I'm in trouble at work again... I should learn just to keep my mouth shut.
I went in to the office kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch. A woman, she is single, obese, and trying to find someone, was there. As I walked in she looked me up and down.
She remarked that she thought I had lost weight.
I said that I had dropped about 10 pounds.
She asked me how, because she knew I had been injured and haven't been doing my regular work outs... And then she began to cry. She told me that she had been trying to lose weight for so long, but she just can't. It wasn't fair for someone "thin" like me to be able to lose weight so quickly, easily, and without working out.
She was crying... I took pity on her, and I wanted to help. So... I took a look at her lunch. Fried chicken tenders with Cheetos and a small spinach salad with ranch dressing. Total calorie count something like 900 to 1000.
My sandwich and potato chips about 500 calories.
So... I said that the plan for losing weight is deceptively simple. You need to take in fewer calories than you burn. I told her that it is easy to find a rough estimate of her Resting Metabolic Rate, to give her an idea of how many calories she burns in a day doing nothing. Take that number, and take in fewer calories that that. Because she spends the day doing more than nothing, she will always end up with a net calorie deficit. Her body will take care of the rest. Losing weight is an energy problem, nothing more. Nutrition is a completely different story.
She looked at me slightly offended, and said that it wasn't easy to lose weight. I said that I knew that very well. I said that the plan is simple. The execution is difficult. Your body doesn't want to lose weight. It likes the weight.
She is now looking at me more than slightly offended, and said that her body doesn't like the weight! But it is hard to lose weight because she gets hungry.
To that I said, trying to use logic to soothe the offence, that hunger is the tough part. You have to have the will to get past the hunger for to get to your goal. The hunger is the worst as you start. It gets better as your body adjusts to the calorie deficiency.
She is more offended now, well... No longer offended. Now she is angry. She asks if I think that "overweight" people don't have self control or discipline.
Well, fuck, I think to myself. I've stepped all the way into it now. There is no way to extract myself at this point. Well intentioned or not, I've managed to hit the hot button on all fat people. Discipline and Self Control. If you had more of both, you wouldn't be fat. The simple answer is "yes" but as all things, it is more complicated than that. The problem is that your body is sneaky. Like I said it WANTS to keep the fat. It LOVES the fat. Back in the good old days it NEEDED the fat, because it never knew when it would get fed again.
I said that I didn't mean for it to sound like I was saying she was not disciplined or had no self control. What I was saying is that hunger is hard to deal with. I told her what I do. I pointed to her lunch. I asked if this was a typical lunch.
Very angry now, she said that it was. I said that if this was typical, then why not try to reduce it by one chicken tender and 1/4 of the Cheetos? That isn't that much food overall, but, if that is typical, the reduction in her weekly calorie count would be significant. Overall, she would sacrifice nothing in terms of taste or restricting what she wanted to eat. Eating a slightly smaller portion would make a good difference in her overall diet.
At this point she just left the room. I knew I was in trouble, because she was angry. Sure enough, I got called in by my boss. I was fat shaming her. I don't even know what that means.
The long and the short of it is this... Keep your mouth shut, and weigh loss is an energy based problem. With an energy based solution. Take in less than you use. The bigger the deficit, the more weight you will lose as your body fights to get in to equilibrium.
Not taking in as much as you use has two avenues to success. Burn more, i.e. exercise and move more to increase energy demand, thus burning more, or control your self and take in less. In both cases self discipline is at the core of success. What does that mean for the overweight? You have to have MORE self control than the person NOT losing weight. To be truly successful, you must eat less and exercise more, at first. Then, when you have reached goal weight, you must maintain your lifestyle at that level. If you exercise less, but keep taking in what you were, you will gain weight. If you eat more, but exercise the same, you will gain weight. If you body metabolism changes for the worse, you will gain weight. Keep a scale and weigh yourself regularly. Make little changes when the scale moves too high. This is lifestyle change, and self discipline.
I wasn't fat shaming the poor woman. I wanted to help her. But, people want to hear comforting lies over the hard truth. They want you to say, "Oh, I'm sorry for your glandular problem." Not, your glandular problem is an excuse that you use to over eat.
No comments:
Post a Comment