As many know I am probably one of the biggest "Biggest Loser" fans there is! I mean I live for Tuesdays to come, and when they start getting on that scale I get as nervous for my favs as they do for themselves! I love the show from beginning to end! That being said I think that the show has warped our thinking and expectations of weight loss! I want big numbers each week! I want to not gain next week but instead have big numbers again! If I don't get those numbers I feel as though I have failed and that will usually cause me to EAT! It's a downward spiral! I know that a lot of these people need to loose lots and lots of weight, but what ever happened to 2lbs being a great weight loss number for a week? Most of us don't have the time to work out like these people do, but if your like me you don't see that, all you see is that huge number that they just lost! It has created unreal and unsafe expectations for many of us! So I'm here to tell myself it's okay if I only have a 2lb loss this week, and it's even ok if I stay the same next week!
Thanks Amy for reminding us we don't always have to lose big!!!! I forget that a lot and get discouraged as well!
ReplyDeleteI just read a really fantastic article a few weeks ago about the unrealistic expectations we have about weight loss and weight maintenance after significant loss.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all
It talks about how biologically, our bodies are wired to maintain a certain weight. So when we become overweight, then try to lose weight, our bodies work against us, trying to gain the weight back. It's a little discouraging from one perspective. But understanding more what we're up against is always helpful.
Right around the same time I read that, I had a conversation with a runner about a certain hormone that's produced when you begin intense exercise with regularity. It makes you ravenous. Your body fights to regain the calories you've burned, when your goal is to burn those calories off for good.
That said, 2 lbs in a week is not only healthy weight loss, it's actually fantastic weight loss! Give yourself permission to celebrate those small victories. While massive weight loss is inspiring, I'd be interested to see the statistics of participants of those sorts of programs and how many of them keep it off permanently and what they still do to maintain.