The Weight I Carry
theatlantic.com
The Weight I Carry
1–10 of 141 posts
Re: The Weight I Carry
#2I've been 400 pounds most of my life. I empathize with every single sentence in this article and cannot imagine making myself write something like this. The vulnerability is incredible.
I'm really glad that exercise is being called out as useless to treat obesity more and more. I hope that trend continues and things like Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaigns never happen again.
Carbohydrate addiction is no joke, even though most don't believe it exists.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#3Watch the Fed up documentary, explains it so well that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less wont work. Our environment is saturated with products now which almost all have added sugar, only way is to look at ingredients and change your environment, dont bring these things home and instead bring better stuff home thats not got added sugar.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#4Being significantly overweight is really tough. Body issues and shame make it so much harder. I wish people would understand that better. There’s a pretty nasty cycle of looking in the mirror, feeling like shit, eating to not feel like shit (the key problem step - note that it never actually works), looking and feeling like shit because you eat too much.
I’ve lost 70 pounds in the last ~7 months. 50 pounds to go. I’m successful for the first time because I’ve gotten over my image issues, I’ve accepted that losing weight necessarily involves being hungry at least some of the time, and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience.
They’re damn right that it gets harder to lose weight every time you do. My metabolism is miraculously “efficient”. The insight is that you have to accept that and eat to the amount that hits your goals, not try to find some miracle diet.
Also, IME, exercise makes me hungry for more calories than I burn. Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods (this is speaking to fat people like me - if you’ve been skinny your whole life your body probably works differently).
Re: The Weight I Carry
#5Being significantly overweight is really tough. Body issues and shame make it so much harder. I wish people would understand that better. There’s a pretty nasty cycle of looking in the mirror, feeling like shit, eating to not feel like shit (the key problem step - note that it never actually works), looking and feeling like shit because you eat too much. I’ve lost 70 pounds in the last ~7 months. 50 pounds to go. I’m…
I think exercise for weight loss/management isn't going to be a good idea for the vast majority of people. As you said, you get hungrier when you burn those calories and it's very easy to spend five minutes and eat all the calories you burned working out for an hour.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#6Watch the Fed up documentary, explains it so well that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less wont work. Our environment is saturated with products now which almost all have added sugar, only way is to look at ingredients and change your environment, dont bring these things home and instead bring better stuff home thats not got added sugar.
> no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less won't work
How can that be? If you burn more calories and you take in less calories, then surely at some point your body must start to lose mass. At very least is the equation that you're breathing out carbon and you're not getting that mass back from anything apart from what you eat.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#7I've been 400 pounds most of my life. I empathize with every single sentence in this article and cannot imagine making myself write something like this. The vulnerability is incredible. I'm really glad that exercise is being called out as useless to treat obesity more and more. I hope that trend continues and things like Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaigns never happen again. Carbohydrate addiction is no joke, ev…
While I agree exercise isn't very effective to treat obesity, it is still healthy for you to exercise, even if it's not going to help you lose weight. There are a lot of people who are overweight who have healthier hearts and lungs then normal weight people due to exercise.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#8Watch the Fed up documentary, explains it so well that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less wont work. Our environment is saturated with products now which almost all have added sugar, only way is to look at ingredients and change your environment, dont bring these things home and instead bring better stuff home thats not got added sugar.
> that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less won't work
Definitely disagree here. These are the only things that work. How else can you lose weight other than by moving more and eating less?
Re: The Weight I Carry
#9Watch the Fed up documentary, explains it so well that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less wont work. Our environment is saturated with products now which almost all have added sugar, only way is to look at ingredients and change your environment, dont bring these things home and instead bring better stuff home thats not got added sugar.
> that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less won't work Definitely disagree here. These are the only things that work. How else can you lose weight other than by moving more and eating less?
The key is that people actually don't eat less. They feel more hungry when they exercise, which drives them to eat more, which pushes the vicious cycle even further.
Re: The Weight I Carry
#10I've been 400 pounds most of my life. I empathize with every single sentence in this article and cannot imagine making myself write something like this. The vulnerability is incredible. I'm really glad that exercise is being called out as useless to treat obesity more and more. I hope that trend continues and things like Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaigns never happen again. Carbohydrate addiction is no joke, ev…
I'm curious what the problem with the "Let's Move" effort was. I was only aware of it (I wasn't part of it, and never set out to read about it, just caught reports on news or random articles), but it seemed to emphasize two things: eating healthy (which got a lot of flak from conservative commentators for some reason) and exercise (the "move" in the name).
If it only focused on the latter, I'd agree with you. But nearly everything I heard about it had to do with the former (healthier food options for schools and such).