Random thoughts...

[Steve]

Yup... well aware of it.

I've done a lot of research, relatively speaking, on neurochemicals and food addiction on the biochemical level.

Interesting and stuff.

 

[i_love_muscle]

Maybe that's what Steve was trying to address in his first post -- how do you get from knowing something to actually ACTING on it?

You need passion coupled with the desire to change. And that passion and desire has to run deep enough to kickstart somebody to act. Whatever you need to act on must become your prime directive. That means you breathe it; you live it; simply put, it is your raison d'être.

That's part of it.

Case in point.

I know a woman who is 420 lbs.

Does she enjoy the way she is physically?

Nope, not much at all. She doesn't get around well, she's uncomfortable, she doesn't fit in places, on and on.

She could also out talk me with regards to nutrition. Big time. Very, very intelligent woman.

I've had discussions with her spanning hours on numerous occasions about it all and the fact remains that she does not know how to put her knowledge to use in a meaningful way. Nor my instruction.

She has overriding tendencies/proclivities that she simply can't bury. Said proclivities simply won't yield for more than a month to any conscious attempt at losing weight.

She also won't even attempt to analyze her thought patterns. She claims it's not her thoughts that has her screwed up. It's a combination of food addiction and a lack of willpower. But that doesn't make much sense to me. Food addiction? Sure, that could seriously be playing a role in it. Lack of willpower though? She's a smart woman. She understanding the cost of being this large is. She understands what's on the other side of the fence. I can't help but believe she has some serious mental distortions and road blocks set up inside that head but she refuses to even go there.

This is just one example.

Steve, does this person write down her realistic goals for her weight loss journey? Everybody learns a bit differently, and perhaps without actually seeing it on paper (in black and white), the concepts are just not getting through to her.

You can talk until you're blue in the face, but she might just have to write things down to make some sense of it so she "sees" it right in front of her, and the process of her writing it down and maybe even saying it to herself while she's writing it down might confirm it in her brain. It's obvious that "knowing" isn't enough for her because she is unable to apply the knowledge you have provided to her. If she is unwilling to apply the knowledge, then she isn't ready to lose weight.

It's as though she is hell-bent on self-sabotage, regardless of how much she says she wants to lose weight. And that stems from a lack of self-love.

 

[Steve]

Steve, does this person write down her realistic goals for her weight loss journey? Everybody learns a bit differently, and perhaps without actually seeing it on paper (in black and white), the concepts are just not getting through to her.

Yup, she's tried that.

But like I said, she's not big on this sort of thing. That's usually the first thing I have clients do. Write down numerous lists (values, thought log, pain/pleasure links, goals, whys, etc)

 

[WineDeer]

I would think the majority of the population knows how to find information. I don't know people who don't know how to find information, but most people I know have University degrees and therefore are aware of basic research skills. They make phone calls, they ask questions. They get pointed in the right direction. Or they search for the information themselves and find good sources.

I'm highly educated, I have done plenty of research papers. I did not find this information to be readily available. It took me a while to find this forum, it took me a while to find a forum for PCOS. I read books, but the books were more in the "diet self-help" category than books that really explained what was going on.

I think you might have had a better understanding of what key words or phrases or knowledge you were looking for.

I can Google "Lose weight" and I will get over 20 million hits on how to lose weight. It won't necessarily teach me about nutrition and what nutrition is right for MY body.

I never said knowledge makes you act. However, I don't understand how a person doesn't know how to take action once they have the information. My basic premise for obtaining information for a specific purpose is "How badly do I want this and how much energy am I willing to expend on getting this?" If I want it, I get the information and I act on it. It's a domino effect for me.

Therefore, I've never had a problem taking action once I feel I have enough information to actually take action. Then I simply find a way to do it and I do it. If Plan A doesn't work out quite the way I wanted, I go into Plan B and Plan C and Plan D. How much easier can it get? It's so simple it's criminal.

Once again, I'm glad it's really easy and simple for you, but it's not that simple and easy for the rest of us.

Some of us do get influenced by outside sources that affect whether we go in one direction or another.

I get influenced by friends who are thinner and don't diet -- they invite me to go out with them and until recently, I never turned them down. I hadn't learned to pick a better choice in a restaurant and it never occurred to me to eat before going out -- that's considered rude where I come from. I have had to struggle between what I intellectually know is correct versus the reality of my life where I don't exist in a vacuum. Where I find myself at 11 PM at night remembering that I didn't go to the store today or yesterday or the day before, and now I don't have food for breakfast.

I struggle with the concept that food has been the center of every social gathering I've attended since I was in the womb -- I have to fight that socialization that if I don't eat at a party, I'm insulting the host. I have to yet learn how to turn down food politely but firmly (otherwise I find myself explaining how I'm on this weight loss journey and then I have to explain why no, one just little bite will in fact affect my diet, blah blah blah, etc.).

I suspect that at some level, this food/diet/exercise thing for you is as easy as IT is for me, and I would be amazed at why people don't understand something easily as I do.

But I recognize that it's not that simple, because it's not that simple for me. If it were, I don't think I'd be here, writing about it. I would have lost my weight back in 2007 and I'd be enjoying my Mai Tai on a beach somewhere right now in my polka dot bikini.

 

[i_love_muscle]

I suspect that at some level, this food/diet/exercise thing for you is as easy as IT is for me, and I would be amazed at why people don't understand something easily as I do.

No, the food/diet/exercise thing is NOT easy for me. Hard sciences, anatomy, physiology and math are easy for me. Everything else I have to work very hard at.

I knew nothing about food and diet before I was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic 25 odd years ago. It took me over a year to memorize carb calorie counts, portions, weights, etc. I'm still reading publications with respect to diabetes, insulin response and diet. The learning curve never stops.

As for exercise, I was always told what to do by trainers and coaches. I didn't have to think. I just did.

So when I hung up my track shoes at 25 years of age, I joined Gold's Gym and I didn't have a freaking clue what to do because everything I had done up to that point had been sport specific training. Gymnastics and sprinting training doesn't work for powerlifting, bodybuilding, etc.

So I asked the guys who looked like they knew what they were doing lots of questions (basically the guys who competed). They told me I'd probably do well at powerlifting, so they helped me set up a program that worked for me. There were no trainers then ... we pretty much flew by the seat of our pants. My workouts were pretty simple: 4-5 days a week, 30-45 minutes per workout. I never did more than 4 different exercises per workout.

Eventually, you just figured it all out through trial and error.

BTW, there was no internet in those days. Nobody had computers. We still used typewriters

 

[Steve]

There's a similar thread going on over on the BR forum. Most of it is a lot of bickering; one group suggesting people who are fat choose to be fat and the other group saying there's more to it than that.

Here's a post of mine in the thread:

It's too bad the thread doesn't take a different direction but it's not my thread so I'm not going to sit here and bitch.

My take is this:

There's always a choice to be made, obviously.

It's not between a) lose weight and b) stay/get fat.

Instead it's between a multitude of pleasure generating activities. This list certainly includes be fit and healthy but it also includes eat a box of cookies, watch television, relax b/c I'm stressed the fuck out from work, on and on.

The choices that don't involve a lot of leg work tend to override values that require a lot of work and effort to attain pleasure from, like being healthy and the like.

I liken it to a funnel. Drop a bunch of desires into a funnel, some bigger than others. The big ones get stuck and rarely make it through, but the smaller desires get around the blockage and manifest themselves as action.

From the outside looking in it seems illogical b/c people, imo, don't desire fatness over other things. But what's happening is the desire for health and weight maintenance loss is being constantly overridden by other shit.

It's not a matter of choosing to be fat. I don't think many people really desire fatness (beyond a very select subset of the population).

It's simply a matter of overriding proclivities stemming from a multifactorial shitpile of stuff including hectic lives, poor upbringings, depression, fucked up neurochemicals, laziness, instant gratification, on and on and on.

That's my half assed opinion anyhow which you're free to tear up.

A good response to this from an individual who is in the same 'camp' I'm in says:

I think there is more to say about how the proclivities override. It is well known that stress impairs the functioning of the frontal cortex,which normally plays the role of restraining the rush towards instant gratification, allows for gratification postponement and higher level decision making. (See Sapolsky's Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers at chapter 16). When the frontal cortex gets shut down, all sorts of ideas about instant gratification that can be directly contrary to what the person actually values or finds important can become irresistible.

Add to that the fact the people vary in the way that the dopamine pleasure/reward system functions. Some people make less dopamine, or are less sensitive to dopamine, or run out. The dopamine reward system is not just about pleasure, it is about motivation for behavior -- and has much to do with how well people can conform behavior to goals. Food, especially sweet tasty food, can trigger a substantial dopamine release in the pleasure pathway. For most of us, that's not enough to make food addictive. But for those who either produce less dopamine generally, or are less sensitive to it, or who run out of it -- true addictive behavior towards food can be the result. And of course, there is a continuum from full addiction/compulsive eating to healthy function -- for every one person who is clinically mentally ill in this regard, there are thousands who are sub-clinically fucked up.

All of the above is well established science. Based on how our brains are wired, we vary on how well we can adhere our behavior to long term goals. (Again, see Sapolsky's work -- he does a great job putting all of this science in a very enjoyable to read format). Ignoring the well known biology and its role in the varying ability among people to stick change long standing behavior -- that gets to the insanely simplistic and misleading "it's a simple choice" thinking on these issues.

Me:

Be that as it may, the person isn't choosing fatness. The stress overrides certain faculties, but only to the extent that shorter term pleasures are more important than longer term pleasures. That's my point.

I do agree that environmental factors change the physiological playing field in terms of brain function, and that's partly the point I was trying to express, obviously not clearly.

Just some more interesting stuff on the subject.

 

[i_love_muscle]

What's the BR forum?

 

[Steve]

Lyle's forum.

 

[WineDeer]

I_Love_Muscle -- just reading that post made me consider something else that played into your choices.

You were diagnosed with Type I diabetes. I wonder if that external motivating factor [disease] has something to do with your ability to search for the knowledge and then put it into action.

While I may have a disease like PCOS, the effects of it are longer term than that.

PCOS won't kill me now -- and the weight gain has been slow and gradual. It's hard to just grab something and run with it when it sneaks up on you, when it goes counter what you've learned all your life, when the effects are long-term rather than immediate, when there are other things that press you to deal with it now, rather than later.

 

[WineDeer]

There's a similar thread going on over on the BR forum. Most of it is a lot of bickering; one group suggesting people who are fat choose to be fat and the other group saying there's more to it than that.

Just some more interesting stuff on the subject.

Those were interesting responses and there is some science behind there that explains the behavior.

I don't think any one of us chooses to be fat.

But, because we do make choices every day, some of those choices lead us down the path to fatness -- when I get home from work and I'm tired, I'm stressed, and the last thing I want to do is get dressed, get back in the car and go to the gym, it's much easier to call up a restaurant and have them deliver my dinner while I relax as I watch TV or talk on the phone.

It's been a conscious effort to not fall into that routine -- I remember the days when I was thin, and I was in school -- exercise WAS part of my day. Sports was something I did in the afternoon, rather than after 8 or 10 hours at school (never happened, school never lasted that long!).

I know this is how our society works and it's not going to change, but damn, kids in school (who still have PE or do sports) have the right idea. I know there's plenty of conference calls that I have during the day that I can easily do if I'm on a bike or walking. I'll go even further -- I could easily have plenty of 6 or even 5 hour days and be equally productive at work than staying there 8 or 9 hours.

I would use the other hours to exercise or do a sport.

 

[i_love_muscle]

I_Love_Muscle -- just reading that post made me consider something else that played into your choices.

You were diagnosed with Type I diabetes. I wonder if that external motivating factor [disease] has something to do with your ability to search for the knowledge and then put it into action.

While I may have a disease like PCOS, the effects of it are longer term than that.

PCOS won't kill me now -- and the weight gain has been slow and gradual. It's hard to just grab something and run with it when it sneaks up on you, when it goes counter what you've learned all your life, when the effects are long-term rather than immediate, when there are other things that press you to deal with it now, rather than later.

Diabetes may have been a powerful catalyst for me to do what was necessary in order to have a full life, but I have always collected information first and then acted. That's how I ended up at a gymnastics school in Germany. My parents didn't help me with that at all. I did it all on my own. I found out where the best gymnastics schools were, I wrote to them, waited to get a response back, and then made all the arrangements myself. At 13, that was not an easy task.

I did the same thing when I switched from gymnastics into track and field.

I wasn't coddled very much as a child. If I wanted something, my parents just said "if you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it". That pretty much forces you to find a way to do it. I was never spoon fed ...

Similar to your PCOS, the effects of diabetes are VERY long term (I'm not comparing the two, because you can't compare PCOS to diabetes, although they are related because many people with PCOS develop diabetes). The complications of diabetes kills people everyday. I've knocked on death's door a few times after lapsing into a diabetic coma.

Long term effects/complications include impaired nerve function, atherosclerosis, kidney and liver function impairment, cardiovascular issues, and early death. Basically, your body wears out from the stress of never having optimal blood glucose values. Type 1 Diabetes has probably taken a good 5 years off my life and my diabetes is very well controlled. It's a very ugly disease (who wants to have a disease? Nobody does. They suck.).

Just because diabetics don't look so bad on the outside doesn't mean the disease hasn't taken its toll on the inside

How are you coping with your PCOS? If you don't feel comfortable telling the world, I'd really appreciate it if you could PM me. I have a polycystic ovary, but I don't have PCOS. I did go through all the tests, though.

 

[WineDeer]

I wasn't coddled very much as a child. If I wanted something, my parents just said "if you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it". That pretty much forces you to find a way to do it. I was never spoon fed ...

I wasn't either. But that somehow doesn't translate to weight loss. I don't know how to explain it -- doing well in school or at work is different than this.

At least, for me -- I don't know why this is different. I've been an athlete, it's not that I don't like to exercise.

I hate to say it -- I think it's what I said in another post. I spend 8 or 9 hours at work, I come home at 6 pm, more or less, and then I have to cook something for dinner. I then have to run errands, go food shopping, do laundry, or any other number of things, see friends, see family, work on some of the side (volunteer) work that I do, and it becomes overwhelming.

I can fit exercise in, but it becomes hard to cook. Or, I cook, but I don't exercise. I spend days focused on this, so I don't see friends OR family. I go to a business dinner and I am like a deer in headlights.

I know it's a question of organizing myself, figuring out what works for me, but while that process is happening, I make mistakes, lose a little weight, gain it back, lose it again, gain it back. I'm a creature of habit and if I can't make it into a habit, it's hard.

It's not that I don't want it badly enough -- it's that I want too many things. I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good girlfriend. I want to be a good daughter and sister and aunt. I want to pursue my career, to be good at it. I also want to lose the weight. It's a balance -- and a balance that I'm still trying to figure out.


And a PM is coming for the PCOS stuff.