I was tired of being fat.  Rule 1 to weight loss: you REALLY need to get used to being hungry.  Even if you get cheap foods, if you consume less calories than you burn, you WILL lose weight.  

I had (am having?) a covid scare so I haven't exactly been able to get out very much.  How do I handle it?  I eat less.  It's 10:13 on Saturday morning, I had a small cup of soup for dinner last night and I haven't eaten yet today.

The hardest part is to avoid boredom eating, stress eating and when you do eat, stop eating when you aren't hungry, not when you're full.  It's frustrating not being completely satisfied after you eat, but I am quite satisfied with having lost almost 150 lbs since 2017.

One of the most important things to weight loss, the key mindset I had to get over to get started, was simply this: believe you CAN do it.  There are a lot of "fat activist" voices in left spaces that will say things like "You'll just hurt yourself trying to lose weight" or "You're just going to gain it back" or some other defeatist talk.  You need to shut that out and tell your self that you can, you will, you need to lose weight.  I didn't tell myself "I want to lose this weight."  I told myself "I WILL lose this weight!"  The right mindset goes a long way; and the wrong mindset will get you stuck in a rut you might never get out of.

(June 27, 2020 at 11:17 am)TaraJo Wrote: I was tired of being fat.  Rule 1 to weight loss: you REALLY need to get used to being hungry.  Even if you get cheap foods, if you consume less calories than you burn, you WILL lose weight.  

I had (am having?) a covid scare so I haven't exactly been able to get out very much.  How do I handle it?  I eat less.  It's 10:13 on Saturday morning, I had a small cup of soup for dinner last night and I haven't eaten yet today.

The hardest part is to avoid boredom eating, stress eating and when you do eat, stop eating when you aren't hungry, not when you're full.  It's frustrating not being completely satisfied after you eat, but I am quite satisfied with having lost almost 150 lbs since 2017.

One of the most important things to weight loss, the key mindset I had to get over to get started, was simply this: believe you CAN do it.  There are a lot of "fat activist" voices in left spaces that will say things like "You'll just hurt yourself trying to lose weight" or "You're just going to gain it back" or some other defeatist talk.  You need to shut that out and tell your self that you can, you will, you need to lose weight.  I didn't tell myself "I want to lose this weight."  I told myself "I WILL lose this weight!"  The right mindset goes a long way; and the wrong mindset will get you stuck in a rut you might never get out of.

The mindset is an essential component. My mother was obese. No matter what the diet, she lost no weight. She would report in exactly what she had for breakfast, lunch and dinner and tot that up she would have been in the starvation category. Yet still lost no weight.

It turns out that the time between meals was not being counted. Add in a bite of this and a taste of that all day long and boy it was no wonder that no weight was lost at all. 

She was functionally blind to all of that daily grazing. They weren't meals so they didn't count.

The scary part is that my father and my three siblings and I were equally blind to it. Looking back, I find myself wondering "How did we miss that?" and the answer is  that we didn't miss it at all. It was simply normalised. Family dynamics are a bugger. We were all enablers.

Eventually, we did take action but it was far too late. The only thing that changed her behaviour was diabetes and two massive heart attacks. 

Time for an emergency quad bypass. And a combo pacemaker/defib device

After months of rehab, on her release from hospital, the med team told her out straight. "We have bought you ten more years". So what did she do? She travelled the world and became a speaker at symposiums for fellow sufferers and basically stuffed as much living into those ten years as humanly possible and never went back to old habits. I cannot but admire that.

But that is what it took for a behavioural change.

Damn that serious tag.  Sorry Madeline.

I'm tired of seeing people be shamed for what they did as stupid kids in a different time and place.  I worry about the humor and honesty that will be lost in the fallout.  I understand the urgency to end hate but can't look at history and think such measures will work.  I love this verse from Jason Isbell, "I'm white man looking in a black man's eyes, wishing I'd never been one of the guys who pretended not to hear another white man's joke.  Oh the times ain't forgotten."

The virus scare is truly wearing me down.  A doctor looking at and x-ray of my back noticed my lungs and asked, your parents smoke?  Asthma before I can remember and allergies from day one.  Too look at me and follow me in the woods or one the river, you wouldn't know.  But if I get the shit, I'm fucked.  On top of that, the air was brown today.  The stuff that sometimes blows in from Oklahoma is reddish and gone in an hour.  Brown sky all day and a haze over the water.  A pall on us from across the ocean.

(June 27, 2020 at 4:38 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: The mindset is an essential component. My mother was obese. No matter what the diet, she lost no weight. She would report in exactly what she had for breakfast, lunch and dinner and tot that up she would have been in the starvation category. Yet still lost no weight.

It turns out that the time between meals was not being counted. Add in a bite of this and a taste of that all day long and boy it was no wonder that no weight was lost at all. 

She was functionally blind to all of that daily grazing. They weren't meals so they didn't count.

The scary part is that my father and my three siblings and I were equally blind to it. Looking back, I find myself wondering "How did we miss that?" and the answer is  that we didn't miss it at all. It was simply normalised. Family dynamics are a bugger. We were all enablers.

Eventually, we did take action but it was far too late. The only thing that changed her behaviour was diabetes and two massive heart attacks. 

Time for an emergency quad bypass. And a combo pacemaker/defib device

After months of rehab, on her release from hospital, the med team told her out straight. "We have bought you ten more years". So what did she do? She travelled the world and became a speaker at symposiums for fellow sufferers and basically stuffed as much living into those ten years as humanly possible and never went back to old habits. I cannot but admire that.

But that is what it took for a behavioural change.

Yes, grazing is still an issue I have from time to time.  I watch my meals, eat light and healthy, but if I'm not careful, I'll pile on the calories getting an odd piece of lunch meat or a couple of little crackers or some extra milk with my breakfast.  Grazing adds up, big time.  

And, yeah, you need the right inspiration.  For a long time, I didn't have that.  You want to know who's going to be really inspired to lose weight?  A 350 pound tranny who suddenly found herself with a job that makes surgery possible.  At least that's what it took for me; I knew surgeons wouldn't touch me at 350 so I started working my ass off (literally) and I'm now down to 213 lbs and surgery is just 10 days away (btw, doctor wanted me to be at least 220, but I want to get my weight even lower than that before surgery).  Find the right inspiration and you can overcome anything.

(June 27, 2020 at 6:44 pm)TaraJo Wrote:

(June 27, 2020 at 4:38 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: The mindset is an essential component. My mother was obese. No matter what the diet, she lost no weight. She would report in exactly what she had for breakfast, lunch and dinner and tot that up she would have been in the starvation category. Yet still lost no weight.

It turns out that the time between meals was not being counted. Add in a bite of this and a taste of that all day long and boy it was no wonder that no weight was lost at all. 

She was functionally blind to all of that daily grazing. They weren't meals so they didn't count.

The scary part is that my father and my three siblings and I were equally blind to it. Looking back, I find myself wondering "How did we miss that?" and the answer is  that we didn't miss it at all. It was simply normalised. Family dynamics are a bugger. We were all enablers.

Eventually, we did take action but it was far too late. The only thing that changed her behaviour was diabetes and two massive heart attacks. 

Time for an emergency quad bypass. And a combo pacemaker/defib device

After months of rehab, on her release from hospital, the med team told her out straight. "We have bought you ten more years". So what did she do? She travelled the world and became a speaker at symposiums for fellow sufferers and basically stuffed as much living into those ten years as humanly possible and never went back to old habits. I cannot but admire that.

But that is what it took for a behavioural change.

Yes, grazing is still an issue I have from time to time.  I watch my meals, eat light and healthy, but if I'm not careful, I'll pile on the calories getting an odd piece of lunch meat or a couple of little crackers or some extra milk with my breakfast.  Grazing adds up, big time.  

And, yeah, you need the right inspiration.  For a long time, I didn't have that.  You want to know who's going to be really inspired to lose weight?  A 350 pound tranny who suddenly found herself with a job that makes surgery possible.  At least that's what it took for me; I knew surgeons wouldn't touch me at 350 so I started working my ass off (literally) and I'm now down to 213 lbs and surgery is just 10 days away (btw, doctor wanted me to be at least 220, but I want to get my weight even lower than that before surgery).  Find the right inspiration and you can overcome anything.

Well done, keep going.

I suspect that one of the problems is how people percieve it as entirely self centred wanton gluttony that the person could simply stop.  It is never that simple, ever. There are a crapton of diverse reasons why it is so and no two cases are identical. We are handicapped by evolution which cursed us with a desire to eat whatever is available because who knew where the next meal was going to be found? Then there is a genetic component. Add in metabolism, cultural bias, circumstance, economic position, upbringing, psychology and so forth, well, there clearly is no simple single answer. There just is no one size fits all solution.

That makes dealing with the issue really difficult. But it also makes fat-shaming really easy.

Very weird to hyper focus on that tiny piece of my post. But ok.

Yeah, honestly, there can be a lot of different factors at play in weight and weight loss.  Some people overstate those complicating factors, though.  My ex used to constantly complain that his blood sugar was low and he just had to eat something while I was dieting;  I kept telling him he needed to talk to his doctor if he's really having blood sugar problems and when he finally did, the doctor found no problems with his blood sugar.  But he kept saying it was too low and he needed to eat something right then and there.

And he wasn't alone.  I've seen quite a few people who absolutely insist they can't lose weight no matter how much they cut back their eating.  But when you look at their instagram or facebook or twitter, they're constantly posting about this restaurant or this big dinner or this desert they're cooking.  Another girl who insisted that there was absolutely no way she could lose weight by reducing her eating got upset with me when I told her that this kind of eating grossed me out.  Negative mental states can play just as big a role as positive mental states.    

For me, I'm finding that, again, grazing is what makes it difficult.  Anyone can say "I'm just going to have a small salad for dinner tonight."  That part is easy.  The trick is, after dinner, when you're craving a little peanut butter jelly sandwich or some cheese and crackers or even just a few grapes, it's hard to maintain that kind of self control and focus.  Focusing on eating light three separate times a day?  Focusing continuously for days, weeks or even months?  That's a bit harder.  Part of why it's so easy to gain weight back after losing it is because it's hard to maintain that focus, consistently, over a long period of time.  

And, yeah, I gained a lot of weight when my living situation changed drastically.  I went from being homeless, having to walk almost everywhere I went and having very little food, to a situation where I had a fairly reliable car and plenty of food.  It can be difficult to realize how your mindset needs to change when your living situation changes.  I was burning a lot less calories but I was still in a mindset of eating as much as I could whenever I could.  I think one of the things I've had to do is change that mindset.

Fat phobia exists, sure, but there's a difference between legitimate fat phobia and health concerns and some people don't understand the difference between the two.  No, fat people don't deserve to be mocked or harassed or ridiculed for being fat.  But that doesn't mean there aren't health concerns to obesity.  Yes, there are health conditions that make weight loss difficult, but it's not impossible and doctors can help you deal with those conditions if you work with them on it.  If you have the right mindset, you'll find a way to deal with the physical.

(June 27, 2020 at 9:54 pm)TaraJo Wrote: Yeah, honestly, there can be a lot of different factors at play in weight and weight loss.  Some people overstate those complicating factors, though.  My ex used to constantly complain that his blood sugar was low and he just had to eat something while I was dieting;  I kept telling him he needed to talk to his doctor if he's really having blood sugar problems and when he finally did, the doctor found no problems with his blood sugar.  But he kept saying it was too low and he needed to eat something right then and there.

And he wasn't alone.  I've seen quite a few people who absolutely insist they can't lose weight no matter how much they cut back their eating.  But when you look at their instagram or facebook or twitter, they're constantly posting about this restaurant or this big dinner or this desert they're cooking.  Another girl who insisted that there was absolutely no way she could lose weight by reducing her eating got upset with me when I told her that this kind of eating grossed me out.  Negative mental states can play just as big a role as positive mental states.    

For me, I'm finding that, again, grazing is what makes it difficult.  Anyone can say "I'm just going to have a small salad for dinner tonight."  That part is easy.  The trick is, after dinner, when you're craving a little peanut butter jelly sandwich or some cheese and crackers or even just a few grapes, it's hard to maintain that kind of self control and focus.  Focusing on eating light three separate times a day?  Focusing continuously for days, weeks or even months?  That's a bit harder.  Part of why it's so easy to gain weight back after losing it is because it's hard to maintain that focus, consistently, over a long period of time.  

And, yeah, I gained a lot of weight when my living situation changed drastically.  I went from being homeless, having to walk almost everywhere I went and having very little food, to a situation where I had a fairly reliable car and plenty of food.  It can be difficult to realize how your mindset needs to change when your living situation changes.  I was burning a lot less calories but I was still in a mindset of eating as much as I could whenever I could.  I think one of the things I've had to do is change that mindset.

Fat phobia exists, sure, but there's a difference between legitimate fat phobia and health concerns and some people don't understand the difference between the two.  No, fat people don't deserve to be mocked or harassed or ridiculed for being fat.  But that doesn't mean there aren't health concerns to obesity.  Yes, there are health conditions that make weight loss difficult, but it's not impossible and doctors can help you deal with those conditions if you work with them on it.  If you have the right mindset, you'll find a way to deal with the physical.

I have had occasion to do the same some 10-12 years ago. I am certain that living out of take away junk for two years has wiped out some of my life expectancy. But needs must.

One does the necessary to survive when it all goes pear shaped.