An Alternative Solution to the Body-Size Problem - POSTED ON: Jan 28, 2018
The Problem: Being Fat is Hard.
The potential Solution is to reduce one’s ongoing food energy intake in the hopes that this will cause one’s body to consume itself and become smaller. Meaning: the Solution is to DIET, which is Hard, and to Permanently MAINTAIN Weight-Loss, which is even Harder. The thing about intentional weight loss is that research shows that almost everyone can lose weight short term, but then almost everyone gains it back – with the majority of people gaining back more than they lost.
The body doesn’t understand that there is a certain size and shape that brings with it an increased social capital. It’s like “No problem, I’ve evolved to survive famine, I’ll just get started lowering metabolism.” Basically, the body is hard at work doing everything it can to lower the amount of food that it needs to live and store as much food as it can. At the end of a dieting process the body is biologically different than it was when it began. It has become biologically different than a body that never dieted, and likely has a new set point weight – higher than its original weight – that it is now trying to maintain because it now is worried that there will soon be another famine. Weight regain has a great deal to do with the fact that keeping the body in a state of starvation is unsustainable, especially when the body reacts by working as hard to get and store all the food it can.
At the end of the day, nobody can produce research for any intentional weight loss method (call it a diet, lifestyle change, or whatever) that succeeds in the long term for more than a tiny fraction of people. The most likely outcome of intentional weight loss is weight gain because of the elements that are ultimately out of our personal control. Instead of: “Just don’t go back to your old habits!” it’s actually: “Just change your body biologically back to how it was before you became fat AND before you dieted!” . So… is there any ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION for anyone with a Body-Size Problem? Below is an outstanding discussion of this issue which proposes Acceptance as an Alternative Solution. This means Essentially: Redefine the Problem. To Plus-size Women who Cannot yet Name their ...
Winner of the “5 Percent Lottery of Hell” - POSTED ON: Jan 26, 2018
Below is a YouTube interview video of an online “Health Coach”, Isabel Foxen Duke, who takes the position of: Stop Dieting and accept Your Own Body Size and Set Point, whether it is fat or thin. It gives an accurate and thorough presentation of the issues involving body image, size acceptance, and weight bias. Research indicates that 95% of all dieters will regain all of their lost weight in 1-5 years, plus more, and will wind up heavier than they were before dieting. Near the end of the video Isabel says people who are able to successfully diet long term are winners in the “5% Lottery of Hell”. I am a person who is in the “tiny fraction of the population of statistical anomalies who are ‘able to successfully diet long term’ … one of the winners in the “5% Lottery of Hell” …, and I find her statements to be accurate as well as amusing. My primary objection to Intuitive Eating (aka: the Hunger & Fullness Diet), is that most of its cheerleaders falsely promise, or at least imply, that it will result in weight-loss; and rarely touch on the proven fact that “reduced obese” dieters who successfully adopt that way-of-eating will most likely re-gain all of their lost weight. Isabel Foxen Duke is an refreshing exception to that norm. She says:
"The reality of the situation is that when you heal your relationship with food, you will be sane, and you will be whatever weight that makes sense for your body … and that weight could be any number of various weights. It is not necessarily going to be defined by what we describe by the politically or socially constructed BMI index .”
What she says is compelling, and I agree with most of her positions on dieting and body image. She says: “You’ve got two choices. Either accept your body for what it is, or fight it.” Her recommended choice is to give up dieting and end the fight. My current choice is to continue fighting my body by dieting to maintain my weight-loss because, at this point, I am simply not willing to accept the high weight that my body clearly wants to give me. The YouTube interview below, “Isabel Foxen Duke on How to Stop F*cking with Food”, contains a clear and accurate explanation of Set Point. Here is a transcript I prepared which contains some of her statements about that issue: ...
Wishful Thinking: Erroneous Belief - POSTED ON: Jan 13, 2018
Intuitive: Without Conscious Reasoning or Rational Thought - POSTED ON: Jan 12, 2018
Babies Eat Intuitively - POSTED ON: Jan 11, 2018
Babies who are in the Process of Eating Intuitively.
Video Below
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