The Fat Trap

[kangofu]

The Fat Trap
Source - NYTimes
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: December 28, 2011For 15 years, Joseph Proietto has been helping people lose weight. When these obese patients arrive at his weight-loss clinic in Australia, they are determined to slim down. And most of the time, he says, they do just that, sticking to the clinic’s program and dropping

Comments

[countrygirl_914]

What perfect timing, since I just realized tonight that I've gained back pretty much all of the 30 lbs I lost while in grad school.

Fuck it all.

[ohloverx]

Well...fuck. Fucking fuck it all to hell. This article triggers the hell out of my anxiety. As someone who has to be hyper-vigilant about what I eat and how many calories I take in/burn off in order to maintain/lose weight and who has a big family history of obesity on BOTH sides...just, fuck it. I hit almost 180 last year and it was the largest I've ever been (I'm a short girl who carries her weight right around her stomach. Not good.). I started counting calories and working out at the end of July and I'm down to around 150. I say "around" because I was down to 148 and just a few holiday days of not working out and eating, literally, only slightly more calories than usual (another 100 or 200 cals.) and I gained FOUR pounds which I can't get off now for the life of me. Now I know why I'm having to fight for it. I knew this would be a lifestyle change, but the thought of getting that big again (or bigger)...seriously, I can't deal with it

[homasse]

it's hard to embrace it.It IS hard to embrace when it causes you health problems, and I kinda know how you feel (diabetes in EVERYONE on dad's side, including an aunt who went blind, plus all the women on that side of the family have the same fat body build, which includes me, and one doctor is nagging me constantly to lose weight because of GERD, and others because I have a collagen disorder that makes me prone to sprains and dislocations, so if I don't tone my muscles more, I'm in for more sprains, dislocations, surgeries, and eventual arthritis), and all that makes me NOT love all the extra weight I'm carrying

[ohloverx]

Thanks, bb. You always make such great comments and do such a wonderful job at comforting and telling it like it is

[homasse]

Thanks

[romp]

Wow. That part about the permanent changes after dieting is intense.

[sesmo]

Interesting article. And <3 for including the pointers to the studies.

[kyra_neko_rei]

This was painful to read---how people went about depriving themselves of food, or monitoring their food . . . it sounds like no wonder most diets fail, nothing has any business being that horrible, never letting up. It's like a protection racket almost, where you pay and pay and pay, not for anything good but to avoid something bad that will happen if you let up for an instant.

Anything that is that all-consumingly unpleasant is not going to work very often and is a really shitty way of doing things. Not to mention that it doesn't surprise me at all that the body reacts to a drop in calories with AM STARVING MUST STORE FOOD. At least exercise can only make you miserable for a percentage of your day, but denying yourself food can suck every waking minute

[omimouse]

Because most of the 'drop the pounds' shit is marketed at women, and women will get told that weight training will make them bulk out like they were going into pro wrestling. And that 'too much' muscle on a woman is 'ugly'.

I hate this culture SO FUCKING MUCH.

[kyra_neko_rei]

Which is the most ridiculous thing EVER, because not only is it pretty invisible under most fat, but if you have more muscle mass than you want you can lose it by doing absolutely nothing and it melts away.

You'd think people would consider it just as good to replace fat which is hard to get rid of with muscle that, if no more desired than fat, is easy to get rid of.

[keestone]

Most people think that unused muscle TURNS INTO fat. (I've been getting this one constantly from the MiL lately, who seems to think that the only exercise one should do is walking. Now I have absolutely nothing against walking, and I do quite a bit of it. It is healthful and a great way to get places. However, it's kind of a base level of fitness for me, and unless I spend several hours a day walking it's not going to get me feeling as fit as when I was doing a bit of weight training. I didn't gain weight because my muscle turned into fat when I dropped the gym membership, dammit, I gained weight because I was eating a bunch of processed junk while not getting enough exercise because I didn't have time for anything but study, thesis-writing, and chucking a frozen pizza into the oven while I wrote.)