Kathleen,
I find your posts to be aggressive and non supportive. I'm acutely aware that text only mediums lack a lot of the nuance that face to face communication has, so it's certainly possible that is not your intent, but I would ask you to not post in my thread if you are going to try to tear me down or criticize me unconstructively. Your previous post hurt and I felt it demonstrated a lack of compassion and understanding of my case and the attitudes that I am bringing to my attempt to transform myself. It was not a small factor in me not posting here for so long.
To get this off my chest I'm going to respond aggressively to both of your posts now.
Does it really matter if you weigh 437 pounds or 414 pounds or 455 pounds?
Yes, it does. It is a metric of whether I am moving in the direction I want to be moving.
The reality is that you are going to be morbidly obese for a long time.
Believe me, I'm quite aware of how long this is going to take, but I'd much rather it take two years than ten years. And I hate the term "morbidly obese" Let's look at
morbid.
Synonyms:
2. unwholesome, diseased, unhealthy, sick, sickly; tainted, corrupted, vitiated.
Antonyms:
1. cheerful. 2. healthy.
Funny, I'm generally quite cheerful, and I'm certainly not diseased. And of course tainted and corrupted gets to that whole value judgment that I find is wrapped up in the word. I'm not a bad person, I'm just fat.
If you think I'm a tainted or corrupt person for being fat, please never post in this thread, and I'd prefer you take that attitude far away from anyone struggling with issues such as mine.
Try focusing on No S as a cure for disordered eating. This is about eating in the present, not about weight in the present. If you focus on eating in the present, then you can be successful TODAY. If you focus on weight, you'll be disappointed by ups and downs on the scale. Also, you aren't going to be a normal weight TODAY no matter what you do.
I
WAS focusing on No S as a cure for disordered eating. And it helped. But not enough. I do not accept that I'll be disappointed by the ups and downs on the scale, because from here on, I'm going to focusing on the trend line which will not jerk up and down erratically.
I also hate the conflation with normalcy and weight. I
AM at a normal weight right now. It's quite normal for me, and I don't accept you suggesting that I'm abnormal.
If you cure the disordered eating by developing habits that are normal eating habits. the weight will come off -- yes, slowly; yes, inconsistently; and yes, with certainty.
I know it's hard. I've followed my version of this diet perfectly for 7 months, and today my husband saw me in a swimsuit for the first time since last summer. All he could say was, "Wow." The "Wow" was not complimentary. It was more a tease. He knows it's hard for me. I wish I could be thin this summer, but the reality is that it will take perhaps three years for me to get off 60 pounds.
The weight will be gone for good, though. That's the real draw of this diet. If you focus on the weight on the scale, you are focusing on a symptom of disordered eating. If you focus on the disordered eating, you are focusing on the cause of your obesity.
The weight has not certainly came off, slowly or not. And I don't think inconsistency is a hallmark of a working diet. The fundamental fact is that to lose weight we must eat less calories than we burn to lose weight.
No S has certainly helped me reduce the amount of calories I put in, but I don't think it has gotten me below the magic number, or if it has, not by much. And considering my weight, that magic number should still be very high.
Let's looks at 60 pounds in three years. That would mean 210,000 calories less over those three years eaten than burned. That's 191.78 per day, not taking S days into account. A 200 calorie per day deficit isn't that great. Double it to a 400 calorie a day deficit, and that 60 pounds will be gone instead in a year and a half.
As for disordered eating, my eating must still be disordered no matter what the reasons are. No S has been one piece of the puzzle. I'm grateful for it. For most people, like those with under 30 pounds to lose, cutting out the three S's should create a calorie deficit sufficient for their needs.
But I need to learn more than that. My eyes don't know what excess looks like yet, to use No S terms. The suggestions that plate sizes will get smaller over time on their own didn't happen for me.
I do not agree that focusing on the scale is focusing on a symptom of disordered eating. I see it at this point as information gathering which is needed for me to create an artificial feedback system for myself to replace the internal one that doesn't work. If you want to continue back to root causes, one can then push back to what is the cause for disordered eating, and I found that answer in The Hacker's Diet. It's a broken feedback system, that works well in skinny people, slightly off in overweight people, and completely busted in people like me. You can read the chapter here:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/chapter1_2_3.html
The scale and the body fat percentage analyzer is going to help me create an artificial feedback system to replace the broken one.
You know what made me realize that lack of willpower is not the reason why people fail at dieting? A former coworker who was on her third attempt at Weight Watchers after losing 40 pounds the prior two times.
I believe people fail because we never address the root cause, a broken feedback system.
I know it is hard to see past the numbers on the scale today, but this diet works by curing disordered eating first. Then you lose weight, and the weight loss is permanent.
Again, obviously it didn't cure it for me. Partially effective treatment, yes. Cure, no. Weight loss is not guaranteed, as you can certainly eat more than enough calories in three plates a day.
My 15 year old daughter has gained 20 pounds in the last year and has been on No S since October. My husband was blaming me for that. Well, yes, I am to blame, but I see past the scale. When she was 9, I remember my husband remarking on her weight. I told him that I wasn't so much concerned about the weight as I was by the eating habits.
20 pounds in a year is again 191.78 extra calories per day. That's really not a lot, and it's really easy to put that extra amount on a plate. And that is STILL DISORDERED EATING. That is still evidence that the feedback system isn't turning on and telling the person to stop eating at the right time. You should be concerned about the weight, because if she's gaining weight, the habit she has is not a good one.
I think weight loss will follow. Even if it doesn't, I think she's better off at a higher weight without a food obsession.
This isn't either/or. You don't have to have a "food obsession" to lose weight.
Think about it. You are being enticed by the promise of quicker weight loss that is not sustainable with the diet you have chosen, as your own experience proves. Stick with vanilla No S.
What isn't sustainable about it, huh? You seem to no nothing about what my own experience proves or you wouldn't be feeding me this tripe. Vanilla No S is only one piece of the picture that is going to create in me the transformation I desire, sticking only to the incomplete picture is failure. If you want to fail, I don't mind, but I'm not going to!
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Now, Kathleen, I imagine you didn't like reading me telling you how wrong you are about the decisions you are making. I don't like it either. There is nothing to be gained by people arguing over their diets. So please keep it out of my thread, just as I had the courtesy not to find yours and past this there. I'd prefer this thread be for encouragement, feedback, advice, and sure, critique, as long as it is compassionate and constructive.
Please keep that in mind if you choose to continue posting in this thread.