This sums up my attitude exactly.

You and I both seem to heavily draw upon the fact/knowledge that our bodies are things for us to control... we aren't at the mercy of our impulses any longer and are capable of shaping it as we wish. We realized one day we could do it... and then when we went on LC, that knowledge what reinforced a hundred fold and so was our drive.
From what I gather you and I both felt defenseless against ourselves before doing this. It seems that coming to this revelation (partly because we were "sick of being fat", and partly because LC allowed us to feel that way), and not only using it to our advantage (obviously, controlling your body with your mind is going to be very useful in losing weight fast) but actually SAVORING the feeling of being empowered over the body - were both key factors in mind state that lead to our success.

Which, again, suggests that losing massive amounts of weight requires owning the fact that we are in control, not our bodies.

I would start another poll to see how strongly a feeling of being able and empowered to control your body correlates with successful dieting behaviors... but since my last poll just really offended a whole bunch of people I don't want to open that can of worms again heh heh.



----------------------
off topic:
The problem with trying "prove" relationships is that it makes you sound judgemental or like you're saying EVERYONE who is this is that, too... when all you're trying to do is see if the relationship you suspect would exist does or doesn't (which would imply whether or not your hypothesis had any merit).
Naturally exceptions are always going to exist, even IF a relationship that is hugely strong is observed... so obviously I'm not trying to say all people who are A are also B, and they are both that way because of a motivating factor C. Some people can be A and not B, some people can be A for reasons totally unrelated to C. But if a strong linear relationship is observed between the two and if frequency/severity of A and B exist together it's likely there is a relationship between the two, right?

Anyway sorry for rambling but I just want people to know I'm not trying to judge anyone AT ALL. In fact, people on the forum who I like the most and have been most inspired by are those who can from appearances be pretty unambitious about this weight thing... either in goal weights, in how hard they try to get to their weight, or how much value they place on thinness. Who you are as a person is just so incredibly more than sizes numbers and ability to manipulate them that they don't even enter my consideration when I gravitate to someone.
What DOES Influence my judgments of people's worth is signs of intelligence, compassion, willingness to care & try to give support and helpful advice to others who struggle, capacity for/openness to interesting or provocative discussion... in general just who they are as people.

To be honest, if anyone is wondering, then why "proving" things or establishing generalizations are important to me.... I am just very curious about why this seems so hard for most people, and so easy for others. What are the factors common to successful weight loss? What are the factors common to unsuccessful weight loss? I do believe there are a common set of factors in both camps, I do not believe that everyone is so radically different that there will be nothing (of relevance) in common among those who fail and those who succeed. It's not only just personal interest and curiosity that I would like to find out but it would really be quite useful to me as well as us in general who struggle with weight to find out what those factors that influence success are. If I know what the REAL primary keys to success in weight control are on a conscious level, it would make weight maintenance much more easier, no?

Val,
If anything you are reinforcing the notion that attitude determines success. All you are suggesting is that it alone isn't enough, and saying "JUST GROW AN ATTITUDE" ain't gonna help one lose weight and keep it off because, as you pointed out - stuff happens. Stuff that undermines your confidence, stuff that forces you to put how important weight is to you on the back burner. Pointing out that you need "a good attitude" to lose weight isn't very helpful because it doesn't help those who don't have it or those who are losing it regain it, does it?

If you CAN'T get and stay motivated, you CAN'T get and stay thin, either, can you?

This to me would suggest that those who lose massive amounts of weight only to get complacent about it and regain it all later because of "stuff", are those who need to learn to prioritize and organize what's important in their lives. They likely need to learn good balance in things they do.
Again this is just a theory but it seems that the ability to temporarily focus intently on something and elevate it to the nexus of your existence (losing weight fast) only to later totally disregard it in importance totally and focus intently on something else (job, family or even eating) to the point where you regain EVERYTHING seems to be a feature of a compulsive, addictive personality. Another theory: is it likely those who tend to lose extremely and regain extremely, or rapidly, are also those who have struggled or do struggle with food addiction/compulsive eating? I wonder...

Speaking personally, I DO recognize this tendency in myself, and I DO recognize that it - a tendency for compulsivity and addiction - was a weakness I utilized to my advantage in this. On the other edge of that blade, I also recognize my ability to be totally complacent and completely ignore handling important things at the expense of my preference/capacity for narrowly focused effort/interest.
This is why fear of slipping even a little bit hangs over me like a dagger. I know myself, I know I am capable of regaining all this weight the hot SECOND I allow myself to forget:
a) what life heavy is/was like for me and why I WANT to stay my size
b) that I am an obese person under it all - I like food, I like eating it, I like eating when I'm full, I like eating when I'm not, and to make matters worse, I am carbohydrate sensitive... I can't allow myself to think it will ever be possible for me to eat in a totally unstructured manner. It's not going to happen. I will always need to use my mind to produce rituals/behaviors to compensate for the defect(s) which naturally result in obesity.
c) that I am not naturally thin, and maintaining this body requires constant vigil over my behaviors.


Perhaps what will help us keep the attitude and avoid losing it, EVEN when life gets rough, is writing down a list of all the reasons we are doing this.
If we can refer to that list at times when other things demand our interest, especially for those among us who tend toward extremism (who would naturally be most susceptible to a total relapse during this time), it might make the difference between becoming complacent and keeping some focus on weight?

I hope, for you, that you never lose that feeling. For a lot of us, that's proven time and time again to be an illusion.

If you can still say the same thing after bearing children, fighting disease, having your puffed rice and banana breakfast lead you to losing control and regaining your weight and struggling to lose it again, or ending up being hospitalized if you "control" yourself into a dangerous situation, THEN I'll believe you.

Thank you very much, but I have learned to prioritize what's important in my life. That "stuff" as you derisively quote it, is more important than whether I am 135 lbs or 195 lbs to me right now. My family, my job, my friends, my activities, my enjoyment of my life, my sanity is more important than being able to beat my body into submission to become underweight. Frankly, my boyfriend things I'm sexy now, I have a fantastic lipid profile, I getting back into jogging for the first time in 20 years and looking forward to running my first 5k in June. I'm healthy, happy, in love and have great relationships with my family. Those things are what are important in my life. So, even at 60 lbs overweight, I think I have a better attitude towards health and weight than those who are willing to sacrifice or jeopardize those things in order to get the the low end of the BMI recommended for their height because they are savouring the ability to indulge in self-denial.

You are right, I don't have the attitude that says I'll do whatever it takes to get to an ambitious weight goal. I'll just have to comfort myself with the fact that while I may never wear a size 2, I have lost 145 lbs, gotten my health back, have a happy life, loving family and friends, feel normal and attractive for the first time in 20 years. It's not as good as weighing 135 lbs, but it will have to do.

Val

Does anyone remember that only about 5% of the people who go on diets and lose weight actually maintain that weightloss? What about the 95% of those folks who diet to regain? That number is daunting. 95% Failure Rate. Long term weight loss success is difficult. If it wasn't why isn't that figure reversed?

Woo and Dean... you're on the diet honeymoon. You've lost the weight, you're in control, you're feeling great. But let's check back a couple years from now and see how you're doing. Can you still control the rice puffs for breakfast, can you still eat only lc ice cream for dinner? Has life thrown you any curveballs that derail your efforts slightly or majorly? This is hard work. It may not seem like it today, but I'd put money on it that somewhere down the road, you will both need to put considerable effort into maintaining this loss. The staggering statistics tell me so.

Thanks everyone for your patience with me. I *am* trying to learn.

Anyway, this will have to be my last post here as I have real work that I need to get done and this topic is just too sensitive to merit continuing at this time. I'll read any replies, but otherwise probably won't post again.

Vicki said, "My weirdness in all of this is that if the rest of my body and my health are good, I would not hesitate to have surgery to correct the one thing that continued to drive me nuts for reasons of vanity."

This is quite reasonable, and if I wasn't seeing my stomach continue to shrink, and if the appearance of it bothered me enough, then I too would get the surgery. With me, the issue is more of wanting to finally get back to being "normal". Drooping stomachs have grossed me out since I was a kid and I always thought I'd never be like that myself. So, to get rid of it is a big deal to me.

Julie said, "Type two is a population of people who don't have large insulin spikes but have gotten fat by eating too much or with total lack of control. I personally have not ever met anyone like this but I'm sure they exist."

First, I want to thank you Julie for taking the time to write such a long and very kind post. Thank you for spending the time doing that.

I may well be in that second population you describe. My problem has always been just eating too much. I can easily eat tons and tons of food. I never ever feel full. I love to eat and I don't want anybody taking my food as I want it ALL!

On the other hand, I don't feel very hungry in-between meals. I can go for long periods and not feel that deprived at all. My issue was certainly one of being out of control. And thus, learning how to gain control is certainly a BIG DEAL to me.

And it's true that I don't understand this issue with insulin resistance very well. Logically, I can understand it, but experience wise I don't.

Even still, it seems most people in the TDC are able to lose fairly easily to begin with and then gradually they slow down. I don't get why the insulin resistance doesn't make it hard to start losing from the very beginning. Is there a theory why that's so?

Worse for me was seeing Lynda's weight loss plot. Her plot showed the standard weight loss curve that starts out falling sharply and then levels out to a stall. Only her plot shows that when she started her 100 day calorie counting, that her weight loss took off again. When I saw that plot, it just convinced me that weight loss wasn't hopeless at some point, and that one could control it.

Just knowing it was possible is all that it took to enable me to do it too. That hope was critical as it gave me the heart to do whatever sacrifice I needed to do to make it.

So maybe Lynda's in category two too. I don't know. And obviously, when you talk about your sister, certainly there are HUGE differences in people where some can eat and eat and never get fat and others eat just a little and have problems. This is obviously VERY frustrating and annoying.

Certainly, anybody in the TDC has SOME issue that made them fat. Certainly, we all have some obstacle that we need to overcome. Mine was controlling of how much I ate. I don't know what it is for others, but I certainly hope there is some answer out there for each of us.

I agree that "none of us fit in a one size fits all mold". I agree that we each have to find our own way. I agree that how far we go, how fast we go, or whatever is up to each of us to decide personally.

But there *are* a few things that we all have (or at least should have) in common. We all have had to make a decision to do something about our weight. And we all have some degree of hope that we will succeed to some degree or else we wouldn't even bother. And really, when you get down to it, this is all the "attitude" I'm really talking about. It's simply staying on the positive side where we have hope that what we are doing will work and not falling to the negative side where we get discouraged, despair and give up.

Hopefully, each of us will apply that attitude of hope in the place and manner that makes sense to us and will help us the most.

CindyG asked, "As I've been reading this thread, I've been wondering why you never had dieted before? So many of us have had some limited success on other plans only to fall short of our goal and then gain even more weight back."

I never dieted simply because I hated even the idea of dieting. I couldn't stand the thought of depriving myself, counting calories, eating horrible food and all that. I knew I had to do something, but I only became depressed if I thought about dieting. I just couldn't ever see it working for me at all. Even if it worked for a while, I couldn't see it working long term.

Secondly, I didn't really care what people thought about me. I don't care to conform or fit in, and so felt no pressure to do something for that reason. The only reason I felt I needed to do something was for health reasons and my very life.

There is one area where I have done something a number of times and now no longer have the will to do it again. I have fasted for religious reasons a number of times. I eventually made it 21 days, but that was so difficult that I lost heart to ever fast again. I don't even want to fast for one day now. I'll easily not eat for a day if I'm busy, but not eating because I'm on a fast is a different matter. I simply don't have the heart to do it any more.

And that's why attitude is a big deal to me. If I don't have the heart to do something, I just won't be able to do it. Something has to "click" to make it seem truly doable to me and then I'll be able to put my heart into it and do it.

When I say this is easy, I only mean it is easy now that I've settled in my heart that I'm going to do it, and now that I've proven to myself that I can do it. Without that hope, without the decision being settled in my heart, this wouldn't just be hard, it would be impossible for me.

For all of you that have dieted many times and felt the despair of regaining your weight, I wonder how much that causes you to not really hope that this time will work. Some say that Wooo and I will talk differently once we fail and regain our weight, and maybe so. But what should we learn from our setbacks?

Should we learn to be more realistic with our practical goals? Should we learn to not to be excessive, as it simply can't be sustained for extended periods? Should we learn that attitude in the end didn't really make a difference?

If so, then perhaps we should stop encouraging people to set "ideal" goals and teach them instead to pick practical, realistic and sustainable goals. We should tell them to only lose weight down to what they are truly comfortable maintaining at. No?

Val said, "You are right, I don't have the attitude that says I'll do whatever it takes to get to an ambitious weight goal. I'll just have to comfort myself with the fact that while I may never wear a size 2, I have lost 145 lbs, gotten my health back, have a happy life, loving family and friends, feel normal and attractive for the first time in 20 years. It's not as good as weighing 135 lbs, but it will have to do."

I love it Val that you are so healthy now and will be doing your first 5K in June. That is really wonderful. And while you were being a bit sarcastic here, I think you're saying what many really feel. You are happier being healthy and alive at the higher weight than you would be doing "whatever it takes" to get to some "ideal" goal.

And good for you! You are the only one that can decide if you'll be happy or not at any given weight. You are the only one that knows how hard you want to push yourself. And since you've transformed your life so much already, I think you only deserve lots of applause! Way to go Val!!

I may have been happy to stay at a higher weight too. I am not even sure I like my current lower weight, especially given that I look too thin now, but hopefully that will change once I start maintenance. But when I discovered I could be in control and that I could lose this weight, it changed what I was willing to go for.

May each of us discover what works best for them and may each of us reach a level where we can be healthy and happy.

Thanks everyone for all your input to this discussion, but I'm bowing out for now. God bless!

This is an interesting thread! And as I'm in the "century club", I thought I'd weigh in (pun intended) with my opinion.

First of all, I find it a bit telling that Dean is the only male on this forum (at least going back a few pages -- I haven't read the whole thread) surrounded by women. Well, OF COURSE he doesn't get it! He doesn't gain weight during one week each month, he doesn't have constantly changing hormones that can cause edema and emotional swings, and he is a diet neophyte who didn't destroy his metabolism by yo-yo dieting for years and years (like me!)

My husband is morbidly obese. He is "cutting back" on his calories. For him, this means keeping his intake under 2500 cals/day. Just by doing this, he has lost something like 15 pounds over the past month! For me, 2500 cals in a day would represent a very heavy eating day. And losing 15 pounds in a month would represent the very most I could hope for! Now, I'm sure as he continues to lose weight, he'll find his weight loss slows a bit. But I doubt he'll plateau. He never has in the past.

Quite frankly, men have it easier than women with respect to diet. AND, my experience is that they eat differently, too. My husband got fat by eating a lot of food. He didn't get fat by emotional eating, or eating too many sweets, or cycling back and forth between sweet and salty foods...nothing like that. He just ate too much. Simpler problems tend to have simpler solutions, and I truly think that weight loss is easier for men than it is for women.

Keeping it off is another story. As I told Dean in his journal, I've lost and gained over 500 pounds in the past 10 years. I have reason to believe that I will be successful this time, but since I've blown it in the past, I am only cautiously optimistic. My way of ensuring success is to do a lot of vigorous exercise, and lots of weight lifting and ab work. This has helped me tremendously...very little loose skin and comparatively flat abs. Still have about 50 pounds to lose, but I am determined to go all the way down to my ideal weight of 125 this time!

Good luck to all of us -- we deserve this!

Dean -

I'm glad you found my weight chart motivating.

However, I'd sure appreciate it it if you'd refrain from speculating about what factors have been important to my weight loss success. I think I have made my views on my own personal experience ABUNDANTLY clear, and I think the only one who is qualified to analyze what's worked for me and what hasn't is ME. Not you. Not Woo. Not anyone else.

You've seen a weight loss chart of mine where calorie tracking while being on an LC diet and having well controlled blood sugar gave me a nice rate of weight loss.

I sure wish I still had some of my old calorie records from when I tried to lose weight the last few times with low fat. I don't think that you'd find a weight graph flatlined in the 300's, documented low fat dieting compliance, an exercise log showing 25 miles ridden per day motivating in the least! Nobody in their right mind would sign up for dieting if there hopes of success were based on the sum total of my experience with dieting over close to 30 years!

For me, the diabetic diet was a two year relief where I could manage precarious blood sugar control for the first time since I was in my early teens. Proper LC dieting has so far been a glorious 2.75 year period of genuine rhobust blood sugar control for the first time in my life.

It is time to leave me OUT of your speculation about attitude contribution to weight loss. Don't go analyzing what I've written here and try to convince me that I'm cluelessly not realizing how my attitiude affects my actions or "success". I know what factors have an effect for me, I know which ones are significant for me and which have negligable contribution. Just because they differ from yours or Woo's DOES NOT mean they are not clearly understood by me or valid.

You can have whatever opinions you want of my physiological response to carbs, my weight loss approach, my maintenance approach - heck, even on my goat pictures or choice of wardrobe. But please, keep them to yourself and lay off posting analysis and speculations of what drives my success, and trust that I have enough sense and self insight that my words on my personal experience can and should actually speak for themselves without second guessing and revision by some folks who obviously have very different weight loss issues to manage. No matter how well intentioned those speculations or "what if we look at it this way" comments have been, I find it disrepectful to have my life experience and well thought out views on MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE second guessed by someone who hasn't lived them.

How about you keep telling folks about YOU, and I can take care of telling folks about me.

Lynda

I just want to interject this one point here.
Those who elect to stay heavy, to let their weights maintain at an obese level, and to try not to control their impulses for food at all (other than making low carb choices when they strike), that's fine and good and it's your choice to do that. However I really do balk at the intimation some posters are raising that this behavior is some how better or more healthful - and by healthful I mean meantally in particular - than trying to control your body.

What seperates humans from the beasts is our ability to act rationally - which means, to use our minds to dictate behavior even when our bodies/emotions & instincts want to do other, more primative things.
There is nothing inherently unhealthy in drawing upon the conscious mind to sometimes override the physical body so as to produce a more gracile, aesthetic result in appearance or behavior. We do this all the time in society.
For example, when you are in the middle of the street and the urge to use the bathroom strikes, do you control yourself until a suitable place to relieve yourself can be found, or do you just go right there 'cuz yer body told you to? Or another example... if you are in a store surrounded by expensive merchandise, do you listen to the primative animal brain that screams "OOOOH TAKE IT NOW"? Or, does the higher, socially responsible mind predominate and swat down the animal brain with logic and rationality: "I cannot take this merchandise as it belongs to someone else, and stealing is morally wrong and socially irresponsible"?

You know, several posters have implicated that using control over the body's desires for food (Which are, truthfully, bottomless if one eats an unstructured diet without "forbidden foods/times of eating/etc". It is more the exception to be naturally thin rather than the rule in today's fast-food saturated consumer culture...) and deriving self satisfaction from it, are a sign of poor mental health or of a potential eating disorder.
You are equating a similar tendency with an extreme form of mental disorder. It's like saying people who enjoy drinking out on the town might become alcoholics. Technically it's true but there is so so so much else going on for the alcoholic that is responsible for the difference between social drinking and alcoholism... so much to the point where the alcohol consumption, itself, is hardly definiative of what it means to be addicted to alcohol.
In truth there is nothing wrong with controlled eating, and it is not automatically true that feeling positive reinforcement for exacting self control over eating means you will develop or have an eating disorder.
In fact, I say it is no less unhealthy to use control and derive satisfaction from feeling like you are behaving in a way that you feel produces a more aesthetic, desirable physical result, than it is to choose to not value conformity/apperances so highly and instead to comfort yourself by indulging in food.

The fact is it is normal and common among people to not eat everything you see, when you want it, every time you want it. I didn't know this until I became thin myself. I thought all thin people just ate everything they wanted, like I did. It wasn't until speaking about it did I learn that almost everyone denies themselves food, junk food, bad food, high calorie food to some degree. It's common for thin people to deny themselves food at least on some level... not to the point of going hungry (like those of us who are RECTIFYING over eating are doing TEMPORARILY), but yes, thin people WILL not eat say, another snickers bar after already eating one, just because they taste good and they got a "craving". Not if they want to stay thin people anyway. Living in american society with it's consumer culture - taste-engineered foods, prepackaged convenient foods, cheap foods, huge quantities of foods EVERYWHERE - it (denial of food impulse) is practically essential if one is to stay in shape and maintain an aesthetically pleasing apperance. It's very rare for someone to be truly "naturally thin" in our culture and to stay that way their entire lives.

Anyway. As I was saying to equate using control to override the body's never ending cries for food on some level with poor health (mentally and/or physically) would be as ridiculous as me equating your choice to eat as much as you want whenever you want so as to stay obese/overweight with compulsive eating disorder and certain death from obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and other complications of largeness. You are equating a harmless behavior with an extreme form of disorder which is just irrational. You chose to never deny yourself food and stay obese/overweight (whereas most people do and stay thin, OR choose to not and gain weight). I choose to deny myself food and stay very slender. Why is your choice better than mine? Why does my choice mean I'm sick? In reality it's not any more unhealthy physically or mentally than the choice to eat a lot (and yes, it is a choice, you DO have control in deciding what and how much you put in your body).

The irony is that most people outside a forum concentrated with obese people would view eating in a way to stay obese - consciously choosing that - as more indicative of mental disorder than electing to be very thin through behavior. The fact is eating to be obese implies a disregard for/indifference to society and it's concept of beauty/normalcy/conformity... and disregard for these (social standards) are often linked to mental state, physical state, and subsequential behaviors that are biologically unproductive/self & socially destructive. Now I'm not saying obese people are defective, just saying that obesity is heavily stigmitized and it is also viewed as a choice people make. To other people, choosing to be very obese through behavior is at best puzzling and at worst intolerable/unacceptable.
People have a natural aversion to difference and those who have no interest in fitting in. There is a reason for that. Difference implies either overt threat or biological defect, neither of which are good to keep around the social structure or in the gene pool. Aversion to difference and those who express indifference to social status/rank is natural. This is also the roots behind other prejudices. It's an unfortunate fact of life, of being a social animal (human).

Now we can pontificate for days whether or not the social standards are right or true, or whether or not people should be "biased against obesity"... but the fact is they are what they are, obesity is NOT acceptable, and there is nothing unhealthy about wanting to better fit in. Especially when you're younger and more concerned with social status/social ascention/ambition is concern with such matters not exceptional at all.
Maybe when you're older and more weathered you can reach a place where you can tell the world to go to hell and unbutton your top pants button and curl up with a slice of low carb cheesecake on the couch..... maybe it is sometimes the product of growing into yourself and greater self confidence that allows us to reach a point where we can accept ourselves irregardless of what people think about us.

It's just a different ballgame when you're young and starting out in the world. To tell the world to "go to hell" and just eat what you wish and become indifferent to your size 20 pants, that's just not normal when you're my age. It's NORMAL to want to be aesthetic, gracile, to fit in, to be popular and beautiful and well received. Few of us ever will achieve "perfection" but almost all of us at one point were or are trying to make ourselves the best we can be.

...and my friends, if you DO value looking as good as you can look, of actually achieving that "goal weight"... it sometimes takes having self control and saying "no body, you cannot eat that slice of cheesecake because we already ate quite a lot already. It's not very high in nutrition either, and we want to stay reasonably fit and healthy and attractive".

Doing this does not mean you will "control yourself into a hospital", nor does it mean what you're doing is shallow, or lower, or more unhealthy than deciding to eat when you've come home from a hard day of work, or to eat because that cheesecake looks damn good and your body is biologically designed to respond with immediate feelings of pleasure to the sensation of it in your mouth and on your tongue. It's just different. I am no more an anorexic destined for hospitalization because I choose to prioritize control/results over indulging in my body's food impulses on a whim, than you are an out of control binge/compulsive eater on their way to becoming an imobile shut in covered in bedsores for choosing to indulge in food more frequently than you deny it. It's irrational to equate harmless behavior that you may have a hard time understanding fully with an extreme mental disorder. We're different people at different places in our lives. I'm discovering self power, that I can change my fate, savoring it after years of feeling out of control.
We're different. Different priorities, different feelings of satisfaction.

This isn't really leading anywhere but to the debating bin, but I'm going to take a stab.




The question is, why are some people able to deny themselves these urges and others not? From reading your posts, I have a good idea what you think the answer is, and I disagree with it. I refuse to point a finger at people, myself included, and say, "You just need willpower," or, "It's just a matter of attitude," particularly when I know what happens when I cut carbs down to about 30g a day, and suddenly have "willpower" to burn.




Please point me to the person, here or elsewhere, who consciously chooses to remain obese. You're really indulging in question begging here: people can choose to be thin (you say so), so if they are obese they have chosen to be obese. Unfortunately, your initial claim is unsupported by anything more than your opinion -- indeed, it cannot be proven -- which makes mush of the whole argument. Yet you continue to push it in post after post.

Dean, this is probably one of the best thoughts I've read in this thread so far, particularly that last sentence. I think a lot of the frustration that is coming out in this thread is because people are saying, "I'm applying weight loss in a manner that makes sense to me and I believe will help me the most while balancing it with all the other 'stuff' I have going on in my life" and then others come along and say basically, "I don't think that's enough."
What right does anyone have to say that?



Wooo, nobody said it was better for everyone. What a few have said is that it's better and more sane for them at this time and yet you want to continue to argue that for some reason it shouldn't be, basically questioning the commitment and attitude of those who have chosen a higher goal weight for themselves because other things in their lives are more important to them than losing that last 30 or 40 pounds. Can you accept that for some people there are things in their life that have higher value and priority than absolute thinness as defined by a chart and that happiness, love and acceptance for some is not dependent on a number?



No, Wooo, what was said is that a driving need to be in absolute and total control over your food and your weight/body can be a danger sign of a potential eating disorder. In reality, it has nothing to do with what you weigh and everything to do with a need for absolute control because it is the one area of their life where they can exert that control. It's not simply a matter of controlled eating, but the degree and the attitudes and fears that surround weight gain even when gaining a few pounds might be in their best interest.
http://www.pale-reflections.com/anorexia.asp



You meaning who? We have gone from maintaining at a higher than ideal weight as defined by a chart to 'eating whatever you want whenever you want it'? If a person is maintaining, obviously they are still excercising some degree of control, whether they are maintaining at a higher level or a lower one.



A couple of points on this one. First of all, are you saying that a person cannot be gracile, popular, beautiful, fit in or be well-received unless they are 'ideal weight'? To quote a much-loved Colonel from a past TV series, "Horsefeathers!!". I knew plenty of thin girls when I was your age, Wooo, and only a few fit that description despite being thin (and for those that did fit that category, often the family having large amounts of money factored in). Second, if you really believe that all those things are somehow magically conferred on you through reaching some magic number, then I'm very sad for you and it is very much an insult to imply that you cannot be all those things at a higher weight. Perhaps I am an exception to the rule, but I should point out that I married my husband of nearly 20 years when I was at a higher weight than I am now. I started my current career and became a respected subject matter expert in my field while being obese. People all over my state within my company seek out my opinion and you know what? They don't particularly care what size pants I'm wearing that day. I have made and maintained close friendships while in an obese state (which I honestly prefer to the shallow acceptance of the masses). If attitude matters in anything in life, it definitely matters in the area of finding happiness and acceptance. If you don't believe that you can find it until you are 'thin', you won't.
I also disagree that choosing to remain at a higher weight than what others may find 'perfect' or 'aesthetically pleasing' because they are happy with it implies a lack of self confidence or low self esteem. I believe it takes a great deal more self confidence and self-esteem than you give credit for when it is a considered decision. It takes a good deal of backbone to choose what makes you happy over what makes everyone else happy.

Wooo,

I think you are setting up a straw man and shooting him down. I don't imagine that there is anyone on this forum who thinks that they should not exert some control over their eating. If they did, they wouldn't be on a lowcarb forum. There certainly isn't anyone in the TDC who has lost anything in the vicinity of 100 pounds who is advocating eating whatever you want to eat whenever you want to eat it. I, and everyone else who has lost over 100 pounds, knows full well that if we eat whatever momentarily strikes our fancy, we will gain back all the weight we lost and more. In my opinion, for you to waste a lot of breath arguing against that is a waste of your time.

The issue is the degree of control we exert over our bodies. At some point -- and I don't know where that point is -- control crosses the line from being human and healthy to being dysfunctional. I think we can all look at anorexics and agree they have crossed that line (and I believe you have been there yourself). Where the line is short of anorexia, I don't know, and I suspect it is in a different place for everyone.

I get invited to a lot of parties.

Message deleted by poster.