Do as I say.
Someone has pointed out to me that my saying diets don’t work is…kind of a lie, at least for me personally.
The fact is, when I went on my very first diet back in 2001, I weighed at least 187 pounds. I say “at least” because that was my official doctor’s office weight about four months earlier. I suspect I weighed more by the time I started the diet, because I had moved up a clothing size by that point, but as I didn’t own a scale, I don’t know what my true “starting weight” was.
When I stopped dieting, I pretty speedily gained about 15 - 20 pounds, and now my body has settled here around 143 and doesn’t seem inclined to move more than 5 pounds in either direction (interesting sidenote: my original goal weight was 145 — odd that my body picked that as well).
But that is at least 44 pounds below my highest weight. So, as this person pointed out, I can say that diets don’t work, but the one that brought me to my original goal? Well, it seems to have kind of stuck.
I have a really different lifestyle now then I did in 2001. I was decidedly sedentary then; now I get an hour or more of physical activity most every day. I also eat in a very different way. Back then, entire weeks would pass without me consuming a fruit or a vegetable; now at least half my grocery shopping is done in the produce section.
So, maybe my natural weight range is just kind of…broad? Like, my body wants to be in the 140s when I’m pretty active and eating in a minimally processed kind of way, and it likes to go up to around 190 when I’m not working out and mostly consuming processed, refined foods?
I don’t have an answer for this person. I don’t know why my body has maintained that weight loss for close to 6 years. I’m eating more these days than I did while dieting and I have so much more muscle than I ever did pre-diet, so my body just seems to function in a different way.
Or maybe I’m just an exception, because the other women in my life, the ones who have been on and off diets numerous times in these same 6 years, none of them have maintained any long-term weight changes. So my single experience doesn’t change the fact that, for most people, diets won’t work.
But how convincing is that coming from me?
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Ok, but is your current weight (and past goal weight) what is said to be within the normal range for your height (before they lowered the criteria)? You dieted to below that weight, and gained back part of what you had lost, so in that sense, the diet didn’t fully work. And if you went back to the way you ate, pre-diet, would you gain it all back? I would say probably. But just because you have lost weight and kept it off for 6 years doesn’t mean you can’t say that diets don’t work for the majority of people. There are other people out there who can diet and lose weight and keep it off indefinitely, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. Personally, I can believe what you say, no matter what your personal experience has been with dieting, simply because I know no two people are exactly alike and what works for one will not necessarily work for another. And the major thing is this: thin, fat, or in-between, all women need to be able to love and accept the body they have. You have a lot to contribute in that conversation, and I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.
One other thing, I think you could be onto something with the processed foods/less active versus minimally processed foods/more active weight ranges. It’s what works for you, others, well, their mileage may vary.
When you stopped dieting, you gained weight. When you started practicing a more HAES-based lifestyle, you wound up losing some weight. Sounds like diets don’t work even for you - HAES does! *grin*
See, I would say that when you were 187 or whatev, you probably were well above your setpoint range — which you seem to be in now.
From what I understand, it IS possible to exceed your natural range, just as it’s possible to diet your way below it. Your natural range is where you end up when you eat and exercise in a balanced way. In the prisoner study that showed deliberate long-term deliberate weight GAIN is just as elusive as long-term deliberate weight loss, the men did gain weight by overeating substantially — it just fell away as soon as they went back to normal. So I would guess that you were out of balance when you were sedentary and eating mostly junk food, just as you were out of balance when you were overexercising and restricting calories.
I’ve been meaning to do a post about this. My mom was another exception to the rule — she lost 65 lbs. and kept it off until she died 20 years later. But the big picture is a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, despite seriously restricting calories, she never got smaller than a size 14/16 — the range she ultimately settled in was about the same as my setpoint range. Since I’m a dead ringer for her in all other ways, that’s not too surprising.
Unfortunately, talking about this then opens the door to every fat person saying, “Well, am I above MY natural range? Do I actually NEED to diet?” When you and my mom could just be in the freak 5% for reasons we’ll never know. And the other important thing we don’t know is, would you and my mom have lost the same amount of weight through intuitive eating instead of dieting? It stands to reason that if overeating got you above your natural setpoints, finding your way to balanced eating naturally, instead of by restricting calories and then reintroducing them, might well have landed you in the same place.
Heh. The Rotund just nailed the point in a fraction of the words I used, as always.
Sounds to me like you aren’t on a diet.
Hi! Long time listener, first time caller…
Part of the “Diets Don’t Work” mentality, for me, is that diets cause craziness in my head (never mind that I also suck at dieting). So, in that way alone, they don’t work for me.
I think the fact that you were smaller when dieting but still chose to give them up shows that diets do not work for you as well. Although you were a “successful” dieter in the way that you kept the pounds off and managed to keep yourself below your set point.
I am still working on my morning cup of tea, so I hope this makes sense.
I believe a person’s setpoint is what they weigh if they eat without trying to eat more or less than they want.
This means that the setpoint can be affected by how much exercise they get and what sorts of food they’re eating–the setpoint is the minimum aggravation weight for a given lifestyle.