Don't go on a diet!

[leemack]

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.3.html

[Hellistile]

She makes some valid points however she does not go into how different foods affect hormones, moods, etc. Just eating a burger and fries when you feel like it would send me on a carb binge that would take me weeks to get over. Education is the key. Educating people with the correct information on how foods affect your body would go far rather than going with what your body tells you. I can't trust my body right now. Maybe someday, but not now.

[JLx]

UCLA sociologist Abigail Saguy, author of What’s Wrong With Fat?, says people are often invested in their own thin privilege. “They want to think they’ve earned it by working hard and counting calories, and they cling to it,” she says.
...

The idea that obesity is a choice, that people who are obese lack self-discipline or are gluttonous or lazy, is deeply ingrained in our public psyche. And there are other costs to this kind of judgmentalism. Research done by Lenny Vartanian, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales, suggests that people who believe they’re worthless because they’re not thin, who have tried and failed to maintain weight loss, are less likely to exercise than fat people who haven’t strongly internalized weight stigma.
It’s hard to think of any other disease—if you want to call it that—where treatment rarely works and most people are blamed for not “recovering.”

Interesting quotes, I thought.

I was defending myself to my always-been-thin sister once after yet another weight gain, and pointed out that around 95% of people gain weight back, and she said, then why bother? Why indeed? I told her "hope springs eternal", and that's about it for me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just wasting my life though obsessing about weight most of it. But then something happens like recently when I lost 15 lbs from one doc visit to the next and my blood pressure normalized and I think, how can I not keep trying?

[leemack]

I think it's the focusing on weight loss that becomes the problem. People should be encouraged and supported to eat for health for life, rather than short term 'diets'.

Natural unprocessed foods wherever possible, lower carb if heavier. BMI should be scrapped.

We can't really control our weight, we can only control our behaviour - choose the right foods, and if we lose we lose, but if not at least we'll be healthier.

[Bonnie OFS]

I think it's the focusing on weight loss that becomes the problem. People should be encouraged and supported to eat for health for life, rather than short term 'diets'.

That's what I finally started doing. I was quite discouraged when I stopped losing weight, then gained some back over the winter. But my BG is doing quite well, I'm no longer on medication, & both my physical & mental health have improved. I'm hanging on to that & trying not to think about my weight.

[bkloots]

Coincidentally I clicked on this thread after posting in my Journal today a brief history of my weight loss journey. It's a story of struggle, ups and downs, restarts, and plenty of self-discipline. Click over there if you care to.

Like the woman from Kansas City quoted in the article, I've found that weight management is a JOB. At the very least, it's a hobby you have to pursue with relentless enthusiasm. You are never "cured" of the tendency to accumulate fat.

...recent research suggests that losing weight doesn’t actually improve health biomarkers such as blood pressure, fasting glucose, or triglyceride levels for most people. Anyone up to speed on current research would reply that it isn't weight loss per se but the QUALITY of the diet that improves these markers. You can lose weight on a low-fat/low-calorie diet without improving anything except your pants size--and it won't last long. However, a low-carbohydrate/moderate protein lifestyle can indeed improve health, longevity, and disease process leading to T2, cardio disease, and other chronic conditions.

[leemack]

Anyone up to speed on current research would reply that it isn't weight loss per se but the QUALITY of the diet that improves these markers. You can lose weight on a low-fat/low-calorie diet without improving anything except your pants size--and it won't last long. However, a low-carbohydrate/moderate protein lifestyle can indeed improve health, longevity, and disease process leading to T2, cardio disease, and other chronic conditions.

This is so true :agree: I haven't lost much yet, and am around my lowest, which I had reached previously on low carb a few years ago (before gaining it all back).

The differences:

A few years ago I was doing low carb intermittently, between episodes of binge eating sugar. What kept me losing was a GI issue causing on average 20 (number 2) trips to the loo each day, which meant, in effect, a low calorie diet due to low absorption. My blood test results weren't good, high crp, very high ggt (indicating fatty liver), cholesterol and trigs high, borderline diabetic

Now: I've been continuously cheat free for 155 days. My GI issues (touch wood) are really improved, and I'm a similar weight as the previous low, so if it were weight that were the cause of the poor blood results and fatty liver, they'd be about the same, right? Nope. No longer borderline diabetic (fbg 90), ggt down more than 200 points to 38 (which is huge, upper normal limit is 35), and cholesterol 184, ldl 92, hdl 64, trigs 64.

Any doctor who says lower weight improves test results is sadly deluded. I am still at a very high weight, I am not an anomaly as I previously had poor test results. What I have had is a consistent, no cheat approach to my woe. Even if I lose no more weight, I am much healthier.

I used to think that if I binge ate two days a week, at least I was healthy 5 days a week, but it doesn't work.

Consistency and lifelong commitment to real foods is the key to better health :)

[khrussva]

... cholesterol 184, ldl 92, hdl 64, trigs 64.

Any doctor who says lower weight improves test results is sadly deluded. I am still at a very high weight, I am not an anomaly as I previously had poor test results. What I have had is a consistent, no cheat approach to my woe. Even if I lose no more weight, I am much healthier.
...

Wow - those cholesterol numbers are outstanding! WTG X 2! In that 'Low Carb Explained' video that I mentioned in my journal, Mary Vernon MD - who has offers up LC as a treatment option to her patients for years - indicated that the ideal HDL to Triglycerides ratio is 1 to 1 and that is exactly what yours is. You can't get much better than that! You couldn't possibly have a weight problem, could you? Perhaps you are mistaken. Fat is the cause of all our problems -- or so they say.

On the same note, my HDL to Triglycerides ratio went from 3.9 to 2.4 in just the first 4 months of this WOE. I was a skinny 375 pounds at the time. My most recent labs had my ratio clear down to 1.2 and I am thin as a twig at 285 pounds.

Your example is a great one. You've been here before the right way and the wrong way. Eating the right way made all the difference. I totally agree -- diet is everything as far as health is concerned. Weight loss does fix some things and is certainly desirable. But being healthy does not require BMI thinness.

My grandmother was obese and had been for as long as I can remember. She was a whole foods, meat, eggs, and potatoes kind of person and rarely ate sugar. Yes - grandma's cookie jar was almost always empty! Anyway - she lived on her own up until age 98. She lived her last 4 years in an assisted living household - but she was still mobile and took care of herself right up until the day she died. At her 100th birthday party, people marveled at how she read all the birthday cards. She had no eye glasses, no reading glasses. She did not need them. And she was quite the roly-poly little lady by anyone's standards. I'd rather hoped I had her genes. Maybe I do? But you see, grandma didn't eat and drink crap. I did.

[bkloots]

But being healthy does not require BMI thinness. This is a very good point that we don't often talk about here, since so many of us are focused on weight loss as a desirable goal. It is, of course, a desirable goal. But weight loss per se isn't the main health improvement. People can be healthy--or unhealthy--regardless of weight.

she lived on her own up until age 98. That's what I'm aiming for, and hoping for the lucky genes to get me there. Oh, and a healthy LC diet.

[wheeler]

Thanks for this thread, it makes me feel better about gaining back weight. I am continuing to mostly eat LC, but my focus is on whole foods and health. I still feel so much better than I did before I changed my diet, and I won't ever stop trying to shed pounds. But I recognize how very much my body wants to regain those lost pounds & the shift in my body since menopause. I won't stop trying, and I won't feel bad about regained pounds.