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

[buriedbeds]

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Using both methods, I lost weight. I think detractors of the atkins diet try to make the point that point that people eat less under the Atkins diet and thats why it works. Even if that is true, the reason people eat less under the Atkins diet isn't simply that they have less options or get sick of eating meat. Its that if you eat a no carb diet, you don't get as hungry and you don't need as many calories to function normally.

My understanding is that when you eat sugar and starch, your blood sugar gets immediately spiked. This spike releases insulin which removes the sugar from your bloodstream. Now that your blood sugar is depleted, your body suddenly needs more sugar. I think we've all felt this, you eat some sugar, you have a ton of energy for an hour, or however long, then you crash and need another hit.

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Exactly. You eat less because you don't feel like you HAVE to eat more. It is fantastic, and for people who are EXTREMELY addicted to carbs (like me), it is literally a godsend.

Again, I'm not saying that it's perfect for everybody, but for some people - like me - it is. People with insulin disorders or carbohydrate sensitivity really, really benefit from it.

-bb.

[buriedbeds]

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Congrats, just a quick question for you. Im back in uni after a year off when I worked construction so I was always very acive, outdoors 10-12 hours a day, since the first week of Sept when I returned to school, I have put the weight back on that I lost while working. Now I'n not fat per se (6'1", ~198lbs), but I want to lose a bit of weight. How were you able to keep yourself motivated in working out, eating right etc. I signed up for a gym and have been once but thats it. Any help would be very appreciated.

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I can't give it to you.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you are USELESS trying to motivate others. They absolutely, positively must do it for themselves. I wish it were otherwise, but it's not.

As to my motivation? Well, at first it was just blind terror. I thought - more accurately, felt 100% positive - that I was going to die. The way I was going, I thought I'd be dead by 30, and there was no way I'd make 35. Seriously, I felt unbelievably bad - ALL THE TIME. I know what it's like to be trapped inside your own body. To get down on the floor and really have to fight to get up. To come home from work and not have the energy to do anything but lie on the couch and watch tv, because physically you're in such rough shape, and mentally and emotionally you're so drained from dealing with people who look down on you, all the while feeling completely, totally hopeless and helpless because you've tried everything you can try and you just can not tame this thing that's afflicting you.

I didn't want my nephews to put me in a box. I love those kids, and they love me, and the idea of them having to bury me is truly terrible to me. I didn't want to die without having done a lot of the things I wanted to do. I didn't want to be miserable. I wanted a life, desperately. You know those people on tv who have shows where they're so overweight that they've become shut-ins? That is, without a doubt, where I was headed. When you're wearing a 6x, you're literally getting to be too big for the big and tall, as 6x is roughly where even they stop carrying stuff. I had just started going from a 5x to a 6x when I started this. I was in bad, bad, bad shape.

So when this worked, I grabbed it with both hands and absolutely did not let go. I am still terrified to this day of going back there. I can not let myself do that. The terrifying thing is that it's not just possible, it's likely - the majority of people who lose weight - even triple digits weight - gain it all back and then some. That scares the living hell out of me. I would literally rather be dead. If I get back to the point where I'm shopping in the big and tall again, I will die.

So fear and desperation is a big motivation for me. Now I also have the added motivation of not only feeling not-bad, but actually feeling great. I want to continue to feel great - maybe more than others because I know what it feels like to feel really, really bad.

Your motivation, however, is your own, and nobody on earth is going to give it to you but you.

-bb.

[buriedbeds]

Incidentally, in my incredibly-long-winded OP, I forgot to mention how I honestly think that I couldn't have done this without poker. While I know that "poker as life" analogies are generally trite, annoying and corny, I do feel that there's a parallel in the skill set I use playing cards to the one I use losing weight. This thread's kind of my way of giving back for that, as well as for turning me on to kettlebells and to hopefully shed some light on a somewhat taboo topic of what it's like to be super-morbidly obese, and to lose that weight.

When you're losing weight - especially when you have a lot to lose and it's taking a long time - your body often does not comply on any given day. Sometimes you'll gain a couple of pounds for no discernible reason, or drop a bunch suddenly when you weren't doing anything out of the ordinary. This is just the way it is - your body tries to hold on to weight as a survival method, then gets convinced it's okay and lets it go. But all the while, you need to stay on course. For this reason, the idea of avoiding Results-Oriented Thinkind (ROT) is, imo, INCREDIBLY valuable in losing weight. Here's (a somewhat changed version of) something I wrote about the topic on my other board. Keep in mind that it was targeted towards people who don't play...don't feel talked down to or anything [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] :

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On a day-to-day basis in losing weight, I leave the results up to the fates. I've often wished I was religious to be able to feel that way, to have the whole "leave it up to god" idea. I'm not, however - I just gambled my way to enlightenment. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

In poker, you have to learn how to avoid what's called Results-Oriented Thinking, or ROT. In any given hand of poker, you have no control over the cards. The only thing that you can judge yourself by is whether or not you got your money in good. The cards will come as they come - people will hit river flushes against your set of aces, people will draw out to incredibly-unlikely miracle cards that crush your huge hands just because they were stupid and didn't fold.

Now, you can sit around and get angry, or you can look at what you did and determine whether or not what you did was correct. Did I raise with the best hand? Did I fold when I more-than-likely was beaten? Did I call a bet drawing to a flush that I should have because there was so much money in the pot that I had the right odds? These are mathematical truths, not opinions. Whether you won or lost - you didn't control that. That came as it came. A person can hit a 22-to-1 shot 10 times in a row on you. You just have to have faith that over the long-haul it's going to even out and you're going to win. You can't BUT win. You just have to stick around long enough so that you beat your opponent the 220 times straight that it takes to bring things back to equilibrium.

When you're playing and you DO get beaten by those long shots over and over again, you can get angry. Angry at the fates for doing this to you, angry at the idiot who kept winning despite playing horribly, angry at yourself for even playing this stupid game. But that anger is misplaced, and, ultimately, self-destructive.

Getting angry at the fates? Worthless. Try being upset with luck. It does you no good.

Upset with the other person? You WANT them to play badly - that's how you make money.

Upset with yourself for even playing? That's stupid. You put yourself in a position to be profitable, it just didn't work out. You can start questioning yourself and start playing horribly - trying for those miracle cards yourself - because they did it to you. You can just give up. Either way, it hurts YOU to do it. When you start doing things that don't match what you KNOW is correct, you're giving up money. When you don't play in a game you know you can beat, you're passing up free money.

Now, the same thing is true of our bodies, in my opinion.

I've been doing this long enough now to know that on any given day I'll be up or down for no discernible reason. Yesterday I was down - today I'm up. The swing both ways was big. But why? Imo, it's a given day's luck.

Just like in poker, I control what I know I can control, and I trust that what I'm doing WILL pay off over the long term. It can't BUT pay off. I know it for a fact. Now if I'm NOT doing what I KNOW I should do - then I have cause for alarm, cause to be upset with myself. But if I am doing what I know is correct and things aren't going the way I'd like - again - I can get angry. Angry at the fates for putting me in this boat, where it's not coming off as I'd like or where I'm even retracing some weight for reasons I don't understand. Angry at other people whose achievements I admire, who managed to lose weight while doing things that I KNOW won't work for me - like eating low-fat, high-carb, or, worse yet, people who can eat anything and never gain a pound. Angry at myself for even trying when I'm just going to fail.

But, again, that anger is misplaced.

Angry at your luck? Good luck WILLING that to change. Sometimes you just have to wait it out.

Angry at other people? You can't control that someone else's results are different than yours. We're all different. You can't mimic their actions because you KNOW that you're not them. Maybe that's not fair. It doesn't have to be.

Angry at yourself? Now you're apt to destroy everything you've worked for. You can get upset and just quit. You can start, our of that anger and desperation, to do things that are self-destructive and ultimately counterproductive. For instance, starving myself might drop a few shock lbs off my frame, but it ultimately leads me to stall. I've seen more people wrecked by "carb-up" days that they tried in desperation to get the weight loss started again than I've seen helped by them. If I tried that, I'd likely fall into the abyss because my body is just not good with sugar and carbs. The list of potential failures caused by getting angry and losing faith in what you're doing is nearly endless.

So I don't get angry. Maybe I shrug, or I allow myself a few minutes to wallow, but I DON'T let it freak me out. I do what I know I have to do, and if I regain, I regain. It WILL come off.

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[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.

[People_Mover]

this is a great read and very inspiring. I have a few Q's though:

Did you experience any knee or leg problems? Shin Splits, etc?

My dad is overweight and even had triple bypass heart surgery last year because he eats like sh.it but he has bad knees and it's hard for him to walk or run anymore. What do you suggest I tell him to do to get off his ass as I'm concerned for his health as he's a diabetic as well.

[Ikaika]

Have him do an aqua-aerobics class or something. Super low impact and it'll wear him out. If he lost weight it is possible that his diabetes symptoms would become less severe.

[Dominic]

great job! You really are an inspiration. Plus, you're a pretty good writer, too.

[7ontheline]

You say you don't look down on people who aren't trying to lose weight because you know how hard it is to live as a fat person. What do you think of those who have come to accept or even celebrate their obesity? The whole "Fat is Beautiful" mindset, I guess. IMO, they are deluding themselves and ignoring very likely future health problems. It's great that they're not depressed, but they're just about as likely to have other health problems. What do you think?

[James282]

This is a great story, nothing to add except thanks for sharing.

James

[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.