h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a yo-yo dieter in the past, I can testify to how hard this is. "Eat less, exercise more" is easier said than done.

But what I have found was the keyto my weight problem is that I never took the time to get to the emotional side of my overeating and consumption of all the wrong foods.

This time (which I promise is really the last time - just hear that "click" in my brain) I go nowhere whithout my "diet" diary, in which I write down what I ate (no cheating), and my emotions that day. For example, if I was tempted during mid-morning to go to the cookie jar at work (it's so bad to have one by the way), I simply stop and ask myself - "what prompted that urge?". Then I write down my answer in the diary and it helps me stay on the right path to healthy eating.

It is also good for writing encouragements, compliments (which I am getting more frequently now), tips for the week, stars (for every kilo I lose), etc, etc. Also, if you know there is a weekend party coming up you can monitor what you eat that week to make sure you have some "reserve" kilojoules, calories, etc for that day!

And it sounds simple, but you have no idea how fast you are making progress if you don't measure. I mean, measure everything - weight, inches around key body parts (hips, thighs, waist, etc), how much exercise you did, how many kilojoules you burned, and most importantly what you ate that week/day.

Personally, I find the idea of writing it all down more unbearable than the dieting and exercise. I know, roughly, what I have been eating and how much exercise I have been getting, so I feel no need to write it down. However, thinking about why you get the craving to hit the cookies can be useful. In my case it's either boredom or I'm hungry but can't be bothered to do 'proper' food, i.e. food with some nutritional value.

Just a few comments I'd like to make - make of them what you will. Tashalls, it still sounds to me as if you are obsessing a bit too much about food. Food is extremely important - without enough of it we will die - but thankfully our modern lifestyles are of such a kind that most of us can easily get enough food of the right kinds and therefore we shouldn't need to be thinking of it all the time.

Maybe the emotional reasons you talk about are carryovers of the instinct from the times long ago when humans had big trouble getting enough food and therefore, whenever food was available, it would have been good for them to eat as much of it as possible so that they have a good chance of staying alive until they can again find food.

The thing is, you don't have to eat whenever food is available, and you don't have to keep perfect track of every bit of food you ingest either. Eat when you need to eat, and keep busy with other things in between.

Here's another thing that might be relevant: people often crave food because their bodies really need extra nutrition! In other words it might not be emotional after all! Most modern foods are devoid of nutrients but stacked with calories. Most people don't need more than 2000 calories a day, but they need large amounts of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and trace elements. Diets composed of supermarket foods can have 4 000 calories but less than half the essential nutrients your body needs. And in that case your body will push you to eat more food because it HAS TO get in those essential nutrients. The best way to combat that is to make sure that first of all you get in the essential nutrients. Eat a diet that is rich in vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and trace elements. Then you can get in all the nutrients you really need while consuming the minimum amount of calories, and you can lose weight without even feeling hungry or suffering any loss of energy - and without obsessive calorie counting either! And if you plan well enough you can still enjoy many if not most of your favourite foods and snacks.

Most published "slimming diets" are deficient in nutrients as well as calories and cannot possibly be kept up over the long term. The diet that will work will be a permanent way of eating, and rather than looking in popular books it will help to gain some knowledge about the science of human nutrition and the composition of available foods. You can use the internet for this if you want, but check out the credentials of the authors you refer to.

Your body has a built-in instinct for how much food it needs. Combine your knowledge with your instincts, be sensitive to your REAL needs, and you won't need to spend much time planning, calculating or worrying about your diet, exercise regimen or lifestyle.

Actually, the whole food/ emotional thing is very real. And so is the fact that very few adults actually know when they are hungry or not. Restaurant portions are something like 2 to 5 times larger than any book will tell you is a portion, and no one can figure out why the percentage of overweight people is going up. Our forebearers worked at physical labor...now we sit at desks. They farmed...we shop. They walked...we drive, or use the phone/ comuputer. They had to actually prepare food, we go to McDonald's. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Let me ask this question, because it seems to be MY major stumbling block. At one point, about 12 years ago in college, I lost a lot of weight. I loved it, *until* people who had never spoken to me before started to, and guys who had never liked my personality asked me out, etc. I suddenly was popular, for no other reason than I was thin. Now my fat is somehow my protector, my fake people radar. If you like me, you like me for me, not for what I look like. It's some sort of test. Does anyone else feel like this, or am I just weird?

This is interesting because I was just reading a book about hypnotic regression therapy and the book mentioned that in many cases where the therapy was used to combat a weight problem the fat was considered a barrier against various things. The book wasn't about weight loss so it only mentioned it in passing but it was very similar to what you posted,

Montana, I live in Africa, and here people are not getting fatter, they are getting thinner, and the reason is they are too poor to buy food. People suffer from malnutrition, they are physically deformed, they are mentally stunted. The idea of thin being attractive is a very funny one to me. I would desperately love to see more people with enough meat to cover their bones over here.

What I want is that people should be WELL-NOURISHED. I want that all of this malnutrition should end, it is absolutely monstrous that people grow up with a fraction of their mental and physical capabilities because of not having had the right kind of food, and enough of it, while they were growing up.

And in "rich" countries people are still poorly nourished because junk and supermarket foods don't contain enough of the most important kinds of nutrients.

Nutrition is fantastically important. You only need to see some of the horrifying afflictions that result from really bad malnutrition to realise this. You don't eat to look a certain way - you eat so that you can live! Everything you eat goes to every part of your body, including your brain. It forms the bits of your body and also delivers the energy needed to move those bits around. In other words, YOU, and YOUR LIFE, are merely the outcomes of the food you eat. A high-quality diet translates into a high-quality life. You don't do it for anybody else. You do it for yourself. You shouldn't care a fig whether people find you more or less attractive the one way or the other! What is at stake is your life, your future, every second of every day, and the things that you will be able or unable to do. That's what nutrition is about. It's not about image.

Forgive me if I now sound obsessed on my part. It's a matter of different perspectives.

Montana: You're not the first person I've met who uses flab as a social defense mechanism. It's not all that common, I guess, but you're certainly not alone.

I can't say that I understand the logic behind it, though, to be honest. Looking slim and attractive makes it easier to make a first impression, and that is where a relationship begins. After that, you can begin to figure out what sort of person you're really dealing with. If you hide by deliberately rendering yourself less attractive, you make it so much more difficult to meet anyone at all, real or completely fake. And while it will surely make it easier for you to spot people who will *like* you for your personality, I think it will make it much more difficult to find someone who *loves* you. In my case, when looking for friendship, I'm only looking for someone who is interesting, entertaining, and/or makes me feel good about myself. But when it comes to finding love, I have to admit that one of the ingredients for me is a physical attraction. The other girl I met who padded herself against the world was grossly overweight, and I couldn't find her attractive. I do believe she still hates me for that.

Pillowcase: Montana was speaking from an American perspective, where every year the government releases a report telling us all that we've gotten fatter. If that's true, I must be wearing it well. I agree wholeheartedly with the "well-nourished" thing. Here in the States, we have every extreme... from sumo wrestler bodies to starving supermodels. The starving girls are *supposed* to be our ideal of attractiveness, but I have to admit that it doesn't do all that much for me. Jennifer Lopez is a cutie, but the poor woman has no butt. These "women" all too often have all the curves of a twelve-year old, unless they go into the shop for some frontal rebuilding... and when they do that, it just looks ridiculous. It's like mounting a 440 big block into a Ford Pinto. But women with that well-nourished look, with all those blinding curves, distinctly feminine, yet still firm and fit...

Well said, that bit about the starving supermodels. Except the thing about Jennifer Lopez not having a butt...she has serious back!
And it isn't that I haven't found love...in two weeks, my hub and I will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary. What I was trying to say is that my fat is a barrier between me and others as some sort of a test. It is my way of weeding out the shallow, fairweather folk. While I know that it is unhealthy for me to be as overweight as I am, it is mentally much more complicated than that. I wear my fat like armor. With it, I can do things that without it, I fear I would loose. Like my wicked sense of humor. Fat chicks can be a lot more sarcastic, some would say honest, than thin girls can be.
Another thing that worries me is my four year old telling me that one of the boys at preschool called her fat. She's not fat. She's 4, and weighs all of 37 pounds. She is, and has been since birth, extremely small for her age, and falls into the bottom of both her weight and height charts. Our obsession with weight and attractiveness and all of those superficial things start early, do they not?

Wow! I really started something, huh?

Okay, in answer to some of the issues raised: I am not obsessing about food - just measuring how much actually goes into my mouth. As Montana said, portion sizes are out of all control, and many people living in the land of plenty don't really experience hunger or understand when their bodies need to eat, as they are shovelling it in constantly (like myself a few months ago). So, the point I was trying to make with writing things down was to actually assess exactly how much I am eating. Hey it works for me, it may not work for others who already know when their bodies are "hungry" rather than just craving.

Another point that was raised was that bodies would tell us what they want, and that would provide us with the nutrition we need. Well, when I used to walk past a donut shop, my body would automatically tell me I "needed" a donut - not too nutritous, hey? Again, understanding why I got these uncontrollable cravings is key to my battle with my bulge.

About wearing your fat as a "fake radar" - that might work, but I know who my friends are now, that's not going to change whether I am a size 20 or size 8...

I don't want to ramble on here, but the last point I would like to make is that food is emotional for some people. I appreciate there are problems on the other end of the spectrum, such as starvation, but Western world is also experiencing an unhealthy relationship with food.

Montana, you are certainly not alone!
I lost a significant amount of weight when I was much younger, and had the same types of experiences. I was crushed to realize that people (read "males") I knew who had treated me as equal, all of a sudden treated me like I was some kind of bimbo, overnight! I fought back by refusing to "dumb down" to match the treatment I was getting. I moved to California shortly after, and the problem stopped. In California, I was no where near thin enough to be treated as a bimbo.
[I'm still trying to figure if this is a good thing or not. ]

LOL!

I noticed when I visited Calfornia (well, San Fransisco and Santa Cruz mainly) that there was a definite divide between obesity and extremes of skinniness. Is that true in your perspective (I was only there for a week)

I certainly identify with this one: I was using food to stuff down emotional turbulence that either I didn't want to deal with or didn't know how to....and I'm still wanting to stuff down emotion, although I don't do nearly as much as I used to. The other half of that is using sugar to make myself feel better when my self-esteem was in the trash....definitely don't do that any more.

I've also met a couple of people who used their bodies to protect themselves from others.....I used to use my fat to protect myself from others and myself. Stopped doing that, too.

'Our forebearers worked at physical labor...now we sit at desks. They farmed...we shop. They walked...we drive, or use the phone/ comuputer. They had to actually prepare food, we go to McDonald's. Makes you think, doesn't it?'
Well said. What kind of activities are you replacing a sedentary life with? My favourites are cycling, rock-climbing and scuba-diving. While I'm building a multimedium project (requiring huge mental activity) I'm working with a moving-company shifting furniture all the time: burns fat and builds muscle.

I've also had to pay much closer attention to what, and how often, I eat because I've been diagnosed as a Type II diabetic (that means I need pills to stimulate pancreatic activity instead of shooting-up with insulin). Nothing like a dibilitating illness to provide a wake-up call.

'If you like me, you like me for me, not for what I look like. It's some sort of test. '
As much as I've longed to be accepted for who I am, I also never really cared what anyone thought of me because I was always told (by siblings) that I wasn't worth the time of day. Deliberately becoming fatter feels more like a massive dose of self-abuse than a test of someone's personality; fake people tend to become obvious really quickly through their behaviour and language.

Years ago I was told that the building-up of fat as well as the maintainance of it was done over a long time...so getting rid of it should also take about the same amount of time. Our bodies are bioligical; they won't work as fast as a Mac G4 and we shouldn't expect them to. Any sort of change of this nature requires commitment, a certain amount of new routine (some supportive mates make a difference, too).

Fruitbat

While I posted that comment about not being thin enough to be a bimbo in jest, I HAVE occasionally felt like I would be picked up by the Fat Police (particularly in San Diego!) and felt mildly depressed. There is a strong unspoken bias here; I've lived in the Los Angeles area for (mumble, mumble ) years, and have always felt self-conscious about my weight.

I had a fairly good handle on things for a number of years, but in the past year I had a very mild stroke, recovered, then broke an ankle 2 months later! This has had the effect of curtailing my regular exercise plan, which consisted of walking 6-10 miles per week. That's not much but I leave home for work at 7 in the morning and get back about 10 hours later at the earliest, then go to school at night -- I was doing pretty good to do 6 miles weekly! I am now only just getting back into walking, and by really pushing it, I just achieved 3 miles for last week (Yea, team!). I am very encouraged by the site at h2g2.com A481754! Way to go, Researchers!
[I feel a Hurrah coming on, but can't find my Pom-Poms]

Fruitbat (or is it Mr. Fruitbat? ), I am also a diabetic of the T2 persuasion. Keep up the exercise, it's the greatest tool for controlling your blood sugar! As I am the only diabetic in my family, I had no idea where to start and incurred some damage before I finally figured it out. I know if I perservere I will be back in complete control again soon.

The only effective weight loss programme I've come across is the Emotional Truama diet. Splitting up from a long term partner , death of a loved one that sort of thing works as an excellent appetite suppressant in my experience. last year I met a frined from college who I hadn't seen for 7 years and she looked just great! She then spent the next two hours going through about the nightmare her life had become because she married the pyschonutter from Hell. SO be happy and pudgy or miserable and slim. Just two other comments: Smoking I find works well as an appetite supressant but kills me so I can either smoke and die of heart disease or not smoke and die of heart disease...(Exercise, no way)I also used to think I was very fat until I started working somewhere where I had a lot of contact with a great many American tourists. Now this is not a dig at those of you from over there , merely an observation based on what I've seen. I now consider myself to be mildely overweight. Quite a few tourists are mildely overweight, but a significant minority appear to be completely rotund. They start expanding from the ankles and their shape is a near perfect parabola ending where most of us have a neck. Middle America seems to have taken obesity into new realms. They are awesome. So remember one person's fatness is another's pleasantly rounded. I think that personal self-image is the key. Are you happy with who you are? Oh and lets shoot those b******s who have such a high metabolic rate rate that they can eat three chocolate cream eclairs and burn it off in an hour by doing the housework. My metabolic rate is so slow I put on a few ounces by merely contemplating a chocolate cream eclair and can only take it off by six weeks hard labour ( or having an emotional trauma....).

I empathise with your trauma

I can personally vouch for the efficacy of non-trauma exercise. I am sitting here wearing a pair of 32" waist jeans, which means I am now the same wiast size I was aged 18 (now 37 all but a couple of weeks).

Less than a year ago I was straining at the 40" waist of my chinos. Exercise increases your metabolism! Apparently I can now metabloise the equivalent of seven Big Macs a day without even getting out of bed!

Hi Androyd,

I hope that entry was "tongue in cheek"...sounds like you and your friend has had a rough time of it. Although I don't know whether I would advocate traumatic events as a means to losing weight successfully to the general populace. And people respond to trauma differently - where you and your friend responded in a way that caused dramatic weight loss, others might find consolation in food.

Emotions can run both ways, I knew a girl in uni who always lost heaps of weight during exams (even though she didn't have much weight to spare in the first place), as her stress acted as an appetite suppressant whereas mine acted as an "all systems go for food" signal!

And I would caution that smoking does suppress your appetite, which is the sad reason why so many women are taking it up in droves while statistics say their male counterparts are quitting in equal numbers (in Australia, anyway). But smoking has far worse repercussions on health than being overweight. With sensible diet and moderate exercise, everyone I know who has quit smoking has not seen any weight gain.

I'm terribly informal, so Fruitbat will do well.

An observation I forgot to make before: we now work from desks, yet we continue to eat the same amount as if we'd just come in from the fields....and few bother to check this (we also want to get our money's worth at the 'all you can eat' counter)....

Why do people who've burnt off X-calories typing away at a keyboard then go off and have a regular lunch? They hardly move about at all, so the reality is they need very little sustainance to keep them going (very light snacks instead of a meal might have the same effect). I've been at conferences where most people are sitting and listening for three hours, then they go and have a high-fat, highly-sugared lunch as if they'd just come from the track. Watching that left me staggered because I could still feel breakfast sitting inside while my body moved very little.

I HAD to both curtail my dietary habits (which are still of dubious quality) and my sugar intake at the same time as doing semi-regular blood-tests. This made me conscious of how long food takes to burn off. I used to eat about every three hours or whenever I got really bored. Now I'm obliged to wait 4-6 hours (unless I sense light-headedness coming on)...and then I really do feel empty. THAT's when the light meals should start.
Anyone see 'The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life In The Universe'? (Lily Tomlin's one-woman show, written by Jane Wagner) There's a line in that show where a character's talking about selling the idea of between-meal snacks to third-world countries: "These people don't know where their next meal is coming from, so the idea of snacking between meals simply never occurred to them."
Our society 'encourages' over-eating and under-exercising in order to sell us all the tools necessary for the 'new image' of being slim and healthy again.....and we're all buying into it. This includes all of the messages about what makes a 'perfect body', the 'ideal image' (in whose opinion?)....and which components combine to produce the 'perfect body'.
Never mind the quick-fix: there isn't one. Let's take all the responsibility for our behaviours and sort them out in a reasonable and effective manner.

Fruitbat

Thank you so much for reminding me of "The Search..."! I loved it -- my favorite line being, "Reality...just a collective hunch?", by Trudy the Bag lady.

Negative emotional events can certainly play a large part in weight loss or gain. I lost my husband of 15 years to a complication from cancer survival, and just stopped taking my insulin for three months. I was not consciouly trying to kill myself, I just was in a fog of denial and didn't care. The result was that I lost about 25 pounds, some from out-of-control diabetes (whereby the body catabolizes muscle mass to get the fuel it needs) and partly because I wasn't eating as much. Two good things DID come from the experience: I found out I wasn't a Type I diabetic after all, and I finally, after 11 years of spotty self-care, got serious about my condition and turned it around!
(See, you didn't need to drag out the violins, after all! )

It sounds like you've found the true answer to overeating. I, also keep a record of my food intake, but the more important thing is to truthfully examine your thoughts and frustrations at the time when the urge for bingeing comes on.
Check out my first posting, entitled physics and metaphysics. I'm brand new to this posting business, so my first entry was a repetitious thing, but I'll get better.
My college professor has assigned this website to us for evaluation, so here I am.
[email protected]

Hey there Researcher 167514, what do you think of the site so far? And what subject is this for?