First, Miku Fan, good idea to start a non-crisis thread for psych discussions.
From the Random Thoughts Thread:
I had a lengthier response to this, but my computer froze and there was no way to save it. I simply don't have the capacity to try to recreate it.
I feel like I should point out a few things:
1) I am not sedentary. I work at a job where I sit all day, and I do go weeks sometime without working out, but for the most part, I am pretty active. I walked 4 miles yesterday. I sweated (which I love, so I do it) and I was tired and had to rest for about 20 min afterwards, but it was "easy" for me (and the dog, she came with. I actually want to do more research on how much walking/hiking a dog can do vs their age and what have you). So many of these questions were to get your guys' POV on the subject. As I have pointed out, I frequent the My Fitness Pal forums and I have read all their POVs. Now I want yours.
2) Do I want to be a marathon runner? Yes. Yes I do. My mental problems have this duality about them. I walked the dog 4 miles yesterday and I was enjoyed every second of it. But, when I get depressed, then I don't/can't/won't get the motivation to work out. Working out is a drug to me. My current goal is to work out more, ESPECIALLY when I am feeling depressed because exercise dopamine's work better than pills and ESPECIALLY better than B eer amd P ot.
3) I am morbidly obese. I get that. And my brain is screwed up about my relationship toward food, body image, and all of that. So, my ultimate goal is to be an athlete because I enjoy working out when I am obese, and I assume I will enjoy it more (because I can do more things) once I lose weight.
4) I am a huge yo-yo dieter because I can go several days and then have a mental crash. The people on My Fitness Pal just say I am lazy and using that as an excuse. Whatever. I just think I have too many conflicting thoughts of "I can do this" vs. "You suck and you are and will be a big fat pig all your life" vs "I hate myself."
Also I need to add:
I have in the past had exercise bulimia (exercising so much to offset any amount of food you eat and then getting really upset if you can't work out). This is something I have to be watchful of.
I did not mean anything I wrote to be critical. My responses were based solely on what you'd written.
With your comment '4', people using terms like "lazy" are the opposite of helpful. That is one of the most DEmotivating comments that can be made to someone who is overweight, and result in additional emotional responses that can feed into binging and exercise avoidance.
In response to the term 'lazy': first, people who have made attempts at change are not lazy. People with psychological difficulties are almost never lazy (generally they have too much going on inside and are often, at best, mentally exhausted from it to the exclusion of other actions). In addition, when food is involved, there are a large number of biological components to food addictions (e.g. sugar/corn/wheat) that often trump the psychological functioning of people without psych difficulties.
If your yo-yo dieting is related to sugar (or wheat or corn - which behave the same as sugar in the body, but with additional problems), then I might suggest this book: The Sugar Impact Diet, in which she discusses how to phase out sugar, as she points out that going cold turkey on sugar is next to impossible, given the way human biology works.
What I've written on the forum about nutrition and exercise is what I have synthesized from watching over 100 hours of health presentations by specialists in assorted medical and medically-related fields. It sounds different from what most people say because it is based on the most up-to-date scientific research. Does everything I've ever written apply to everyone? No. Nothing does. But from the large degree of overlap between what various medical professionals have said, apparently it does apply to the majority of people most of the time, so I believe it is worth trying. Otherwise I wouldn't spend the time describing it, and describing it in enough detail so that it can be seen it isn't just the adoption of a bit of 'common knowledge' that doesn't happen to be true (e.g. the food pyramid was created by companies with a vested interest in getting people to eat their products like grains and dairy; the 'eat less and exercise more' idea that simply does not work and is actually problematic for people whose biology has been adversely affected by everything from their microbiome being devastated by antibiotics to autoimmune thyroid problems to the simple truth of poisons in the food they eat; etc.). [Seriously: look up the FDA and GRAS regulations, it is horrifying how little the FDA protects the food you eat from completely untested chemicals.]
I really don't want to get into a debate about if I am addicted to one kind of food because I am not. I am addicted to numbing myself with any and all foods. I was trained from a very young age to eat and eat a lot (thanks DAD 
), and if you asked me to remove one type of food, then I would just end the day doing some sort of d r u g anyway, so it's the psych issues that are my biggest obstacle.
Understood. With the comment I made, I was saying "if" you had food addictions. With eating a lot (per your father, I'm guessing either a "clean your plate" person, or taught it by example), if you change
what you eat, you weight will still be massively impacted by it (i.e. eating bunches of organic veggies will not result in weight gain, but in weight loss). And the key - as many health presenters pointed out, is not
removing foods, but substituting
different ones, ones that are healthier. That is what the JJ Virgin 'Sugar Impact Diet' is about: substitution of healthier foods for foods that are damaging or problematic.
Veggies with a lot of healthy fat on them [coconut oil, ghee, etc.] are very filling, and - with the healthy fats - satisfying and healthy. Fried foods, or prepackaged foods stable at room temp, are neither (both because they are nutritionally void, and because they have massive omega-6 oils which are whole-body inflammatory).
I think one of the things that may be most helpful about the sources I referred to is that they normalize a fair number of reactions, so that one doesn't feel as guilty about them. That reduces the psychological burden that you have to dig out from under in order to feel able to make progress.
Topic: General Psychology Thread (for non-emergency and long-term issues) (Read 55627 times)