not so subtle weight comments from DH ruining my vacation
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Anonymous
Ok....? |
Anonymous
New poster here. I don't know much about science, but I dI'd know enough that at the age of 37 after having two kids I managed to lose 40lbs. and I know enough of how to have kept it off for 5 years now. I will give you FREE advice. I did it by eating less, making better food choices, and moving more. It is that simple. not very scientific, bit it works every single time. My DH did the exact same thing and lost 80lbs. Because I'm now a regular at the gym I've also seen dozens of people do...wait for it.....THE EXACT SAME THING! |
Anonymous
I've seen my wife eat well and exercise like a fiend only to hit a plateau that's about 25 pounds above where she'd like to be. Bodies metabolize food differently, and you have to account for that. |
Anonymous
Not the PP you responded to: I am loathe to contradict you but my experience has been that people consume a lot more calories than they think they are doing. Exercise plays a vital role but ultimately one has to limit what one eats. I say this from personal experience. When I was trying to lose weight I limited my intake to 1600 calories daily. It took remarkably little food to get to that number. I will also endorse what the PP said about seeing people at the gym losing weight gradually over a period of time. |
Anonymous
Translation: to me, it's easier to exercise financial discipline that to eat well. |
Anonymous
Translation: to me, the PP was zoned out when he posted that gibberish. |
Anonymous
Just because you found it easy or possible to lose weight with diet and exercise does not mean that that works for everyone. You have no basis for suggesting the PP and his wife, who he describes as eating well, are both deluding themselves about how much she is eating. Different people have different metabolisms. I am a good example of this as I don't eat well and don't exercise much and am still thin after 2 kids. I know I have not done anything to "deserve" this so I don't get all judgmental towards people who are heavy, who may well be healthier than I am. |
Anonymous
I appreciate that I'm just a random person on the Internet and, you're right, people generally do consume a lot more calories than they think. That said I believe my wife shoots for 1,200 calories per day. She measures her food and everything. By contrast, at age 40, I eat a shit ton more than her, exercise less, have a BMI of 21.5, and body fat of 16 - 17% or so. There is no question that our bodies process food differently. |
Anonymous
I think running is not the best choice for very heavy people because of the impact on joints. Even thin people eventually damage their joints by running on hard surfaces. There are other cardio exercise types that won't be as hard on this joints - like cycling, swimming etc. I've had all kinds of cardio practice and I find running to be the most painful for my knees. |
Anonymous
First, thanks for your courteous response. There is no question that people process food differently. Most of the calories consumed for the average person is from what I believe is termed "basal metabolism" which is essentially what the human body needs to just function even absent any activity. Some people do seem to have much faster metabolism and certainly one's metabolism slows down as one gets older and for a woman hormonal changes also plays a big part. I find it interesting that some racial groups like the Asians who tend to be skinny despite eating well - and eating carbs such as rice - seem to see a change in their metabolism after being in the US for a few decades. I cannot explain why this happens but it does cause one to wonder what it is in our food that seems to cause this slowing down in the metabolism. |
Anonymous
Other than being a practicing MD no. I can't help you if you refuse to believe calories that in < calories out results in weight loss, and I don't have the time or patience to teach you undergraduate physics. The fact that there aren't large, well designed trials that show significant weight loss is sustainable over time in large cohorts is immaterial to whether caloric restriction will result in weight loss. It just reinforces how incredibly difficult caloric restriction is, something that I and several other posters have conceded. Many many people, myself included, have successfully lost weight and kept it off with caloric restriction. As a teen I lost close to 60 lbs and kept it off until my late 30's. I just turned 45 and in the last 7 or 8 years have crept up to 220 on a 5'10" fairly muscular frame. I fully expect to lose 20 pounds with moderate difficulty and then expect it to be hell to lose another 20, but that will be because I am eating too many calories relative to what I burn, not because I somehow have turned into a perpetual energy machine. |
Anonymous
Thanks for this post. I'm a NP to this thread, and I've not read much of it because I figured it had devolved into the usual. But, as someone who lost 150 lbs through diet modifications and exercise, and has successfully kept it off thus far, the points in your post are very much of interest to me for many reasons (self, family, society). As someone who used to be extremely obese, I feel in many ways like I imagine a recovering alcoholic feels. I monitor my food intake at all times - feeling good about myself when I do "well" and beating myself up when I don't. Not overeating is a daily challenge, and there are periods when I feel ravenous. During those periods it is difficult to determine or know whether the desire to eat is physiological or psychological, or both. I always feel like laughing when people talk about "listening to your body" with regard to hunger cues and eating - that approach would be a disaster for me. Constant vigilance is the only thing that keeps me from regaining, and it is mentally exhausting at times. Anyway, to others in this thread - I don't know much about losing 20 or 40 lbs, but as someone who has experience losing a ton of weight: it is neither easy nor anywhere near as simple as you'd like to believe. It is complex and difficult. That does not mean impossible (and believe me, I am all for finding ways to empower people to develop healthier habits), but there are many other things in life that are also not impossible that we just can't do or manage at any given point in our lives due to resources, logistics, finances, psychology and on and on. You'd like to believe weight loss is straightforward and that it's a simple choice to "eat less" or not, but for most very overweight people it just isn't. |
Anonymous
I am the PP you're responding to - I agree. I now run as part of a more diverse workout regimen focused on weightlifting. I might go for an interval run once a week, twice at most. Running as your sole exercise does put a lot of wear on the body, but not everyone seems susceptible to that. I also found that my knees hurt if I didn't do exercises to compensate for the stronger hamstrings that are developed while running. As long as I did heavy squats, I could run pain free, even when I was doing a 8-10 mile run (and several shorter runs) each week. |
Anonymous
Well I too could exercise like a maniac and only loose a little weight. Diet is critical. Also, in losing 40lbs I've hit a plateau multiple times. When that happened, I had to switch up my exercise routine. I'm 140#s and 5'9" and for me to lose those last 10lbs I had to make a MAJOR change. I have an office job. In addition to exercise at the gym, at the office, I use the bathroom on the 7th floor. I walk up those stairs 4 times a day, more if I drink a lot of water. On nice days, I eat my lunch outside for 20 min and use the remaining 30 minuets to walk on the WOD trail next to my office. The key to making your hormones and metabolism function AS IT SHOULD, is to avoid being sedentary and no, "chasing" after kids does not count. Something that brings you to a point right before you sweat on a regular basis. Someone at my office set up a treadmill desk and walks very slowly (think 2MPH) and clocks 40 miles a week at the office and she changed nothing about her diet and lost 25lbs that first month. She has lost 70 in total after then making slight changes to her diet. |
Anonymous
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