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

[spider]

BB, great post and congratulations. One thing that I found interesting here is that it seems you were always very honest with yourself about everything. I think that is something that most people trying to lose weight are unable to do. ("can't" vs "won't" as you mentioned earlier)

Another thing is the scale. I went a long time without using a scale and then read about some study that said it was important to weigh yourself frequently b/c it gives you the quickest feedback (and most honest, I would add). Anyway, I agree with the study.

[buriedbeds]

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One thing that I found interesting here is that it seems you were always very honest with yourself about everything.

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Honestly, imo this is the most important thing you can do - and it's a fundamental baseline of all the people I've known who've been successful. If you make a sub-optimal decision, YOU are making the decision. It's not being made for you, YOU are doing it. And you need to be willing and able to accept it.

That doesn't mean that it's not okay to make sub-optimal decisions - it happens. But do it CONSCIOUSLY. Recognize and acknowledge what it is. Again, this is somewhere that my poker experience really helped me - objective analysis of a potentially emotional decision-making process. You need to learn to disassociate food from emotion in pretty much every facet of your life. For this reason I don't allow myself to judge my self-worth by the food decisions I make. To me, your self-worth is measured by how you treat people, how hard you work - WHO you are. What you eat is just that - it's what you eat. Nothing more, nothing less. Because losing weight is so hard, people really fetishize the whole process, and that can get unhealthy because they allow it to get so emotional. On my weight loss board, someone got the stomach flu and had to go back onto eating carbs just to get by. They then had a post where they talked about how they "blew it," which is ABSURD. People can use falling off for any reason - out of a simple poor decision or even out of necessity, as in this woman's situation - as a reason to quit. Because they get wrapped up in the emotion of it, rather than just seeing it as a series of decisions that you're making to realize a goal. Here's my response to her from that board. Incidentally, the acronyms WOE and WOL are commonly used there - they stand for Way of Eating and Way of Life. People don't usually call it a "diet," because it is not that - or at least not if you want to be long-term successful. A diet has an endpoint, a WOE or WOL does not. It's an important distinction. That doesn't mean that you'll never increase your carb level - if you follow Atkins properly, you eventually do, and you basically end up eating the commonly prescribed "lots of fruits and vegetables with lean meats" diet, albeit with less grains and no refined sugars. But it is a commitment to NOT going back to your old, ineffective way of eating:

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I'll be blunt here (that's kind of my way...):

That's ridiculous. You didn't blow it. You got a stomach virus and ate some stuff that wasn't on your plan. Calm down, and do NOT think that way. Blowing it is saying "I've fallen off, and I'm staying off," or, "I don't care that I've regained weight."

This is a totally defeatist thing to say. I had mono this year, and when I had mono I ate ice cream because it was literally the only thing I could swallow, and I needed calories. Did I "blow it"?? No. I did what I had to do at the time. When I was better, I stopped.

Don't allow yourself to be mentally defeated and think things like that. What happens if you DON'T have the stomach flu and you fall off? Have you "blown it" then?? No, you ate off plan. That's all. Start eating on plan again.

I really hate that people see this in such an absolute way. It's incredibly unhealthy, imo, because it fetishizes the WOE. A WOE is just that - a WAY OF EATING. It's what you eat. It's not a holy thing that can never be violated, or that if you have the gall to not follow will punish you. It is not an entity that fights you or controls you. It's an effective methodology for losing weight. If you want to lose weight, follow it. Do not rationalize, do not eat badly. But do it because you are doing it - not because it is doing it to you. If you fall off, IT'S OKAY. All you have to do is get back in line with the WOE and everything will work itself out. If you're stalled, just stay in line with it and it will be fine. But do not feel controlled by it, because that will lead you to rebel against it. And do not feel constrained by it, or like you have to live up to its expectations or something, because that is not what it is. It is how you're choosing to eat. If you go off, your next choice can be a good one, it's okay. There is no "blowing it." It's not like it's an exclusive club, where once you screw up - or, in this case, are forced into a sub-optimal decision - you're out. It's your free will and you can do whatever you like at any time. If what you want to do is eat on plan, then do it. If you fall off and decide that you don't want to eat off plan after all, then start eating on plan again.

Just make the best choices you can and everything will be fine - don't worry about "blowing it," as though there's something to blow. Just make decisions that are in line with your plan in so far as you can. If you make a bad choice - or in this case are forced to make a choice that isn't in line with what you'd like to do - just FORGET about it and move on to the next one, and make IT good.

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Another thing is the scale. I went a long time without using a scale and then read about some study that said it was important to weigh yourself frequently b/c it gives you the quickest feedback (and most honest, I would add). Anyway, I agree with the study.

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I totally agree with that. I now weigh myself daily, and plan to do so for the rest of my life. I didn't from age probably 11 or 12 until last year, when I bought the scale. I hid from the truth of the situation, because I felt so powerless against it.

One thing I will say, however, is that I believe very strongly in using multiple forms of feedback. I use the scale, the tape measure, a hand held body fat analyzer and, when I'm really trying hard to lose weight, ketostix (which measure the amount of ketones you're expelling, a sign that you're in lipolysis, as described earlier). I do NOT put too much emphasis on any one form, nor on any given day's specific readings. Your body is just too damned stubborn and weird for that - you can be up or down on any given day for no good reason at all. Here are a couple of graphs from people who've successfully lost weight and kept track of it in a spreadsheet (not me - I didn't keep track in anything but my head):





Note how much both of them bounce, both up AND down. The ultimate goal, however, is what's going on - it's a downward trend. The day-to-day readings don't mean anything, it's the long-term trends that matter. I need multi-day trends across multiple forms of feedback that coincide with some kind of change in my routine before I start to even consider changing anything up, because the day-to-day jumps and dips are virtually meaningless. And if I'm gaining weight but losing inches or body fat %, I am HAPPY, not concerned - it means that I'm losing the thing that I want to lose, which is fat. I don't care as much about losing weight. I do know, however, that the weight will eventually come off if I follow what I need to follow. It can't but come off.

-bb.

[spider]

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The day-to-day readings don't mean anything, it's the long-term trends that matter.

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Yeah, great point. As important as the scale is, you have to realize it easily fluctuates by a couple of pounds. It helps to have a consistent procedure (no clothes, first thing in the morning) but even that will show fluctuations.

Another very simple thing along the lines of your multiple forms of feedback is the belt. Most men are storing a high percentage of excess weight in the belly, and you can get a suprising amount of feedback just from day to day tightness in the belt.

[evagaba]

I didn't read all the replies, but great story.

I have always been overweight myself but not obese. Lets just say I could have always afforded to lose 20 lbs.

4 Years ago I quit smoking after 18 years. 6 Months after that I gained an additional 25 lbs putting me at 246 on a 5'9" frame. I had never been able to lose weight myself and this was just around the time that Atkins was taking off. I decided to give it a try and LOVED it. In 6 months of Aktins and exercise, I lost a total of 57 lbs. Be warned though, it only works ONCE. I had a friend who did the same as me, lost 45 lbs, put it ALL back on and then tried Aktins again 2 years later...IT DID NOT WORK the second time around.

Anyways, good for you!

[buriedbeds]

Spider - I agree.

Evagaba: Thanks. What you're talking about is usually referred to by people as "the golden shot." It's generally, however, not that it won't work, just that it doesn't work as well at the same carb levels:

http://www.lowcarbluxury.com/goldenshot.html

-bb.

[riverrchic]

This has been a great read - thank you for sharing. I'm really impressed with your drive and dedication.

My question: are you a fan of shows like the Biggest Loser?

[buriedbeds]

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This has been a great read - thank you for sharing. I'm really impressed with your drive and dedication.

My question: are you a fan of shows like the Biggest Loser?

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Thanks. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I hate hate HATE that show. I admit that I watch it (this season's my first), but my girlfriend gets annoyed with me while we do because I scream at the TV so much.

It's ridiculous how bad that show is in terms of what you really need to do lose weight in a lasting way. The grand majority of the contestants have apparently regained the weight, and I think that that's largely a function of how horrid and unhealthy the whole process is. Here's an article on what happened to contestants after being on the biggest loser.

My list of complaints with the show is long, but here are some of them:

1. They are NOT doing it in a sustainable way. They are killing themselves for hours a day in the gym. This greatly affects their metabolism - and what's going to happen when they go back to work and CAN'T work out as much?? Their bodies will gain more from eating less.
2. They are not doing it in a healthy way. They are eating almost nothing - which screws up your metabolism when you do it for a long time so that when you DO start eating again you gain massive amounts of weight. This isn't even mentioning the fact that they are intentionally making themselves horrifically dehydrated - and calling that weightloss. Losing and gaining weight very, very quickly is a horrible shock to your system, and they are setting them up to run their bodies through a meat grinder. WTF is the rush?? You didn't gain it overnight, you don't have to lose it overnight, either.
2. They have a completely unrealistic situation regarding their motivations. They have someone (like, for instance, the millions in the viewing public, who they have to be aware of at all times, what with the cameras...talk about peer pressure) watch their every move. When they get home, are they going to have that? No. They will have to find that motivation internally. That is the single biggest adjustment that anyone has to make in doing this, and as far as I can tell they will have no support in doing it.
3. Relatedly, they are in an isolated environment. In order to REALLY lose weight in a sustainable way, you MUST learn to do it in the course of your everyday life. When do people fall off the wagon? When they have interactions with other people that trigger their bad habits, either in the form of people or events causing tension or in the form of people or events that they've previously associated with foods that are not healthy (gatherings, birthdays, holidays, etc. etc. etc.). When you're isolated from that, you don't have to learn how NOT to grab a box of twinkies when the person you're dating dumps you, how NOT to eat candy at Halloween, etc. etc. etc. And when you put them back in that situation, they're just not going to be prepared for it the GRAND majority of the time. I can't tell you how much of the traffic on my weightloss board is seasonal - people screw up during the the christmas holidays, then show up repentant in the new year, or people work out for the summer and then fall off at halloween. Life doesn't stop just because you need to lose some weight. You need to learn how to deal with that, or you absolutely will fail.
4. The show is goddamned degrading. This week they had them digging through donuts to find a coin worth $5,000, and they had to eat a donut just to play. Ha-ha, fat people digging through donuts. Where's your [censored] dignity, people?? The fake goddamned sympathy and empathy they toss around and then have them do garbage like that is revolting to me. What a lot of people don't realize is that these people are essentially addicted to a drug, and they're having them degrade themselves and their situation on national television. That donut thing is exactly the same thing to me as if they had a bunch of coke addicts sifting through kilos of blow looking for cash, and forcing them to do a couple of lines beforehand just to participate. It is exactly the same thing. These people are killing themselves with that drug, but it's a socially-acceptable drug and people love making fun of fat people, so it's okay. Having been hooked on that drug and nearly killed by it, I honestly just find it repellent.

I seriously could go on for a while, but those are my biggest complaints with it - and that's before I get to the basic things, like how annoying the trainers are, how annoying the commercial breaks are (because they always hold you "in suspense") and how I wish they'd find SOMEONE to be on there who's not a wuss because they seriously ALL cry like every 5 minutes, which just leaves me embarrassed for those people.

That said, go kae! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] She's the one who I think is the least likely to regain, along with Bill.

-bb.