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The key obstacle to weight loss is the same as any form of self-improvement: Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. They

by beloch 14y ago

The key obstacle to weight loss is the same as any form of self-improvement: Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. They just don't do it because its hard to motivate ourselves to do things we're not used to doing. i.e. It's hard to defy our habits. Healthy people don't defy their habits any more than unhealthy people do. They just have healthy habits. So when you're trying to become healthy the goal should not be to "lose 5 pounds this week", but to form healthy habits and break unhealthy ones. This kind of thinking is crucial. You might have enough willpower to defy your habits long enough to achieve your weight-loss goal, but only forming healthy habits will keep the weight from coming right back. This is possibly why doctors aren't terribly useful. They can tell us when we need to lose weight and perhaps even give us a general idea of what we need to do, but they really aren't trained to focus on habits and motivation. Even if they were, everyone responds differently to ideas and we each need to sift through a lot of possible ideas to find ways of changing our habits that are actually compatible with how we live and think. It's a matter of brute-force. A doctor has maybe 10 minutes to set you on the right path, but you can spend hours upon hours reading reddit looking for things that will work for you. One point in the linked article that I absolutely disagree with is that cardio is unimportant. To be fair, he only really said it's unimportant for weight-loss. If all you want is to look pretty then perhaps it's not crucial, but it absolutely is important for being healthy. Above I said that forming healthy habits is a way to side-step the need to constantly motivate ourselves, but the truth is that it also takes effort to change our habits! Having the strongest possible motivation helps, and I've found that being healthy so I can do things like play sports and hike is a better motivator than simply looking good.

HelloMcFly 14y ago
> Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. Maybe. But I think the issue is some people, based on bad advice, focus their motivation on eating right and exercise. Many times that split focus leads people to over-emphasize the exercise part, and that often comes at the expense of the food part. They'll probably see some progress on their goals, but they may be slow and not nearly as rewarding as they expected. That can be a huge de-motivator. Also, as you said, the article didn't say cardio wasn't important, just that it's not necessary (or the best strategy) for weight loss. If you're going to point someone towards a healthy diet or a jogging regimen, the healthy diet is often the way to go.
- beloch 14y ago
  I don't disagree that you can lose weight without doing cardio. However, I think people should want to be healthy rather than merely skinny. There are some pretty unhealthy skinny people out there.
jseliger 14y ago
The key obstacle to weight loss is the same as any form of self-improvement: Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. I don't disagree with this, but sometimes motivation is more enabled by a society or cultural milieu and sometimes it's less enabled. In our society, the default is towards simple sugars in everything from ubiquitous soda to donuts in the break room to sandwiches to white rice in restaurants to high-fructose corn syrup in damn near everything. The larger the cultural inertia, the harder the change. Ask vegetarians: in the U.S., meat-eating is the assumed default. I've read that, in India, vegetarian food at events, parties, and so forth is basically the norm. They can tell us when we need to lose weight and perhaps even give us a general idea of what we need to do, but they really aren't trained to focus on habits and motivation It's actually more pernicious than that. As described by Taubes in Why We Get Fat (http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702?ie=...), the government and doctors have spent the last 40 years convincing everyone that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet is optimal, and government agencies and many researchers have ignored evidence to the contrary. I don't think this reflects malice on the part of individual doctors, but it does reflect systematic misinformation about what effective nutrition actually is. So doctors haven't only not given "us a general idea of what we need to do," but they've actually told us the opposite, even unwittingly.
beloch 14y ago
Disclosure: I actually never used reddit for fitness advice, but it does look nice enough that I wish it had been around earlier! I used to be unfit, but I got myself sorted out before reddit really came along. To find good advice I had to read a lot of trash along with the good and evaluate everything critically. If you throw enough ideas at the wall eventually some stick. So in that spirit, here are some of the revelations that helped me the most. -Gyms suck. The ideal gym member buys a life-time membership and then shows up twice. As such, many gyms aren't really set up to help you form good habits. What do even good gyms really offer that you can't have at home though? Exercise machines let you isolate specific muscles and avoid injuries that can come from bad form when using free-weights, but free-weights really are better if you learn proper form. Free-weights force you to develop stabilizing muscles and generally won't let you neglect muscles that are needed for real-world movements the way some machines do. If you train with free weights you're less likely to injure yourself playing sports. When you're twenty-something injuries aren't a big thing because you heal so fast, but after thirty they suck and you really need to avoid them! Free weights are also really cheap. In fact, you can find people giving them away for free on a regular basis. -Rowing machines rock. Even if you live someplace that's always warm (I don't) you should try to get a little variety in your cardio workouts. Owning a good cardio machine can really help with that. Unfortunately, most home exercise machines are built for the same people who buy lifetime gym memberships and then never use them. i.e. They're not built to last very long if you actually use them. I wore out a few cheaper machines and then decided to find something that would last. Elliptical's can give you a pretty good workout, but good elliptical's are horrendously expensive. You can get a fantastic rowing machine for less than $1000, and they can really kick your ass. (I generally don't like giving away free advertising, but concept2 really is worth taking a look at here.) Why aren't rowing machines more popular? They make you look ridiculous and bad form can lead to injuries. Learn to row properly! -Listen to your body. Our bodies do a great job of telling us when they're hungry, what they're hungry for, and how much food is enough, albeit that last one with an annoying amount of lag! A hugely beneficial healthy habit to form is not to eat when you're not hungry. We get psychological cravings for food that we simply don't need to eat. Learn to subvert those. Other times we crave something specific, like fat or salt, and then eat something "healthier" hoping that it will satisfy us only to wind up eating what we were craving in the end anyways. End result: we just ate more than we would have if we'd have just eaten what our body wanted in the first place! Forcing ourselves to eat too much healthy food is unhealthy, as bizarre at that may sound. Our bodies do tell us when we've eaten too much, but only well after we've done so. It's okay to stop eating while you're still hungry. In fact, you really should stop eating while you're still hungry. It takes time for us to feel sated no matter how much food we shovel in. You may be surprised at how little it takes to feel sated versus how much it takes to feel bloated! Give yourself time to feel sated and, if you still feel hungry, eat a little more. That way you're eating to not feel hungry instead of eating to feel full. There's a big difference! -The most important workout is the one you least want to do. You slept poorly last night. You have a cold. You had a rough day at work. You have every excuse to take it easy, but if you get that workout in, every other workout you do will be that much easier to motivate yourself to do. If you start cutting yourself some slack pretty soon you'll be skipping workouts because a dog looked at you funny. -Do the math when reading food labels. 1 serving is not necessarily what you'll eat. e.g. Potato chips frequently list the nutritional data for a serving size of "10-12 chips". That is not how normal humans eat potato chips.
mberning 14y ago
Couldn't disagree more. Motivation implies some sort of personal failing or personal weakness, which leads me to believe that you buy into the"eat less, exercise more" mantra. I would just like to point out a few things. You state that "most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight" as if there is some cut and dry method to getting thin. Well, I suppose starvation diets ARE that easy, but nobody sticks to them, so they are useless in the long term. This brings me to my first point. If losing weight were as simple as following a specific regimen and the pounds fell off there would be no obesity problem. Nobody chooses to be fat. In fact fat people generally hate it and try incessantly to lose weight. I think the advice that these people get from their doctors, the government, the fitness gurus etc. is almost universally wrong. I could write much more on this subject, but consider that most people that want to lose weight try a variety of methods, and conspicuously none of them work. If this were isolated to just a few people I would say it is a personal defect, but since it is such a widespread phenomena (and growing) I must say I don't think it can simply be explained away as bad habits. People need good information on what to do, and by and large they aren't getting good info. The other thing that I would like to point out is that the focus on exercise is a relatively recent development, and even though more people are exercising than ever before, there has been absolutely no slow down in obesity rates. Go to any gym and you will see an abundance of fat people trying to get fit. It simply doesn't work. They stay fat.
- beloch 14y ago
  Yes, I buy into the "eat less, move more" idea. But then, I'm a physicist and I believe in the laws of thermodynamics. I am in complete agreement with you that starvation diets, fad diets, and other cook-book regimens are likely to result in failure. The point I was trying to convey was that this failure comes from the fact that it takes willpower to follow these, while you're much more likely to succeed if you try to form habits that don't require willpower to follow. I was borderline obese once myself, but I never followed any specific diets or regimens. I just learned healthy habits. Exercise is absolutely crucial for good health. Just being skinny doesn't necessarily make you healthy. Perhaps there was less focus on exercise in the past because people were, on average, much more active in their daily jobs. Today, paper-pushers really need to exercise to be healthy.
sliverstorm 14y ago
Motivation is important, but knowledge is important too, and most people only have a general idea what they should do. For example, I've known a number of folks who go to a class for the first time and way way overexert themselves. This is unhealthy, and really destroys motivation to go back in a way a more appropriate level of exercise does not. Additionally, seeing results is motivating, so I'd argue that to some degree, picking effective routines is going to help long-term success. (You don't have to have the perfectly optimal routine, of course, just a decent one)
- beloch 14y ago
  I'm not saying people have no need of knowledge, just that acquiring the knowledge you need is generally a lot easier than finding ways to actually make yourself put it into practice on a long-term basis.

by beloch 14y ago

HelloMcFly 14y ago

> Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. Maybe. But I think the issue is some people, based on bad advice, focus their motivation on eating right and exercise. Many times that split focus leads people to over-emphasize the exercise part, and that often comes at the expense of the food part. They'll probably see some progress on their goals, but they may be slow and not nearly as rewarding as they expected. That can be a huge de-motivator. Also, as you said, the article didn't say cardio wasn't important, just that it's not necessary (or the best strategy) for weight loss. If you're going to point someone towards a healthy diet or a jogging regimen, the healthy diet is often the way to go.

beloch 14y ago
I don't disagree that you can lose weight without doing cardio. However, I think people should want to be healthy rather than merely skinny. There are some pretty unhealthy skinny people out there.

jseliger 14y ago

The key obstacle to weight loss is the same as any form of self-improvement: Motivation. Most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight. I don't disagree with this, but sometimes motivation is more enabled by a society or cultural milieu and sometimes it's less enabled. In our society, the default is towards simple sugars in everything from ubiquitous soda to donuts in the break room to sandwiches to white rice in restaurants to high-fructose corn syrup in damn near everything. The larger the cultural inertia, the harder the change. Ask vegetarians: in the U.S., meat-eating is the assumed default. I've read that, in India, vegetarian food at events, parties, and so forth is basically the norm. They can tell us when we need to lose weight and perhaps even give us a general idea of what we need to do, but they really aren't trained to focus on habits and motivation It's actually more pernicious than that. As described by Taubes in Why We Get Fat (http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702?ie=...), the government and doctors have spent the last 40 years convincing everyone that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet is optimal, and government agencies and many researchers have ignored evidence to the contrary. I don't think this reflects malice on the part of individual doctors, but it does reflect systematic misinformation about what effective nutrition actually is. So doctors haven't only not given "us a general idea of what we need to do," but they've actually told us the opposite, even unwittingly.

beloch 14y ago

Disclosure: I actually never used reddit for fitness advice, but it does look nice enough that I wish it had been around earlier! I used to be unfit, but I got myself sorted out before reddit really came along. To find good advice I had to read a lot of trash along with the good and evaluate everything critically. If you throw enough ideas at the wall eventually some stick. So in that spirit, here are some of the revelations that helped me the most. -Gyms suck. The ideal gym member buys a life-time membership and then shows up twice. As such, many gyms aren't really set up to help you form good habits. What do even good gyms really offer that you can't have at home though? Exercise machines let you isolate specific muscles and avoid injuries that can come from bad form when using free-weights, but free-weights really are better if you learn proper form. Free-weights force you to develop stabilizing muscles and generally won't let you neglect muscles that are needed for real-world movements the way some machines do. If you train with free weights you're less likely to injure yourself playing sports. When you're twenty-something injuries aren't a big thing because you heal so fast, but after thirty they suck and you really need to avoid them! Free weights are also really cheap. In fact, you can find people giving them away for free on a regular basis. -Rowing machines rock. Even if you live someplace that's always warm (I don't) you should try to get a little variety in your cardio workouts. Owning a good cardio machine can really help with that. Unfortunately, most home exercise machines are built for the same people who buy lifetime gym memberships and then never use them. i.e. They're not built to last very long if you actually use them. I wore out a few cheaper machines and then decided to find something that would last. Elliptical's can give you a pretty good workout, but good elliptical's are horrendously expensive. You can get a fantastic rowing machine for less than $1000, and they can really kick your ass. (I generally don't like giving away free advertising, but concept2 really is worth taking a look at here.) Why aren't rowing machines more popular? They make you look ridiculous and bad form can lead to injuries. Learn to row properly! -Listen to your body. Our bodies do a great job of telling us when they're hungry, what they're hungry for, and how much food is enough, albeit that last one with an annoying amount of lag! A hugely beneficial healthy habit to form is not to eat when you're not hungry. We get psychological cravings for food that we simply don't need to eat. Learn to subvert those. Other times we crave something specific, like fat or salt, and then eat something "healthier" hoping that it will satisfy us only to wind up eating what we were craving in the end anyways. End result: we just ate more than we would have if we'd have just eaten what our body wanted in the first place! Forcing ourselves to eat too much healthy food is unhealthy, as bizarre at that may sound. Our bodies do tell us when we've eaten too much, but only well after we've done so. It's okay to stop eating while you're still hungry. In fact, you really should stop eating while you're still hungry. It takes time for us to feel sated no matter how much food we shovel in. You may be surprised at how little it takes to feel sated versus how much it takes to feel bloated! Give yourself time to feel sated and, if you still feel hungry, eat a little more. That way you're eating to not feel hungry instead of eating to feel full. There's a big difference! -The most important workout is the one you least want to do. You slept poorly last night. You have a cold. You had a rough day at work. You have every excuse to take it easy, but if you get that workout in, every other workout you do will be that much easier to motivate yourself to do. If you start cutting yourself some slack pretty soon you'll be skipping workouts because a dog looked at you funny. -Do the math when reading food labels. 1 serving is not necessarily what you'll eat. e.g. Potato chips frequently list the nutritional data for a serving size of "10-12 chips". That is not how normal humans eat potato chips.

mberning 14y ago

Couldn't disagree more. Motivation implies some sort of personal failing or personal weakness, which leads me to believe that you buy into the"eat less, exercise more" mantra. I would just like to point out a few things. You state that "most people know what they need to do in order to lose weight" as if there is some cut and dry method to getting thin. Well, I suppose starvation diets ARE that easy, but nobody sticks to them, so they are useless in the long term. This brings me to my first point. If losing weight were as simple as following a specific regimen and the pounds fell off there would be no obesity problem. Nobody chooses to be fat. In fact fat people generally hate it and try incessantly to lose weight. I think the advice that these people get from their doctors, the government, the fitness gurus etc. is almost universally wrong. I could write much more on this subject, but consider that most people that want to lose weight try a variety of methods, and conspicuously none of them work. If this were isolated to just a few people I would say it is a personal defect, but since it is such a widespread phenomena (and growing) I must say I don't think it can simply be explained away as bad habits. People need good information on what to do, and by and large they aren't getting good info. The other thing that I would like to point out is that the focus on exercise is a relatively recent development, and even though more people are exercising than ever before, there has been absolutely no slow down in obesity rates. Go to any gym and you will see an abundance of fat people trying to get fit. It simply doesn't work. They stay fat.

beloch 14y ago
Yes, I buy into the "eat less, move more" idea. But then, I'm a physicist and I believe in the laws of thermodynamics. I am in complete agreement with you that starvation diets, fad diets, and other cook-book regimens are likely to result in failure. The point I was trying to convey was that this failure comes from the fact that it takes willpower to follow these, while you're much more likely to succeed if you try to form habits that don't require willpower to follow. I was borderline obese once myself, but I never followed any specific diets or regimens. I just learned healthy habits. Exercise is absolutely crucial for good health. Just being skinny doesn't necessarily make you healthy. Perhaps there was less focus on exercise in the past because people were, on average, much more active in their daily jobs. Today, paper-pushers really need to exercise to be healthy.

sliverstorm 14y ago

Motivation is important, but knowledge is important too, and most people only have a general idea what they should do. For example, I've known a number of folks who go to a class for the first time and way way overexert themselves. This is unhealthy, and really destroys motivation to go back in a way a more appropriate level of exercise does not. Additionally, seeing results is motivating, so I'd argue that to some degree, picking effective routines is going to help long-term success. (You don't have to have the perfectly optimal routine, of course, just a decent one)

beloch 14y ago
I'm not saying people have no need of knowledge, just that acquiring the knowledge you need is generally a lot easier than finding ways to actually make yourself put it into practice on a long-term basis.