MR.C Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Dave, You are the sole reason i will not be renewing my membership. You are one hell of a sad man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 1 hour ago, Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman said: This is the sort of dogmatically damaging approach that also leads to umpteen mental health issues, from body image problems to full blown eating disorders, let alone depression, anxiety and addiction. All of which then tend to either make the original issue of weight gain worse, or in the most catastrophic cases, cause such a massive reversal that physical health can be damaged permanently, even to the very extreme cases of death. Dave, you have very eloquently expressed what I ineptly waffled around earlier. The big challenge in my mind is how you balance the need to keep personal responsibility in place, empowering people to feel they can take action to help themselves, whilst avoiding the kinds of very damaging impacts you described by a fat shaming type approach. I’ve yet to square that one away in my head, and although I personally don’t get affected by it, I have two daughters who we have to be very careful with to maintain their self esteem in the face of relentless social media/TV images. it’s certainly a very complex topic. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Just now, fatblokestu said: it’s certainly a very complex topic. that it undoubtedly is. My niece is in her final year this year of university, before becoming a Clinical dietician- perhaps similar to the person Chris saw? It’s been a real eye opener for the rest of the family just how medically complex her studies have been and how incredibly complex a subject it is. (Obviously we’re talking in this instance way beyond weight control, and into the realms of drug and treatment interactions, within the hospital, as well as the effects on recovery etc.) The links to mental health beyond the simplistic/basic are fascinating too. Personally, I have (medically diagnosed) depression, that will come and go over time, (returning with a vengeance post lock down), which is also partially linked to PTSD. I don’t speak to use any as an excuse. But it makes all sorts of complications to life, weight loss included. Personally. What I’ve found in the last year or so, is all the good habits formed while loosing six stone, around 2018 ish, seemed, when my “spin” seemed to get knocked off axis somewhat, post pandemic, to almost get reset to some of the decades ingrained bad habits from before. Frustratingly, they’re not all gone, and loosing the weight a second time, so soon, is soooo much harder. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR.C Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 I Withdraw my last post, i was way out of order and apologise to Dave. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Thank you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff oakley Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 It is good we are discussing these issue frankly and openly. I was quite shocked when I was speaking with the dietician as to how complex this can be. As I said I have had weight issues all my life at this was the first time some aspects of the problem was explained. It seems bizarre that a person might be eating so little that their body stores everything it can as it thinks it is being starved, which then leads to more issues. That doesn't apply to me but one can see how easy a person might develop an eating disorder if they keep being told eat less. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaykay42 Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Hi! I think/believe we're coming upon a distinction here: with weight management as well as with other areas in life there are fundamentally different starting points and hence fundamentally different solutions required. What I'm trying to say is probably easier to explain in quite simplistic dimensions of just two distinct groups of people, just to get the point across. However, I'm a firm believer that life is not binary - plenty of shades of grey out there. Anyway, here goes and sticking with weight management to make the point. The majority of the population can probably get their weight under control with the simple solution of eating less and moving more. For most people it is probably also entirely their own fault and their own lack of discipline if that doesn't happen. However, for maybe as many (or as few?) as 20-25% of us that is absolutely not the case. There are far more profound matters involved, Dave was hinting at some and I won't go into it, but I have learnt a lesson or two about such, too. We "just" have to be honest with ourselves when we try and figure out where we stand/start. Whether it's deciding how to maintain our weight, or reaching a healthy weight, or any other choice of how we live our lives. For most of us it will simply be a matter of "choice", but unfortunately not for all of us. A mistake to avoid would be to apply solutions/excuses for group "A" to group "B" - and vice versa! Last proviso: While I may sound quite self-assured and certain in my words, I am not. I may well be entirely wrong about everything I just said. The above is just my current life experience - hopefully more will be added to it... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 2 hours ago, Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman said: What I’ve found in the last year or so, is all the good habits formed while loosing six stone, around 2018 ish, seemed, when my “spin” seemed to get knocked off axis somewhat, post pandemic, to almost get reset to some of the decades ingrained bad habits from before. Whilst the causes may be very different for me Dave, I too lost around 7 stone before lockdown started, but then for some reason fell off my metaphorical horse and during lockdown I managed to put about 90% of it back on. I KNOW I can do it again, but as you say it is a lot more difficult second time around. This pic is my motivation. Over 20st vs 13st 10. Same shirt, was probably unironed in the first pic too, but was stretched so tight the creases didn’t show 😱 🤣 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 37 minutes ago, jaykay42 said: Hi! I think/believe we're coming upon a distinction here: with weight management as well as with other areas in life there are fundamentally different starting points and hence fundamentally different solutions required. What I'm trying to say is probably easier to explain in quite simplistic dimensions of just two distinct groups of people, just to get the point across. However, I'm a firm believer that life is not binary - plenty of shades of grey out there. Anyway, here goes and sticking with weight management to make the point. The majority of the population can probably get their weight under control with the simple solution of eating less and moving more. For most people it is probably also entirely their own fault and their own lack of discipline if that doesn't happen. However, for maybe as many (or as few?) as 20-25% of us that is absolutely not the case. There are far more profound matters involved, Dave was hinting at some and I won't go into it, but I have learnt a lesson or two about such, too. We "just" have to be honest with ourselves when we try and figure out where we stand/start. Whether it's deciding how to maintain our weight, or reaching a healthy weight, or any other choice of how we live our lives. For most of us it will simply be a matter of "choice", but unfortunately not for all of us. A mistake to avoid would be to apply solutions/excuses for group "A" to group "B" - and vice versa! Last proviso: While I may sound quite self-assured and certain in my words, I am not. I may well be entirely wrong about everything I just said. The above is just my current life experience - hopefully more will be added to it... Certainly good to have an open discussion about it here, I never expected the thread to take off like this, but it’s good that it has. I suspect that your percentages may well be wrong, in that far more people have mental reasons for their eating habits, in fact I suspect it is far higher. There are many reasons; depression, stress, anxiety, low self esteem, pain, grief, enough reasons that we all experience them at some point in our lives. They are so interlinked too eg low self esteem can cause weight gain, fix the weight gain and the self esteem comes back, and equally fix the self esteem and the weight may drop off, but where do you start on that cycle? Push the weight piece too hard and that just crushes self esteem even more. As I mentioned, acute and chronic pain (back pain and sciatica) over years, ironically caused by rowing but also heavy lifting in the garden which ruined my lower two discs were a major factor for me. Add to that a perforated stomach leading to a laparotomy (think emergency C section type incision cutting through all my stomach muscles vertically) which destroyed my core strength and added to the pressure on my back. That was my start on comfort eating, mild depression and lack of exercise, leading to weight gain and more pressure on the back and and and… The start of the route back for me was finding a good pain consultant who got me an MRI scan to diagnose the problem, then gave me root nerve block injections into my discs to numb the pain. The most remarkable thing about this is that it demonstrates how much pain is mental as well as physical. The injections wear off after a few months, but deadening the pain allowed my brain to perform a kind of hard reset, so the nerves which had become over sensitised to pain no longer triggered at such low levels, and the pain largely went away. My back still hurts, but it is a totally different sort of pain and quite manageable. Just as another example of the mental aspect of pain. At one stage I could not stand for more than five minutes without severe buttock and leg pain, requiring me to crouch down to relieve it. Mrs Stu and I went to a concert where we were going to be standing for two hours or more, so I was understandably nervous. It turned out that once the music started, I completely forgot about it and was able to enjoy the whole thing without thinking about it. Only when walking back to the car did the pain return. I digress. Just examples of one of many different factors which can influence eating habits. Complex indeed. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kit Car Electronics Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Interesting, here's a really good TED talk on the illusion of pain and why things hurt: https://youtu.be/gwd-wLdIHjs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaykay42 Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 26 minutes ago, fatblokestu said: Certainly good to have an open discussion about it here, I never expected the thread to take off like this, but it’s good that it has. I suspect that your percentages may well be wrong, in that far more people have mental reasons for their eating habits, in fact I suspect it is far higher. There are many reasons; depression, stress, anxiety, low self esteem, pain, grief, enough reasons that we all experience them at some point in our lives. They are so interlinked too eg low self esteem can cause weight gain, fix the weight gain and the self esteem comes back, and equally fix the self esteem and the weight may drop off, but where do you start on that cycle? Push the weight piece too hard and that just crushes self esteem even more. As I mentioned, acute and chronic pain (back pain and sciatica) over years, ironically caused by rowing but also heavy lifting in the garden which ruined my lower two discs were a major factor for me. Add to that a perforated stomach leading to a laparotomy (think emergency C section type incision cutting through all my stomach muscles vertically) which destroyed my core strength and added to the pressure on my back. That was my start on comfort eating, mild depression and lack of exercise, leading to weight gain and more pressure on the back and and and… The start of the route back for me was finding a good pain consultant who got me an MRI scan to diagnose the problem, then gave me root nerve block injections into my discs to numb the pain. The most remarkable thing about this is that it demonstrates how much pain is mental as well as physical. The injections wear off after a few months, but deadening the pain allowed my brain to perform a kind of hard reset, so the nerves which had become over sensitised to pain no longer triggered at such low levels, and the pain largely went away. My back still hurts, but it is a totally different sort of pain and quite manageable. Just as another example of the mental aspect of pain. At one stage I could not stand for more than five minutes without severe buttock and leg pain, requiring me to crouch down to relieve it. Mrs Stu and I went to a concert where we were going to be standing for two hours or more, so I was understandably nervous. It turned out that once the music started, I completely forgot about it and was able to enjoy the whole thing without thinking about it. Only when walking back to the car did the pain return. I digress. Just examples of one of many different factors which can influence eating habits. Complex indeed. Hi! Yes, the discussion is definitely flowing and you've hit the right spot! 🙂 I'm very intrigued in what you're thinking of my percentages, which admittedly I plugged out of thin air so I'm not precious about them. However, I also have a long history in rowing and through all these years learned (was taught) that anything and everything can be fixed by pulling yourself together, biting through the pain and pushing even harder. Well... of course it didn't work all the time, of course I often fell short of this approach etc. but that was the mindset of the people I grew up in and the successful ones openly celebrated that approach + the fruits of this were measurable and indisputable. So, I frequently ponder how much actually can be solved by this, how much more damage is being done by it and for many people and problems this approach is absolutely useless. I can certainly speak for myself in that before I started rowing (at about 15) I was a very, very wet blanket... and thanks to what I went through in competitive rowing I'm only a wet blanket now. No deep stuff needed, I just had to learn to bite. What worked for me surely must work for a few more folks out there... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 35 minutes ago, jaykay42 said: Hi! Yes, the discussion is definitely flowing and you've hit the right spot! 🙂 I'm very intrigued in what you're thinking of my percentages, which admittedly I plugged out of thin air so I'm not precious about them. However, I also have a long history in rowing and through all these years learned (was taught) that anything and everything can be fixed by pulling yourself together, biting through the pain and pushing even harder. Well... of course it didn't work all the time, of course I often fell short of this approach etc. but that was the mindset of the people I grew up in and the successful ones openly celebrated that approach + the fruits of this were measurable and indisputable. So, I frequently ponder how much actually can be solved by this, how much more damage is being done by it and for many people and problems this approach is absolutely useless. I can certainly speak for myself in that before I started rowing (at about 15) I was a very, very wet blanket... and thanks to what I went through in competitive rowing I'm only a wet blanket now. No deep stuff needed, I just had to learn to bite. What worked for me surely must work for a few more folks out there... Just so we are equal, I am pulling this stuff from thin air and gut feelings too 👍 My thoughts are that all over (or under) eating issues are ultimately driven by mental issues of a whole variety of causes, why else would perfectly intelligent human beings consistently cause themselves damage through these behaviours? So, given the number of people that are overweight, I just believe that the number of people whose poor eating is driven by mental issues, rather than just it being their fault, is much higher than your 20 to 25%. Those issues might be one of those mentioned above (depression, stress, anxiety, pain, grief etc), or something like addiction to sugars led by the tsunami of marketing which we all face everyday. This is not necessarily a mental health issue, but is still mental in origin and makes the issue not just one of fault. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 9, 2023 Author Share Posted January 9, 2023 On 08/01/2023 at 20:38, Kit Car Electronics said: Interesting, here's a really good TED talk on the illusion of pain and why things hurt: https://youtu.be/gwd-wLdIHjs Interesting, thanks. Matches my own experiences very well I think. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigSkyBrad Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 Y’all will be saying what have I got to worry about, but hear me out. When I first moved to the UK from NZ I was a trim toned 11st. I had been in physically active jobs (and the Airforce before that), I had completed a self-build house on 3 acres with ¾ acres of lawn to look after, and had an active outdoor lifestyle with plenty of trail-riding etc, and I rarely drink alcohol. It wasn’t long in the UK before I had jumped up to 12st - a more sedentary job and lifestyle, and age played it’s part. I’ve also a sweet’n’pastry tooth, and someone at work has always got cake/biscuits/chokkies in. It was a slow, steady increase up to Jan last year when I topped out at 13st-4 - which doesn’t sound like much to some, but it’s 20% none the less. I’m now back down to 12st, and a major contributor to that was having a substantial project on the go - I’m so busy and immersed with my camper truck build (to the wife’s chagrin) that I forget to snack like I do when I’m bored. Also, the cost of living at the moment, means we are less likely to have random snacks in our weekly shop. So I guess that’s my recommendation/contribution - have a long term project or hobby that gives you agency and activity, and takes your brain somewhere away from superfluous food and drink, and mental fog (and in my case, home-sickness). I have always got some sort of project or pastime on the go in the garage - just don't neglect the missus, or a few extra pounds will be the least of your worries! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 2 hours ago, BigSkyBrad said: Y’all will be saying what have I got to worry about, but hear me out. When I first moved to the UK from NZ I was a trim toned 11st. I had been in physically active jobs (and the Airforce before that), I had completed a self-build house on 3 acres with ¾ acres of lawn to look after, and had an active outdoor lifestyle with plenty of trail-riding etc, and I rarely drink alcohol. It wasn’t long in the UK before I had jumped up to 12st - a more sedentary job and lifestyle, and age played it’s part. I’ve also a sweet’n’pastry tooth, and someone at work has always got cake/biscuits/chokkies in. It was a slow, steady increase up to Jan last year when I topped out at 13st-4 - which doesn’t sound like much to some, but it’s 20% none the less. I’m now back down to 12st, and a major contributor to that was having a substantial project on the go - I’m so busy and immersed with my camper truck build (to the wife’s chagrin) that I forget to snack like I do when I’m bored. Also, the cost of living at the moment, means we are less likely to have random snacks in our weekly shop. So I guess that’s my recommendation/contribution - have a long term project or hobby that gives you agency and activity, and takes your brain somewhere away from superfluous food and drink, and mental fog (and in my case, home-sickness). I have always got some sort of project or pastime on the go in the garage - just don't neglect the missus, or a few extra pounds will be the least of your worries! Thanks Brad. Everything is relative. 13st is my recommended weight according to BMI indices, but I only just managed to dip under that when intensively training in my early twenties, and know that it would be very hard for me to get there due to my build. If 11st is your natural weight, then yea, over 13 is going to feel like a lot. Agreed on keeping busy to avoid the snacking. I’ve also been demonstrating to myself the importance of mood on the success of weight loss. Work has been a right pain in the backside this week, stressful for unnecessary reasons and that has led to me being a little naughtier than I should. Back in it now though 👍 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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