Ask buriedbeds about losing 200 lbs (very, very long)

[Cracka Lacka]

Great post.

Congrats!!

Keep it off.

[ratholeusoul]

I woke up at 6am and ate my breakfast reading this thread... I think I'll go outside and do some jogging. After I'm done, I'll spend my day figuring out why it's so god damn difficult for me to eat well and make prop bets with somebody to have enough incentive to work out multiple times a week. Afk -->

[bigscore]

bb,

exactly how much do you weigh now? and how tall are you?

[mindflayer]

Cheers [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

[ryanj247]

bb,

currently, approximately how many calories do you eat per day, and what is the fat/protein/carb breakdown?

i'm curious about what kind of carb levels you end up when you follow the atkins diet long-term. i skimmed the website a bit and saw that the initial phase is supposed to be like <20g carbs/day. to me, that seems absurd. their 2-week menu plan is just ridiculous, and i wouldn't even consider attempting to try to follow it. i'm definitely concerned that i'm addicted to sugar, but even when i try to find decent things to eat, it's just not practical to eliminate so many carbs. a bowl of cereal/oatmeal, yogurt, a banana, a turkey sandwich, a wrap/burrito...all of those are like 30-40g carbs each. can you fit those into your current diet?

[chopstick]

Nice work, bb.

[Stinger88]

thanks for posting all of this bb, excellent read

[buriedbeds]

I'm sorry that I've been so slow getting in my responses...I thought I was starting this thread at an ideal time, that it would be a couple/few weeks where the work/life load would be slower...it turns out I was wrong. Rather than continue to let the posts continue to mount, I'm just going to try and get a response or two in whenever I have time. I just tend to write so much (obviously), which takes quite a while...so I keep trying to wait until I have a bunch of time to really give the answers in the depth I'd like. Since that doesn't seem to be happening, I'll get in as much as I can, when I can.

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That was a very inspirational OP, thanks bb. I've been trying to loose some weight myself and I hope to be able to use your experience as guide.

I have a question though; how did you feel about alcohol, both now and when you were on a diet? I'm in college right now so there's a lot of oppertunities to drink, lot's of "temptations". I don't drink a lot but we all know beer is a nono when you want to loose weight. How did you deal with it?

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I drink when I feel like it and accept that it will stall my weight loss. This is a long-term thing, with long-term implications. I honestly don't much care if I get stalled for a week or two because I feel like going on a bender, or feel like having a few (miller lite, as it's the lowest carb one usually available) beers at a ballgame or whatever.

FWIW, hard alcohol is the lowest in carbs, which wasn't too hard for me as when I drink, I like to drink Jack Daniel's. In tremendous volume, on occasion. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I am not on a diet, with short-term implications. This whole thing has been about re-learning how to eat - for life - and as such how to make it livable. Getting unimaginably hammered is one thing that I enjoy from time to time, so... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

-bb.

[buriedbeds]

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bb,

I'm not trying to imply that fat people are all lack character, or that you once were and now aren't. I'm not saying I would never associate myself with people who I perceive as not being very strong, or that I'd purposelly look to mess with people who are overweight (or ugly, or anything). People who do that are scum, and I'd be the first in line to say that I'd rather seek out an overweight person as a friend than someone who lacks the self-confidence to not make fun of strangers.

What I am saying is that strength of character is an important personality trait. You seem like a strong person, you simply failed in the past because you tried to solve a problem the wrong way. That doesn't mean that all fat people are strong people who have simply tried the wrong thing. Many are just never going to get thin because they don't have the strength to do it.

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Based on what? What grounds do you have to say this? Because I probably interact with a LOT more fat people than you do through the internet, and I can not name a single one that has not tried everything they can to try and beat it. Not ONE. Period.

See my above post for the reasons WHY someone might have given up. But that doesn't mean that they aren't going to try again, nor that they haven't tried - REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hard - to beat it. I fatigued on it and honestly just could not try for a couple of years. I'd tried - I thought - everything. I've yet to meet one fat person who hasn't. Did I "lack strength?" No. Was I beat up from the experience and needing some time to regroup? Yes. That does NOT mean that I am - or was - weak. It is harder than you can imagine to try over and over and over and over and over again, only to fail. But, to use a cliche, it's not how many times you fall down, it's whether you get back up again.

Reading fatness as equating to weakness is just plain wrong.

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Does it help that people make fun of them and question them and all that? No, and that's why I'd never do it. I don't want to pretend that we are all islands or some such. At the same time, the information is out there. It's not like Atkins is a secret.

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Nor is anything else I tried, all of which are "supposed" to work, none of which did. Is Weight Watchers a secret? Nutrisystem? The AHA diet? Etc, etc, etc.? How do you know which one will work for you?? Are you supposed to just "know?"

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If someone wants, really, really, really, really, really wants to lose weight, AND GOES ABOUT DOING IT THE CORRECT WAY, they will lose weight (barring some medical conditions).

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NO ONE who is way overweight doesn't really, really, really, really, really want to lose weight. None that I've met. And again, how are you supposed to know WHAT's going to work for you? Because - speaking from experience - they don't all work for every person. Nor do they all teach you how to continue to eat once you're "done" with them. Any diet that ends is a bad diet, and most of the accepted diets end.

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That people may be ignorant and try fad diets doesn't mean they lack strength, but if they simply stop there without trying what is frankly a pretty popular and well known strategy... well that strikes me as rather lazy.

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If you're even TRYING a fad diet, it's BECAUSE you tried everything else. WTF, do you REALLY think that someone's going to jump into the "X" diet of the month WITHOUT trying the ones that have a proven track record first? If so, you're wrong. Seriously. You're just plain mistaken.

Further, how do you KNOW it's a "fad" diet?? Atkins was supposedly a "fad" diet, too...until studies started showing its effectiveness, and the fact that it didn't have adverse health effects. Now you can't name me a major diet plan that doesn't include some form of carb control - even if they don't call it such.

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I don't think you are a whole new person, but I think it's incorrect to say you are the same. The "who" and the "what" you are aren't so easy to seperate. Being able to go out in public and climb stairs and play sports, that makes you a different person. You can talk about your soul or character or whatever you'd like, but you are no longer the same person.

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You're wrong. I'm me, you're not, you don't get to say. I am the same human being - in essence - as I was before I lost the weight. I can do new things, I don't get hassled. That doesn't change who I am. I'm sorry if you don't like that answer. It is true. How would you know??

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You then talk about depression. I'm clearly not saying weight causes depression. However, you need to realize that however cruel society can be, being overweight is quite bad for its own reasons. And with all that I feel for you and the struggles you've gone through, telling sob stories isn't helpful to anyone. The people who make fun of you aren't going to stop, and using it as a defense mechanism is surely not productive. Don't act like nobody but yourself (or gay people) has had feelings of being ostracized. I've been atheist in a Jewish school, Jewish in a catholic camp, I've been made fun of. At some point you decide whether to just tell people to [censored] off or let some [censored] run your life. You find friends and family, and those people give a [censored] about your problems and how hard things are for you. Nobody else does. And maybe the world is too cruel, but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. Trial by fire and all that [censored].

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Yeah, I was an atheist kid at a christian camp. I was an atheist kid that had to go to church every single Sunday. So yeah, I know about that, too. I know about what you're talking about. The thing is, that when you're ostracized, it stopped for you when you left the camp, left the school, whatever. I was different internally and got knocked before I said a thing because of what I looked like. So you can give me this "trial by fire" [censored] all you want, but again, take every time you've felt ostracized, every time you've had problems, then imagine it exacerbated - and not in a small way - by being a social pariah because of how you look.

Every problem a thin person has, a fat person has, too. Then they have other sets of problems that thin people don't. Health ones, yes, but also a HUGE set of social ones that are undeniable. If you don't get that, or can't look past your bias to see how that might really, really [censored] with your quality of life, there's nothing else I can say. If you can't see how having to deal with that every single day of your life would make you a stronger - NOT weaker - person, then again, I'm sorry, we just disagree. I've been on both sides of the fence, I know what I'm talking about here. My problems didn't go away because I lost weight - I still have the kinds of problems you're talking about, the same kinds of problems EVERYONE has. But I DON'T have that additional burden of being constantly prejudged by ignorant people, and that makes life very, very, very different. Thin people don't know or understand what that's like, and while diminishing that reality might make you feel more at ease with your worldview, your assumptions about people's character or your seeming belief that it's not any different than having been ostracized one week at camp or in school is just plain wrong. I've been on both sides of the fence, and it is very, very different.

On your "trial by fire" comment - I have no regrets about myself. I DID eventually just say "[censored] it" to people who prejudged me, and I did whatever I had to do to be able to look myself in the mirror every day, anyone who didn't like it be damned. But so what?? Do you think the people who ostracized you for being jewish were RIGHT?? Because they weren't, just as people ostracizing fat people are wrong. It doesn't matter that it made me stronger - it doesn't make it right. The reason why I'm addressing the issue is because it's NOT right. I'm not whining in every forum about "treat fat people with respect!" I started a thread about weight loss, and an element of that is what it's like to be that fat. Should I just avoid the topic because it's uncomfortable or something?? These are not randomly interjected anecdotes in unrelated, off-topic threads. They're things I've brought up within a designated context to provide some insight into what it's like for people who don't have any idea. To give you an idea of how hard the social stigma is, I've even gotten PM's from people who've said the same kinds of things to me in them, but who have literally said to me that they don't want to post in this thread because of the attached negative perception that might result. This is on an essentially anonymous message board! If that doesn't tell you something, I don't know what will.

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And honestly, a comment like this:

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Skinny people are plenty melodramatic with their [censored] little problems, and they don't have to deal with any of that.

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is just beyond [censored] stupid.

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No, it's not. It is definitely hyperbole - I'll cop to that. But again, my point stands and I have no regrets writing it. Skinny people telling fat people that they lack strength or character is, to me, just absurd, because they have all the same problems as skinny people PLUS the addition burdens related to how they are perceived.

-bb.

[youtalkfunny]

BB,

You're wrong when you say that you can't motivate people. This thread, especially the OP, has motivated the hell out of me.

I hope I get to start a thread like this in a year or two.