Then You Lose Weight

I had a conversation with a woman who said that she thinks that Weight Watchers is great and that I shouldn’t speak badly about them.  I asked her if she was familiar with WW’s success rates (or, you know, complete lack thereof).  She said that she wasn’t, but that the suggestions of the program were to eat healthy and exercise and that those are good things to do.  I agreed that those can be things that people choose to do, and that my problem is not the idea of “eat healthy and exercise” part, though it’s never an obligation, my issue is with the  “…then you lose weight” part, and the way that WW defines healthy eating and exercise.

I think that there are definitely weight loss programs that are just plain bad ideas (drink reconstituted soy protein shakes 5 times a day? Take a pill that gives you “uncontrolled anal seepage”?  Yikes.)  But, there are a some programs that have reasonable options for people who are interested in working on their health (knowing that health is not completely in our control, and is not an obligation or a barometer of worthiness) if those companies would just drop the weight loss bit.

“Join the gym, become more active, get healthier!” There are no guarantees but this is ok advice if someone has access to and can afford a gym, if going to the gym sounds like something they want to do, and if they are interested in movement as a path to health.  “Join the gym, become more active, and then you lose weight”.   Horrible advice no matter what the circumstances-  there is no evidence to support that people will lose weight long term, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that increased activity increases health but does not lead to weight loss.  Sadly, since many gyms choose to grossly overstate what the evidence shows they can achieve, when people don’t lose weight, or when they lose it short term and then plateau and start gaining it back, they quit going to the gym (or whatever activity they picked to make them healthier) because they think it’s not “working” because they’ve been wrongly convinced by the gym that if they aren’t thinner then they aren’t healthier.

“Eat more whole foods, vegetables, and whole grains and you’ll get healthier.” It’s ok advice if someone has access and can afford those things, and if they are good for their bodies and circumstances.  “Eat more whole foods, vegetables, and whole grains…then you’ll lose weight.”  Horrible advice.  Again, if weight change happens to occur through a change in diet then the evidence suggests that it’s probably short term.

This is precisely why I think we should take weight loss out of the health discussion.  There is so much confusion about weight and health.  That causes people to confuse weight loss behaviors with healthy behaviors and that, in turn,  causes people to do unhealthy things under the false belief that they will be healthier when they get thinner no matter what they have to do to make it happen.  The next thing you know someone’s doctor has convinced them that the healthiest thing that they can do is have their stomach amputated.

People are allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, including having healthy organs amputated, but I’m not convinced that doctors are being honest about this surgery when death is a side effect, as are any number of problems (again with the uncontrolled anal seepage), there is a high rate of weight regain which leaves people as heavier or heavier than they were but less a large part of their digestive system, and doctors are recommending this surgery to people who are healthy because they believe, based on correlation and not causation, that people are better off thin, even if we have to amputate a perfectly healthy organ to  do it. Meanwhile the company that makes the lap band, an aid in another type of weight loss surgery, is lobbying Congress to be able to give that type of weight loss surgery to progressively lighter and younger patients.

This is what happens when we make the health discussion about weight loss, and make weight loss a for-profit product, this is what happens when any sentence that starts with health ends with “then you lose weight.”

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61 thoughts on “Then You Lose Weight

  1. WARNING WEIGHT LOSS TRIGGER
    I thought I’d leave a quick note about my personal experiences at Weight Watchers. I am one of the people who has lost some weight in eating a healthier diet and and exercising more and kept it off for four years. I’ve stabilized at an “overweight” size that seems comfortable to me but made the mistake of joining WW last year to try to lose more.

    I’m convinced that the program is designed to make you fail and feel badly about it to keep you coming back and paying on an long term basis. Some examples include a Leader telling me she was disappointed in me when I “only” lost 1 lb. one week and the Frankenfood that they sell.

    Their model of restricting calories to below what your body needs to function will backfire every time you go back to eating what was a “normal” amount for you and you may find you gain more weight than before when you go on a business trip, etc. At any rate, I think they deliberately do set people up for failure and my friends that have been very “successful” with it have felt the worst when they inevitably gain all the weight back.

    1. Based on my personal experiences with WW, I think you’re right. I have no idea what it’s mutated into now, but when I joined the second time around, anyone over a certain weight was restricted to the same number of points no matter how much over that certain weight you were. It seemed and still seems like a surefire way to push people to fail so they keep coming back. From any of the times I joined, I can recall only a few people (aside from the group leaders) on the maintenance program. As in, I could count on both hands the number of people from all three times I joined, including the group leaders, and have fingers left over. That’s not a successful program.

      1. Well, obviously WW can’t work. If it worked, it wouldn’t be a successful business.

        It works enough. People lose enough weight initially to make it seem like it’s working. Then they gain the weight back when the stop using WW stupid complicated system, and blame themselves. Then they go back on WW, giving WW more money.

        I don’t know why anyone would pay someone for that. It seems so stupid.

    2. One of the many times I joined WW, we had a wonderful leader. She was compassionate, practical, and caring. She was also maybe 50 pounds over her “goal” weight, and struggling. One day she was just…gone. The perky little pencil they put in her place explained that she hadn’t been a good role model. Well, let me tell you, I’d FAR rather have a caring person who shares my struggles in that role than someone who lost 10 lbs of baby weight in 6 weeks, suggests a bath for anything that might trigger eating, and reads 7 Habits of Successful People to us. I’m SO glad I’m not doing that anymore!

    3. When I went it was like an AA meeting or a church support group. This was in late 2000. Someone had given us coupons to attend meetings, since they were about $40 a session. And if you missed one week, you had to pay for it at the next one, so it was 2 costs. And if you missed more than that, it was just cheaper to “rejoin” instead of paying for all of those missed sessions.

      This was before veg. counted as points.

  2. A bizarre part of this to me is there seems to be this idea that if you don’t promise people they’ll be thin, they will never eat a veggie or get off the couch again. Sadly, when eating veggies and getting off the couch don’t make them thin, they think it didn’t “work” and they give up. For this reason, I think tacking on “you’ll get thin” to health-enhancing behaviors is not only a false promise, but it also discourages those behaviors.

    1. “I think tacking on “you’ll get thin” to health-enhancing behaviors is not only a false promise, but it also discourages those behaviors.”

      If you’ll permit me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment, maybe that’s the point. I mean, these guys’ worldview is based around the idea thin people are superior to fat people because thin people eat right and exercise and fat people don’t. If fat people eat right and exercise but don’t stop being fat in the process, there goes their supposed superiority. So they make those things as onerous for us as possible in the guise of “tough love,” specifically with the goal of *making us quit.* I’ve always liked running, but I remember the first and only time I signed up for a team… I was relentlessly bullied mentally and physicall until I dropped out without even making tryouts. You’d think if they’d been really sure I’d fail, they would have let me make tryouts and fail, so what were they really afraid of…?

        1. Track. I’m not sure what it is about running in particular that makes fatphobes see red, but while they love to force you to do it if they think you don’t want to, they turn rabid if you *do.* When I started first grade, I was always one of the first kids to finish a race. By the time I reached middle school, I had dropped to the back. I’d learned my lesson. It wasn’t… scratch that, it WAS worth the bullying, but my little kid self didn’t know that. She just handed over her lunch money (running) and hoped the bullies would stop.

          Oh, well, no use complaining about it now. Instead, I concentrate on my *fun* memories of me and my cousin tearing through the backyard and around the block, screaming, “I’m Cheetara!” “No, I’M Cheetara!” (…really dating myself there), or the first time I decided to go for a jog after not having run since PE became optional enough to opt out, didn’t take a stopwatch or anything, only ran as fast and as far as I could just like when I was a kid. That’s what I think about when I’m running these days. I might never be as fast as I would have been if I hadn’t let them bully me out of it for years, but it’s finally starting to feel like it used to before the bullies pissed in my corn flakes (to “save” my fat ass from the carbs, no doubt).

          …I just hope I don’t lose too much restraint and start screaming, “I’M CHEETARA!” I might get a few funny looks. 😉

      1. Your team reminds me of my softball team in high school. I CLEARLY remember the day I attempted to steal 3rd base in practice and didn’t make it. One girl laughed at me and said “you thought you could actually steal a base? You can’t run. You’re too slow and fat.” I’ll admit, I was never very quick with running – I knew this – but I enjoyed the sport and could throw and hit hard. Fat? No. Taller and more muscular than your average girl? Absolutely.

        But that is why I’ve never enjoyed running since. That was also my final year of playing softball.

      2. Because if [superior feeling] thin people were honest about what they’re proud about–thinness genetics bequeathed to them–then it would be impossible to deny it’s bigotry. If you convince you’re self you’re superior because of a behavior, no matter how deluded, you’ll get away with it and even call to call yourself “disciplined” and “determined.”

  3. I have recurrent chest pain and have had for 4 years now. I’ve been through 3 doctors so far, and none of them will explore any other options until I lose weight, because they’re all convinced that that’s the cause. One doctor told me I’d “just have to luve with it.” The only thing that’s helping me lose weight is a running program. Probably not the best thing with chest pain, but it’s what my doctors told me to do…

    1. Might it be low-salt causing it? I had heart palpitations for years that went away when I increased my salt. No doctor ever took it seriously though, but I had it since I was 7, and it got worse over time as I reduced salt.

      Exercise will only make it worse though. 😦

  4. My husband has the lap-band; lost weight initially, but he’s gained it back. The problem is he can’t eat normally, and it is difficult for him to eat with others (including family). Dinner takes at least 2 hours! We leave him alone after 30 minutes.

    Also, there is the ever-present and not-so-discrete spittoon!

      1. When food is chewed, it has to be really REALLY chewed. So not only does every bite take a long time; but if there is a little cartiliage or skin in the chicken… gristle on the beef…etc.

        Some restaurants we go to, we have to figure out clever ways of asking for take-out, ie “throw away” cups to serve as spittoons. It would be too awful to have someone clean that!

        The thing is, even if the gastric band is removed or loosened, scar tissue and muscles have been permanently traumatized. There are members of his (and my) family that specifically won’t sit near him at a table at parties/ holidays because of this. Luckily, he doesn’t read this blog. —Jen

          1. I’m sensing maybe a blog post for our dear leader. The aftereffects the surgeons never mention, and might not bother to research.

            My husband will always be under the care of an ear, nose & throat doctor because the regurgitation UP causes ulcers. Constant coughing and certainly wasn’t the “easy way out”.

            Nevertheless it is THE ONLY WLSurgery aimed at pregnant women because if they become/desire to reproduce the gastric band can always be loosened! (Part of the literature when he was considering the procedure 8 years ago, dunno if its still done, but it was).

    1. Ew? I very sorry to hear that your husband has to go through all that. It’s nice that you spend half an hour together at dinner, though! So many families don’t spend enough quality time together – there are a few more kinds of health than just physical, I think.

    2. My husband also has lap band. No spittoon for him, fortunately, and he does eat mostly normally. He doesn’t do lettuce or bread, but that’s the only restriction I can think of. He’s kept off the weight he lost and is happily no longer on insulin. However…kidney stones! I do not recall that being listed as an after effect but apparently it’s fairly common. Given that, you’d think they could have diagnosed them without a 3 day hospitalization and I-don’t-wanna-know-how-much the imaging tests cost. He still has body image issues. Before it was his size. Now it’s still his size, but in terms of very reduced muscle mass and saggy skin. There have been benefits for him but 6 years out I’m not sure it balances with the costs.

    3. Wow… I just… I mean, that’s a quality of life issue. “This might make you thin for 5 minutes, but it will ruin your ability to eat normally or eat with others.” How is that “healthy”??? Damnit, I thought doctors were supposed to “first do no harm”?

  5. HAES teaches that (if we are inclined and able) we should eat as healthily as we can and take exercise that we enjoy and we’ll become fitter and healthier given our individual circumstances. If the majority of concern trolls are right then we’d all become thinner if they are so wrong they couldn’t see right with binoculars then we’ll still be fitter and healthier. Where is the downside (unless you are the diet industry)?

    Oh and as an added bonus, by removing fat stigma and making fat shaming unacceptable then those who aren’t inclined or able to improve their diet and exercise may still see the benefits from reduced stress and better healthcare treatment as their actual issues (when they have them) will be treated rather than being diagnosed as ‘fat’ with weight loss being touted as the Panecea.

    1. Every word you write is true, Pyctsi, and that’s precisely the problem as far as the diet industry is concerned. They have 60 billion reasons and counting to fear your common sense, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep us from finding out about the little man behind the curtain.

  6. I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with cutting people about, too, in the name of weight loss and good health. How can it be remotely good for you to have a portion of your digestive system removed permanently? It was clearly there for a purpose, after all! I believe, too, that it is not the amount that we eat that effects weight gain, but the type of food, and the quality of that food i.e. whether or not it is genuinely nutritious, and not just “junk”. Doesn’t it follow that highly processed junk is going to cause our bodies to think “Yuck! I really don’t know how to deal with that emulsifier/stabiliser/artificial sweetener! I’m going to protect myself!” Our bodies weren’t made to deal with the artificial substances used to process certain foods, after all. On the other hand, I don’t question anyone’s right to eat “junk” if they want to – let’s face it, successive governments in the UK and the USA have extolled the virtues of such things for years in abortive attempts to stamp out obesity. You can hardly blame people for still thinking it’s helping them, if they feel they want to lose weight. We’ve been fed a load of old emulsifier!!

  7. Heh, I saw a Weight Watcher’s commercial today that featured a little girl exclaiming she was going to “use her magic want to make rainbows fall from the sky.” Then the voiceover said, “Remember when you thought anything was possible?”

    Did they just admit permanent weight loss is not possible without the use of *actual magic?* When did WW get so honest? (Also, I think that kid is gonna get her rainbows long before WW’s fat customers get thin bodies.)

    Anyway, excellent post. The problem is not with “eat right and exercise” as advice, the problem is with the “eat right, exercise, and most importantly of all, lose weight, or just lose weight if you can’t do the other two,” as a condition of humanity and humane treatment, and with the assumption that someone who is not losing weight cannot be eating right and exercising. I wonder how many fellow human beings’ health concern trolls have destroyed telling them that they should give up the whole grains, avocados, potatoes, and dairy products because they’re “fattening,” or because they they neglected to mention the hair loss, the bleeding gums, the constipation, the headfog, the chills, the heart damage, the liver damage, the low energy levels, the wildly fluctuating blood pressure, and all those other “healthy” side effects you’ll get from calorie restriction. They sell the idea that once you’re thin, you can fix those things in post. Except you can’t. The weight loss is temporary. The damage is permanent. And that’s why the “…and lose weight!” suffix needs to stop being tacked on the end of otherwise sensible advice.

    Weight Watchers and its ilk don’t get let off the hook for contributing to this because they *may* get *some* things right.

    1. Oh aye, I can definitely attest to this one. Things I have been told by people concerned about my “health” include…

      That I shouldn’t eat wholegrain or seeded breads because they contain more fat and calories than plain white bread.
      That snacking on hummus and carrots, or on a pack of seeds, or on some mixed dried fruit and nuts, was wrong and something to be avoided because all those things contain either sugar, fat or calories.
      That snacking at all, ever, is bad. That I should do what they do and only eat one meal a day, and if I feel hungry in between times that’s evidence that I’m greedy and used to “overeating”.

      It’s like people think calories are some evil poison hidden in foods, to be avoided at all costs. Instead of, y’know, literally just a measurement of the nutrient energy available in a piece of food.

      And that advert is both hilariously ridiculous and… well… a little frightening. It reminds me of a billboard I see at the edge of my town, paid for by a local American-style church that recently moved in here. It’s a close-up of someone’s face lifted up to the sky, all happy and smiley, with the words “Maybe, just maybe…” next to it. Then at the bottom of the board a web address, and the sentence “maybe God is real….”

      I’m not an atheist, while the faith I follow isn’t one of the big ones it’s important to me and I appreciate that people from other faiths feel the same, but the specific marketing going on there just struck me as ridiculous. Like freely admitting they have no idea and are just hoping they’ve got it right, as though that’d be justification for the massive investment of time and donations I know that particular church expects.

      And it’s telling that a weight-loss company is using similar advertising techniques as a faith organisation trying to find new converts.

      1. TW for disordered eating and calorie-counting

        Oh, yes. I remember just a few years ago, if I had the choice between a piece of healthy, whole-grain, homemade bread with nuts or seeds in it at *gasp* 100 calories a slice or a stale little piece of white bread made out of something Dr. Oz found growing on a meteor clocking in at 40 calories, I would have taken the unhealthy 40-calorie option every time. Nutrient-dense food is by definition going to be calorie-dense, so genuinely healthy foods are the first thing a calorie-restricting dieter must throw out if they want to keep under those ridiculously low limits.

        And, certainly, the weight loss industry can get disturbingly cultlike. When you chip it away to its foundation, it’s based entirely on the belief that good people will be rewarded for their morality with thin bodies, and therefore people who are not rewarded with thin bodies are *bad people,* even if it looks like they’re “being good” (eating approved foods and participating in approved forms of exercise).

  8. WW is hardly in the business of health, otherwise it would not include a crapload of …well, crap, in their products. The company is in the business of making billions, by using the same old tired formula and dressing it up in a slinky new dress, at the start of each year.
    Its financial success is based on the fact that members seem to believe that they have been provided with the golden key to the golden lock, when in reality they already have access to the treasure (INFORMATION) . The recidivism rate is ridiculous and an indication that some people don’t trust themselves to make independent decisions that are right for them. Instead, they need the motivation of paying a conglomerate to tell sell them information they already have and in most cases, paid for, repeatedly.

  9. This reminds of resolutions and how ideally, any promises we make to ourselves should be rooted in things we can control. Resolving to “walk more,” for instance, is something I can control, but resolving to “walk more and lose 20 pounds” or “walk more and lower my cholesterol” isn’t because bodies don’t always respond the way we’d like. What happens to your morale when you keep “your” side of the bargain but your body doesn’t deliver the results you wanted?

    That’s why I like “and feel better” as a substitute for “then lose weight” or even “and get healthier.” Since so much of how we define “healthier” is based on numbers (blood pressure, cholesterol levels, etc), we might not be able to directly change those figures. But without ever having to go to a doctor, step on a scale, check my blood pressure or cholesterol, etc, I *know* that when I move (in my case, walk) more, my body *feels* better.

    But of course, you can’t sell people products by urging them to focus on their own perception of what feels good to their own bodies. Instead, you have to lure them into comparing themselves to other people, judging themselves based on a number on the scale, etc.

  10. Thank you, in particular for reminding us of the horrific and deadly scam that weight loss surgery is. I have uncovered that the weight loss surgery industry is enlisting healthy intact confederates to demonstrate vibrant health, years after surgery was supposedly done. The medical industry has gone past a hard limit in permitting weight loss surgery. We will use the sanctioning of this violent form of anti fat bigotry to bring the fat oppression industry to its knees.

  11. I think a lot of times too much focus on weight loss actually keeps people less healthy than they might be. Like if you start eating healthier better food (ie more veggies, cut out fast food) , and start exercising more..generally these are good things. How often does it happen that a person starts doing these things but then not see any change on the scale or get impatient if its not going quickly, and decide “oh this isn’t working” and just drop the whole thing..and in doing so lose any of the benefits of better food and better fitness that have nothing to do with weight.

    I’ve also had it happen on several occasions where I might go work out or do some exercisey thing (ie zumba) and then afterwards eat a not particularly healthy dinner or go ahead and have desert and someone says “well you just undid all that hard work”..as if whatever aerobic benefits I got from zumba, or strength benefit I got from lifting heavy things, just went poof cause I ate a brownie, as if calories were the only benefit any of that had. F that.

  12. Thank you for including the points of “if [you have] access to and can afford”. Out of all the exercises out there, really there’s only 1 place I have honestly, truly ever looked forward to going to. Unfortunately, where I live now – the locations are a bit far, and the cost is more than your average gym (like, sometimes 3x more a month). On top of gas prices? That cuts into our already meager funds! I like to do Pilates, but I’ve only ever done them alone so I’m always afraid I’m not doing something right or it might cause a problem because I’m not doing them right. (And of course, the possibility of doing them right then getting lax and slipping into bad habits that an instructor could correct you on).

    I honestly hate traditional gyms. I feel like a lab mouse with no direction. Do I run on the wheel or maybe wander around the maze for cheese? Don’t bother the mouse next to you listening to their music and off in their own world! Continue on until you’ve been there for a long enough time to be considered a “good test subject”. BLEH.

    I just wish I could get an insurance that actually would offer to pay for the one place I did like working out at. I’ve heard they exist, but I have never actually seen one. (they’re probably out of my cost-range anyway.)

  13. It’s not just WW, it’s all the other diet plans out there, The one I really hate is the one Marie Osmond is touting right now. She says she really likes it when her husband tells her she’s hot (after having lost 50 lbs). My response to that (yes, I talk back to the TV when it comes to weight loss commercials) – bitch, I weigh 400 lbs and my husband thinks I’m hot, so a woman doesn’t have to be thin/get thin in order to be considered “hot” by a man.
    While weight may affect health, if it drastically limits your mobility, there isn’t a whole lot most of us can do to permanently change our weight. So finding things that will maintain or improve our health, if we are inclined to do so, is better for us than just trying to lose weight.

    1. Ugh, that commercial. It’s so condescending. I mean, they all are, but I share your special hatred for that one.

  14. OK, I am decidedly not a biologist, but I thought the stomach was an organ that can expand and contract (like many of our organs, includes the uterus). That is, if you eat a lot it will stretch out, but if you eat smaller, more frequent meals your stomach will adjust to that schedule too and become physically smaller. If that’s the case, then how much does amputating said organ actually help? I mean, it seems like a bad idea all the way around. Especially when weight loss is not, has never been and will never be as simple as calories in/out.

  15. Imagine the media in a world in which there is no assumption that you can only be healthy and fit if you’re thin.

    I mean, yes, there’s the obvious–no more rapid scrolling past the horrific ad featuring a female torso skinned and defatted and then dressed in a jogbra and bike shorts. No more women having their lats photoshopped off. But let’s dig deeper.

    What if Bowflex ads showed people actually doing stuff instead of just posing all shaved and oiled while sucking it in? How about a burly (“fat”) obviously middle-aged (“oldfatunfit”) guy in dad jeans (“lazyoldfatunfitinept”) casually one-handing over a hip-high fence to retrieve a lost ball instead of walking down to the gate?

    What if the front-page ad at the Curves site was a woman with white hair and a soft chin running up a flight of stairs in her street clothes after her little grandson, instead of yet another blondish youngish brilliantly lit thin woman posing in fashionably impractical workout gear? And instead of “Kickstart Your Weight Loss In Just 30 Minutes,” the copy read, “You’ll Be Amazed At What You Can Do?”

    What if women were sold yogurt as a quick, satisfying, protein-packed, delicious meal-on-the-go? Yogurt in 8-ounce cups, with chunks of fruit on the bottom and cream on top, because the point was not to pretend to be eating a magic thin potion instead of evilbadunfit (gasp) calories, but instead simply to get full?

    What if 100-calorie packs didn’t exist? What if most people had no clue about the calorie content of their food? What if guilt, the thrill of the forbidden, and the facsimile of rebelliousness were never used to sell food?

    What if the USDA didn’t freak out about children over age 2 drinking whole milk?

    What if the “motivating,” “empowering” show that is now entering its 15th season were called The Biggest Gain? What if the contestants were people who had always wanted to try something athletic, but for various reasons hadn’t done it? What if the final vote came down to a near-tie between the man who was now able to push himself up 15 times in a row using the armrests of his wheelchair as stands, and the woman who had overcome fear of falling through the water to swim across a pool for the first time in her life?

    What if Holley Mangold made her TV debut when the summer blockbuster Superman: Apokolips finally went to cable? What if the only controversy about her appearance was that her character, freedom fighter and super-powered buttkicker Big Barda, was supposed to be taller and not blonde?

    What if Sarah Robles was on the Wheaties box?

    1. I stand corrected about Bowflex: The ad on their page shows a woman happily pulling her kid around on a sled while wearing weather-appropriate clothing. So that’s something. “Use Our Product So You Don’t Get Exhausted Postholing Through the Snow!” Much better than the ads that ran back when I had cable–“Use Bowflex and Be Shiny and Young and Sexy FOREVAH.”

  16. All of this reminds me of the “Doctor Berntien, weight loss clinic!” ads. It has one man and one woman, and how they have kept the weight off from 07 for the man and 04 for the woman, now the ads popped up at the end of 07 beginning of 08 and are still playing.

    In big bolded letters it says “Results ARE typical.” I always question that because they only show one man and one woman in their ads. And it is always the same two people. So of the results are typical where are the rest of them?

  17. Reblogged this on Sly Fawkes and commented:
    The “and then you lose weight” part kept me from exercising for many years, because I never did.
    One day I said “to hell with it, I’m going to exercise anyway, even if I don’t lose weight.”
    A year and a half later, I’m still exercising fairly faithfully!
    All I had to do is tell myself that it didn’t matter whether I lost weight or not.
    I have to be careful not to slip back into my orthorexic ways of thinking “more, more, more! If you aren’t exercising for a minimum of two hours, you’re a loser” type thoughts. I’ve done pretty well with it.

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