Thread: Kind of depressing, but important.

Okay...this is long, and I've already got another long article somewhere saying the same sort of stuff, but it's really worth the read if you're up to it
Some Answers About Genes, Environment, Obesity and Maintenance - 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community Living Maintenance

I thought as much

Sucks doesn't it.

So we have two choices. Either get big again, or make sure we maintain however hard.

I know which one I plan to do

I read bits of it. Was upset to read the bit where it says about not trying to eat intuitively (which is what Paul McKenna suggests basically). Will read it in more detail tomorrow - thanks Karion.

Originally Posted by D_Q

Was upset to read the bit where it says about not trying to eat intuitively (which is what Paul McKenna suggests basically).

I know what you mean, but I know I can't eat intuitively which is one reason I don't follow PMcK. Having said that, as you know...eating intuitively the PmcK way is more complex than just listening to your body and eating accordingly. I just haven't got the patience to go through the whole ringmarole of following his plan and too scared to put weight on before I suss it out.

So PMck aside for one moment....no I can't eat intuitively...well not most of the time anyway.

Reading it has actually made me feel better though - I just thought it was me and that I was crap for finding maintenance hard.

I've found that since reaching goal, I now have very, very strong urges to binge eat and this is not something I ever did when I was at my heaviest. I'm not used to it and am not at all sure how to deal with it or stop it.

Anyone else had this problem?

Jem x

You're not alone Jem.

I have a huge article about this too. I remember posting it on the pink site once. Makes long reading, but is absolutely fascinating.

I'll hook it out in the next couple of days and post it on this thread. It might explain a few things.

WOW - great reading - it explains my yo yo weight problem and why I always got so much fatter after a weight loss programme!
It makes me more determined to control my weight loss this time & acceptance that I cannot & will never be able to eat like a "Slim Normal person"!
Tis true helen we are fat people disguised in a slim body!!

Hmmmm explains a lot!!! Boo!!!

At least it's not just down to me being a greedy pig! *cough*

I'm so glad you posted that Karion and it does make me feel better in a funny kind of way, at least it explains a lot.

Bad news for me is that I really need to up my exercise, I'm a lazy mare and hate exercise, it's a real chore for me, but I'm not going back up the scales any further, so I need a real re-think of what I'm doing.

Thanks, I think - LOL

It is kind of reassuring in a strange way.

I have now found the article that I posted on the pink site a long time ago. It is long and I think I'll post it here in chapters.

If you have the time, I urge to read it. Rather than reading it and thinking 'well...whats the point', I found it gave me answers...facts...made me realise what I was up against so that I could tackle it.

Bit like going into battle and being warned that there were some damn good soldiers on the other side I could adjust my weapons accordingly

Dieting Psychology Snippet 1

Very many people engage in dieting. Health professionals could be forgiven for assuming that reducing diets are for fat people. However, this is far from the case.

Up to one third of men and women in the western world is said to be overweight. Yet twice as many believe that they weigh more than they should. Thinking that one is overweight is more common in normal weight women than in men. Moreover, not only do these normal weight people believe they weigh too much, many also have lives that are in some way restricted by worry about weight.

In this context, dieting is extremely common and people of all weights are trying to lose weight. In 1980 - 81 Dr Jeffrey and his colleagues from the University of Minnesota surveyed 2000 people living in the town of Minneapolis.

According to the people they questioned, 72% of the women dieters and 44% of the men had never been overweight. This finding has been replicated in many other studies, namely that many people, women in particular, mistakenly believe themselves to be overweight and at least one in every two women who are NOT overweight has tried dieting.

The popularity of dieting is fuelled by several factors, the first being a national aversion to fatness. This attitude sets in at a very young age. Schoolchildren in one study showed a stronger aversion to being overweight than to being blind or physically crippled, Even children as young as 8 are restricting their food intake and by age 15 one in three has been on a diet.

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Sad world we live in, especially the bit I put in bold

This is getting more interesting....promise

There is a popular myth that body fat is a “Cinderella substance” which fits on top of the real person underneath, that can be controlled with the right diet and the right degree of willpower.

Hence, as far as dieting success is concerned, much of what is written in the popular press has an optimistic flavour. Despite poor success rates, even the professionals who proffer diet plans believe that successful dieting is possible - that any one can do it if they try hard enough to follow the advice they are given. In actual fact there is no evidence for this assumption. At best modern weight control programmes can achieve weight losses of around 15 pounds but the proportion of people who maintain their losses for over 5 years is in single figures. Only one in twenty people who join commercial weight control programmes is said to reach goal weight - but not all of these people are clinically obese and there is no information about how many of the successes re-enrol at a later date. Further, half of all dieters put back even more weight than they have lost. Obviously something else is going on.

Dieters and non diets alike explain the difficulty of losing weight in terms of a concept called “willpower” - successful dieters have it and failed dieters do not. This idea is so popular as an explanation for failure to lose weight that advisors who prescribe weight loss plans for people are puzzled, angry or at least resigned when a person returns to be weighed not having lost an ounce and often having gained weight.

Researchers have battled long and hard with the question of what distinguishes the successful from the unsuccessful dieter.

At first they explained differences in success / failure in terms of personality, neuroticism and many other psychological constructs. Now we know that the difference between success and failure cannot be explained by one single phenomenon.

At the very least , there are some facts about the experience of dieting and its psychology which women with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating or obesity should understand, if they wish to overcome their eating problem or lose weight successfully. This will explain why dieting is so difficult and why when weight is lost most people cannot keep it down.

In addition there is growing evidence that repeated cycles of dieting can make matters even worse, in that people may have to eat less and for longer to lose the same amount of weight. Kelly Brownell has reported on research done by colleagues on the effects of weight cycling in rats, which is like yo yo dieting in humans.

A group of rats were dieted and then re-fed. In the second cycle of restriction the rats needed 46 days on the same calorie intake to lose the weight they had previously lost in 21 days. It rook them only 14 days on the second occasion to regain as much weight as they had regained previously in 46 days. While we cannot extrapolate from humans to rats and no firm conclusions can be drawn from such human studies as exist it is interesting to note that athletes who have to keep within a weight range from one season to the other complain that it becomes progressively harder to lose the same amount of weight from one season to another.