I'm trying to think about those efforts and what I did right and what I did wrong each time. I hope I can figure it out and apply those lessons.
I start off each day with the best of intentions but more often than not, at some point it falls apart. Sometimes I wonder if I really want to lose weight.
Once I got into a discussion with someone who said that fat people choose to be fat. If everyone always behaved rationally and did a cost/benefit analysis of every decision they made, I'd agree. Maybe I'm arguing semantics, but that's like saying a bank robber (and I'm not saying overeating and robbing a bank are morally equivalent) chooses to go to prison. Yes, it's much more likely than not that he will go to prison, but that's not part of the plan,. He plans to get away with it, go to South America and live happily ever after.
I'm not comfortable in my own skin. I walk too slowly and take up too much space in public places which inconveniences others. I when I have to pick something up off the floor, I have difficulty getting back up. I haven't been diagnosed with any serious obesity-related illnesses yet, but it's only a matter of time if that doesn't change. I'm looking at a shorter life and a lesser quality of life. Who in their right mind, knowing those consequences, would choose that? Yet somehow, when it comes to choosing what and how much I eat, I've chosen to eat too much of the wrong foods, which leas to those consequences.
I guess I'm not the most rational person. I do tend to be a short-term thinker and that's caused problems in several areas of my life.
It's because we don't really want to lose weight. I mean, we do, but not just for the sake of it, or for the very viable but very long-term and unglamorous goal of being healthy. We want to do it so that we can more easily do fun, active things, engage more easily and confidently with others, have a shot at loving someone and being loved back (without feeling like, or actually having, others wondering what in the world our significant other sees in us). We want to do it so maybe we won't sound like we're going to keel over and die trying to climb any flight of stairs, or, indeed, dread any time we see one, or sweat like a pig after doing any little thing, or so we don't have to go into a store and hate shopping for clothes, etc.
There always has to be a motivation. No one who is very overweight loses weight just to lose weight, even in spite of all the very real benefits -- benefits that don't even have to do with our personal desires or any of the more gratuitous positives.
Because they
can't do it. And, yes, it is just easier not to, despite any best intentions and good efforts. That doesn't mean we "choose to be fat." Usually, it just means we can't do what we have to do.
And that's because if the good intentions and best efforts don't stay in place,
forever, the weight will come back whenever it is they stop being executed on a consistent basis. People will play dumb and blame things primarily on genetics, but anybody with real weight problems that are even partially due to reasons other than that knows what they have to do to get on track, or get back on track. Yes, you can bet that they know what changed, and what, exactly they have to do start losing weight again. Even if they don't say so.
I do. The night-time (even overnight) junk-food eating and the fewer gym workouts, at least in comparison to what I was doing a couple years ago, are two easily pinpointed culprits. And when I go back to what I was doing right before, any weight I want to lose will, in all likelihood, come off again.
But such change, often on a (pardon the pun) large-scale basis, to boot, is so hard that it usually doesn't happen long enough to make a significant or long-term difference for most people, just
because it has to happen for all time. It's more than most already overweight people can do on their own.
In that sense, it's an addiction, and unlike others, it is one that can't be truly be turned away because, yes, people must eat. They just must eat less/better, and exercise more. There's no getting around it.
