weight and spoken thinking

[miriam_e]

I was chatting with an old friend last night. She was concerned about her weight. She tends to have meat at every meal and eats a lot of sweets. She knows my views on sweets so I left that alone, but instead suggested she go easy on the meat, perhaps cutting back to once a week. She replied that she'd heard meat doesn't put on weight; starch does. I thought for a moment and asked her where were all the overweight vegetarians and skinny butchers then?

Interesting. I'd never really thought about it till I said it. Isn't it weird that you can hold information in your head but never connect it till it escapes your mouth. Often I can resolve a problem simply by talking to someone about it. The other person doesn't even need to really listen; just the act of explaining it seems to make new connections in the brain. We are such strange creatures.

Comments

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

I've learned a fair bit from my own attempts to lose weight, and eating meat daily is entirely doable as long as it's lean, and only about 125g per meal. The main factors in weight gain are carbohydrates, fats and a poor balance with activity level. Breads, potatoes and sweets are all evils that must, alas, be compensated with excercise or significantly reduced in intake.

(Baked goods and sweet stuff are my main weakness:)

I sincerely recommend Weight Watchers as an alternative for your friend. They don't push particular foods and they REALLY help understand how the WHOLE process works, including the emotional elements.
Not the cheapest alternative but the education inherent in the program is invaluable. They have non-meeting alternatives too these days.

With some exceptions (like coconut which is evil), vegies are pretty much devoid of fat. Most aren't high in carbohydrates either. I imagine that's why vegetarians don't tend to suffer from being overweight.
Butchers probably have a role-reinforced eating disorder ;)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I eat lots of starch -- giant bowl of meusli each morning and dinner is another big bowl, half potato, half other veges. I love potatoes and could eat them till the cows come home. I seem to be skinny by force of genetics though, and given that most humans use up almost half their energy with their incredibly wasteful brains, mine seems to waste even more on nervous energy. I'm kinda glad I don't like sweets. I love salt though, which is really naughty... lookin' at high blood pressure in old age. Damn.

Good idea about getting Margaret to go along to Weight Watchers. I've been trying everything I can think of to get her to go out and meet people. It could be just the trick. She normally says, putting herself down, that people don't want to see a fat person, and that she'll feel out of place. But that is all fine at Weight Watchers. Thanks for the idea.

I like the gentle dig at butchers... role-reinforced eating disorder. heheheh :)