Doing what I can, with what I have,
where I am.

Some days are harder than others.
 

Here at DietHobby, I keep saying the same things over and over. … like I do in my own mind.

I repeat these things, because I need to hear them again and again. I often post copies of articles within this website so that in my future, I can easily find them and read them to encourage and/or inspire myself.

In an article here, when I say “we”, I mean me and anyone else who is interested in agreeing with me. DietHobby is a place that I share philosophies and points of view that I find personally helpful or interesting.

Although the dates of my posts in the Archives make it SEEM like I have a daily posting commitment, this is actually inaccurate, because I don’t.

If other people are inspired as a Result of me working to inspire Myself, I’m pleased, but I don’t have a commitment to help or inspire Others. What I have is a commitment to do whatever things that I find encouraging and inspiring for Me on my lifelong weight-loss, weight-maintenance journey.

My own success is based on keeping my Focus on “What Works For Me”. Is this Selfish? Yes, … but I choose not to necessarily see that as a “Bad” thing.

DietHobby has been here for 2 years now, and I expect to keep this website in existence for a very long time, but if … in the future …. days, or weeks, or even months go by without a post from me here, that will still be a successful follow through of my own initial Plan for this site.

There's No Cure for Obesity
           By Dr. Yoni Freedhoff M.D.    2/2013 - Health Section of U.S. News.

Despite what you may see in breathless advertisements, or read from the latest diet book guru, or hear from celebrity diet spokespeople, there simply is no cure for obesity. Although you probably already know that in your bones (after all, if there were a cure, the world would certainly not be struggling with weight), I'm guessing that you may still approach weight-management efforts as if a cure was possible.

In my experience working with thousands of people, the majority seem to believe that there are two phases to weight management—the weight-loss phase and the weight-maintenance phase—and that the losing phase will require far more restriction than the maintaining phase.

And therein lies the rub: If the ability to gain weight in our modern environment is considered the condition, it's one that never goes away, which means weight-management efforts are treatments, and when treatments stop, conditions recur. So if you've lost weight following a strict approach, only to relax it once the weight is lost, you might be unpleasantly surprised to see your weight return.

Two weeks ago, the New England Journal of Medicine published a piece highlighting the myths, presumptions, and facts that surround our current understanding of obesity. Among the facts mentioned is this one: "Continuation of conditions that promote weight loss promotes maintenance of lower weight." The point can be expanded upon by some of my favorite weight-management truisms:

• The more weight you'd like to permanently lose,
the more of your life you'll need to permanently change.

• If you can't happily eat less, you're not going to eat less.

• If you can't happily exercise more, you're not going to exercise more.

• Your best weight is whatever weight you reach,
when you're living the healthiest life you actually enjoy.

So remember, whatever you choose to do to lose the weight, if you stop doing it, the weight's going to come back. What that means, of course, is that if you don't like your life while you're losing weight, you're going to gain your weight back. Putting this another way, whatever strategy you choose for weight management, if you see the strategy as a temporary means to an end, the end will likely only be temporary.

If you're on a diet that leaves you regularly hungry or having cravings, you're going to quit. If you're exercising beyond the point of liking it, with the hours or the effort a source of dread, you're going to quit.

Our shared affliction, the human condition, simply isn't good at letting us live lives of unnecessary, perpetual suffering. So even if you do manage to lose boatloads of weight through misery, since suffering through under-eating and over-exercising is wholly unnecessary, the suffering, and the losses, won't last.

If you're planning a weight-management effort, or if you're in the midst of one, make sure you ask this one all-important and straightforward question: "Do I like the life I'm living?" If the answer's no, I'd recommend you try something else, because if you don't like the life you're living, you're not going to keep living that way. And for obesity, there is no cure, only ongoing treatment.

Yoni Freedhoff, MD, is an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, where he's the founder and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute—dedicated to non-surgical weight management since 2004. Dr. Freedhoff posts frequently at Weighty Matters. Dr. Freedhoff's latest book Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work will be published by Random House's Crown/Harmony in 2014.

The notion that true Habits,

meaning:
... Behaviors that automatically persist even in the face of major life upheavals and adversities ...

can be forged in 21 days
flies in the face of reality.


Where did that idea come from?

In 1960 Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic surgeon, reported that it took 21 days for amputees to stop feeling phantom limb pain. Maltz then said that consciously cultivating a new behavior for just 15 minutes a day for 21 days could create a habit. 

However, a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology looked at the time it took for subjects to "automate" an eating, drinking or exercise behavior "carried out daily in the same context"—i.e., a habit. Using examples such as the time it took to automatically drink a glass of water after waking, or to do 50 sit-ups before breakfast, they concluded that it took participants between 18 and 254 days for these behaviors to happen "automatically."

There’s quite a lot of time between 18 and 254 days. That study didn't control for the real-life upheavals that tend to get in the way of our very best intentions, and the behaviors they chose to study are so minor in scope, it seems like their results would not even apply to the real world. Especially not to the prospect of cultivating an entirely new eating lifestyle, which involves many new and complex behaviors and choices.

Ex-smokers know quite a lot about how long it takes to make or break a habit. According to the National Institutes of Health, nicotine's physical withdrawal symptoms are usually over within a week. But any ex-smoker will tell you, the fight to break the habit of smoking, and cultivate the habit of not smoking, lasts much longer.

Most smokers have difficulty quitting. They commonly report that the first few weeks are truly miserable, with a nearly constant, conscious battle not to smoke. As time goes by, the battles became less frequent, but even two to three years after quitting, they still have occasional moments or circumstances when they have to consciously fight the urge to light up. And even if someone who hasn’t smoked for many years, lites up again, they're back to a pack a day in no time.

Changing eating behaviors and creating new eating habits takes an awfully long time. While a some people might be able become comfortable with a new behavior in just 21 days, ordinarily, habit formation takes years of consciously reminding ourselves of our new choices.

While it can seem tedious to keep our new eating behaviors in regular focus for several years – or more - by continually and consistently reminding ourselves, it is a price most of us have to pay in order to establish habits involving new eating behaviors.