It seems like a lot of people, including me, are struggling a bit right now. Hugs to everyone.

I've asked myself "Why can't you?" over and over again. I've been in the midst of self-loathing, and even then, I can't find any logical, rational reason that I (or anyone else) can't do this. That's been my mantra from day one.

I've found reasons that I don't want to make the effort, but I haven't found any reason that I can't.

There's no reason you can't either.

thank you for this post!
i keep having to remind myself that if other people can do it so can i. for some reason i have these thoughts that somehow my body is different and while others are moving forward and losing weight some invisible force will keep me where i am. i'm doing things properly this time, good food and exercise, all the other times i've lost weight it has been through near starvation, and i know thats not healthy and totally unsustainable.

I strongly disagree. There are many logical, rational reasons that popular weight loss methods make weight loss virtually impossible. Yes, weight loss itself is possible for nearly everyone, but for many people that possibility is contingent upon dieting very differently than common wisdom dictates.

I've been dieting most of my life (I'm going to be 45 next month, and I was put on my first diet in kindergarten), and most of that time I believed that there were no logical, rational reasons that anyone couldn't and shouldn't be able to acheive and maintain a healthy weight. Anyone who didn't, just wasn't trying hard enough. I thought I wasn't trying hard enough. I thought I must be lazy, crazy, and stupid. So I kept trying harder and harder, and experienced less and less success. I didn't have to work harder, I had to work smarter. I had to understand why weight loss was so difficult, and find ways to make it more manageable.

I only was able to gain some mastery after I learned and accepted that there are indeed entirely logical and rational reasons that weight loss is one of the most difficult feats to accomplish. Weight loss isn't rocket-science. Rocket science is child's play in comparison.

I think we have to stop telling people "you can do it" without giving specific tools to do it. I think "you just have to want it bad enough" is misleading advice. "You just have to work harder" is misleading advice. "If I can do it, anyone can do it" is misleading advice.

There are thousands of factors that contribute to weight gain, and no weight gain is exactly alike. Physiological factors play a huge role. A fact I didn't take into consideration most of my life. I thought I was fat because "I had no will power," because I was lazy, or because I had emotional issues that I was self-medicating with food (not realizing that what I was eating wasn't a result of emotional issues, the imbalanced diet was actually causing the lack of control of my emotions).

Yes, using "will power" I was able to lose weight in the short-term, but not in the long term. It was like holding my breath - I could do it, until I couldn't. Sure you don't pass out and eat while unconscious, but physiological hunger can be very difficult to resist. For most people, it's very difficult, nearly impossible to starve yourself to death. Instinct prevents it. And those "starvation-preventing instincts" can be triggered even at 200 lbs overweight.

If I had not discovered the physiological underpinnings of my obesity, I wouldn't have been able to lose weight. I would have only dieted myself fatter and fatter. I had to learn the hormonal component (birth control, which I had avoided because doctors told me it would likely result in weight gain - helped prevent the insane monthly hunger that made binging nearly inevitable). I had to learn the carbohydrate component (I'm less hungry on 1000 calories of very low carb, than on 3000 calories of normal carb).

I didn't learn to succeed with weight loss by deciding I needed more willpower. I learned to succeed by realizing why willpower wasn't enough. I had to learn those logical, rational reasons that most weight loss methods are ineffective. There are reasons people aren't succeeding.

If we do weight loss as our society teaches us to do it, many of us cannot succeed. For some of us, we need learn the reasons why the "normal way" rarely works.

When I thought "there's no reason I can't do this," I felt like a lazy, crazy idiot when I failed.

When I learned all of the reasons that make weight loss difficult, I realized "Oh wow, no wonder weight loss has always been so difficult. I have to approach this in a different manner. I have to outsmart my physiology and biology.


Books that helped me see and address the physiological issues

The End of Overeating by David Kessler
Refuse to Regain by Barbara Berkely
Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
Neanderthin by Ray Audette
Several books by Michael Pollen
Several books by Gary Taubes
Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata


I was so skeptical when I started that I was willing to put almost no effort into this. I succeeded despite myself, essentially. I'm only now starting to really have to try to put serious effort into the attempt and I'm finding some of the old tactics are just as ineffective now as they were then. Cutting calories to the point that I can lose at least 2 lbs a week, results in rebound hunger so bad I end up gaining instead of losing. It's certainly not true for everyone, but it is true for me. But damn it I want those 2 lbs I feel entitled to (I'm not). It's a path where more effort is actually counterproductive. Learning to expend less effort (because it's the most effective strategy) is not an easy strategy (because we're taught more effort yeilds more results - but not always with weight loss. Often more effort backfires. Learning to outsmart biology isn't always about more effort, it's often about different effort. And if you don't learn those different methods you may not succeed, and you'll think you're lazy, crazy, or stupid when you're just musinformed and unprepared).

I'm ranting a bit, but this is information that is not common knowledge yet. Weight loss is one of the most difficult accomplishments a person can make. Saying "there's no reason you can't," or "anyone can" without providing the tools to do so, can do great injury. It can inspire more and more self-hatred and contempt, and worse it can inspire people to work harder at ineffective methods.

Thinking "anyone can do this," inspired me to run head-first into a wall, and instead of finding a way around the wall, I just ran at the wall with more and more effort and speed, and I was so mystified why I couldn't bring down the wall.

Learning the physiology (all those logical and rational reasons that weight loss can be virtually impossible the way most of us are taught to do it) changed my outlook. I stopped seeing obesity as a foe that anyone can beat with no education or training. You have to know the enemy and learn how to fight it, and just wanting it isn't enough. "Just doing it" isn't even enough if your efforts aren't sustainable and effective.

Despite strongly disagreeing, you point out that it is possible for nearly everyone. It's a matter of continuing to try to find what works for you. No one said it was easy.

If you can't, that's fine. The rest of us will.

kaplods when i said if others can do it so can i, i didn't necessarily mean by their methods. everyone is different, what works for some may not work for others. what i meant is if others can find their way, i can find mine. im sorry you have struggled so much for such a long time, i hope you have it sussed now, from your ticker it seems you have done very well so far, i hope your success continues.

Thank you! Thank you so much! Yes I can do it too! It might be slow sometimes, i might stall sometimes, I might miss exercise or I might mess up my food, but in the long run I am not giving up! And not for people, not for fashion but for me! Because I finally begin to love myself and i finally start to care! I have had enough of harming my body with food! I want to be natural, I want to be healthy and not spend my life eating and exercising like crazy!

I thought you were inside my head for a minute there because I've been repeating some variation of, "You can live in a foreign country, of course you can run these five minutes. The only thing stopping you is you," when I work out.

We all deserve this and we're all capable of attaining it. Best of luck, everyone!

You missed my point entirely. I've been studying weight loss for 40 years, putting far more effort and brain power into it than my career and education (which is no small feat, considering I always worked at least two jobs and obtained both a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology).

I put excessive, but wrong effort into it, because I believed there were no "logical and rational" reasons that I couldn't stick to my food plan. There very much WERE logical and rational reasons, but I didn't know them. You can't fight what you do not understand.

Just saying that " It's a matter of continuing to find what works for you," is like sayingthat anyone can fly if they want it badly enough without mentioning that jumping off a cliff and flapping your arms probably will not work (and the person that does jump off the cliff is not going to have an opportunity to learn from their mistakes).


People have in the past, and will continue in the future to kill themselves trying to lose weight. People have spent entire life times of intense effort without ever having found what works for them. It takes far more than desire. It even takes more than commitment.

I never succeeded when I thought as you did. I only succeeded when I did see the logical and reasonable obstacles in my path. I also know that it took me 40 years, with a mensa-level IQ, a master's degree in an applicable field (I went in to psychology to understand myself, and to use it to help myself), self-help groups, counseling, counsulting dozens of doctors and specialitsts and nutritionist/dietitians, and after reading hundreds (if not thousands) of books, articles.

If someone with all of my advantages and resources, with great effort took 40 years to find the answers, what hope would someone have if they had no formal education, were living in poverty with a family to support, perhaps functionally iliterate, unaware of available resources, unable to access available resources...

Telling people that something is possible for everyone, without giving everyone the tools to do so, makes "possible" meaningless.

Saying there's no logical, rational reason for failure, when there are many such reasons, many related factors, is misleading. It encourages people to work harder rather than different. I didn't explore low-carb for good, logical, rational reasons (virtually all of the common wisdom and sciece at the time, said that low-carb was unhealthy and unsustainable. Many of the experts still do).


I have far more confidence in my success, because of my understanding of the logical and rational factors that preven weight loss. The reasons for my success has not been a belief that weight loss was possible (when I began succeeding I had no such confidence. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work), it was my adressing all of the logical, reasonable obstacles.

If you tell people it's possible and then don't give them the tools to accomplish it, they only feel like bigger failures when they don't. Hope isn't enough. Understanding the factors that prevent success is far more valuable.

It's one of the reasons I think weight loss statistics are so dismal. There's plenty of hope and expectations of success to go around, yet the main theory of failure is that the person didn't believe in themselves, didn't work hard enough, didn't want it badly enough - it's all crap. You can have all those things and still not succeed because you don't have the right tools and information, and unless you get those tools and information you can do your very best and never succeed. It's information that is lacking. What works for which people. How to find what is likely to work for you.

If my doctor had not recommended low-carb, I never would have tried it. What I thought I knew about it would have prevented me from doing so. I would have gone to my grave without ever having found what works for me, and many people do and have and will go to their grave without succeeding at weight loss, and not because they were lazy, crazy or stupid, not because they didn't put every bit of effort they had.

Saying "anyone can do it," without providing the information and tools to do it, is meaninglyess and even disrespectful. Telling someone "eating less and moving more" is the secret to success is like telling someone that the cure to their poverty is "earning more and spending less." It's the how that has to be shared, before it becomes doable. Telling someone they can do it, is meaningless without telling them how to do it, or at least how to find the resources to do it.

Well...I kind of agree with both sides of this.

On the one hand, I think there exists a successful weight loss and maintenance regimen for the vast majority of people.

Unfortunately...there are huge and (IMO) unnecessary obstacles in the way of many people finding their successful regimen. Some of the conventional diet wisdom, much of which comes from people in the medical community who really should know better, is unhelpful and/or damaging. Most people, unless they're incredibly lucky, have to be ornery enough to reject some advice from authority figures while still figuring out which information is useful.

The danger of thinking, "well, it can be done, it's just a matter of setting my mind to it" is that, if you go in with the best intentions but pursue a regimen that doesn't work for you, failure and disappointment are almost guaranteed.

It's also true that success doesn't always look like people might expect it to. Many people can't sustain the "typical" 1-2 pound weekly weight loss without having to resort to the kind of severe deprivation that is likely to prompt a rebound. At the end of my weight-loss phase, I was losing around 3/4 pound a week, and that was fine, but I was fortunate that I never experienced a significant plateau. We can't always control how our bodies will react, and someone who is expecting their "deserved" 1-2 pound loss per week, but not getting it, might get discouraged and give up.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's definitely good to be encouraged by other people's success, but it's also necessary to manage one's expectations and be willing to course-correct.

I want to be clear that I'm not arguing that hope isn't necessary. It is. I also do understand and support feeling, believing, and knowing that if others have succeeded, so can you.

It's the only thing that kept me trying to find "the way" for nearly 40 years.

But what intensely drives me crazy is the implication that effort and desire are all you need for success, and that if you don't succeed you're deeply flawed. You're in some way lazy, crazy or stupid.

Too often weight loss is treated as simple. And in the short-term it is. Absolutely anyone can lose some weight, rather quickly just by eating less and moving more. It's how to put that into practice that so often fails, and there are many reasons for that. Saying there's "no reason" for failure is extremely misleading.

Success is an accomplishment most don't succeed at, and there are good reasons for that (reasons that have to be overcome - but to overcome them a person has to recognize them).

I have no self-loathing. I've always done my best, and been proud and satisfied with that, but my greatest regret in life, is not realizing and fully understanding what I was up against. I didn't realize that very slow weight loss WAS success. I didn't realize it, because virtually no one believes it. I learned to lose weight the way everyone else does - by the experience of others (and that's a horrible way because so few people do it permanently).

You have to learn to think differently to succeed, and that's information that isn't getting out there. You have to understand what you're up against, and it just seems that when people say "anyone can do it," it isn't enough of the truth to be helpful. I don't think most people fail because they don't want to, or because they're not putting enough effort in. I think most people are actually putting far more effort in than they need to, they're just putting their effort in directions that aren't very effective.

I think too often "why can't you," has been used as a weapon against a person who just hasn't yet found their success. It's certainly been used as a weapon against me since I was 5. If you are succeeding, it's natural to think "if I can do it, so can anyone," but that's rather dismissive to people who don't have the advantages you might have. I think it can hurt those who aren't yet succeeding. Saying "if they've done it, I probably can" is certainly a wonderful thing, but to say "anyone can" can make people feel lazy, crazy, or stupid (enemies of weight loss).

The word has to get out that there are a lot of reasonable and logical obstacles that are true roadblocks. It doesn't make weight loss technically impossible for anyone, but the "no excuses" mentality often does more harm than good. It says "you're to blame" when blame is rarely if ever an effective strategy for weight loss.

The first paragraph is what comes across in many of your posts. Many of us have been there. Give the five year old little girl inside of you a hug, send her to bed, and let go of that mindset. It's self-victimizing and does no one any good. What positives are you receiving by holding onto that knee-jerk reaction to situation 40 years ago? From the outside, I can't see any.

There are obstacles. That doesn't mean that it's impossible. However, it does become impossible when you shrug your shoulders and walk away instead of finding another path.

Wow, you've managed to say in a few lines, what I was trying to convey with my novel-length posts.

Lack of "orneryness" may have been my biggest problem(and now I may have more than my share).


I wasn't trying to offend anyone, or discount their experience. I just fervently wish that effective methods of weight loss were more commonly available. The state of weight loss science is dismal. For too many decades it's approached obesity treatment as a one-size-fits-all endeavor - which plan is effective, rather than which plan works best for which people (and perhaps which types of obesity). What did long-term succeeders have/do that failers didn't?

Humans have a need to simplify, but when it comes to weight loss, I think it's a huge mistake. Almost any statement that simplifies, oversimplifies, and we need to understand the complexity of weight loss, not simplify it into a few short and easy to remember maxims.

That's the biggest problem I have with cliches like "if I can do it anyone can..." it's not that there isn't some truth to the cliche, it's that the devil is in the details. It's the microdetails that most not-yet-succeeders are lacking.

Wow Kaplods, great posts! I really identify with what you have to say here. Your words mirror a lot of my struggles with weight and self-esteem. All of the inspiration, advise, and well wishes in the world won't help anyone get to a healthy weight unless they also have a solid, individualized, realistic plan of action and the knowledge of how/ why the plan will work for them. Real weight loss is complicated and everyone must take their own unique path to success.

You've greatly misunderstood. I do not have a self-victimizing mindset. Quite the contrary. I am confident in MY ability to succeed - far more than I am confident in EVERYONE'S ability to succeed. I have found my answers, but it took 40 years to do it. It was believing that "it's possible for everyone," and believing that "anyone can do it" and believing that "any diet works if you work it," and all the other oversimplified diet myths that were roadblocks in my path.

It was only when I understood the roadblocks that I was able to find success. I have no doubt that I will continue to make progress towards my goal. Will I get to 150 lbs before I die (even if it's of old-age)? I'm not even looking that far down the road, because experience tells me it's counterproductive. I concentrate on the one pound in front of me. One pound at a time, one day at a time, one minute at a time, if that's what I need to do.

I have never in my life lost this much weight, or sustained a "losing trend" for this long. I've never gone so long without feeling that I had failed badly enough to abandon my efforts without having a new plan in place. I've never had more confidence in myself. I don't only know that I can succeed, I know that I am succeeding. It is not on my own behalf that I am arguing this point.

There are thousands of factors that contributed to my lack of success in the past, and just as many to my current success. It is not myself who I am defending when I argue that "anyone can do it" is an oversimplification that can do more harm than good. It's the people without my resources. If someone as intelligent, as resourceful, as hard-working, as well-educated, as self-educated on the topic of weight loss, with the amazing support system I have had in my family and the people I've met here at 3FC and in my TOPS group, and with the financial resources I had at my disposal (at least before I became disabled) - and it STILL took me 40 years to succeed, what about all the people without my advantages? How is telling them "you can do it" without providing a lot more in the way of information in tools not a huge slap in the face?

I am not saying "I can't succeed," I am saying "I couldn't have succeeded without a lot more going for me than my desire and belief in my ability to do so."

My eventual success was largely dumb luck and desperation, NOT strategies I would comfortably recommend. There are too many ways that dumb luck and desperation can backfire and cause permanent damage, injury and even death (if I had been desperate enough to take fen-phen, with my propensity for low-levels of blood sodium, it's likely that the drug would have resulted in cardiac arrest).

While hope, self-confidence, and perseverance are necessary for permanent weight loss, they are not sufficient, I don't believe they are in short supply. It's the factual knowledge that is in such a poor state that without it, I don't see most people, let alone everyone succeeding - and that's what I want. I don't want just to succeed myself, I want everyone to succeed - and in a lot fewer than 40 years.

For me that meant understanding the enemy of obesity in a way I had never realized was necessary. Understanding all of the ways in which weight loss is unwinnable without the knowledge and tools to defeat the enemy.

It was the "no logical or reasonable reason" that I am arguing against, because until I knew and understood the logical and reasonable nature of the obstacles, my intense efforts were unproductive. When I thought "anyone can do this," I approached the problem in a very different way than when I understood just how complicated and difficult the process is. When I realized how few people do succeed, despite insane amounts of effort, I knew it was the strategy I had to change, not my belief in my ability to do it.

When I found the right strategies, my belief didn't matter (which was good because when I started, I didn't have much belief. My success gave me some of that back).

I had to learn to diet "backwards" almost in direct opposition to common wisdom. And I learned that if your strategy is effective, even disbelief and lack of confidence can't stop you from losing. It's the rational and logical physiological obstacles I see as being far more important than desire or motivation. What we're taught about weight loss is so often untrue. That's what has to be communicated far more effectively than "you can do it."

We've been saying "you can do it" for more than 150 years. We don't need more of it, we need more information on "how to do it," so fewer people have to spend decades learning it for themselves.

Thanks for your reply, kaplods. I think we were composing a couple of our posts in parallel and ended up making similar points. I always enjoy reading your posts and find them to be valuable.

AZ Sunrises, back to your original post: keep trying, but please try to forgive yourself if you have lapses. A desire to improve and do better is healthy--self-loathing, even aside from how rotten it feels, is counterproductive.