To be irritated by people who say they can't lose weight?

[BeerSnake]

umm just eat less and get out more. Or am I being unreasonable?

I don't think we need to make it too complicated. Most British women eat the wrong foods and more are over weight than not. It's a big problem If they changed what they ate to healthier foods they would feel better which is as important as being slimmer for a start.

The maths is simpl e- eat more calories than you expend and you put on weight. The psychology is complex as many of those women are eating for reasons other than hunger and some of the foods like sweets/chocolate are a bit like an addictive substance in terms of what they do to the brain.

I have never said I was a millionaire. I don't know why anyone would think I were.

However I feel richer beyond any money because of the good health and wellbeing I have which in my view is at least in part a result of eating a healthy diet and avoiding processed foods. Given I know how good it makes me feel why would I not want others to know?

pm'd this latest literature review to rhonda last night but thought other lurkers might like to see

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-0080.2010.01497.x/abstract

The authors are australian but its a very good and robust literature review of everything on this over the last number of years. 2011 publication date too. Sorry its only the abstract here.

Yabu , I "get out" more than any of my skinny friends (walk 9 miles a day every school day, walk less on holiday but as not driving at all still walk more than anyone I know) and struggle to loose weight.

I do not eat like a bird but I deffiinitely do not pig out all day on crisps/chocolate/burgers either either

what an utterly hideous thread

It is non PC because it leads to judging people on their appearance only wihout , most of the time, having a clue what the overweight person's lifstyle is like.

YABU and ignorant and I'm sure you realise that.

I presume you've had a pita of a week and are needing a bit of a row to get it out your system - good luck with that .

kladdkata really informative posts-thanks. Op-not so!

It certainly got better.
It should not be taboot to say that half women in the UK are over weight and plenty of those are obese. It's totally different though to say that to someone's face etc.

there are very complex reasons as to why people put on weight but certainly some foods cause people to eat more and more of them and not feel full than others and some foods are good for you and make you feel good and others might temporarily appear to do so but do not really.

YABU

I have not read all the thread, compulsive eating/anorexia/bulmia are all eating disorders!

People turn to alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, food, sex, exercise and various other things to help them cope with life at times, obesity doesn't hurt others behaviours of choice does, idealy we would all use exercise to help deal with our stress in life.

If having everyone at their ideal weight was that simple we would all weight our ideal weight, we don't so the solution is not as easy as you seem to think it is.

Why are so many more people obese today than 39 years ago?

Is it bacause more are overeating without burning off excess calories or are there greater numbers of people with medical conditions causing uncontrollable weight gain?

Whilst having sympathy for anyone with a medical condition I do think that most kid themselves that they have 'slow metabolism' when in fact their large bodies are burning more calories than a slim person would.

Should've been 30 years ago - nothing spectacular happened precisely 39 years ago!

YANBU.
I used to be overweight because I ate too much. I kidded myself I was on a diet all week then stuffed myself with sweets at weekends and complained that I couldn't lose weight!
I accept that some people who take certain medications can't lose weight easily or put it on through water retention etc.
If hormones, glands and slow metabolisms are to blame why don't we see obese people in countries that suffer from famine?
Do these people not have hormones or glands?

Catsmother - what about the difficulty of exercising ('just moving around more - OP') when you are very overweight?

As I said in an earlier post - I weigh 20 stone - so it is like a person of my ideal weight carrying around another person pretty much the same weight as them all the time. It makes exercise bloody difficult, I promise you. By the time I get to the end of our road, my back is aching, and if I walk a decent distance, I'm crippled afterwards (like when my friend and I walked 4 miles with the dogs, and I could hardly drag myself upstairs that evening).

Another thing - and I know this is going to sound like such a trivial reason - when you are really big, it is very hard to find exercise clothes that fit, that are comfortable to exercise in, and that don't make you feel like the world's worst heifer when you wear them. It took me ages to find yoga trousers that fitted me and that didn't shrink the first time I washed them, and even longer to find a loose t-shirt that was long enough to cover my stomach.

If you feel totally conspicuous already, just by being at the gym with all the fit, healthy, slim people, and you are made to feel worse by the clothes you are wearing, it just adds another factor that can help put you off exercise.

Today I ate
2 scotch pancakes for breakfast...no butter..
1 mug of black coffee
1 apple
No Lunch 2 glasses of water
Met with friends for early meal at their house with kids.
A few carrot sticks homous, a few olives.
medium size portion of lasagne. salad of cucumber, toms, peppers no dressing
1 slice garlic bread.
1small slice of choc cake.
2 large glasses wine
1 black coffee
1 mug green tea

Exercise
1.5 hrs dynamic yoga
1.5 hrs housework.
walk 20 mins and back to shops.
This is a very average day for me food wise,( I exercise every day too) sometimes 0 wine, sometimes a g&T. Sometimes lunch not dinner. If I have both, both will be small like a bowl of soup or beans on toast.
I struggle to maintain my weight, especially as I get older. I am not overweight, but my God it's hard. I only need to add a choc bar, or an extra piece of bread, and wham!! up the scales go.

Of course the OP is being unreasonable - to assume it's as simple all that.

But, I always thought that because I have PCOS I can't lose weight. I really did believe this, but I lost quite a lot following a well known diet.

I know other people who have also lost weight despite odds being stacked against them due to health problems. Obviously I don't know everybody's condition, and there are those who either cannot or will find it much more difficult to lose weight, but the fact is there are also a lot of people who just aren't very motivated and assume defeat without trying very hard.

Going to the gym and having special clothes to exersize in isn't strictly necessary either, as just walking around the block or to the shops is exersize.

Like I say, GodzillasBumcheek - I struggle to walk any meaningful distance - I can't walk far without getting back ache and sore joints. It sounds mad, but it is easier to walk on a treadmill, partly because you can get off and rest if you need to (you don't have to get back home, if you see what I mean), and partly because it has a bit more 'give' than tarmac, so is easier on the joints.

But even knowing this, the depression and my poor self esteem and difficulty in finding any motivation means that I don't get to the gym. The only pounds I lose are from my bank account.

I also think the OP is wrong to say you need to eat less - you need to eat differently - more mindfully and slowly, so you recognise when you are full, and balancing the different parts of your diet. You could end up actually eating more - but if a lot of that is vegetables and fruit, you can still lose weight.

Just eating less will make you hungry, and will make your blood sugar drop - and that is likely to lead you to crave the high calorie foods that won't help you lose weight - well, in my experience, anyway.

I've never understood how people who get gastric bands can lose weight after claiming that it doesn't matter how little they eat they can't lose weight.
I know you eat next to nothing after getting a gastric band as your stomach is tiny but surely that proves that if you eat less you lose weight?

SDTG - That is absolutely right, becuse the healthy diet and mindful eating (and telling DH not to pile loads on my plate - getting portion sizes right is important) you describe is what I did.

There are so many reasons why I end up giving in to the cake (my weak point by far), PMS, headaches, general anxiety. It still wasn't that I couldn't lose weight, it was that I hadn't tried very hard until recently. It helped to write what I ate down as well - I find I'm slipping quite badly now I've stopped.

But some reasons, and some health problems, don't have a simple solution unfortunately do they?

A friend's husband is rather overweight. According to her he eats virtually nothing and has far smaller portions than her but can't lose weight. However a few years ago he had gall bladder problems and couldn't eat fatty foods. He lost 2.5 stone in 3 months. He had the op and sadly has put it all back on again. Yet she still maintains he's eating very little. When we've been away with them I've seen that this isn't the case - he does things like drink a pint of fresh orange juice 2 or 3 times during the day.

I think people don't realise how very small changes to their eating/drinking habits make a huge difference over time. There are 3800 calories in a pound of fat so if you consume just 200 extra calories per day (roughly a glass of wine and an apple, for example) you'll put on more than a stone in a year.

Obese people aren't gorging themselves like pigs they're just consuming a little too much on a regular basis.

You are not being unreasonable to be irritated by it, OP; your emotions are your own prerogative. But you may lack some understanding of the complex relationship many people have with food. It's not just about sustenance any more. When food is available in abundance it can become very addictive. What people really mean when they say they 'can't lose weight' is that they can't stop themselves eating the foods that they crave and/or enjoy.
Of course it's true that calorie deprivation wil lead to certain weight loss (there were no overweight people liberated from prison camps or concentration camps after all) but most people find it very hard to self-inflict that deprivation when surrounded by plentiful food sources. It is a problem that can only get worse, I fear.

I am 34, I had always been slim. For the past 9 years despite having had 5 dc, I was a size 8, seemingly effortlessly. Looking back at photos I should have twigged I was ridiculously thin, yet was eating whatever I wanted. Anyway last year I was diagnosed with Graves disease after I became really ill. Heart beating far too fast, spleen enlarged, breathing difficulties. This was the reason I'd lost weight so easily. I am now on meds to help control thyroid but there is no actual cure for Graves. Since starting treatment I am shocked at how near impossible it is for me to keep weight off. But I don't care, I'm more normal looking and most importantly far healthier. I think yabu, peoples ability to loose weight is affected by so many things

YANBU

Clearly there has been a huge increase in obesity levels over the past 30 years and the causes are multiple - increased car ownership, increased sedentary lifestyle, lower priced processed food, increase in sedentary work, rise in convenience food. Just about the only thing that hasn't changed are the people - were are genetically no different than our parents or grandparents.

I too am irritated by the what I perceive to be a victim culture often validated by an image obsessed media. Eating and exercise are areas over which we have control but too often fail to, notwithstanding genuine medical conditions the vast majority of people are simply eating too much in front of the telly.

SDT, don't worry too much about the exercise for now. Most people who join gyms waste their money, exercise, get hungry and sit down often at the gym in front of a plate of chips. Exercise is certainly good but that could as much be walking around your house. Just concentrate as you sensibly say on changing the foods you eat to healthier ones.

Why are we fatter than 40 years ago? One reason is we have changed thet ypes of food we eat. That is common all over the planet. As soon as a processed Western diet is brought out with lots of corn syrup, fizzing drinks, processed white bread or rice rather than something "brown" with hard bits and roughage in it, people can eat a lot more without feeling full or want the instant hit of seratonin on the brain they get with quick fix sugar products like sweets and biscuits.

Obviously like the Graves disease above (how awful, poor you) there are exceptions but most people have put on weight because of the kinds of foods they eat. The basic premise that they eat more calories than they expend still stands but it's just if you're on a litre of coca cola each day, you drink a l ot of alcohol, you main line on chocolate digestives every after noon etc those are foods where you can take in a l ot more before your body says enough. That is one reason they give chocolate milkshakes to anorexics sometimes as it's a way with very little effort you can get a lot of calories down you. It's why gastric band people sometimes liquidise Mars Bars to sabotage the process.