Oh boy is this on my mind lately. According to my scale, I'm down 56 pounds. Got a lot more to go but we're off to the races.
I could say a lot but I'll try to keep it short and direct:
- We are, as humans, maladaptive because we were designed by nature, evolution, God, and/or random chance (and I believe it's a combination of all of the above personally but it really doesn't matter) to survive some pretty harsh conditions without the aid of technology.
For most of human history, it was vital to eat every last little bit of food you could find, because you probably weren't eating very much at all.
It's very instructive to try to hunt and gather for a short time, say a day or three, and realize how sparse food in the natural world actually is.
We have now in many (but not all) countries solved the problem of not enough food, but we have not adapted to the environment of food being plentiful.
To put it simply, we descend from the people who ate a lot (relatively speaking).
- The culture we're in gives us terrible ideas about food, what we should eat, how much, we equate eating with socializing, etc.
- I personally think, and this is really summarizing it here, that we live in a society that gives us material abundance (relatively speaking), but doesn't fundamentally address individual happiness in a meaningful way.
When someone isn't starving to death, they start thinking about their self-realization needs, need for acceptance, etc. and we live in a society which fundamentally isolates people.
I don't think people were meant to live like this in nature, in societies with millions and even billions of people under one banner, I think we were meant to live in small societies of a most a couple hundred people (Dunbar's number) that we were fundamentally very similar to.
When you have such a large population, you do get a much economically and culturally richer and more robust society. However you also create a plurality of people who, on various axes, are not suited to the dominant culture.
The problem is, if I am pro-skub and so is 33% of the population, we're not allowed to live a life of skub because 67% of the population is anti-skub and forces their views on us.
"Skub" can be any political wedge issue. The more minorities you are in "skub" wise, the less this society suits you. If you're only pro skub in one or two areas, you probably get along okay but are fundamentally unhappy about certain things, now imagine if it's a dozen or more skubs...
The point is, the larger the scale a society operates on, the less it conforms to the values and needs of individuals, and the more unhappiness it must create.
- I don't think we should "normalize" being fat to the point it's not acceptable to call someone out for it, we don't want people to be delusional for the sake of always sparing their feelings.
There's plenty of reasonable ways to tell someone they're fat that gets the point across without vitriol, such as "You are overweight and I am concerned for you".
Shaming tactics aren't going to motivate anyone. It's okay to call me "fatso", because this is unfortunate but true, but stop with the "You're fat because you're a stupid person" that comes with it.
That leap of non logic takes it too far, and if anything this kind of negative discussion just makes people more unhappy creating another barrier between an obese person and better health.
- Willpower is a tricksy thing. It is ultimately the answer, but you have to understand where your willpower comes from and that it is a limited resource.
I could for example go on an explosive rage of fitness madness, drinking nothing but vegetable juice and doing 2 cross fit sessions a day.
That would last... hardly any time at all. 1 day, maybe 2?
For someone else, that sounds ridiculous. "I do that every day and then run a marathon every weekend, what is wrong with you, you fat stupid lazy idiot?"
And I can tell you that this does not motivate one to lose weight either. It's a classic apex fallacy.
Even in my current streak of success, I hate discussing my workout because it's very simple and pathetic sounding:
I do body weight exercises for about 8-10 minutes three days a week.
I do a kettlebell circuit for about 10 minutes three days a week.
I walk until a full hour has passed regardless of whether today was bodyweight/kettlebell day.
Now is this going to be my daily workout forever? I hope not, even now I keep making it a little more intense here and there after all (I am doing more reps, I upgraded to a heavier kettebell, etc.). I hope eventually to start packing on more lean muscle, I do have goals, but for now this is all I can handle.
But to someone who can do 15 pull ups in their workout and who does 9 different kinds of deadlifts, who compares their snapshot in time to mine, yes that workout is pathetic.
Fitness is pretty much the only arena I've ever seen where it's okay for anyone, even if they are not super athletic themselves, trash anything that's less than Olympic level intensity.
It'd be like someone who saves 70% of their income mocking someone who "only" saves 20% of their income. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and this is the approach you have to take to improve your willpower.
It's the classic lesson of, you can't compare yourself to other people, but we live in a society where we constantly compare ourselves to other people!
You don't jump from "Dorito eating couch potato trainwreck" to "Crossfit loving triathlete" in one go (nor do either of those things sound like fun in the least to me), it's not a willpower switch you can just flip, there's a lot of steps in between, and you have to make little changes that you can live with.
It's better to make a small change that will be permanent going forward, forever, than to make a big change for some 12 week boot camp gimmick program.
I can't tell you how many "beginner" workouts I've seen that involve 12-20 different exercises. Nutrition is even worse, I don't need a 300 page dissertation on what the best kind of antioxidant is.
Simple. Small. Understandable. Plug the big holes: too much sugar, too many calories, too much salt, too many carbs, too much fat (I put it in that order because solving sugar solved calories for me, etc.)
Don't try to be a Navy SEAL, just learn how to make time every day for yourself because your health is important and you deserve some time for care and maintenance.
The point is, tiny little changes that are indefinitely sustainable, piled up over time, is the method, and how you get to this mindset where you're able to do that is a whole other rant.
Those are the lessons I have learned that very few fitness gurus teach. It's not their fault, they market mostly to people who are already very healthy who are trying to be superhuman.
You have to stretch and strengthen your willpower as much as any muscle, if you over exert it, you'll fail.
Really it's the getting into the mindset where you accept small, sustainable, improvements being made indefinitely going forward that's the hard part. Incrementing your nutrition and exercise is easy in comparison.
Honestly it's very similar to when I made a decision to manage myself better financially, it's not something I did overnight, and I'm not where I want to be, but I choose to consciously monitor and incrementally improve as circumstances allow. That kind of change is hard and takes time, and the support for it is a bit sparse.
