I'm an adult who's been 15, 20, 25 pounds overweight his entire life, but the moment I started losing even just a few of those pounds (and I mean literally just 2-3), my family got extremely concerned. Keep in mind, I'm not doing anything drastic. I'm not working myself out to death. I'm not starving. If you want the specifics, here's what I'm doing:
- A decent 30-60 minutes of cardio a day plus a little bit of strength training (i.e. some sets of pushups, situps, and squats every day, plus I have a pullup bar).
- For diet, I basically cut all the excess with theses rules: No more midnight snacks. Only one snack per day max. No seconds at meals. Only 1 flavored cup of chocolate milk a day, the rest of the milk I drink must be regular (i.e. I save about 40 calories per cup without the flavoring). If I want additional drinks at a meal, everything after the first must be water (saves maybe 150 calories per extra glass I would have had). Milk may be allowed after a particularly hard workout for recovery purposes.
In short, all I'm really doing is having the conscious, active lifestyle I always should have had.
The exercise might seem a little on the strong side, but one other thing to consider is that since the pandemic started, there's basically no reason for me to ever leave the house, so my step count is basically negligible. Whereas I was once reliably hitting 6,000 (~about 200-300 calories) every day due to having to walk to university classes, Zoom means that I literally just have to get out of bed and dress. While I grind out 500 calories a day on my rowing machine, the lack of steps means I'm really only burning maybe 200-300 calories more than in my pre-pandemic, no-exercise, play-games-all-day lifestyle. It's actually fairly modest all things considered.
Likewise, I'm not even really dieting so much as just cutting out all the overeating. I'm not saying "Okay, this breakfast can only be 300 calories because I can only have 1,100 today.", I'm asking "Do I really need to have that extra slice of pizza when I've already had 3, a serving size is 2 slices, and I'm not really hungry?"
Despite these fairly moderate efforts, my family is very worried and upset, and I just don't know how to alleviate them. I think part of the problem is I've been overweight for so long that my anything approaching a normal bodyweight looks anorexic to them: any body chart will show you I'm 15-25 pounds above the upper limit of a healthy bodyweight, let alone in an unhealthily low one. I could literally eat nothing for weeks and still be overweight, so there's no reason to think I have a problem for only eating 150 calories in a snack instead of 200 or 250. Measuring portion sizes is not the same as going to the toilet to induce vomiting.
The whole situation is honestly just surreal. My family was fine with me being 15-25 pounds overweight all my life, but losing 2-3 has put them into panic mode. I feel like a criminal for exercising in front of them, because I can barely do a simple floor calisthenics routine before they think I'm doing too much. I've been living an unhealthy lifestyle for years, but trying to improve has made them more terrified than any of the awful habits and sedentary lifestyle I've had for the longest time.
Imagine being a smoker for all your life, but then the moment you start doing 1 pack a day instead of 2 (i.e. not even actually quitting, just like I'm still overweight), everyone acts like you have some sort of disorder. And all of it so painfully, easily irreversible even if I did go too far: if I had a bout of workout insanity and destroyed 2,000 calories in 4 hours of rowing, I could literally just go to the fridge and wipe out the excessive exercise with a single microwaved pizza.
On the topic of pizza, we just had takeout last night, which provides a great contrast to some cereal-measuring drama I had earlier this morning. Why is eating 1500-2000 calories in a single meal no problem for them, but pouring my cereal into a measuring cup so I can gauge the proper portion size is highly disturbing?
Has anyone else had this kind of problem with friends or family? How did you solve it, and what are somethings I could say to my family or how to approach the topic?
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