There are lots of people I know who are doing the "Ideal Protein Diet"...it feels like more and more every time I turn around. I know it works for some people, but I also know it is very expensive and very restrictive. You don't do this diet unless you are extremely serious. I guess I'm not that serious. I mean, during the summer months when I have less stress, I'm pretty sure I could handle the restrictiveness of it, but it's the money outlay that gets me.
When I look up online what percentage of people who lose weight actually keep it off, the numbers are really grim...about 5%. There are lots of biological factors which make it much harder for people who have lost weight to actually maintain that weight. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all
Call me a cynic, but I don't want to pay all of this money to lose weight this summer only to gain it all back during the school year next year. When my kids have a lot going on, and I'm teaching, I don't want to be on such a restrictive diet which requires so much thought and discipline. In the past, I've thought that once I got the weight off, I could kind of coast along. But no. It seems that once a person has gotten to an overweight state for several years, it takes tons of discipline, planning, and purposefulness for a lifetime to lose weight and stay there. I know that during the school year, I'm not willing to do that.
Recently, I read an article about hospice care and the medical costs of treating cancer. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all Several things struck me as I read this article. One thing that really struck me is how doctors don't want to accept the harsh realities of a cancer diagnosis, much less share these realities with patients. They would rather give the patients hopes in completely unproven, untested procedures which can steal the last years of the patients' lives while they chase treatment after treatment and which also cause the patient to spend much more time in the hospital when they could be at home with their loved ones. It was incredible to me that the patients who accepted their diagnosis and just went the hospice route lived longer on average and had a much better quality of life in their last years. The article is not saying that doctors and families shouldn't do everything possible to save lives, but it's important for families to know to what extent their loved one wants to pursue treatment in order to stay alive especially in this age of technology...is it worth it to stay alive when you are no longer coherent and are in a vegetative state? Issues like these have been debated for quite awhile now, but I think the main thrust of this article is that patients and families of patients need to be realistic about what their options are and should have talked ahead of time about at what point they would want to forgo medical treatment.
So what does weight loss have to do with cancer? Well, I think no one wants to be really honest about just how entirely rare it is to lose a substantial amount of weight and keep it off long term. Five percent or less. I hope that my friends working so hard to lose weight are in that 5% or less category. Who at all would benefit from someone saying that losing weight and actually keeping it off is next to impossible? Not the weight loss companies, not the media, not people in the health care field. It could also affect overweight people themselves in a negative way because it might make them just throw the towel in and stop trying. For me, though, it doesn't have that effect. Right now, I just feel happy that my weight didn't get higher than it did at its peak. I feel really resolute to stop it from getting higher because I know what an uphill struggle it is to get MORE weight off.
I feel like I've plunked down so much money and dreamed so many dreams of losing weight all for naught, esp when I think about the 35 lbs I would need to lose to get to my goal weight. But it's not all for naught when I think about how I did lose about 20 lbs from where my peak was, and I hover in that area all year round. Sometimes I'm 25 lbs lower than that peak and sometimes I'm 15 lbs lower. I know I can't ever coast along because as soon as I do, I gain weight quick! So I have to keep exercising and watching what I eat, but don't we all?
So, I'm trying to determine what my goal should be now in the summer since I do have more time and emotional energy to give to better eating habits and exercise. I ordered a Jillian Michaels Sculpting DVD this morning which I'm going to check out, and my friend told me about how compression socks really help to protect your joints in running. So, I think I might try those and see about trying to jog again. As far as eating goes, I'm at a loss. I know I don't want to do anything extreme. I had tried the 5-2 fasting diet, but for me, it does make me crave donuts and other bad food like crazy on the days I'm not fasting. Maybe I will try it again, without the stress of school, and see if I can get my body into a set rhythm with it.
I can't decide if my ambivalence about my weight right now is a good thing or a bad thing. I guess that's why I'm ambivalent!
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