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Being significantly overweight is really tough. Body issues and shame make it so much harder. I wish people would understand that better. There’s a pretty nasty

by nxc18 8y ago

Being significantly overweight is really tough. Body issues and shame make it so much harder. I wish people would understand that better. There’s a pretty nasty cycle of looking in the mirror, feeling like shit, eating to not feel like shit (the key problem step - note that it never actually works), looking and feeling like shit because you eat too much. I’ve lost 70 pounds in the last ~7 months. 50 pounds to go. I’m successful for the first time because I’ve gotten over my image issues, I’ve accepted that losing weight necessarily involves being hungry at least some of the time, and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience. They’re damn right that it gets harder to lose weight every time you do. My metabolism is miraculously “efficient”. The insight is that you have to accept that and eat to the amount that hits your goals, not try to find some miracle diet. Also, IME, exercise makes me hungry for more calories than I burn. Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods (this is speaking to fat people like me - if you’ve been skinny your whole life your body probably works differently).

neaden 8y ago
I think exercise for weight loss/management isn't going to be a good idea for the vast majority of people. As you said, you get hungrier when you burn those calories and it's very easy to spend five minutes and eat all the calories you burned working out for an hour.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  When I exercise, it puts me on a health-minded path every day that snowballs into other good decisions. It's like how they say making your bed in the morning helps put you on task the rest of the day. I find your line of thought unconvincing. The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all. The amount of people I know who don't do anything is astonishing. The problem people have with exercise is that they don't build the habit at all. That's where they fail, long before your hypothesis could even be tested. "Better not exercise so I don't overeat!" sounds like every other self-sabotaging bargaining we do to avoid effort, like not jogging because you can't yet afford nice running shoes. This seems like the last excuse that we need to be peddling to people trying to turn their life around.
  - nxc18 8y ago
    I think you're on the right track, but you have to account for the biases in the fat people who need this advice. No amount of exercise can counteract overeating at the scale seriously fat people (like past versions of myself) do. Often weight is _the_ barrier to exercise. When I was at 300lb it was physically painful to walk more than a few minutes. The small muscles near my ankles just couldn't take it. After I lost ~25lbs I suddenly could walk without serious trouble. I'm still working on actual exercise beyond walking 30 minutes to and from work each day. You can use it as an excuse but really I suspect for most people sticking with a diet is actually much easier than sticking to an exercise plan. Especially if you didn't grow up exercising and don't have any happy memories of exercise. When did you start exercising regularly? Any tips for the rest of us on sticking with it long enough to form a habit?
    - OkGoDoIt 8y ago
      I lost 50lbs a few years ago. Walking was a great gateway drug for exercise since I really hated the idea of exercise and sweating, plus I felt so awkward and out of place going to a gym. It always felt like everyone at the gym was staring at me and I felt stupid not knowing how to do things properly. Walking was a solo activity and pretty hard to do wrong, so it eliminated the self confidence barrier at least. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks made the walking more enjoyable, sometimes I’d walk for hours and not realize how sweaty and tired I was until I stopped due to a phone call or something. Beyond walking, a friend got me into rock climbing. It seemed super daunting since everyone at climbing gyms is so buff and I had no muscle and lots of fat and couldn’t do a pull up to save my life. But it turns out with proper instruction the entry level climbs are pretty easy, no harder than climbing a ladder. But then when you get to the top there’s adrenaline from the height looking down, plus a real sense of accomplishment. It helped me build momentum. Eventually things got easier as I did it more often. And once I started looking in the mirror and seeing actual muscle on my arm it was a huge confidence boost and I doubled down on my efforts. Getting over that initial hump where you don’t see any benefit yet is the hardest part. I never fully lost my belly fat even today, but the visible muscle growth was something I could latch onto to keep motivated. TL;DR: start small, avoid situations that hurt self-confidence, find things that are enjoyable or exciting, look for signs of progress in order to stay motivated Edit: to be clear my diet changes made a huge difference as well, I’m not attributing my weight loss entirely to the exercise. But I was responding to the question of how to start exercising. I do think it made a difference. I found regular exercise improved my mood which probably helped me limit overeating from depression/stress.
growlist 8y ago
I find protein bars are pretty good at fighting my hunger pangs.
- nxc18 8y ago
  High protein, and (while still calorie restricting) high fat does wonders for appetite. Also: water! As an obese person I kind of had to learn what thirst is because I almost always interpreted it as hunger. Also vital while your stomach is shrinking if you're used to overeating (as I was).
joeskyyy 8y ago
> Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods Thank you! Exercise should be completely supplemental to overall health, not to lose weight. The amount of times I've seen people eat an awful meal while trying to lose weight because they "worked out extra hard" is astonishing. Losing weight is almost completely related to what you put in your body. While you can certainly lose weight from exercise, it's by far not the most profound way to do so. Congrats on your weight loss by the way, former fat kid myself, I know it's not an easy process and keeping it off is just as hard!
- JKCalhoun 8y ago
  Yep, it's the food. I took up running four years ago, but saw no real effect on my weight. (Def helped me from getting winded and made hiking fun, etc. — so exercise is cool, no doubt). I had a medical emergency early last year that caused me to cut my food intake (I feared too large of a meal would cause another medical emergency). So I looked at the plate of food in front of me, measured out what I thought was a "reasonable amount", and ate only that. No seconds. Within two or three months I dropped 20 pounds. Had surgery at that point. After surgery I no longer worried about medical emergencies so I resumed my original eating habits. And steadily put the 20 pounds back on.
jaggederest 8y ago
> Also, IME, exercise makes me hungry for more calories than I burn. Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods (this is speaking to fat people like me - if you’ve been skinny your whole life your body probably works differently). Conveniently summarized as "You can't outrun your fork". No amount of running replaces a calorie deficit. Also, props for 70 pounds of weight loss. That's a huge number.
graeme 8y ago
Actually you're more of less agreeing with the conventional wisdom of those who do weight lifting. The vast majority of fat loss is simply diet. Walking, is helpful. And strength training is good to prevent muscle loss. Anyway, the above is actually the conventional wisdom of those who go to the gym and try to get lean. This is not the message you hear in pop nutrition however. Congrats on your progress! If you do ever do strength training (or for anyone reading this), one very simple metric to add is weight + waist measure. After all, the goal is fat loss, not "weight", per se. When doing lifts, it can be discouraging to see the scale not moving. However, in lost cases the fat is still going away and the waist shrinks.
- kd5bjo 8y ago
  When I got serious about this stuff, the best decision I made was to focus on performance measures instead of body composition ones. I’m still overweight (but not nearly as much as I once was), but people don’t generally treat me like it because I don’t act overweight— I’ve now got more strength, endurance, and agility than a great many normal-weight people. So, for most people, my advice is to first focus on how much they’re able to do: it’s faster and more reliable than weight loss, brings comparable health and social benefits, and puts you in a better position to appreciate the fat reduction when you start focusing on that.
  - graeme 8y ago
    That's a great approach. I should add that having only one measure is discouraging: in fitness or anything else. So your approach broadens beyond weight and gives a win, even in the event weight temporarily increased. Also per my previous comment, I suspect that if you got stronger, then you probably lowered your weight circumference too. At least if your weight was stable. Muscle mass and bone density take the place of fat as strength increases, at equal weights. Hard to go wrong with functional measures. The types of fat may change in a good way too as function increases. I looked into the health of sumo wrestlers. Turns out that at an equivalent fat percentage of a non-athlete, they will have much less visceral fat. This is fat around the organs, and is the type of fat most linked to bad health effects.
bichiliad 8y ago
> and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience. Obviously no pressure here, but are you willing to share your experience?
- nxc18 8y ago
  LSD, going into it with some specific anxieties and things I wanted to work through. I ended up a lot more in touch with myself and more in tune with my body. After that it was just unfathomable to not lose weight. The tricky thing about LSD is you don't learn anything you didn't already know, it just clicks in a real way for the first time. Having a mental model/ knowing something is a distinct process from internalizing it in a way that affecrs behavior.

by nxc18 8y ago

neaden 8y ago

I think exercise for weight loss/management isn't going to be a good idea for the vast majority of people. As you said, you get hungrier when you burn those calories and it's very easy to spend five minutes and eat all the calories you burned working out for an hour.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
When I exercise, it puts me on a health-minded path every day that snowballs into other good decisions. It's like how they say making your bed in the morning helps put you on task the rest of the day. I find your line of thought unconvincing. The thing in common among everyone I know who is overweight is that they don't even work out at all. The amount of people I know who don't do anything is astonishing. The problem people have with exercise is that they don't build the habit at all. That's where they fail, long before your hypothesis could even be tested. "Better not exercise so I don't overeat!" sounds like every other self-sabotaging bargaining we do to avoid effort, like not jogging because you can't yet afford nice running shoes. This seems like the last excuse that we need to be peddling to people trying to turn their life around.
- nxc18 8y ago
  I think you're on the right track, but you have to account for the biases in the fat people who need this advice. No amount of exercise can counteract overeating at the scale seriously fat people (like past versions of myself) do. Often weight is _the_ barrier to exercise. When I was at 300lb it was physically painful to walk more than a few minutes. The small muscles near my ankles just couldn't take it. After I lost ~25lbs I suddenly could walk without serious trouble. I'm still working on actual exercise beyond walking 30 minutes to and from work each day. You can use it as an excuse but really I suspect for most people sticking with a diet is actually much easier than sticking to an exercise plan. Especially if you didn't grow up exercising and don't have any happy memories of exercise. When did you start exercising regularly? Any tips for the rest of us on sticking with it long enough to form a habit?
  - OkGoDoIt 8y ago
    I lost 50lbs a few years ago. Walking was a great gateway drug for exercise since I really hated the idea of exercise and sweating, plus I felt so awkward and out of place going to a gym. It always felt like everyone at the gym was staring at me and I felt stupid not knowing how to do things properly. Walking was a solo activity and pretty hard to do wrong, so it eliminated the self confidence barrier at least. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks made the walking more enjoyable, sometimes I’d walk for hours and not realize how sweaty and tired I was until I stopped due to a phone call or something. Beyond walking, a friend got me into rock climbing. It seemed super daunting since everyone at climbing gyms is so buff and I had no muscle and lots of fat and couldn’t do a pull up to save my life. But it turns out with proper instruction the entry level climbs are pretty easy, no harder than climbing a ladder. But then when you get to the top there’s adrenaline from the height looking down, plus a real sense of accomplishment. It helped me build momentum. Eventually things got easier as I did it more often. And once I started looking in the mirror and seeing actual muscle on my arm it was a huge confidence boost and I doubled down on my efforts. Getting over that initial hump where you don’t see any benefit yet is the hardest part. I never fully lost my belly fat even today, but the visible muscle growth was something I could latch onto to keep motivated. TL;DR: start small, avoid situations that hurt self-confidence, find things that are enjoyable or exciting, look for signs of progress in order to stay motivated Edit: to be clear my diet changes made a huge difference as well, I’m not attributing my weight loss entirely to the exercise. But I was responding to the question of how to start exercising. I do think it made a difference. I found regular exercise improved my mood which probably helped me limit overeating from depression/stress.

growlist 8y ago

I find protein bars are pretty good at fighting my hunger pangs.

nxc18 8y ago
High protein, and (while still calorie restricting) high fat does wonders for appetite. Also: water! As an obese person I kind of had to learn what thirst is because I almost always interpreted it as hunger. Also vital while your stomach is shrinking if you're used to overeating (as I was).

joeskyyy 8y ago

> Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods Thank you! Exercise should be completely supplemental to overall health, not to lose weight. The amount of times I've seen people eat an awful meal while trying to lose weight because they "worked out extra hard" is astonishing. Losing weight is almost completely related to what you put in your body. While you can certainly lose weight from exercise, it's by far not the most profound way to do so. Congrats on your weight loss by the way, former fat kid myself, I know it's not an easy process and keeping it off is just as hard!

JKCalhoun 8y ago
Yep, it's the food. I took up running four years ago, but saw no real effect on my weight. (Def helped me from getting winded and made hiking fun, etc. — so exercise is cool, no doubt). I had a medical emergency early last year that caused me to cut my food intake (I feared too large of a meal would cause another medical emergency). So I looked at the plate of food in front of me, measured out what I thought was a "reasonable amount", and ate only that. No seconds. Within two or three months I dropped 20 pounds. Had surgery at that point. After surgery I no longer worried about medical emergencies so I resumed my original eating habits. And steadily put the 20 pounds back on.

jaggederest 8y ago

> Also, IME, exercise makes me hungry for more calories than I burn. Exercise to get healthy, treat the metabolism boost as a bonus. Exercise does not cancel out foods (this is speaking to fat people like me - if you’ve been skinny your whole life your body probably works differently). Conveniently summarized as "You can't outrun your fork". No amount of running replaces a calorie deficit. Also, props for 70 pounds of weight loss. That's a huge number.

graeme 8y ago

Actually you're more of less agreeing with the conventional wisdom of those who do weight lifting. The vast majority of fat loss is simply diet. Walking, is helpful. And strength training is good to prevent muscle loss. Anyway, the above is actually the conventional wisdom of those who go to the gym and try to get lean. This is not the message you hear in pop nutrition however. Congrats on your progress! If you do ever do strength training (or for anyone reading this), one very simple metric to add is weight + waist measure. After all, the goal is fat loss, not "weight", per se. When doing lifts, it can be discouraging to see the scale not moving. However, in lost cases the fat is still going away and the waist shrinks.

kd5bjo 8y ago
When I got serious about this stuff, the best decision I made was to focus on performance measures instead of body composition ones. I’m still overweight (but not nearly as much as I once was), but people don’t generally treat me like it because I don’t act overweight— I’ve now got more strength, endurance, and agility than a great many normal-weight people. So, for most people, my advice is to first focus on how much they’re able to do: it’s faster and more reliable than weight loss, brings comparable health and social benefits, and puts you in a better position to appreciate the fat reduction when you start focusing on that.
- graeme 8y ago
  That's a great approach. I should add that having only one measure is discouraging: in fitness or anything else. So your approach broadens beyond weight and gives a win, even in the event weight temporarily increased. Also per my previous comment, I suspect that if you got stronger, then you probably lowered your weight circumference too. At least if your weight was stable. Muscle mass and bone density take the place of fat as strength increases, at equal weights. Hard to go wrong with functional measures. The types of fat may change in a good way too as function increases. I looked into the health of sumo wrestlers. Turns out that at an equivalent fat percentage of a non-athlete, they will have much less visceral fat. This is fat around the organs, and is the type of fat most linked to bad health effects.

bichiliad 8y ago

> and I had a ‘spiritual’ experience. Obviously no pressure here, but are you willing to share your experience?

nxc18 8y ago
LSD, going into it with some specific anxieties and things I wanted to work through. I ended up a lot more in touch with myself and more in tune with my body. After that it was just unfathomable to not lose weight. The tricky thing about LSD is you don't learn anything you didn't already know, it just clicks in a real way for the first time. Having a mental model/ knowing something is a distinct process from internalizing it in a way that affecrs behavior.