A strange and all too common phenomenon is the way a person, who is has never been very far beyond the borderline of the obesity range, loses around 20 to 30 lbs and suddenly becomes an expert on dieting and obesity.

These people take their personal experience with minor weight loss.. (which of course, might be MAJOR to them personally)… and decide that whatever worked for them ought to work for everyone, and that clearly the solution to the weight issue is easy, because “hey, if they can do it, so can anyone”.

This is like someone who has just finished their first piano lesson telling others about how to become a concert pianist.  It’s like asking someone without cancer how they prevented cancer in their own body, and then using those lessons to treat cancer patients.

I say to such a person:

"Congratulations on your weight loss. I'm sure it's significant to you. But you do not have the same issues that a person with 100 or 200 pounds to lose frequently has."

It’s almost amusing how everyone feels they have an “expert” opinion to share with someone who is trying to lose weight. Even people who have never had a weight problem tend to assume that they are doing something that fat people aren't doing, and therefore they also know the solution to obesity.

There are many naturally slim people (some of them who are even doctors or nutritionists) who truly think obese people are just ignorant, greedy, and lazy. After all, they, themselves, have slim bodies which stay slim by "occasionally taking walks and not eating entire gallons of ice cream in one sitting."  Especially, those who have mediocre processed food diets, and are borderline sedentary, are very quick to assume that obese people must have VERY bad habits.

Anyone who truly believes that people who continually struggle with weight issues are simply missing the information, personal desire, and sense of personal responsibility it takes to succeed, is showing that they don't have a grasp on what it really is, to struggle with a great deal of excess weight, nor an understanding of obesity’s difficult issues. The "eat-less-move-more formula," for a morbidly obese person, is frequently far more complex than even the majority of medical professionals make it out to be.

The habits as outlined in the National Weight Registry Control research – which appear necessary for the majority who succeed at weight-loss maintenance, …. such as daily weighing, calorie counting, lots of exercise etc….. are the same behaviors that are castigated by those medical professionals who involve themselves with treatment of “Eating Disorders”. And yet there is an immense amount of proof that if a reduced obese person stops self-monitoring and making immediate corrections, the weight comes back on without fail.

Many people find it easy to lose a bit of weight, but the body fights back, so very few are able to do what it takes to keep it off.  Invariably when I read "inspiring" weight loss stories in the popular media, 99% of those profiled haven't even made it to the 5-year maintenance mark. When .. and if ... they get there, I’d like to hear about it. Also, please tell me what society you can live in where normal sized people don't feel compelled to shame fat people. I'd like to move there.

Sometimes doing what it take for weight-loss maintenance feels like a dreary way to live. My own position is: “Being Fat is Hard. Losing Weight is Hard. Maintaining Weight is Hard. Choose Your Hard.”

Weight loss is difficult and often complex, no matter how determined you are.
As a reduced obese person who is now maintaining a large weight-loss, I am well aware that obese people sometimes make excuses and wallow in self-pity instead of doing things that they “know” will be effective in decreasing weight. Many people spend decades looking for the magic of an easy way, while in basic denial of the simple truth that eating less calories than you burn will …in most cases…. lead to weight loss.  Truthfully, it is very hard to believe how few calories an obese person actually burns, because for many, the Scientific Theory that 3500 calories equals 1 fat lb just doesn't always hold true for everyone at every weight.

More precisely, it's not that we fat people need to hear this from others - after all, what fat person hasn't already heard it a thousand times?. Rather, it's something that many of us need to take to heart once and for all, instead of continually ignoring/denying the Reality of the difficulty of the consistent, ongoing, lifetime effort it is really going to take.

Eat less calories than we burn.  However, how do we individually DO that?
And then, … how do we do it consistently, FOREVER?
Obesity can't be treated with a one-size-fits-all solution. We are not cookie cutter people and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. How great it would be if everyone could truely take to heart the message within the video below.

Fill out this form to see your current BMI. 

I ran across this BMI widget: checked mine for today: and here's a copy of my current result.

Here are links to three past articles involving the BMI
that are contained here in the DietHobby Archives.

Body Mass Index: What about the BMI?

Setting a Goal Weight Range

Change in my Weight Range Maintenance Plan

                             

Although almost every weight-loss expert seems to have something to sell,
...... despite the marketing hype ,...... there are kernals of truth in many of the basic things they say.
 

"Science has failed us in the weight loss department.
It literally gets an “F.”

The culture has failed us as well. Far too many people have intense moral judgments towards anyone with excess pounds, which contributes to the hidden epidemic of social disconnection, apathy, and plain old sadness.

Let’s face it: when it comes to the subject of weight gain and weight loss, we’re clueless.  And from that place of cluelessness we tend to flail around, we try our hand at the most inane weight loss strategies, we diet for decades, we consume diet foods ...that are, if you care to closely study the scientific literature ... toxic."

                    Marc David - Psychology of Eating

“Whether it's low-carb diets, low-fat diets, GI diets, middle-ground diets, vegan diets, and even bat-shit crazy diets, there are long term success stories and recurrent failures with each and every one, where the common ground to success is a person actually liking their life enough to sustain their new patterns of reduced dietary intake, and where the common ground to failure is suffering or restriction beyond an individual's capacity to enjoy their life.

………..when it comes to clinical utility and weight management, the last thing the world needs is to believe that there's only one right way to go.”

I totally agree with the quote above by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff M.D. who blogs at “Weighty Matters, Musings of an Obesity Medicine Doc and Certifiably Cynical Realist”

A close review of my website will show that although I’m not per se a “low-carb” person. I am a fan of Gary Taubes, and am very interested in the obesity concepts that he puts forth, although, my own experience …as well as what I’m hearing from the experiences of others …. tells me that even in low-carb or zero-carb eating, the amount of one’s caloric intake is an extremely important consideration when dealing with the issue of obesity.

Today, September 12, 2012, Dr. Freedhoff posted an article that might appeal to some of you with similar interests. Here’s the link: “Gary Taubes Launches Non-Profit to Prove His Low Carb Hypothesis”.

I often read articles involving diverse perspectives on Obesity and Dieting. I consider the evidence and put it into my mental file on the issue. Sometimes I even change my mind. But, truthfully, I most enjoy the articles that agree with my own beliefs.

I’m well aware of the existence of a great deal of dietary research involving “bad” science.   Some of these are studies based on inaccurate, self-reported, dietary recall which don’t even attempt to account for the actual quality of the participant’s diets, but then make conclusions about different food and health issues, including the impact of artificial sweeteners on one’s health.

I think that an Ideal end goal would be to drink the smallest amount of “sweet” beverages regardless of how the beverages got their “sweet” in the first place. In an Ideal World, I’d replace all of my artificially flavored and artificially sweetened beverages, including tea and diet cokes, with clear and undiluted water.

However, it’s NOT an Ideal World.

 As my current choice is to frequently use Splenda, and to drink Diet Cokes or Coke Zero, I enjoyed the following article.

             Artificial sweeteners help keep it off.

Not exactly a surprising result, but likely one that will be poo-poo'd by all those who love to vilify artificial sweeteners.

Researchers in New Zealand studied folks who had successfully lost weight and their dietary consumption patterns. More specifically they looked at folks who had maintained a weight loss of greater than 10% of their weight for 11.5 years and they compared these folks' dietary strategies to folks of similar weights who had never been overweight.

What unshocking yet valuable results did they find?

They found that folks who lost the weight had to work harder at their dietary strategies to help keep that weight off than folks who never had weight to lose. Their strategies included consuming fewer calories from fat (though the importance of this one's debatable as the 90s were the low-fat decade and more recent data from the National Weight Control Registry suggest that low-calorie is of course more important than low-fat and can be accomplished many different ways), consuming more of sugar and fat modified foods (reduced fat, reduced sugar), consuming more water, less pop and three times more daily servings of artificially sweetened soft drinks.

Go figure - folks who are predisposed to weight gain can help themselves keep the weight off by employing dietary strategies to help themselves consume fewer calories.

Go ahead, drink your diet Coke.

Phelan, S., Lang, W., Jordan, D., & Wing, R. (2009). Use of artificial sweeteners and fat-modified foods in weight loss maintainers and always-normal weight individuals International Journal of Obesity DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2009.147

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff MD,
Sept 17, 2009
weightymatters.ca