Weight loss non-advice: your questions answered badly
Jul 29, 2009 Weight Loss
[I am NOT a nutritionist, doctor, nurse, or anything else that would give me any special knowledge about weight loss outside of my own experience. If you take anything I'm about to say as advice, you do it at your own risk and I take absolutely no responsibility. I'm a BLOGGER, and you should never take medical advice from a blogger, unless possibly that blogger is also a well-known doctor who has appeared repeatedly on Oprah. And even then, not sure you should. Just saying. To sum up: me, not responsible for anything you do.]
So I just got this email. Here it is in its entirety:
Hi,
How fast would you lose weight if you didn t eat?
I know you are probably very busy but I was hoping you could give me a couple pointers.
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
yours truly,
Susan
Well Susan, first off, I’m wondering why you’re asking. Either you’re a smart-ass looking for a laugh at my expense, or you are so vain/depressed/desperate that you would risk your life to be thin. I suspect it’s the first one, but since I like math I’ll play along. I’ll even use myself as an example. But if it’s the second one, my friendly suggestion would be to get yourself to a psychiatrist as soon as possible. The fact that you’re even asking the question (if it’s a serious one) scares me.
Checking a few different websites with calorie calculators (just google “how many calories do I need calculator”), I’ve found that I need anywhere from 1,700 calories to 2,500 a day to maintain my weight. That’s a big range, but I’m guessing that if I were fasting in order to lose weight, I’d also be exercising and being active to help things along. So I’ll use the top of the range, 2,500 calories a day. One pound equals approximately 3,500 calories. So, if I fasted (voluntarily stopped eating) and drank only calorie-free water, I would stand to lose about 5 pounds per week, probably a lot more the first week as my body gets rid of all the extra water it’s been retaining due to sodium in the french fries, frozen dinners and canned soup I’m no longer eating. I’m guessing I could probably drop ten pounds just in water weight.
At that rate, I’d be at the absolute bottom of my goal weight in just a couple of months (probably too thin for my frame, actually). Of course, that probably would never happen, because I would most likely die first. I’ve seen estimates on how long an adequately-hydrated person can live without food, and they range anywhere from two weeks to six months , depending on many factors: the person’s weight when she started, how much energy she expels while fasting, her overall health before starting the fast, etc. But for most of us I’m guessing it would be towards the lower end with absolutely no food. The six month mention was for an extremely obese person, who had hundreds of pounds to lose.
So, there you have it, Susan. I have no idea how fast you would lose weight, because I have nothing but your name and your email address, and those don’t give me a clue as to your height, weight and activity level. But for me, it would be somewhere around five pounds a week until I died, or the starvation-induced delirium caused me to get involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, where they would probably give me a feeding tube or force me to eat. The only pointer I can reasonably give you is to eat healthy, don’t go below 1,200 calories a day, and figure out why it’s so important to you to lose weight so fast – again, the psychiatrist might come in handy.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: fasting, Weight Loss
Weight Loss Tuesday: Dr. Phil can’t help me lose weight
Jul 28, 2009 Weight Loss
I love Dr. Phil, and I agree with a lot of what he as to say (even if I often cringe at how he’s saying it). But I’ve never agreed with him on weight loss. I didn’t agree when I was thin, I didn’t agree when I was fat, and I still don’t agree with him now that I’m on my way back. And it all centers on will power.
Dr. Phil has said over and over on his show that if you want to lose weight, you can’t rely on will power. Instead, he pushes his guests to change their entire routines and environments in order to take the weight off. The house is emptied of junk food, the route to work is changed in order to not pass any tempting drive-thru restaurants. This has never made sense to me. For one thing, the foods that I really shouldn’t have much of if I want to lose weight are not necessarily bad foods. Some M&M’s are fine. Half a large bag is not. Cheese is great, as long as I don’t eat the entire package. Why in the world should I keep my family from eating foods that only seem to be making me fat, and why should I deprive myself of foods that are delicious?
And the McDonald’s Drive-Thru? It’s everywhere. I pass at least half a dozen on the way to camp each day to pick up my kids. Will power is the only thing stopping me from driving in every day and grabbing some fries for the road. So sure, if you were to put me in some kind of sterile environment where I didn’t have access to foods that can make me fat, I’m sure that I would come out thin. But I can’t live in that environment forever. Nor would I want to. I want to be able to have some dessert without binging. I want to be able to drive past McDonald’s and choose (most of the time, anyway) not to stop. And the free food? Oh my God, every press event I go to has delicious, free food – my weakness! But the thinner I get, the easier those decisions become.
I’ve often been tempted to join Nutri-System or some other program that would send me food, and as long as I ate that food I would lose weight. But then what? Do I have to eat that food forever? Losing weight isn’t easy, but neither is it hard. What it is, though, is a commitment from within, and changing the outside environment is a temporary fix. I need to be able to live and eat well in my world as it is. And my world is filled with fast food, and kids’ snacks, and the incredibly delicious pizza that’s one room away from me right now (and which is fine to eat as long as I stop at one or two pieces).
Did I eat more than I should have this past weekend in Chicago? Of course. But did I ever stuff myself? No. I did usually eat until I was very full, but I ate so much less than on any other recent out-of-town trip. It all basically boiled down to reminding myself that that wasn’t going to be my last chance to eat free food. That was it. Because I think I eat out of fear a lot of the time. Fear that the food won’t be there tomorrow. And really, convincing myself that I’m a grown-up who could go out and buy food whenever was not hard. So, I can be in the same room with chips and brownies and pasta and not just automatically go hog-wild.
Sorry, Dr. Phil. But I’ll be sure to call you when I catch my daughter pouring drain cleaner on my toothbrush.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: fast food, Weight Loss
Weight Loss Tuesday: I didn’t go crazy!
Jul 22, 2009 Weight Loss
This is going to be a short one, because I stayed out with friends until one in the morning and the laundry that I’m waiting to put in the dryer is minutes away from being done in the washer. So no recipe this week. Just this: I went out to dinner with a friend tonight and didn’t go crazy. That’s a big deal for me.
It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s rare. The last time, I was going out with someone else who is also dieting with My Food Diary, and that just made it so much easier to stay on track. But not this time. I made dinner plans this morning with a friend, and tried to eat as little as possible for the rest of the day. There’s no way it’s going to be a day of weight loss, but I think it might be a break even day, and I’ll take it. Because I went out with a friend and had a non-extreme dinner. A year ago, the only choices for me would have been to either not eat at all at the restaurant, or I would have just said “screw it” and pigged out. Tonight I did neither. Yes, I could have stopped after the first piece of spinach-ricotta-garlic pizza. But I did stop after the second, and wasn’t even tempted by the cheese and crackers that came out later. I ate like a normal person. It was a good feeling.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: pizza, Weight Loss
