skylights
i love
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2010
- Messages
- 7,756
- MBTI Type
- INFP
- Enneagram
- 6w7
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
For the average person, yes, simply restricting calories and increasing physical activity will make them lose weight.
That doesn't make it either healthy or sustainable.
I'm assuming Jix is a pretty normal guy with no significant physical or psychological issues that would prevent him from losing weight and no significant environmental obstacles to losing weight. In this case, awesome, I'm glad it's working for you. :]
For others it's not so purely chemical-behavioral, and it will take different strategies to get them to a healthy state. These are much less clear, much less supported, and much less of an easy fix. Personally, I think actually the majority of overweight people are overweight because of a combination of socioeconomic, psychological, and behavioral reasons. Depending on the state of each of those variables, it will be easier or not to impact weight. Behavior is probably the easiest fix of the three.
Personally, I am more healthy at a relatively heavier weight now than I was having body image issues and eating a can of chicken soup and a salad a day and then a whole box of Pop-Tarts out of nowhere once a week when I was 13. I am muscularly built and I hated my body as a teen, and unsucessfully tried to starve myself (unsurprisingly, when you're mostly muscle and not much fat, you don't lose much weight). Now, would I lose weight if I ate better and exercised more? Yes. Would I be healthier? Maybe, as long as I didn't fall back into the psychological and behavioral patterns I used to have. My biggest obstacle personally is hitting the middle ground between too little and too much, in particular because I am poor at judging my levels of satiation and exertion. As of right now, I'd rather be a little soft around the edges and eat like a normal person than be a more physically healthy weight and grapple with psychological dysfunction. For me, losing weight is hard because it's so tied up in psychological struggle and self-esteem.
That doesn't make it either healthy or sustainable.
I'm assuming Jix is a pretty normal guy with no significant physical or psychological issues that would prevent him from losing weight and no significant environmental obstacles to losing weight. In this case, awesome, I'm glad it's working for you. :]
For others it's not so purely chemical-behavioral, and it will take different strategies to get them to a healthy state. These are much less clear, much less supported, and much less of an easy fix. Personally, I think actually the majority of overweight people are overweight because of a combination of socioeconomic, psychological, and behavioral reasons. Depending on the state of each of those variables, it will be easier or not to impact weight. Behavior is probably the easiest fix of the three.
Personally, I am more healthy at a relatively heavier weight now than I was having body image issues and eating a can of chicken soup and a salad a day and then a whole box of Pop-Tarts out of nowhere once a week when I was 13. I am muscularly built and I hated my body as a teen, and unsucessfully tried to starve myself (unsurprisingly, when you're mostly muscle and not much fat, you don't lose much weight). Now, would I lose weight if I ate better and exercised more? Yes. Would I be healthier? Maybe, as long as I didn't fall back into the psychological and behavioral patterns I used to have. My biggest obstacle personally is hitting the middle ground between too little and too much, in particular because I am poor at judging my levels of satiation and exertion. As of right now, I'd rather be a little soft around the edges and eat like a normal person than be a more physically healthy weight and grapple with psychological dysfunction. For me, losing weight is hard because it's so tied up in psychological struggle and self-esteem.