A Glorified Comments Post
I think you're right, person in the comments, when you say that some people just don't get it. In this case, Mr. Anonymous, who said:
I fixed it by eating less and exercising more, with more exercise being the real key. I take care of my diet needs by eating a pretty strict diet six days a week and eating whatever I want on the seventh, plus regular weighings. That's not "obsessing", that's just keeping healthy... I think if you *have* to obsess over it there's something really wrong. Either you decide to control your weight, or not. If you want to control your weight, it's almost always feasible to come up with a low-maintenance diet and exercise plan.
Compare and contrast that comment with today's entry in the Skinny Daily Post:
Making all of the changes that we must make to lose weight permanently can feel impossible. Overwhelming. Giving up addictive food, taking on exercise, cutting back on caffeine, buying and preparing whole foods, measuring, weighing, preparing, recording. It’s a lot to ask. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of change. Is it too much?
Both of these individuals have successfully lost a significant amount of weight. But Mr. Anonymous presents it as "low-maintenance" whereas Julie understands that it's "a lot to ask." I don't think Mr. Anonymous was intending to attack anyone, he just hasn't had the same experience as some of the rest of us have had. He doesn't get it.
I would respond further to Mr. Anonymous, on a personal level, by saying that when I am trying to lose weight, I am obsessing about it. Because otherwise it simply doesn't happen. My habits, my metabolism, my personality-- they require it. There's no other way.
He says that if you have to obsess over it, "there's something really wrong." And that's the crux of the matter, I think. For some people, there is something--mental, or physical or both--that keeps us at the weights that we are. Whether these weights are "wrong" for us are for us to decide as individuals, not for Mr. Anonymous to decide on our behalf.
Because for me it is not a matter of just "deciding to control my weight or not." That's an oversimplification and--though it was probably not intended as such--an insulting one.
I fixed it by eating less and exercising more, with more exercise being the real key. I take care of my diet needs by eating a pretty strict diet six days a week and eating whatever I want on the seventh, plus regular weighings. That's not "obsessing", that's just keeping healthy... I think if you *have* to obsess over it there's something really wrong. Either you decide to control your weight, or not. If you want to control your weight, it's almost always feasible to come up with a low-maintenance diet and exercise plan.
Compare and contrast that comment with today's entry in the Skinny Daily Post:
Making all of the changes that we must make to lose weight permanently can feel impossible. Overwhelming. Giving up addictive food, taking on exercise, cutting back on caffeine, buying and preparing whole foods, measuring, weighing, preparing, recording. It’s a lot to ask. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of change. Is it too much?
Both of these individuals have successfully lost a significant amount of weight. But Mr. Anonymous presents it as "low-maintenance" whereas Julie understands that it's "a lot to ask." I don't think Mr. Anonymous was intending to attack anyone, he just hasn't had the same experience as some of the rest of us have had. He doesn't get it.
I would respond further to Mr. Anonymous, on a personal level, by saying that when I am trying to lose weight, I am obsessing about it. Because otherwise it simply doesn't happen. My habits, my metabolism, my personality-- they require it. There's no other way.
He says that if you have to obsess over it, "there's something really wrong." And that's the crux of the matter, I think. For some people, there is something--mental, or physical or both--that keeps us at the weights that we are. Whether these weights are "wrong" for us are for us to decide as individuals, not for Mr. Anonymous to decide on our behalf.
Because for me it is not a matter of just "deciding to control my weight or not." That's an oversimplification and--though it was probably not intended as such--an insulting one.
posted by mo pie at 12:50 PM
11 Comments:
Hey MoPie,
Boy I have a longtime beef with this. The upcoming (Friday) piece is a tongue-in-cheek one wherein I compare my body work with Lance Armstrong's. Silly?
Why?
He carefully records every morsel that goes into his face, and every calorie he spends (well, he has people who help him with this, but you get the idea).
When Lance does it, it's called Focus. Dedication. Discipline. When we do it it's obsession. Please.
Why is a bike race more glorius than climbing a flight of stairs?
Answer is: It isn't.
For me, this takes relentless focus. I am not obsessed. It is not my religion. But when I lose focus I gain weight. Every time.
And thanks for the link, sweetpea.
Losing weight is HARD work - for me it's like having a second full-time job. Planning my meals for the week, grocery shopping, preparing fresh fruits and veggies, cooking, packing up my lunches the night before, going to the gym . . . Sheesh! I get tired just looking at that, and yet that's what I have to do every day. Am I being obsessive? Gee, I didn't think so; I thought I was being organized.
I have a conflict with this issue, and at the risk of ruffling any feathers I'm hesitant to voice it. However...
I'm having a really hard time understanding how eating well, exercising, and reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is such an overwhelming burden. Sure, I understand the struggle to lose weight and I know that some women are predisposed to being heavier and that for them losing weight can be much more difficult. But I think the real issue is related to psychology, not logistics. And don't get me wrong, as a woman who struggles with her weight and the accompanying issues of self-esteem on a daily basis (I think almost all women do) I know how hard it can be to break the cycle and change established patterns.
But it can be done without having to compromise every other aspect of your life. Saying that you can't stick to a diet because you are too busy just doesn't ring true to me - it sounds like an excuse.
At the end of the day, we all need to take responsibility for our health. If being overweight is a health issue then doing something about it should be a priority. If it's simply a matter of aesthetics then I think the real challenge is to confront our individual demons and find a way to cope - whether that means losing the weight or accepting it.
Sarah C.
Yet another Sarah here...Sarah W. this time.
I think it's important to acknowledge the logistical difficulties of diet and exercise and I think it's important to point out that many of these difficulties are economic (I was the one who posted about weight and economics before--noticing a trend in my thinking? :-)). Not everyone can afford a gym membership. Not everyone lives in a neighborhood where it's safe to go jogging or walking. Not everyone works only one job and thus has the leisure to exercise or cook a healthy meal. Not everyone can shop at the Whole Foods. The Big Mac costs way less than the salad or the grilled chicken. In my market, a huge bag of cheetos costs less than a single bell pepper. Low-income children who depend on public schools to provide for many of their nutritional needs face government policies that treat ketchup as a vegetable and welcome junk food vending contracts to offset costs. These are real problems, not just "excuses."
The food industry in this country gives its overwhelming energy to inundating consumers with mass produced and distributed high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar, preservative and artificial color-laden foods--the most addictive foods possible. Locally grown produce is expensive and requires a special trip to the farmer's market, while test tube Snacky-Cakes and Cheesy Poofs are available in every vending machine. What is wrong with this picture?
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just pointing out that for a lot of people, losing weight is rendered almost impossible by certain economic realities. The choice to eat healthy and exercise is not as simplistic as it seems. It's not a matter of just "decid[ing] to control your weight or not." It might take a measure of "obsessiveness" to get past all those obstacles.
Plus, for all the reasons Mo and other commenters have mentioned--habits, personality, metabolism--even if one does have the income and the leisure time to eat right and exercise, it is still going to be harder for some people to lose weight than it will for others. Ultimately, I think appreciating each other's efforts is more productive than assuming the efforts are the result of unhealthy "obsessing."
Hmmm ....
Well. (sigh) I kinda agree with Male Anonymous, but ...
Changing well-entrenched habits is really, really, REALLY hard, as in HARD. Dunno about most of the readers here, but I have reached the point of needing to lose 90lbs by letting some very bad lifestyle habits take over my life. Without even realizing it. So now i am, at the tender age of 47, trying to change those habits. All of them. This is a slow process; we all know that. And it's best accomplished by taking it one day at a time. And doing things one day at a time requires a certain amount of pre-planning and thought, almost as much as it does action. To some people this early stage looks like obsession, maybe even obsessive-complusive disorder.
It seemed to me that what Male Anonymous tried to say was that he'd figured out what he needed to do to lose a substantial amount of weight and went out and did it. But he didn't make losing the weight the focus of every nanosecond of his day. (Huh. So who was preparing his meals? Hmm...)
And right there is the source of much mis-understanding between men and women. Men's lives are mostly about themselves. Women's lives are mostly about other people. It is the way we are all raised from the nanosecond we are out of the womb. Remember the Women's Movement and all the fuss about how they were encouraging women to think of themselves every once in a while? And how people got all upset about how the feminists were thus destroying the family?
Women have a more difficult time losing weight because to do so means changing all sorts of behaviors and ways of thinking about themselves and their place in the world. This process can really upend the world each woman lives in and, oh! how dare we!!!
An example? In my apartment you will not find anything that contains either transfats or high-fructose corn syrup. No sodas. No icecream. No cookies or cakes or pies unless I bake them. (A rare occurance that.) No white bread or other grocery-store non-aging pastries. No potato chips or pretzels. No crackers. Very little in the way of processed foods. Not much that's ready to eat without cooking. This cuts waaaaay down on my snacking, but really dismays visitors. If they want something to drink, it's either water or skim milk.
Lots of people think I'm really inhospitable. After all, aren't women, REAL women, supposed to be ready at all times to feed whoever happens by?
No one expects a man, a REAL man, to be ready to feed crowds at a moments notice. And if he is, then there must be something "wrong" with him.
I'd just like to point out that succeeding at this whole healthy lifestyle bit means CHANGING YOUR IDENTITY. Think about that for a minute and how overwhelming it can seem (hence the one-day-at-a-time rhetoric)and what a challenge it is to maintain long-term. Dieting, as we all know, is not the hard part. We have all gone hungry for weeks or months to see a skinnier reflection in the mirror. But truly adopting a healthy, *thin* lifestyle is a major production involving alterations at the very core of who we are. For years and years we have been that person who ignored diet in favor of other more pressing issues (whatever they are) - and now we are expected to no longer be that person. To instead be the one who chooses the apple and spends time trying to remember if there are salad ingredients enough for dinner and lunch tomorrow and must say no to the buffet. It's like we're trying to be someone we are not (no matter how much we want it) and that requires a lot of energy and focus and attention. It's a fight against our "old" identites who are constantly struggling to assert themselves. And maybe you have to somehow along the way grieve for the loss of that "other" person, for we all know also that it's hard not to feel like you are missing something, or missing out on something by leading the "skinny" life. Anyways, I just want to say kudos to everyone who tries with concentrated effort to better themselves and their quality of life. Courage!
-Michelle
Ah, there it is. It is, absolutely, a matter of changing your SELF. Fundamentally and often in a way that has you swimming against the current of your culture and environment.
It takes years to build the strength for swimming this way. Changing so very many behaviors. Both allowing and demanding focus on your own health. Yes, being able to find or afford healthy foods, having the time and wherewithal and teachers to learn about portion control. Learning to defend your mind and body against not only advertising but the behavoirs of the people around you. Actively focusing on what goes into your body, and making time for exercise.
Weight loss can boil down to calories in-calories out, but that simple equation says nothing about the environment we live in, the culture, social expectations, the workings of our minds, our sedentary forms of entertainment, the ways we USE food that go way beyond sustenance, the pace of our work and social lives, whether we feel safe walking/exercising near our homes, etc., etc.
Yes it's hard. If I had formed as a different person with thin habits and a thin-promoting environment, it wouldn't be. But I formed as a person with habits made for fat storage. Three years after my 100-lb. loss and living at the very top of the healthy BPI range for my height? Transforming myself continues to be a struggle.
I agree with the commentor above who pointed out the logistical difficulties of dedicating oneself to losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight. It's not only economic, but also due to the gogogo/pushpushpush/rat-race culture we live in.
Yes, at a certain level, "I'm too busy for a diet and exercise regime" is an excuse and a falsity. But at another level . . . not so much. I need to lose forty pounds, and in order to do that I really need to exercise long and regularly, and cut out the takeout and prepared food. And I keep looking at my week and thinking, "when? where? how?" I work 10+ hours a day, plus a forty five minute commute each way on a good traffic day. I don't take a lunch break because that would mean I'd have to stay at work even longer. My schedule includes getting up at 5:30 to feed and play with my baby son before leaving him all day, and getting home usually a bit before 7, at which point I just want the easiest possible thing for dinner, and to hurry up and squeeze in more time with my boy before his bedtime an hour and a half later, and then usually more work has to be done after he is in bed. Add spending occasional time with my husband, and keeping the house so it looks presentable, and the time leftover is truly minimal. I mean, I could get up at 4:30 to exercise every day, but . . . 4:30? Really? How am I going to sustain myself on that little sleep, even if my baby son eventually learns to sleep more than three hours at a time (please God)?
I don't mean this to be "poor me"--the point is that this is reflective of so many people's lives. I work all those hours for a pretty good salary so in my case I can afford the gym membership and the organic foods, but I'm so drained by my life that I can barely find the time and energy to do anything, and taking an hour out of each day to run or swim or go to the gym sounds wonderful but also vaguely like a pipe dream. And yet, like many others, I have to find some way to do it . . .
This is our culture--we have to do it all and we are supposed to look the part too. But for some people there is a lot that needs to be poured into looking the part, and sometimes it truly does seem like an overwhelming burden--one that requires other priorities to be pushed aside, and that requires, yes, some amount of "obsessing."
All these posts just make me wonder whether we're really phrasing the debate in the right way. As someone who is really really BAD at the whole focus thing when it comes to losing weight, I will admit I'm biased. But isn't the real question WHY it's so freakin' important, for those of us (including myself!) who are in the healthy-but-not-Paris-Hilton-or-even-Kate-Winslet range, to spend such a huge amount of time and energy obsessing over our weight?
Most studies show that it's living a healthy lifestyle, not weight (or weight loss), that has real health issues. So I take issue with people (like Mr. Anonymous) who tell me that I should spend a huge part of my life controlling my diet and exercise (even if Mr. Anonymous thinks that should be really easy).
I think for many of us (myself included!) we worry about our weight for aesthetic reasons. That of course makes it sound like I'm trivializing the issue -- trust me, spending most of my life being larger-than-average means I share the stigma that goes along with not fitting the norm. But if all of this weight loss/health/whatever discussion is really about aesthetics (well, and access to really cute clothes), then aren't we just buying in to all those people and social forces that have made us feel bad for our whole lives by focusing our lives (hello, our LIVES!) on weight loss?
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