Liars - POSTED ON: Dec 28, 2013
Here at DietHobby there are many articles about my weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss.
For more details see ABOUT ME in the Resources section, and various Status Updates etc. in the ARCHIVES. I've consistently recorded all my food into a computer food journal every day for more than NINE years.
I've also recorded my weight daily or weekly during that time. Those detailed records show a large weight loss, followed by a couple of years holding pattern, followed by about five years of gradual weight-gain while eating a calorie average of around 1050 calories daily. Despite my careful adherence to calorie budgets, and detailed documentation, people tend to disbelieve this truth. I'm tired of being considered a liar. In fact, involving myself further in discussions on the issue is becoming too exhausting to even contemplate. My records are helpful to me personally, but are generally discounted by others as inaccurate, mistaken, or faulty in some way because … what these records show "simply cannot be true". This is a common phenomenon. Medical personnel and weight loss gurus get to openly doubt the claims of any and all failed dieters because their fat bodies are the visible proof that they are lying. Former dieters who claim diets don’t work were probably just doing it wrong all along, or else they didn’t try Guru X, Y or Z, who would have set them straight right away. However, the bottom line is, diets don’t fail because failed dieters are liars, but because the only diets that yield substantial, noticeable weight loss in a statistically significant portion of the population are the same diets that are largely unsustainable for many, many reasons. The problem isn’t lying dieters, it’s that the expectations surrounding diets and weight loss are built on lies, half-truths, insinuations, flawed research and cults of personality. It is important to realize and understand that people regain lost weight due to biological reasons which are totally out of their control. When a person engages in the kind of severe caloric restriction necessary to lose significant amounts of weight, it triggers hormonal changes in their body that pushes back against that caloric deficit, both physically and emotionally. The body's response to caloric restriction involves issues involving leptin, ghrelin and adaptive thermogenesis. In a nutshell, one's body does everything it can to preserve what few calories it is taking in. This is the semi-starvation neurosis that is most noticeable in the infamous Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Those continual, ongoing, unpleasant symptoms are the body’s way of trying to urge a person to find more calories. Most people find that kind of lifestyle unsustainable. The 3500 kcal per pound Theory was derived by estimating ...
If it Involves Eating, It's a Diet - POSTED ON: Mar 22, 2013
Here is a recent Quote by a member of a forum that I frequent.
(The article posted below) “supports what some say, and I contend, about dieting for MOST--not all --. And by dieting I mean a purposeful restriction of foods and amounts to match a target low intake and weight goal.
It certainly doesn't mean that reducing the number of calories won't result in some weight loss. It will. The point is that as a strategy it has not been shown to change permanent habits in most who try it. Worse, it distorts the process so that weight gain statistically follows.
You can argue until you're blue in the face that it will work, but if it thwarts the natural process for most, I call that a strategy meant for the few. And the stats show it. Not for those who make it- for those who don't. Which is most.”
My response to this quote, and to the Article I've posted below is:
Everything that has to do with eating or not eating food is a Diet. Eating LESS than the body uses as energy is a “weight-loss diet” Eating the SAME food that the body uses as energy is a “maintenance” diet. Eating MORE food than the body uses as energy is a “weight-gain” diet.
Some Diets are more easily incorporated into the lifestyles of Some People than other Diets. Labeling any type of eating (but especially a plan to eat less) "not a diet" or a “non diet” is just a Semantic Game.
No matter what the "Diet"... "eating plan" .... "way-of-eating" .... "lifestyle", it is difficult to lose weight, and even more difficult to maintain weight-loss. I've been saying this here at DietHobby and other online places for quite some time, and the article below supports this.
This is my personal experience, and I've been researching and writing about this for quite some time. Some of the writings that support this principle can be found at the Links below:
Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss---and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (2008) by Gina Kolata. No Cure
Effort Shock
Sometimes Hunger is a Lie - POSTED ON: Nov 03, 2012
As much as we might like the idea of trusting the Body to tell us when and how to eat, sometimes our Body’s Hunger is a Lie.
Here are a couple of articles about the Science of Willpower, which discuss some of the reasons why the Body’s wisdom can’t always be trusted.
The Ghrelin Gremlin by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. Published on June 22, 2010 in Psychology Today
One of the most popular ideas in weight loss right now is:
"trust your body's wisdom." The body knows what it wants. The body never lies. If you listen to signals like hunger and satiety, your body will never steer you wrong.
This is a lovely sentiment, and it's true that the body is a great source of wisdom. Until it's not. A new study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society shows how the brain can be tricked by the body into overeating and choosing fattening foods over healthier choices. [1] The study set-up was simple enough: bring in hungry participants and ask them to choose between high-calorie, high-fat foods (e.g. pizza, cake, chocolate) and less fattening foods (e.g. salad, vegetables, and lean protein). Not surprisingly, hungry participants preferred the less healthy choices. Their bodies craved energy. The researchers then had participants makes similar choices, but 90 minutes after eating a meal. They weren't as hungry, and they made healthier choices. They "listened" to their bodies and choose a more appropriate snack, given their fullness. But the researchers didn't stop there. They were interested in whether they could mimic the effects of fasting by manipulating participants' level of a hormone called "ghrelin." Ghrelin stimulates appetite and plays a big role in the body's signals of hunger and cravings. It is typically regulated by things like how recently you ate your last meal and blood sugar level, making it a good signal of the need to eat. But it can also be influenced by many other things, including stress and sleep. This means that as much as you'd like to trust the body, the signal of hunger can be a lie. Back to the lab: On one visit, participants who had recently eaten a full meal were injected with ghrelin. And this time, the participants behaved as if they were starving. They found the higher-fat, higher-calorie foods more appealing and were more likely to choose them--even though the body was actually quite satiated. This injection was just a quick-and-dirty stand in for all the things that can push ghrelin levels up in the real world. If you're sleep deprived, your body is pumping out more ghrelin to get you to eat. [2]
It's a poor substitute for sleep, but high-fat, high-sugar foods are a source of the energy you desperately need. The same is true for stress. And research shows that high-sugar foods - especially drinks, includ...
Do Diets Work? - POSTED ON: Aug 02, 2012
Diets and dieting is often an emotionally charged topic. Everyone has an opinion, and most people are interested in sharing theirs. Even "experts" have different perspectives and many of them are quite evangelistic about their own beliefs on the subject. There is now a rather popular viewpoint fostered by some Therapists and Nutritional experts who say that "Diets don't work"; that "Diet head is a bad thing"; and that "Dieting is one of the primary causes of eating disorders".
Do Diets Work?
My own position is that If a person eats food, and that person is alive, that person is on a diet that works. The frequency of eating, the amount eaten, and the micronutrients of the food eaten are all just factors of various diets. For more about those factors, read my articles:
The Essence of Diets Part One, and
The Essence of Diets Part Two. What is "Diet head" and is it a bad thing?
The basic essence of the term, diet head simply involves thinking about what and how one is eating. I, personally, see this as a very positive thing, and have chosen to make Dieting one of my Hobbies. For more about that perspective read my article:
Intuitive Eating and the No S Diet - POSTED ON: Dec 14, 2011
I read a lot about various Diet Plans, and I've spent a lot of time experimenting with them. I am not a fan of the Intutitive Eating Diet (and it is a Diet, although proponents like to label it a "non-diet"). My research and personal experience with it has proven to me that "Intutive Eating" is an absolute disaster as a weight-loss plan for almost every person who struggles with obesity. In my opinion, even "Faith Healing" has a better track record. People who embrace the Intuitive Eating concepts sometimes develop Peace of Mind about their eating...but that usually lasts only until they realize that, not only are they NOT losing weight... they are Actually becoming fatter.
However, adding some simple guidelines to that concept can help stop the Intuitive Eating runaway train to Fat City. I think that embracing the No S Diet plan is a useful strategy that can be helpful for people who have bought into, and found themselves trapped inside, the Intuitive Eating fantasy mindset.
Here's a very insightful quote by a long-time member of the "No S" forum:
When a thin person says she eats as much as she wants, it is a different "as much" as the typical overweight person. Most thin people have a different definition of what full or stuffed is. Most of them hate the feeling of being stuffed. And most of them will routinely wait a long time to have a meal, if necessary. If they have to wait longer for dinner one day, they just get hungrier and wait. They will leave even food they love on their plate when they are full. If eating as much as you want routinely means eating when you are hungry and beyond full or slightly less than full, you will not lose weight. In the meantime, when you are intermittently reinforcing the habit of overeating, eating just because you have an urge that has nothing to do with hunger, responding to environmental cues, etc., you are making that habit stronger and stretching out the time it takes to help establish and solidify the habit of allowing yourself to get hungry several times a day by eating moderate amounts and then waiting an appropriate amount of time. I spent years looking at why I ate. It wasn't until the No S Diet that I realized that it didn't matter. The best way to cut the cord between multiple reasons to eat and eating was to surrender to the one-plate 3-meal structure. I won't ever be able to remove all the reasons I would like to eat. On N (normal) days, most N days, they are irrelevant. The problems don't go away. The random eating has. I eat my meals, some light, some heavier. I get hungry, I satisfy the hunger. It is ten times easier (but not easy at the start) than any...
When a thin person says she eats as much as she wants, it is a different "as much" as the typical overweight person. Most thin people have a different definition of what full or stuffed is. Most of them hate the feeling of being stuffed. And most of them will routinely wait a long time to have a meal, if necessary. If they have to wait longer for dinner one day, they just get hungrier and wait. They will leave even food they love on their plate when they are full.
If eating as much as you want routinely means eating when you are hungry and beyond full or slightly less than full, you will not lose weight.
In the meantime, when you are intermittently reinforcing the habit of overeating, eating just because you have an urge that has nothing to do with hunger, responding to environmental cues, etc., you are making that habit stronger and stretching out the time it takes to help establish and solidify the habit of allowing yourself to get hungry several times a day by eating moderate amounts and then waiting an appropriate amount of time. I spent years looking at why I ate. It wasn't until the No S Diet that I realized that it didn't matter. The best way to cut the cord between multiple reasons to eat and eating was to surrender to the one-plate 3-meal structure. I won't ever be able to remove all the reasons I would like to eat. On N (normal) days, most N days, they are irrelevant. The problems don't go away. The random eating has.
I eat my meals, some light, some heavier. I get hungry, I satisfy the hunger. It is ten times easier (but not easy at the start) than any...
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