I have a question for the forum here. The two basic elements of losing fat are exercise and food, and of the two, what you eat is the more important determining factor.
I'm trying to lose fat. I have a fat content of about 23%, which is acceptable for a mid-30s male, but it's also not ideal and doesn't look great, either, especially in the image-conscious part of the country I'm in.
I'm in a difficult position of living very near my parents, and eating with them most nights of the week. My mom cooks. This is a recipe for a lot of pressure to "clean your plate". Decades of training to "clean your plate", plus pressure to eat the wrong foods in the wrong quantities at the wrong times are why Americans look like... super-sized Americans these days. In my specific case, not eating something, or eating only a little bit of something, results in my dad getting angry for rejecting my mom's cooking, which is a proxy for me rejecting her, etc. In other words, my simple decisions about calories and carbohydrates are part of a huge tangle of family things.
This is all bad; for a long time I have understood that the biggest obstacle to life-long weight loss/maintenance is untangling emotional issues from food. People cook and eat to show love, acceptance, etc. People eat to feel good, because they're bored, to fit in, to punish themselves, to isolate themselves, etc. All kinds of emotional issues. As long as those issues are there, long-term control of in-take (and therefore weight) is going to be impossible.
To control fat and weight, it's necessary to take a mechanical view of food: I need this many calories, this many grams of fat/protein/carb, etc, today, so I will eat according to a certain meal plan. It's as emotional as putting gas in a car. If cars came with expandable gas tanks, and we kept on putting in more and more gas without driving the car enough, it would gain weight, too.
Anyway, my dad was very angry at me today because I didn't want to eat the soup. He said that I only think about myself. My parents are borderline-overweight, and are both gaining. I love my parents but I don't want to eat the soup, or the fried cheese with butter, or any of that kind of stuff. I want tofu, some low-fat cottage cheese and a salad, because if I eat the fried cheese with butter, I'm going to end up in a bad situation. It's a lot easier to avoid gaining weight than it is to gain it and then try to lose it, right?
Does anyone have some suggestions of what I should do to explain all this? My dad got angry at me and said "just eat less during the rest of the day" and "there's no medical evidence that having a bit more fat is unhealthy", etc. These ideas just aren't real and don't work for me. If I eat a 1000 calorie dinner, I WILL gain weight, unless I'm also running for an hour a day, which I can't do. And yes, there may be no health difference between 25% body fat and 15% bodyfat, but there's a big difference in perceptions, and as a single guy in Southern California, I can say that 15% works and 25% doesn't.
Any ideas welcome here.
I'm trying to lose fat. I have a fat content of about 23%, which is acceptable for a mid-30s male, but it's also not ideal and doesn't look great, either, especially in the image-conscious part of the country I'm in.
I'm in a difficult position of living very near my parents, and eating with them most nights of the week. My mom cooks. This is a recipe for a lot of pressure to "clean your plate". Decades of training to "clean your plate", plus pressure to eat the wrong foods in the wrong quantities at the wrong times are why Americans look like... super-sized Americans these days. In my specific case, not eating something, or eating only a little bit of something, results in my dad getting angry for rejecting my mom's cooking, which is a proxy for me rejecting her, etc. In other words, my simple decisions about calories and carbohydrates are part of a huge tangle of family things.
This is all bad; for a long time I have understood that the biggest obstacle to life-long weight loss/maintenance is untangling emotional issues from food. People cook and eat to show love, acceptance, etc. People eat to feel good, because they're bored, to fit in, to punish themselves, to isolate themselves, etc. All kinds of emotional issues. As long as those issues are there, long-term control of in-take (and therefore weight) is going to be impossible.
To control fat and weight, it's necessary to take a mechanical view of food: I need this many calories, this many grams of fat/protein/carb, etc, today, so I will eat according to a certain meal plan. It's as emotional as putting gas in a car. If cars came with expandable gas tanks, and we kept on putting in more and more gas without driving the car enough, it would gain weight, too.
Anyway, my dad was very angry at me today because I didn't want to eat the soup. He said that I only think about myself. My parents are borderline-overweight, and are both gaining. I love my parents but I don't want to eat the soup, or the fried cheese with butter, or any of that kind of stuff. I want tofu, some low-fat cottage cheese and a salad, because if I eat the fried cheese with butter, I'm going to end up in a bad situation. It's a lot easier to avoid gaining weight than it is to gain it and then try to lose it, right?
Does anyone have some suggestions of what I should do to explain all this? My dad got angry at me and said "just eat less during the rest of the day" and "there's no medical evidence that having a bit more fat is unhealthy", etc. These ideas just aren't real and don't work for me. If I eat a 1000 calorie dinner, I WILL gain weight, unless I'm also running for an hour a day, which I can't do. And yes, there may be no health difference between 25% body fat and 15% bodyfat, but there's a big difference in perceptions, and as a single guy in Southern California, I can say that 15% works and 25% doesn't.
Any ideas welcome here.
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