Weight Loss -- does confrontation ever work?

Parent Cafe
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Stress can make you gain weight.
I think the most we can do, is model healthy behavior and try not to enable.
Unless someone is in a place where they can’t think clearly, as with anxiety/ depression, we have to recognize that they are adults, and should be free to make their own choices, as long as they are not infringing on anyone else.

We can * trick* them however.
For example, a friend of mine has an adult sister who has disabilities and lives in a group home, because that unfortunately was the only way her parents could get adequate help from the state.
Also unfortunately, she has gained at LEAST 100 lbs, since she moved to the group home, at about 5’ tall, because it is mostly commodity food, starchy & fatty, and they don’t encourage exercise.
Anyway, her sister since she graduated from college, has been taking her sister on walks through Goodwill stores every week, with the incentive of a small purchase. She won’t go for a walk outside, but she doesnt associate shopping with exercise. So far anyway.

62

^^^^ oh my goodness, yes! Like the advice to only have one latte, or only eat out twice a week instead of every night, or don’t eat from the pastry cart at work… I already don’t ! But thanks!!! //sarcasm//

OTOH, I just had a houseguest who wants to lose 150 lbs this year (a good goal and much needed). She won’t drink skim milk “tastes funny” only eats carrots as a veggie “oh, those others are so weird” and was highly dismayed by a vegetarian meal (pasta and sauce, with tiny bits of zucchini) “you really are gonna be hungry if you don’t eat meat”.
Yet, she said again and again that she was really going to meet her goals. My FIL always says he “mostly eats fish” but I’ve never seen him do that. He’s busy eating ice cream and hot dogs.

I get it. I was/am the person who ate “a few” oreos after work. I bought munchies “for the guys” and cooked elaborate cheesy deliciousness as relaxation. I ate all of every food gift because I wouldn’t give myself permission to admire it and then throw it out. Really, I was eating the whole box of oreos, buying things I knew I wouldn’t resist, and eating much more than necessary. Sometimes, we are not honest with ourselves, and I forgive the people who try to be honest with us in the name of health and love.

63

I have become a skeptical curmudgeon and rather self-righteous in the three years that I’ve been losing weight. I’m down fifty pounds (hooray for me) and still have about fifteen to go. However, my actual weight loss began when a nutritionist reviewed my eating logs (for three weeks) and told me “well, if you’re telling the truth, you should be losing a quarter to a half pound a week.”

I was telling the truth; at that point I’d been eating that way for about five years (and walking about two miles a day) and all that had happened was that I had stopped GAINING weight. I had thyroid testing and other health testing, too.

Rather than giving up, however, I took this as “hmm, my metabolism is in fact different.”

I went back to the “standard advice” of eat less, exercise more. I figured it was worth a shot. I started measuring every single bite I ate and writing it down and I upped my daily dog walks to 3 miles from 2. I started losing weight. Very very slowly, but I started losing weight.

I’ve given up almost all sweets, almost all processed food, almost all meals out, almost all carbohydrates. I’ve read an enormous amount of dieting psychology (small plates, put the food away after you serve yourself, etc.). I run three or four times a week. I get about 110,000 steps a week now.

The sweet young thing doctor I discussed this with a few weeks ago (I go to a teaching practice and she’s a second-year resident), when I turned sixty, told me “that sounds like you should be losing about two pounds a week.” I’m not. I’m losing about a pound a month. I go to Weight Watchers and I watch the other people losing weight faster than I am and they get no exercise at all and they talk about eating “just a small piece of chocolate cake.”

But… I’m not gaining, I am losing, I’m no longer considered pre-diabetic (fasting blood sugar has dropped from 105 to 92), my knees don’t hurt nearly as much as they used to, and I have enough stamina to run rings around people half my age.

And I’ve become a self-righteous judgmental prig about weight loss. People ask me “what did you do?” and I tell them all that, and they sigh and say “I couldn’t do that.” Of course they could. They just want it to be easier than that.

Well, news flash. It’s <<>> hard. You want to lose weight? It’s hard. It requires that you change the habits of a lifetime. It’s HARD. Deal with it.

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Losing 150 in a year will not be a permanent loss. That’s taking what is probably an unwise diet and running with it vs. actually changing ingrained habits and lifestyle. It took me three years to lose 100 and I still battle. Every stinkin’ day.

My initial goal was to lower my blood sugar. Then to get healthy because of my cardiac event. I did not want to end up like my mom, bedridden and immobile at age 64 because of bones that couldn’t support her, diabetes and congestive heart failure. I never set out intending to lose this much – that kind of goal would have scared me away. But small steps turned into bigger goals.