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The Weight I Carry

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Weight I Carry

#111

Post by kerrsclyde »

We've all be gamed by the food industry for years. We should be eating mainly vegetables, some fruit and a little meat.

Hardly anyone eats lots of veg because they taste bland compared to the other processed treats we are sold. It suits the food industry to sell us processed food because it is cheap, it has a long shelf life and they know it tastes so good we will eat loads of it.

I'm not blaming them, they are businesses with a profit to make, but somehow doesn't feel like a fair fight.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#112

Post by kazinator »

chrisseaton wrote: post #70
kazinator wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that this is true in cases when neglecting to exercise and eat appropriately is the cause of excess weight in a normally functioning body. In severe cases of obesity, something else may be going on. In a nutshell, the bodies of some of these sufferers could be on some sort of fat storage rampage. The fat cells extract an "energy tax" and store it; the body then has to do with what is left. If there is a b…

Then how come in famine situations there is nobody for whom the restricted calorie intake and exercise does not cause weight loss? Nobody in those situations stays overweight due to 'some sort of fat storage rampage' do they?

Well, firstly, "famine" isn't the same thing as "diet and exercise regime"

Even if famine does work, and does so for everyone, that still plausibly leaves regular diet and exercise not equally effective for everyone.

> Nobody in those situations stays overweight due to 'some sort of fat storage rampage' do they?

I actually have no idea.

Does there exist anyone who died at close to zero fat and muscle in a death camp, or due to famine, who had been confirmed to have been a 450 pounder?

It's imaginable that in such a predicament, such an obese person will die of starvation long before losing the fat; that it simply won't be metabolically available to sustain them.

Without any actual data, "nobody came out fat out of Auschwitz" is just a dumb Internet meme.

There are cases of incredible body transformation from people quite severely obese to basically skin-over-muscle; yet that doesn't prove it's possible for everyone.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#113

Post by notus »

I personally enjoyed this article and I wish more people would write things like this. Just reading someone eloquently list their thoughts and anxieties about a certain issue really makes you feel not alone if you are going through the same thing. There was a paragraph where he questioned whether he would lose the good parts of himself by losing weight and I've had that same type of thinking applied to so many other aspects of my life, not necessarily weight, but mental illnesses that I sometimes believe give me insight I wouldn't otherwise have.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#114

Post by notus »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #19

I found one of his fears interesting: > I’ve never been anything but fat. Is there something in the fat version of me that also makes me likable and creative and a decent human being? Are the best parts of me all knotted up with the worst? Is there some way to untangle it and keep just the good stuff? Most of the time I think of my fat as a husk—something I have to shed so the best part of me can come out. But someti…

I think this observation can resonate with anyone who has struggled with changing a of themselves that is so big it is part of their identity. For example people who are chronically depressed sometimes believe (including myself in the past) that taking pills to not be depressed will remove their intellectual edge and prevent them from having the insight of an outsider. It's objectively false, you actually get smarter since the depression isn't interfering with pursuing intellectual interests anymore.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#115

Post by OkGoDoIt »

nxc18 wrote: post #74
hombre_fatal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I exercise, it puts me on a health-minded path every day that snowballs into other good decisions. It's like how they say making your bed in the morning helps put you on task the rest of the day. I find your line of thought unconvincing. The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all. The amount of people I know who don't do anything is astonishing. The proble…

I think you're on the right track, but you have to account for the biases in the fat people who need this advice. No amount of exercise can counteract overeating at the scale seriously fat people (like past versions of myself) do. Often weight is _the_ barrier to exercise. When I was at 300lb it was physically painful to walk more than a few minutes. The small muscles near my ankles just couldn't take it. After I los…

I lost 50lbs a few years ago.

Walking was a great gateway drug for exercise since I really hated the idea of exercise and sweating, plus I felt so awkward and out of place going to a gym. It always felt like everyone at the gym was staring at me and I felt stupid not knowing how to do things properly. Walking was a solo activity and pretty hard to do wrong, so it eliminated the self confidence barrier at least. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks made the walking more enjoyable, sometimes I’d walk for hours and not realize how sweaty and tired I was until I stopped due to a phone call or something.

Beyond walking, a friend got me into rock climbing. It seemed super daunting since everyone at climbing gyms is so buff and I had no muscle and lots of fat and couldn’t do a pull up to save my life. But it turns out with proper instruction the entry level climbs are pretty easy, no harder than climbing a ladder. But then when you get to the top there’s adrenaline from the height looking down, plus a real sense of accomplishment. It helped me build momentum. Eventually things got easier as I did it more often. And once I started looking in the mirror and seeing actual muscle on my arm it was a huge confidence boost and I doubled down on my efforts. Getting over that initial hump where you don’t see any benefit yet is the hardest part. I never fully lost my belly fat even today, but the visible muscle growth was something I could latch onto to keep motivated.

TL;DR: start small, avoid situations that hurt self-confidence, find things that are enjoyable or exciting, look for signs of progress in order to stay motivated

Edit: to be clear my diet changes made a huge difference as well, I’m not attributing my weight loss entirely to the exercise. But I was responding to the question of how to start exercising. I do think it made a difference. I found regular exercise improved my mood which probably helped me limit overeating from depression/stress.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#116

Post by bichiliad »

nxc18 wrote: post #4

Being 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…

> and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience.

Obviously no pressure here, but are you willing to share your experience?

Re: The Weight I Carry

#117

Post by nxc18 »

bichiliad wrote: post #116
nxc18 wrote: post #4

Being 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…

> and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience. Obviously no pressure here, but are you willing to share your experience?

LSD, going into it with some specific anxieties and things I wanted to work through.

I ended up a lot more in touch with myself and more in tune with my body. After that it was just unfathomable to not lose weight.

The tricky thing about LSD is you don't learn anything you didn't already know, it just clicks in a real way for the first time. Having a mental model/ knowing something is a distinct process from internalizing it in a way that affecrs behavior.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#118

Post by kd5bjo »

graeme wrote: post #30
nxc18 wrote: post #4

Being 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…

Actually you're more of less agreeing with the conventional wisdom of those who do weight lifting. The vast majority of fat loss is simply diet. Walking, is helpful. And strength training is good to prevent muscle loss. Anyway, the above is actually the conventional wisdom of those who go to the gym and try to get lean. This is not the message you hear in pop nutrition however. Congrats on your progress! If you do ev…

When I got serious about this stuff, the best decision I made was to focus on performance measures instead of body composition ones. I’m still overweight (but not nearly as much as I once was), but people don’t generally treat me like it because I don’t act overweight— I’ve now got more strength, endurance, and agility than a great many normal-weight people.

So, for most people, my advice is to first focus on how much they’re able to do: it’s faster and more reliable than weight loss, brings comparable health and social benefits, and puts you in a better position to appreciate the fat reduction when you start focusing on that.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#119

Post by jdminhbg »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #80
bko wrote: post #13

I found this study from 1973 interesting where an extremely obese individual performed a supervised fast for about a year and dropped from 456 to 180 pounds. > A 27-year-old male patient fasted under supervision for 382 days and has subsequently maintained his normal weight. Blood glucose concentrations around 30 mg/100 ml were recorded consistently during the last 8 months, although the patient was ambulant and atte…

> I don't know why I haven't seen more studies where extremely obese individuals just stop eating. It's probably not common because you'd be trying to study the one thing they have the most trouble doing. To understand what I mean, you have to understand that asking an extremely obese person to stop eating is like asking an Alcoholic to stop drinking. All of them know that's what they have to do but that's literally…

> You don't tell an alcoholic it's simple not to be an alcoholic, "Just stop drinking!" or to a drug addict, "Just stop taking drugs!". It's simple for you, but it's not simple for them. That's what makes them an alcoholic and not you.

I think this is the point though. You don't tell an alcoholic "just have a couple drinks not the whole bottle," you help them stop drinking completely because they can't handle moderation. It's not simple for an alcoholic to stop drinking, but it's doable in a way that just cutting back (the alcohol equivalent of "eat less and move more") is not.

Obviously, a person will eventually need to eat or will simply starve to death, but I think the point above is that fasting as a way of breaking the cycle is underexplored.

Re: The Weight I Carry

#120

Post by danso »

notus wrote: post #113

I personally enjoyed this article and I wish more people would write things like this. Just reading someone eloquently list their thoughts and anxieties about a certain issue really makes you feel not alone if you are going through the same thing. There was a paragraph where he questioned whether he would lose the good parts of himself by losing weight and I've had that same type of thinking applied to so many other…

I was a bit astonished by how the article started: that this was the first time the author had confronted his weight problem in writing. This is someone who has had a long award-winning writing career in newspapers and online, who has had no problem writing about many other subjects. Just goes to show how deep the personal shame he has felt his whole life.
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