I lost 30 lbs after BD and IHS. When I found this site I was amazed how common the drastic weight loss was among those posting here. So many sitches I read through where 25-30lbs seemed to be spot on.
According to Christopher Titus (Love is Evol) that's because that's how much a soul weighs. Grim humor. Worth a watch.
M 20+ T25+ S ~15.5 (BD) BD 4/6/15 D 12/23/16
"Someone I loved once gave me A box full of darkness. It took me years to understand, That this too, was a gift." ~ Mary Oliver
Just to be clear, I’m not at all advocating people do a divorce, bomb drop or any other type of crash diet. It’s not healthy. My entire point is to point out the very same body (person) that loses 30 pounds without even trying but can’t lose the same 30 pounds when they try. Their body is clearly capable of the weight loss, but as LM sort of points out, they are not and instead blame other reasons. This does not apply to everyone. There are clearly medical reasons for some not being able to shed pounds. It’s just not the norm.
KML you’ve turned into a one song band singing the same song over and over again. We’ve tried masks for 2 years and vaccines for 1. If that’s still all we are pushing it’s a fail. Medication that works but can’t be obtained is a fail. I’m just judging by results. Slowly but surely the religious mask wearers and basement hiders are also getting Covid - while still claiming hiding away and wearing mask works.
The two (weight loss and Covid) are very much the same - blaming other reasons for the failures. We’ve got to get better at Covid treatment. We did it for HIV. We can do it for this virus - but not if we don’t think about and try different things.
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
Lol - Don, we didn’t get better at HIV treatment for a decade and we STILL don’t have a vaccine. People still need to wear condoms and practice safe sex to prevent its spread. What we have achieved with Covid is a freaking miracle. Paxlovid has only just been approved (because research takes time ) and takes five months to manufacture. The failure of two out of three monoclonal antibodies because of a new variant is just one of the things that can happen with a new virus. The best way to alleviate the terrible pressure on our hospitals and medical staff right now is for people to get vaccinated and to continue the public health measures that slow the spread - masks and distancing.
I've spent a lot of my life dealing with issues pertaining to diet, being exposed to issues around diet, been a life-long dieter (since about 21 anyway), and have failed many a diet.
Losing weight is not about willpower. People have the will, they often don't have the knowledge, the resources, or the emotional ability to see it through. Ginger is correct, Dr. Fung's book is life-changing. I mentioned on my thread the other day about work on aging, which very much correlates with Dr. Fung. The geneticist behind the work on aging I mentioned is an intermittent faster and like Dr. Fung sees glucose/insulin as a major contributor to most health issues, including aging.
I lived with someone for 25 years who wanted me to be thin. He became obsessed with diet and was an early adopter of paleo/Atkins/Keto/intermittent fasting. He begged me to read the Obesity Code and I finally did. But what he could not do, was to change my thoughts around food, how I interacted with food, and how my brain processed thoughts around food.
Obesity can, I think, in some instances be medically-related and be in a different ballpark I'm not addressing here. For the most part, obesity is driven by other factors. There are people who don't have access to grocery stores/farmer's markets and fresh fruits and vegetables, there are people who don't have access to information about how we lose and gain weight, there are people who don't have the funds to buy healthy foods. Those are social issues that society as a whole needs to resolve. There are many doctors who shame obese patients without endeavoring to help them. Obese patients often avoid doctors as a result (I am one who did). Most doctors get a couple of hours of training on nutrition and obesity (as my then H confirmed). Perhaps it is different now.
There are experiments showing that little girls playing with dolls would rather play with the ones missing arms/legs than be fat. As all other forms of discrimination started to become unacceptable, it was still safe to discriminate against fat people. Think of how many movies have the fat character, the fat target of the joke, etc. I won't get into body positivity here, there are parts I agree with, but parts I think are misguided from a scientific point of view.
I could easily lose weight on a carb-restricted diet. What I could not do, is stop the mental thoughts around restriction/deprivation/scarcity. As a result I always gained the weight back (and then some). Weight loss has two components: the physical part and the mental part. To lose weight and keep off, both of those have to be in the picture.
I wake up every day now and make a commitment to myself about what I will eat for the day (I write it down). I only eat when I'm hungry. I stop eating the moment I'm satisfied (and if I'm not sure I wait 20 minutes or more after I've eaten and drink to make sure I'm not thirsty). I eat very few carbs, I generally eat only once a day, but if I want a carb or I want more food, I eat it as ong as I've planned for it and if I haven't I consider it an urge that I need to resist.
I have told myself there are no foods that I cannot have. There are no banned foods (even carbs). I just ask myself to plan for it. To move the urge from the primitive brain to the logical brain which can (the next day or a future day) say, huh, do you really want that cookie you wanted yesterday? You know it will cause an insulin spike and cause a cascade of events that will take a lot of time and effort to recover from. Guess what, I never want the cookie anymore. The difference between a primitive brain afraid of scarcity and telling me to eat it now in case I don't have the chance later, and a logical brain that says hey, the fridge has food, the supermarket is open, there is always another cookie, so is that what you really want to do? Again, the answer is usually no. But when it is, I eat the cookie, don't beat myself up over it, and don't have perfectionist fantasies of oh well, I blew that, I may as well eat everything I can, start again on Monday, next week, the New Year, etc.
I've never been a drinker, but I know there is a concept of a dry drunk. When I lost weight in the past I was white-knuckling it, waiting for the reward later and the diet to be over. I failed every time. Now I just see myself as someone (like most people) who doesn't handle glucose/insulin well. But the difference is that I'm letting my logical brain control the situation and not creating a sense of deprivation. Just as I understand recovering alcoholics benefit from continuing participation in meetings, I will continue to follow the research on obesity, participate in the discussion, and make this a priority. But I will no longer feel shame for what I weigh, look down on other people who don't have the benefit of the resources, education, and time that I do, or simply have not chosen to make this a priority in their own life as I have.
Grrr - railway has bailed on us for the better part of a week. They can't put together a complete crew. If one guy on a crew is sick, they cancel the run since they don't mix separate crews together. Kind of makes sense as I would expect running a train and swapping cars in and out of sidings is undoubtedly complicated and requires close team-work. I have a call in to my service rep to see if he can confirm if we'll get a switch tonight. Latest news is that it's looking unlikely.
I have 5 cars on my siding that should have shipped out last week and now am up to 23 cars waiting to be called in. Just getting behinder and behinder. I have one tank that is completely full so production has been diverted (can't just turn this thing on and off) and two tanks that are pretty much completely dry.
Rather worrisome given that we're on the back end of the supply chain as a bulk commodity producer. Each car holds a bit under 200,000 lbs of product that we make out of air, water and gruffy dust so that comes to a bit over 6 million pounds of raw materials that aren't moving. And we're one of the smaller producers in our industry much of which moves by rail. I've seen a few customers pop out of the wood-work in recent times too who had gone to our competitors - so I expect everyone is struggling.
I'm still working from home for this week to minimize the people at the plant. I was talking to the lead operator this morning who was still coughing like a life-long smoker. Worried about a few of the guys. One of them - who works in an out-building by himself has a wife with COPD and refuses to go into the main plant for very good reason.
Our plant staff is split about 50-50 between guys my age and the under 30 crowd. Most of the drivers who haul our loads are in their 50s or later. Not a lot of young guys want to haul hazardous bulk even though the pay is good. It's a tough rig to handle and takes very steady nerves.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
How are you feeling? Well enough to be shoveling all that snow without relapsing?
I’m actually surprised that the supply chains haven’t broken down more and earlier than they have. Then again, the thing about Omicron, at least in the States, is that as bad as the numbers look - the real numbers are likely 5-10 times higher due to widespread use of rapid tests which are not getting reported. Thank god Omicron did turn out to be less deadly than delta, if it had been the equally deadly with this high transmission we would be seeing society starting to break down right now.
How are you feeling? Well enough to be shoveling all that snow without relapsing?
Thanks for checking in. I actually have a nice little self-propelled snowblower that does all the heavy work. I did shovel the drive by hand while it was above freezing - just a couple of inches - but I didn't want it to freeze in place. I had to go in to town yesterday at lunch on an errand and saw OM out shoveling out their driveway by hand. We'd gotten close to a foot of snow on top of the wet stuff that my snowblower dealt with without issue.
I'm feeling "ok". Still have a touch of a cough that gets better every day.
I heard from 20S yesterday. She's stuck in isolation in a hotel paid for by her employer (she lives with her Gran so probably a good thing) and has tested positive. The group home she works at has pretty much everyone both staff and kids down with Covid. Not good.
Originally Posted by kml
I’m actually surprised that the supply chains haven’t broken down more and earlier than they have.
Keep in mind that even with just-in-time inventory that most places try to operate at, the supply chain is a pretty long and slow moving thing. For example I have about 200,000lbs of potassium hydroxide sitting on a siding right now that I can't get to - railway cancelled again last night. I believe that the end customer is using this as part of their paper making process. Stock up on toilet paper This load should have been unloaded nearly a week ago so my customer's customer has probably had to pause their production until we can get this on to our siding and unloaded.
Most of the logistics companies I deal with are short on drivers. We used to be able to promise customers delivery within a couple of days of order. We're now out almost a full week. I'm having to make decisions now on more or less which customers to disappoint because we just don't have the product to ship even if we had a truck to haul it with. I have noticed as well that a few of our customers for one of our more unique products seem to have just dropped off the map which in some ways is good because my tanks are pretty dry. But worrying as well. Their order patterns historically have been very stable with a lot of them taking 18-20 tonnes every 3 or 4 weeks.
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In other news I did a foray into online dating and got some success. A local charity offered "blind dates with a book" so I picked one up. I'm looking forward to seeing who my date is. Currently they're wrapped up in plain paper and string in my living room. I'm sure they'll be fine there for a week or so
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
I have noticed as well that a few of our customers for one of our more unique products seem to have just dropped off the map which in some ways is good because my tanks are pretty dry. But worrying as well. Their order patterns historically have been very stable with a lot of them taking 18-20 tonnes every 3 or 4 weeks.
A loss in volume doesn't bode well long-term. Hopefully, it's bound to a reduction in demand that will rectify as markets open up more, and not them switching to one of your competitors. Everyone is having supply chain issues so my money would be on the former.
Originally Posted by Andrew
In other news I did a foray into online dating and got some success. Currently they're wrapped up in plain paper and string in my living room.
I rest my case--if your living room's clear of baggage, dating is easy!
I rest my case--if your living room's clear of baggage, dating is easy!
Especially since it's a brown paper package tied up with string .... this is one of my favourite things ....
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Being a single parent even with adult kids can be tough. Boy - I wish I could "send for backup". Not that the kids' Mother would be of much use, she just tended to get angry if there were any issues.
Nothing really serious though - just be nice to have some help. Double-teaming the kids was a lot more effective.
Friday night I was starting to run the water into the tub for my Friday night soak and movie (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) when the land-line rang. It was my son who apologized for not getting back to me (last I saw him was at Christmas) and that yes, he was on for brunch on Sunday. We chatted for a bit, caught up on some of his accomplishments (finally has his full driver's license) and then he mentioned that he was in a parking lot in the town his mother lives in and had locked his keys in his car. Sigh. It's only 10 minutes away for me and I have his spare key. Not clue if his mother does or not - she would have been 3 minutes.
Sigh
I drove in, we chatted some more and he mentioned in passing that he'd just left his job with no other job to hand. I knew he'd been unhappy there, made noises of support and reassured him that if he got stuck that the Bank of Dad could help out. He assured me that there would be no need. Of course though that put my worry warts into over-drive.
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Had a lovely brunch with him today. Got a few more details. He's been having a lot of stress around his job so I suppose it was a positive thing. He's examining his options which include going back to school in some fashion. He's kind of stuck in his geography as he has a pretty cheap apartment but there are in fact quite a few options around both for education and employment. We chatted for a couple of hours - the cafe is located in an old mill that is also a book-shop so we wandered around there for a while too looking for some specific books I'm wanting and he browsed for himself.
His cat is doing fairly well. He has her on a diet because when her sister got sick she was eating both of their dinners and got rather chunky. He's also thinking very hard about adopting a kitten to have 2 cats again. I did warn him that if he got more than one (then they'd have a buddy) that the smell of 3 cats in a one-bedroom apartment might be a bit much which he agreed with.
He's pretty excited about the Super Bowl coming up - he's a Bengals fan. I understand very little of such things so he kept the explanations simple so that's going to occupy him next Sunday. He's well supplied with food. He just pulled his 18lb turkey out of his freezer and plans on cooking that up later this week. He's seen me do up the duck for enough years that he'll figure out the left-overs and probably make broth as well. So I don't need to worry about his food supplies. I was actually very proud of him when he was talking about what he's been eating lately. No convenience foods, everything made from scratch using whole ingredients. It's perhaps funny in some ways that I've perhaps been a bigger influence on his diet, cooking and housekeeping than his mother. I think that the years he spent here with it being the two of us were very formative for him.
Despite my worries I think he's doing ok. It bothers me more than a bit that this young man who is coming up on 28 seems to be just drifting along. I suppose that I can't measure him against the standards of my generation though. I do hope that he gets his next thing sorted out fairly soon. He's probably got at least a couple of months expenses saved - he spends practically no money and has no interest in "stuff".
I'm proud of both of my children. They are great human beings. Are they as materially successful as I might hope? Nope. They both though have their feet under them and are determined to make it on their own and don't want any sort of rescue from Dad. They also know that Dad is out there though.
As a funny aside we chatted a bit about if something where to happen to me. My son's opinion - and probably a correct one - is that his sister who is an organizing diva would have everything sorted out and he would be "boots on the ground" and certainly take in my cat. Nice to know that he's got a clear vision on things although both of us expect these sort of issues to be at least 20 years out at least.
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On Friday night I nearly reached out to his mother though - someone who the last time - probably 6 years ago I tried to co-parent with just told me that I needed to just tell him what to do and that he should just listen to me. She did always try to make me the heavy. Wish I had some help on this which I think is something that pretty much everyone else here can sympathize with.
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Just needed to get that off my chest. Monthly house-cleaning done. Haggis again for dinner with fresh bread. The diet book suggested here was released by the library to my e-reader. I've made a start on it so that will probably be my companion tonight. I don't really expect it to have an opinion on haggis though.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
This load should have been unloaded nearly a week ago so my customer's customer has probably had to pause their production until we can get this on to our siding and unloaded.