Reply to Predict DW's response when I tell her I would like her to lose some weight

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We all gain / lose / carry weight in different ways.  Our relationships to bring embodied vary.  I grew up in a family of disordered eating and because of nurture and nature (?) have gained a lot of weight during two major difficult times in my life - late teens and my 40s.  About 70-80 # each time.  And then I lost it when my mental / emotional states changed and I was able to change circumstances around me.  In my 40s, I am sure my now XH wasn’t “happy” with my weight gain - but I can see now that weight gain was due to lifestyle shifts (pregnancies, desk job, not enough time for myself), and mostly due to my unhappiness in the marriage.  My literal protective barrier.  Safety blanket.  I do feel like “I let myself go” in that I truly lost my sense of self in the marriage and in that relationship.  But I have no shame about my body fluctuation - just compassion for how hard it was on me overall and that my coping mechanism was still to be hard on myself and body.

So - ironically re: the OP and others - your spouses weight gain may be a reflection of how they are truly feeling about you and your relationship.

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Actually anyone's weight gain is a reflection of consuming more calories than they use for energy.  The difference is stored by the body as adipose tissue.  It's simple arithmetic.  Eat less.[/quote]

Sure if you have a kindergarten education. But if you have an education beyond that, you’ll understand that there are a lot of things that are in play, including cortisol levels, hormonal levels, require drug intakes to treat diseases, sexual abuse, rape victimization, etc.[/quote]

I'm a DP but you are quite confused.  The other "things in play" you're talking about can affect HOW MANY calories someone's body needs or WHY someone is consuming a particular amount of calories. They do not alter the basic fact that eating more calories than you burn is the cause of weight gain.  Suppose someone starts "eating their feelings" in response to a trauma. That might be psychologically understandable, and we can sympathize with that person, but if they're eating more than they're burning, they're going to gain weight, and the solution is to eat less.  Now, to do that, they might need counseling or therapy--something targeted at their emotional state rather than their physical--but that doesn't change the fact that if they want to lose weight, they're going to have to alter the equation of how much they eat and how much they burn. And it's always easier to reduce consumption than to increase burning.

"I gained weight because I aged". Well, as you aged, your body needed fewer calories to operate. That's normal. If you gained weight, it's because you didn't make a corresponding adjustment to your caloric intake. You need to also eat less as your body slows down.

"I gained weight because I don't have time to exercise." Not really. Exercise is an inefficient and often counterproductive way to lose weight. You can bust your hump on an elliptical for a half hour or skip a snack--same effect on the calorie equation.  And if you have bad eating habits--as most overweight people do--then the exercise will just make them hungrier and result in weight GAIN because they won't know how to manage their intake as their need increases.

And so on. If you're not focused on reducing calories in relative to calories out, nothing else will matter for weight loss.[/quote]

Sure.  If you eat less than you burn, then you will lose weight.  But you have no way of knowing how much you burn, and all sorts of things affect it, so this isn’t useful information.

Also, I have been a therapist for many years. I can help people manage their lives and relationships and deal with trauma and stop self harming behavior or frequent suicide attempts, but it’s hard to change how people eat with talking.  Do you know what can change weight?  Concerta.  Zyprexa.   This is all more biological than people like to admit.

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Could not disagree more. How you eat is most effectively controlled through the formation of better habits. This is very doable. The reason people don't is that they're not taught that's the answer. Instead, our culture--media, therapists, self-anointed fitness gurus--finds all kinds of other excuses and solutions, which are totally misguided.

To lose weight, you don't have to know your baseline metabolic rate and you don't have to count calories. Here's an approach: figure out something you eat routinely that you think you could do without. Maybe it's that midnight snack. Estimate how many calories it entails. You want to find something that's about 300-400 calories. Then stop eating that for 3-4 weeks and see what happens. I bet you'll start losing weight. As long as the weight is coming off, stick with that; when you stop losing weight again, find another way to shave a few hundred calories off your daily eating, and add that to the reduction for 3-4 weeks, and then see what happens, and repeat.

Now, as for how to stop eating that extra food, there are lots of behavioral things you can do to make it easier. Here's a list of some good ones off the top of my head:
* Don't buy or cook large amounts of food. Acquire as close to the amount you should eat as possible. You're trying to avoid giving yourself the chance to have second or third helpings.
* Relatedly, don't take out more food than you think you should eat. If you're going to eat some crackers, don't put the box next to you. Instead, take 8 or 10 or however many crackers out of the box, put the box away, and go sit somewhere else to eat.
* Don't drink your calories. Don't drink artificially sweetened drinks because they reinforce your desire for sugar. Only water, black coffee, plain tea (no milk).
* Choose foods with no or low added sugar.
* Don't eat while watching tv; don't eat mindlessly.
* Try not to eat alone. 
* Try to eat slowly.
* Don't snack at all between dinner and bed.
* Don't ratchet up your exercise level until you've learned to control your eating.[/quote]

Pp you are responding to...How do you think it works that Zyprexa makes people gain weight?   I will give you a hint that it doesn't change their metabolism.  It also doesn't work for people with AN or cancer related weight loss.  But people who do not have an eating related illness will eat more and gain weight on the drug.  Why?

Do you think that the drug changes people's habits?  Or that it somehow makes it so they grew up in a different culture?  Or gives them some kind of new information?  No.  Of course not.

So how?  If the way that you eat is all habit and culture, then how could a drug change it?

On the flip side, how could Ozempic make people lose weight?  It also doesn't change anyone's metabolism.  It also doesn't change your culture or your memories of how you grew up.

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I can't tell if you're being willfully stupid to push some agenda or if you're actually this dumb. [/quote]

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