Kate: Chrissy Metz

[chocolatine]

Just now, ClareWalks said:

Daaaaaamn, I *might* be able to drink enough free booze to cover THAT! It seems like so many airlines are kind of doing away with first class, or they only have like four rows. It is annoying. But yeah, a first class seat should definitely be comfy for Kate or any person of size :)

It's just a two-hour flight, so you'd have to drink quickly :)

[Tiger]

1 hour ago, ShadowFacts said:

I liked how, in the Thanksgiving episode, Kate was rather confident about the plane, after brief hesitation.  She proactively told the woman in the window seat she bought both seats, and wasn't sheepish about the seat belt extender.  Matter-of-fact, even though she could have been defeated by people staring.  She wasn't. 

I like Kate when she acts assertive and gets things done like last night and the episode with Jami Gertz.  I hate when she acted feckless with Toby last week.  

[Sake614]

I'm a 'normal' sized person and I barely fit in a coach seat! I swear they get smaller every time I fly. But yeah, someone that big would definitely be more comfortable in two coach seats than one first class. The armrests in first don't lift because the tray table is inside, so there's no extra room beyond the actual seat.

ETA: I think Metz is absolutely stunning regardless of her size. 

Edited November 23, 2016 by Sake614

[chocolatine]

21 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I was curious so I googled... A typical coach seat is 17" wide vs. 22" for first class.  So you get a lot more with two coach seats... 34ish" vs. 22".  (I would think Metz would need more than 22" but maybe not.)

Huh, maybe they just look much bigger to me in a "grass is always greener on the other side" way. And because the few times in my life that I got to fly first class it felt 1000x more comfortable than coach, not just in terms of seat width, but also depth, leg room, reclining angle, foot rest, and lateral distance between seats. I also thought that, pricing being more or less equal, traveling in first class would eliminate the self-conciousness/humiliation that Kate went through of being stared at by the other passengers, assuring her seat neighbor she got two seats, getting the belt extender, etc.

[Tiger]

24 minutes ago, Sake614 said:

I'm a 'normal' sized person and I barely fit in a coach seat! I swear they get smaller every time I fly. But yeah, someone that big would definitely be more comfortable in two coach seats than one first class. The armrests in first don't lift because the tray table is inside, so there's no extra room beyond the actual seat.

ETA: I think Metz is absolutely stunning regardless of her size. 

I'm a 5'8" superlean 185 lb male, and I barely fit in a coach seat.  

I have no idea how anyone any taller or wider than me fits, which is absolutely ridiculous!  Does the FAA not regulate this? 

[Sake614]

@Tiger no the FAA doesn't regulate seat sizes/leg room or anything else. Airlines are free to make whatever changes they want to maximize occupancy. And as soon as one makes a change, the others generally follow. Same with baggage fees, for purchase meals etc. and now that there are only a couple of airlines left, it's even harder to find an alternative.

[ProudMary]

There's an article in The Hollywood Reporter about Chrissy Metz.
'This Is Us' Actress Chrissy Metz on Going From Junior Agent to TV Star: "Now It's My Turn"
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rambling-reporter/is-us-actress-chrissy-metz-going-junior-agent-tv-star-my-turn-949174?facebook_20161123

[SlackerInc]

20 hours ago, random chance said:

I think they can do whatever they want and she can accept or decline, but I did wonder why they didn't pad her originally to take some of the pressure off both sides. Also I doubt they have "X pounds in Y days" in the contract because that would be insane.

As for hiding delicious food from her - she'd be better off changing her mindset, because delicious food is waved in your face everywhere you go.

It's waved around a lot more than I would like.  But it doesn't have to be "everywhere you go".  We all have a daily reservoir of willpower, and the fewer times we have to tap into it, the better chance we have of making it to bedtime without using it up.  Chrissy's money can facilitate that effort.

"Changing her mindset" is a facile suggestion that doesn't track with the reality of how hard it is for people who have accumulated a lot of weight.  Again, this isn't just my experience.  The statistics show that it's more difficult long term than quitting smoking or drinking, for instance.

[random chance]

1 hour ago, SlackerInc said:

"Changing her mindset" is a facile suggestion that doesn't track with the reality of how hard it is for people who have accumulated a lot of weight.  Again, this isn't just my experience.  The statistics show that it's more difficult long term than quitting smoking or drinking, for instance.

I have quit smoking and gained weight and lost weight, so I'm not just being hypothetical and facile here, this is my personal experience. I'm not saying it's easy to rewrite your inner monologue, I'm saying it's more productive (and ultimately more empowering) than depending on other people to remove temptation from you.

Someone asked this on the main thread and I never saw an answer, is the whole deal with gastric bypass simply that they make your stomach smaller and therefore you can't eat as much? (But, you still want to eat as much?) As opposed to, you're less hungry to start with? Because I know this operation has a lot of controversy floating around it but I don't know why.

[SlackerInc]

I'm pretty sure the operation also reduces your hunger.  And you just physically can't get much food in your stomach or you get sick.  But I think there are often complications that arise, infections and so on.  I don't know all that much about it, but that's my impression.

[movingtargetgal]

I had weight loss surgery in 2007.  I chose to go with the lap band because I thought it would be safer.  After a few years, the band itself had failed and it started to allow the saline the simply leak out and it became a useless foreign body inside my stomach. My insurance gave me a difficult time about having it removed.  Last spring I began having a tearing pain around the port.  In August I developed a 105 degree fever and was rushed to the ER and into emergency surgery to have the band removed.  The surgery was six hours long and they removed the band ( which had eroded into my stomach and caused a hole in it), a 4 inch abscess and almost two liters of infected fluids from my abdominal cavity.  I nearly lost my life that day.  I asked my surgeon what I could have done to cause the band to fail like this and he told me that many of the bands are failing in this manner and he had done this type of emergency surgery on his lap band patients.  It happened frequently enough that he stopped doing the lap band procedure.  It has been over a year and I am still not fully recovered.

I really hope they go a different direction with Kate in her weight loss journey.  Instead of surgery, why not have her enter eating disorders therapy.  Let her dig deep into the emotional issues she has that caused her to medicate her pain with food,  her issues with her mother, her grieving her father and the pain of being bullied as a child because she was fat.  All of these things would make a much better storyline that Kate goes to diet class and all the fat people and that one skinny bitch talk about food.

[ClareWalks]

I also know people who have gotten gastric bypass who have had trouble digesting certain foods (like raw veggies, they would puke up every time). It depends on the person and the type of weight loss surgery I think. 

[SlackerInc]

3 hours ago, movingtargetgal said:

I really hope they go a different direction with Kate in her weight loss journey.  Instead of surgery, why not have her enter eating disorders therapy.  Let her dig deep into the emotional issues she has that caused her to medicate her pain with food,  her issues with her mother, her grieving her father and the pain of being bullied as a child because she was fat.  All of these things would make a much better storyline that Kate goes to diet class and all the fat people and that one skinny bitch talk about food.

I'm sorry to hear about what you went through, and glad you made it through.  I agree that I'd not want to see them go the surgery route with Kate.  But the rest of that is exactly the opposite of what I want to see portrayed.  As I noted upthread (or maybe it was in the episode thread), that kind of psychoanalysis really grates on me.  I didn't get morbidly obese because I was "medicating my pain" or Freudian mommy/daddy issues.  I got morbidly obese because I loved to eat triple cheeseburgers, pan pizza with extra cheese, chocolate layer cake, etc.  And I struggle every day to maintain the weight loss because I'm still dying to eat those things (and I do still treat myself and allow myself to eat them, sometimes).  But other than that, I know myself to be very healthy psychologically.  So I really hope they don't contribute to this stereotype with Kate's story, although I am somewhat afraid they will.

Edited November 24, 2016 by SlackerInc

[random chance]

6 hours ago, movingtargetgal said:

I had weight loss surgery in 2007.  I chose to go with the lap band because I thought it would be safer.  [..]  I nearly lost my life that day.  

Oh dear God that's horrible, well now I get the controversy. Glad you're ok!

6 hours ago, ClareWalks said:

I also know people who have gotten gastric bypass who have had trouble digesting certain foods (like raw veggies, they would puke up every time). It depends on the person and the type of weight loss surgery I think. 

That would be enough to put me off the idea right there.

3 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

But the rest of that is exactly the opposite of what I want to see portrayed.  As I noted upthread (or maybe it was in the episode thread), that kind of psychoanalysis really grates on me.  I didn't get morbidly obese because I was "medicating my pain" or Freudian mommy/daddy issues.  I got morbidly obese because I loved to eat triple cheeseburgers, pan pizza with extra cheese, chocolate layer cake, etc. 

Yeah to me the bad thing about the "medicating my pain" is that I don't think you have to be psychologically damaged to enjoy frosting and grilled cheese and so on, and there is kind of a false premise built into it that when you're "mentally healthy" you won't want these things anymore. Which to me is false hope and false advertising.

To me though it all comes down to hunger. If the whole point of the surgery was that you'd feel less hungry I can imagine why it would work. If you were still hungry but could just eat less without getting sick ... ugh, that's a terrible solution. That just sounds like surgical punishment.

[SlackerInc]

Dr. Google gives contradictory answers to whether hunger is actually reduced.

[ClareWalks]

Your stomach feels full so you feel "satisfied," but I would think the psychological triggers to eat would still be there. You'd just need a different outlet for them (lest you puke).

[ShadowFacts]

I don't think it's so much psychoanalysis that's sometimes needed, what I think can be helpful is cognitive therapy which is short-term and helps identify patterns and behaviors and how to redirect negative responses.  If you keep thinking the same, you'll keep doing the same.  You may still want to eat certain things just as much as ever, but you get some practice on how to act differently on the thoughts/urges.  Everybody's different, but this type of help is as legitimate as surgery, etc.  It doesn't mean you're damaged if you avail yourself of it. 

[random chance]

6 hours ago, ClareWalks said:

Your stomach feels full so you feel "satisfied," but I would think the psychological triggers to eat would still be there. You'd just need a different outlet for them (lest you puke).

Maybe it's like smoking in the sense that even after you've gotten past nicotine withdrawal, you're still changing a slew of habits all at the same time and your usual response to that kind of stress is, well, smoking. (And by "you" I mean, "me.")

3 hours ago, ShadowFacts said:

I don't think it's so much psychoanalysis that's sometimes needed, what I think can be helpful is cognitive therapy which is short-term and helps identify patterns and behaviors and how to redirect negative responses.  If you keep thinking the same, you'll keep doing the same.  You may still want to eat certain things just as much as ever, but you get some practice on how to act differently on the thoughts/urges.  Everybody's different, but this type of help is as legitimate as surgery, etc.  It doesn't mean you're damaged if you avail yourself of it. 

That's exactly what I meant by, change your mindset rather than having people remove temptation from you. Whenever you can depend on yourself rather than other people, that is a good thing.

[taragel]

16 hours ago, random chance said:

Someone asked this on the main thread and I never saw an answer, is the whole deal with gastric bypass simply that they make your stomach smaller and therefore you can't eat as much? (But, you still want to eat as much?) As opposed to, you're less hungry to start with? Because I know this operation has a lot of controversy floating around it but I don't know why.

I had gastric bypass two years ago. It does make your stomach smaller (you can fit about 3-4 oz of food at once), and it does reduce ghrelin which produces hunger. However, you still have "head hunger" and cravings, where you may want to eat even if you're not physically hungry. So after the initial adjustment period of having to be super vigilant about your food choices and rely partially on protein shakes for your nutrients (say 3-4 months), your old habits and that head hunger probably/may reassert themselves. Certain foods are very easy to digest ("slider foods") and they're the tasty ones like chips, cookies, etc. Protein is harder because it's heavy and filling. It's easy to overindulge on slider foods, or snack/graze too many times a day which allows you to take in more calories than you should. The surgery is not a magic bullet. It is still possible to gain or regain weight. It's a tool that will help you out and prevent you from overindulging IF you are making healthy choices in your dailly life anyway -- eating three small meals a day, don't snack, and drink all your water, and exercise, etc. 

Everyone has a different experience, obviously, but my surgery was ridiculously easy and I had no real side effects or complications. Nowadays I can eat pretty much anything. You just have to be especially careful to chew a lot, avoid dry/overcooked food, don't keep eating after your full, and eat slowly. Right now, the only foods that still sometimes make me feel sick (like the food is stuck at the opening to your pouch and you need to regurgitate it -- though most times you're just spitting up saliva and don't end up vomiting) is very dry meat or hard ("al dente"), undersauced pasta or rice.

I think there's a real stigma/controversy because whenever the media reports on gastric bypass it features on the very small percentage that have serious problems or complications. Plus, it does sound very drastic to cut out a large part of an internal organ and re-route your intestines. But the number of people who have this surgery is quite large and growing more so all the time (no pun intended) and there are many very skilled doctors who have been doing the surgery for more than 20 years now (like mine was). You just need to do your research, like with any important medical procedure, and decide if it's for you.

I thought the Thanksgiving episode would focus way more on Kate's decision. She didn't research it at all. She just heard the lady in the class say she's lost 30 lbs (which...the lady probably had the surgery very recently then if that's all she lost?) and decided she was on board. (The lady's dialogue about it in the class also was not a glowing endorsement). I was disappointed in that. I wish they would have shown her doing some research if they're going to really pursue this storyline.

Edited November 25, 2016 by taragel

[ShadowFacts]

More very interesting science on why weight loss and maintenance is so difficult, and it is thought to be the tip of the iceberg:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/sunday/the-thin-gene.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

This line of research is leading more to a hormone/drug solution rather than surgery or behavior modification.  Something tells me this might lead to accelerated research, because . . . drug industry. 

I also thought that Kate's decision was impulsive, she hears the woman at group, then has a jolt in the airplane.  Maybe she has done previous research for all we know, and she was just now emboldened.  But it doesn't look well thought out. 

[random chance]

I have to say, even though it's a trope by now, the big decision following scary turbulence scenario is entirely realistic to me.  And it will also be realistic if she changes her mind once she stops being freaked out.

Thanks for that explanation @Taragel!

[SueB]

On 10/14/2016 at 7:36 PM, DearEvette said:

From the couple of interviews Ive seen the actress herself does not seem to be preoccupied with weight at all.  She seems very positive and comfortable. I've only ever heard her say that she's happy to be able to show another type on body image on screen.  I think she told one anecdote where the producers asked her if she had an issue with the unclothed scene in the pilot and she basically said "bring it on."

She has also mentioned that the story about Kate isn't just about her weight.  But the weight is a symptom of bigger issues.  And they'll peel those back as the season goes on that is where her story is going to shift its focus toward.

This is what I'm looking forward to.  What is driving Kate. 

[SlackerInc]

12 hours ago, ShadowFacts said:

More very interesting science on why weight loss and maintenance is so difficult, and it is thought to be the tip of the iceberg:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/sunday/the-thin-gene.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Thanks for posting this.  This paragraph underlines exactly what I've been talking about:

Quote

After all, Americans regard weight as a moral issue. Despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, we assume that people’s minds can control their metabolism — and that they merely need to make a decision to gain or lose weight. But studies demonstrate that this is simply not true. For instance, the contestants on the “Biggest Loser” TV show became paragons of self-control; some shed more than 100 pounds, something very few of us could ever achieve. And yet a recent study showed that even these incredibly disciplined dieters gained all the weight back. In the long run, our hormones win.

The key there, though, is that "hormones win" doesn't mean "people magically regain weight, even though they continue to eat a healthy, low calorie diet".  It's that those hormones make you have near-irresistible cravings for food of high caloric density.  And I don't believe any kind of cognitive therapy will overcome this tendency, which is something we evolved in our ancestral environment.  Way back then, we had irregular, unpredictable opportunities to eat.  So we gorged when the opportunity arose, and then went without, and lived off fat stores, when times were lean.  But nowadays, times are never lean in the industrialized world.  So what I'm doing is artificially making my environment "lean".  And in that circumstance, I can handle it, because dealing with lean times is also evolutionarily built into me.  To expect me or Chrissy or anyone to sit at a table and look at and smell abundant high density calories an arm's reach away, and overcome that primal, evolutionarily hardwired instinct to gorge on them, is just not realistic or fair.

[random chance]

I don't understand why these shows/Craft services (?) are providing tables full of high density calories in the first place. It just seems so counterproductive. Even if the actors aren't on a diet, don't they have to maintain their weight, since a weight gain messes up costuming and storylines and so on? Why aren't they all demanding fruit and vegetables and lean protein? It's just weird to me.

[chocolatine]

31 minutes ago, random chance said:

I don't understand why these shows/Craft services (?) are providing tables full of high density calories in the first place. It just seems so counterproductive. Even if the actors aren't on a diet, don't they have to maintain their weight, since a weight gain messes up costuming and storylines and so on? Why aren't they all demanding fruit and vegetables and lean protein? It's just weird to me.

My understanding, based on interviews I've read with various actors, is that they provide a wide range of foods, fruit/veggies/lean protein as well as pastries, pizza, etc. To make sure there's something for everyone, because it's not just actors who work on the shows. Everyone is an adult and controls what goes into their own mouths.

[random chance]

32 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

My understanding, based on interviews I've read with various actors, is that they provide a wide range of foods, fruit/veggies/lean protein as well as pastries, pizza, etc. To make sure there's something for everyone, because it's not just actors who work on the shows. Everyone is an adult and controls what goes into their own mouths.

AH okay well that makes sense then. I can't fault them if they have options and it's not just all donuts and pies.

[breezy424]

On 11/17/2016 at 4:58 PM, biakbiak said:

Chrissy's contract requires her to lose weight.

Yikes.   It's one thing to want to lose weight but to require it in a contract is something else.  And having something like that hanging over your head may give you motivation but at the same time it could put pressure on you to lose weight in an unhealthful way.  Hopefully, under this contract, Chrissy will be provided with the professional support to do this mindfully.  Hopefully, she will be monitored and be given guidance for the best eating lifestyle plan for 'her'.   

Unfortunately, from what I've seen, 'Kate' has been going down a road of what is supposed to 'work'.  It doesn't IMO.  

I hope the best for Chrissy. 

[MaryPatShelby]

On 9/30/2016 at 5:56 PM, Tiger said:

Starving yourself has actually been scientifically proven to make your body fat % increase because your body "thinks" it needs to store fat because its not being fed regularly.  

I never understand this theory, because anorexia exists.  Anorexics who are basically starving themselves are very very thin, basically skin and bones.  If this were true, wouldn't they be, if not fat, then not skinny?

[Tiger]

1 hour ago, MaryPatShelby said:

I never understand this theory, because anorexia exists.  Anorexics who are basically starving themselves are very very thin, basically skin and bones.  If this were true, wouldn't they be, if not fat, then not skinny?

I think this speaks to what another poster and I discussed earlier regarding my post above: the scientific community keeps changing its guidance and de and re and de, etc., bunking theories.  

In my non-scientific opinion, I think each individual needs to find what works for them. What works for Chrissy may only work for Chrissy.  

Similarly, and speaking from personal experience, what Milo did to get his body may work exclusively for Milo.  

[ShadowFacts]

14 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

Thanks for posting this.  This paragraph underlines exactly what I've been talking about:

The key there, though, is that "hormones win" doesn't mean "people magically regain weight, even though they continue to eat a healthy, low calorie diet".  It's that those hormones make you have near-irresistible cravings for food of high caloric density.  And I don't believe any kind of cognitive therapy will overcome this tendency, which is something we evolved in our ancestral environment.  Way back then, we had irregular, unpredictable opportunities to eat.  So we gorged when the opportunity arose, and then went without, and lived off fat stores, when times were lean.  But nowadays, times are never lean in the industrialized world.  So what I'm doing is artificially making my environment "lean".  And in that circumstance, I can handle it, because dealing with lean times is also evolutionarily built into me.  To expect me or Chrissy or anyone to sit at a table and look at and smell abundant high density calories an arm's reach away, and overcome that primal, evolutionarily hardwired instinct to gorge on them, is just not realistic or fair.

We are employing cognitive means when we choose to eat whatever we eat, and not eat whatever we don't.  Those choices need to be made several times a day, every day, lifelong.  That's where employing strategies comes in, and they are all mind-based.  Staying away from the table of calorie-dense food is a behavioral choice.  Whatever is eventually concluded from the research referenced above, it's still not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution.  People have so many individual genetic variations, and microbiomes, and environmental influences, that there will never be one answer.  Personal choices will always play in. 

What will work for Kate/Chrissy?  Will be interesting.  We're kind of seeing her frustration at slow weight loss, but maybe that is exactly what would work for her in the long-term, minus the unappealing food she seems to be eating currently.  She didn't acquire all the extra pounds in a month or a year, why would it be realistic to expect to lose it fast? 

[random chance]

2 hours ago, MaryPatShelby said:

I never understand this theory, because anorexia exists.  Anorexics who are basically starving themselves are very very thin, basically skin and bones.  If this were true, wouldn't they be, if not fat, then not skinny?

That's why it never made any sense to me - I have seen someone stop eating and shrink away to nothing. So I wasn't surprised to see this one debunked this year - although given how often the scientific community changes its mind, I won't be surprised to see it rebunked either.

45 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I'm not really pushing my own ideas or arguing against anyone else's, I just enjoy the discussion.  

Me too - and I know full well that what works for one person might not for another, but the flip side of that is - what works for one person might also work for another.

[romantic idiot]

I think it's about going beyond a certain level. Not eating will make your metabolism slow down. But if you sustain it, then you will begin to starve. But that's beyond a serious point.

[random chance]

They did debunk this though. Granted they could change their minds again but, the last word on it was that it was in fact not true.

[SlackerInc]

2 hours ago, ShadowFacts said:

We are employing cognitive means when we choose to eat whatever we eat, and not eat whatever we don't.  Those choices need to be made several times a day, every day, lifelong.  That's where employing strategies comes in, and they are all mind-based.  Staying away from the table of calorie-dense food is a behavioral choice.

That's absolutely true.  But it uses up less of our reserves of willpower to put a little extra distance and difficulty between us and the temptation.  Did you ever see the excellent Denzel Washington movie Flight?  

Spoiler

 

He is a raging alcoholic, but with his entire career on the line, he manages to quit drinking for a few weeks leading up to an appearance before an NTSB investigative committee--with the help of staying with a friend and pilots' union guy who clears all the alcohol out of his house.  Then the night before his testimony, they set him up in a hotel right near where the hearing will take place in the morning.  They remove all alcohol from the minibar, and even station a "guard" outside his door.  But an aspect of that important to this discussion, I think, is that this "guard" wouldn't have the legal authority to stop Denzel's character from leaving and heading to a bar or liquor store.  He would try to talk him out of it, call his union guy, etc., and that's enough--Denzel doesn't try to leave.

Only one problem: someone screwed up and left the door between that room and the adjacent one unlocked.  The pilot notices this and you see him trying to fight his temptation, but he walks over to the other room.  There's a great shot where he opens the minibar fridge, and we cut from a shot of all the little liquor bottles to the light from the fridge shining on his face.  He again is visibly shown to fight the temptation.  Then he pops open one of the little vodka bottles and takes a swig.  There is some sense that "okay, maybe he's just going to have a little taste, and then go back to his room" (at least, I was hoping so).  But no: we cut to the morning and the union guy comes in, and he's got these bottles strewn all around him.  He's shitfaced, three sheets to the wind.

I totally relate to that scene, but concerning food rather than alcohol.

 

 To someone who can't relate, it might not make sense.  You might think "okay, if it's that bad, you should actually have to be physically restrained, imprisoned, or you'll go and ignore or fight through whatever roadblocks you set up, and get the thing you crave."  And maybe for some people that's true, heaven help them.  Or on the other hand, you might think

Spoiler

"if you can stay in the room, even though you know you could push past the 'guard' and he can't legally stop you, you ought to be able to exert the same self control in not drinking from the neighboring minibar--after all, the real reason you hold off (wanting to preserve your career) is still there hanging over you in either scenario".

 And maybe for some people that's true, and good for them.  But I think there are a lot of us who hover in that middle ground.  The dismal stats for keeping off weight (look at all those Biggest Loser contestants, who have a strong social pressure to keep it off) show that at the very least, most people are not in that last category, just being able to do it all from willpower.  For someone like Chrissy, who also has a career-related impetus behind it, trying my approach could test, then, whether she is in the middle category (like I seem to be, three years plus and counting) or in the "hopeless" category (since she's not going to be actually imprisoned unless she commits a crime, and that's obviously not worth it).

2 hours ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

But your broader environment isn't lean.  You believe that if you see the food, you don't have the self-control to not eat it.  But you do have the self-control to not walk to the non-safe frig or stop at the drive-thru or pick up Doritos at the store or decide that tonight is ok for a splurge meal even though you've already had two of those this week.  I understand, I do the same thing (with varying success).  I don't want to see the foods I'm weaker around.  But I believe that it's more because of how I think about food than about biology.  I'm not ridiculing any hypothesis, I'm sure the reality is it's a complex set of factors that apply.  But I think that a lot of thin people don't have the thought I have that I might lose self-control if I see the Doritos in my own pantry.  Or they keep their homes pretty junk-free but have learned that that's about all they can control.  I bet Milo and Mandy are at fancy dinners and around loaded craft services tables all the time and they don't lose control due to their biology, and I think it's because they've learned that they have the skill not to do so, and have not done so for so long that it's not even much of an issue anymore.

On the first part, concerning the "broader environment", see the stuff I posted about Flight if you don't mind being spoiled (or you've seen it already).

On that last bit: I think you're underrating the extent to which Milo and Mandy are physically different from Chrissy (and me).  Different genetically, and different in not having already created all those fat cells that fight and fight to keep from being depleted, then fight some more to be plumped up again, and never ever give up trying to spur us to regain the weight (hence the dismal outcome for the Biggest Loser winners).

Edited November 26, 2016 by SlackerInc
Realized I had left some spoiler-ish stuff out there

[random chance]

53 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I'd love to read that, if you have any links or ideas how to find that study. 

I read it a long time ago and didn't think to bookmark it, so I tried googling for it today and I brought up several sites that mention it but none of them link to the original research. I'll keep looking (although, not right now), and meanwhile they  all say basically the same thing - in this case, from the Washington Post:

Quote

The idea that dieting can actually be counterproductive for weight loss is a trope that appears in just about every fitness publication, and warnings of the weight-loss plateau abound.

But although it’s true that metabolism does slow down when people cut calories, that offsets less than half of the decrease in diet calories over the first six months. It takes several years for metabolic slowing to fully offset the average dieter’s reduction in calories and result in a weight plateau. The fact that most people experience a weight plateau much earlier, typically after six to eight months of dieting, means that something else must be happening to thwart their continued weight loss.

Quote

I think our mind is still comforted by the act of feeding even when the body itself might be whispering 'it's enough'.  

I think that's absolutely true. And I think that's why food is sold to us as entertainment and comfort, not something we need because we're hungry.

[luna1122]

I didn't grow up overweight. Like a lot of teen girls, probably, I thought I was, tho, so I fasted and toyed with bulimia and messed with my metabolism. Later, when I begin gaining weight due to age and inherent laziness---I hate to exercise, and never played any kind of sport--I did stupid fad diets and starved myself. And then later, when I was diagnosed with hypothryroidism, even tho I'm on meds for it, I find it very very hard to lose weight, no matter what I do. I am not a depressed eater--the only time I have ever really lost weight effortlessly was due to heartbreak or depression. After my divorce, I lost 40 lbs cuz I couldn't eat (nd of course , everyone was telling me how great I looked, even tho it was due to, you know, situational depression). it's when I'm happy that I gain weight...I'm a celebratory eater, it's all a part of good times and get togethers and pleasure. food is sexy.

 

Anyway, the point of all that blather is that there is no one reason people get fat. It's not always about baggage and psychological issues or our moms didn't love us or the kindly old man next door abused us. There are a million reasons, and all the armchair psychology and judginess and 'concern' about their health doesn't mean we understand or an predict or fix it. I admire Chrissy Metz for putting herself out there for all the speculation and judgement she gets. Sure, it comes with the job, but it can't be easy.

[SlackerInc]

1 hour ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

But do we know that our fat cells fight to be returned to overfilled?  I know the body wants to avoid starvation but wouldn't it make sense that it can recognize a healthier weight range and strive for that instead of obesity?    

Sure, in theory.  But not only does empirical reality (like the Biggest Loser contestants) strongly suggest otherwise, so does the evolutionary explanation.  We have not lived in a "post-scarcity" condition, nor in a society with cheap, readily available and highly processed and heavily advertised carbohydrate/fat concoctions, long enough for evolution to catch up.  Not nearly long enough.  In the ancestral state our genes still "think" we live in, piling on pounds of belly fat when food was plentiful was rarely going to reduce our evolutionary fitness.  It was much more likely those fat stores were going to get us through some inevitable occasion when game became scarce, or just through a long winter (like a bear), than that we'd just continue to have all the food we want, forever.  And even if we did live in an Edenic paradise where food was available year round, it was probably someplace like the Mediterranean: and as noted upthread, the Mediterranean diet is very healthy.  We craved sugar, but to get it we ate fruit and berries that were full of fiber and antioxidants.  Pure sugar and white flour simply had not been invented.

Quote

Couldn't it be our own thoughts about food, eating, scarcity, comfort and deprivation that return us to being overfat?

This is the psychological theory that I reject (not for everyone, but as being typically applicable to most obese people, and therefore likely to apply to Chrissy).  It is widely believed, though, and I don't necessarily have some kind of ironclad proof that it's wrong.  I just believe the evolutionary/genetic explanations are a lot more persuasive.

[JudyObscure]

I think part of the confused messages we get about weight is that magazines and newspapers love to have something "new" to tell us.  So a study shows that metabolism slows as we age and we get a big article in the newspaper about it and Woman's Day has a new diet that works even for older women.  What we never hear is that the metabolism does slow with age, but it only means we need to eat about 80 calories per day less  when we're 60 than when we  were 30.  Another example is all the times you hear someone say, "I joined a gym and gained weight, but they told me it was because I was building muscle!"  I've read that, actually, a typical woman on a weight lifting workout program will only gain about three pounds of muscle over the course of a year. The science not only keeps telling us different things, it seldom gives us the whole story.

[random chance]

I remember this from a morning news show last year - they did a study where women walked on a treadmill for an hour a day but changed nothing else, and they all gained weight. And it wasn't muscle weight. The people who ran the study were completely baffled as to why. They theorized that maybe women subconsciously ate more due to the workout, but they couldn't verify this. I thought that was one of the odder studies ever to happen. The kind of study that makes you wonder, "what's the frakking use?" It would be a real public service if Kate had to deal with some of this kind of conflicting advice.

[pennben]

Well hell, wish I had read that before I got on the treadmill this afternoon:)

[random chance]

I do it anyway because I like the feeling of having exercized, but it's a pisser isn't it? :) I never did find a follow up study if they did one.

[chocolatine]

52 minutes ago, pennben said:

Well hell, wish I had read that before I got on the treadmill this afternoon:)

 

19 minutes ago, random chance said:

I do it anyway because I like the feeling of having exercized, but it's a pisser isn't it? :) I never did find a follow up study if they did one.

I don't know how legit that study was, but walking an hour or more per day  works wonders for me in terms of weight loss. I have never been as thin as I when I was a broke grad student and walked everywhere in my mid-sized university town because I didn't want to spend money on the bus. I still ate heartily, no junk but plenty of calories, but by walking a combined 4-5 miles a day and going to a yoga class once or twice a week, I was in great shape.

My life is completely different now, and I no longer have the opportunity to walk so much during the work week, but I still try to squeeze it in whenever I can, and I'm usually in better shape in the summer when it's still light enough after work to do a 3-mile walk around the local lake.

[SlackerInc]

1 hour ago, random chance said:

I remember this from a morning news show last year - they did a study where women walked on a treadmill for an hour a day but changed nothing else, and they all gained weight. And it wasn't muscle weight. The people who ran the study were completely baffled as to why. They theorized that maybe women subconsciously ate more due to the workout, but they couldn't verify this. I thought that was one of the odder studies ever to happen. The kind of study that makes you wonder, "what's the frakking use?" It would be a real public service if Kate had to deal with some of this kind of conflicting advice.

Exercise can act as a temporary appetite suppressant for some (like me--but my wife immediately feels hungrier after exercising).  But it will ultimately stimulate appetite later in any case.  If the things you have around to eat aren't very good in a "volumetrics" sense, you may end up fatter simply because exercise actually doesn't burn off that many calories, so boosted appetite + fattening foods = net gain in weight.  But unless they aren't showing us something, that shouldn't be Kate's issue, because she has been eating comically healthy food (maybe to a fault) and carefully counting calories.  

5 hours ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

Yeah, I believe both.  I for sure agree about evolution and sweetness.  

I don't think The Biggest Loser contestants are a good representative sample to draw conclusions from, though.  They all lost their weight in the most extreme, unsustainable way possible, I think, under crazy pressure.  I also don't think the National Weight Control Registry members are a good representative sample, given they are the success stories, but I think both are relevant.  And at least the NWCR people are a cross-section of diet types, speeds and starting weights.  

I'm no expert on the NWCR, but I have read newspaper articles that profile some of the participants.  The impression I always got was that they were pretty militant about doing things like weighing themselves daily, carefully tracking their calorie intake and controlling what kinds of foods they ate, exercising far more than even most active people...etc.  Basically, being on a permanent diet/exercise regime for maintenance.  That doesn't suggest to me that it's possible, even for that small minority that successfully keeps weight off, for people to reorient their psychology or whatever and just start acting like a "normal" person who stays thin (or at least not fat) without so obsessively working at it all the time.

I just ran across this Washington Post article about David Kessler, who was the head of the FDA during both the first Bush and Clinton administrations.  He struggled for many years with his weight, yo-yoing between around 160-230 lbs.  He wrote a well-received book called The End of Overeating that was mostly a broadside on Big Food's very calculated way of getting people addicted to concoctions of salt/sugar/fat.  But it apparently also includes some advice for how to deal with all the land mines Big Food puts around us--and I particularly related to this:

Quote

He avoids the cues that focus his brain on "highly palatable" foods, going so far as to chart a different route through San Francisco International Airport so that he doesn't walk past the fried dumpling stand.

Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.  I just want Chrissy to be able to have some viable route from the set to her trailer that doesn't go by the craft table containing the "highly palatable" foods.  Even if it's an indirect route, that's fine.  Many of you are saying "well, you can't live that way".  But the former head of the frickin' FDA under two presidents does live that way, and advises it for others!

Edited November 27, 2016 by SlackerInc
Added a link

[random chance]

23 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I suspect walking outdoors for transportation is just different than walking on a treadmill for an hour for a controlled study. 

I bet you're right because to me it's way more work to walk outdoors than to do it on a treadmill. There's uphill downhill aspects, uneven surfaces that take more work, whole-body looking around/gauging safety of crossings and so on. And probably other things I can't think of right now but, I can just feel the difference. (We need a thread for these things! Anybody interested?)

[chocolatine]

1 hour ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

 And were you young as a grad student?  That seems to help with not being overweight.  

I was, but I was heavier in college, when I was even younger (I lived on campus in college, so less walking). I lost 17 pounds in my first three months at grad school, just from the walking.

[ClareWalks]

The main reason a lot of people gain weight or stall weight loss when they begin a workout routine is water retention. When you start working out, particularly strength training, it creates microtears in the muscles so that they can rebuild themselves stronger. The rebuild process requires water and protein. Muscles that are rebuilding swell up with water. This feeling is most familiar as "soreness." A sore person is a water-retaining person, and may be up by several pounds for a few days if they are particularly sore. I never use the "you're not gaining weight, it's MUSCLE" trope with clients because it is, more accurately, water weight that is repairing muscle. Necessary water weight, in the short-term. The key is to stick with a program, drink LOTS of water (it keeps things moving and flushes out excess), and watch total calorie intake at the same time.

Women also have the double whammy of hormonal water-retention fluctuation throughout the month. If you have a hard workout at the wrong time of month, you will be way up on the scale for a day or two. Fun!

[JudyObscure]

11 hours ago, random chance said:

It would be a real public service if Kate had to deal with some of this kind of conflicting advice.

Yes!  We never see this admitted on any of the weight loss shows, we're supposed to believe that Jillian or Bob Greene or Dr. Oz knows exactly what they're talking about and it's just a matter of listening to them.

11 hours ago, random chance said:

they did a study where women walked on a treadmill for an hour a day but changed nothing else, and they all gained weight.

I remember that.  It reminded me of a time when I was doing pretty well on a long term diet, but wanted to lose faster than my 1.5 per week rate, so I stepped up my aerobics from 30 minutes to 60 per day and didn't lose any that week.  My theory is that overly intense exercise causes the stress hormones like cortisol to elevate, and that in turn causes water retention, etc.  -- but they never ask my opinion! ;)

[ShadowFacts]

Chrissy, are you in here?  Are you sick of us yet? 

It gets to be a drag, trying to figure out what works for oneself, and Dr. Oz et al have lost their scientific bearings and are entertainers concerned with ratings.  I think they do more harm than good, and for the actual M.D.s, that's breaking the Hippocratic oath. 

[random chance]

2 hours ago, ClareWalks said:

The main reason a lot of people gain weight or stall weight loss when they begin a workout routine is water retention. When you start working out, particularly strength training, it creates microtears in the muscles so that they can rebuild themselves stronger. The rebuild process requires water and protein.

Interesting! .

2 hours ago, JudyObscure said:

My theory is that overly intense exercise causes the stress hormones like cortisol to elevate, and that in turn causes water retention, etc.  -- but they never ask my opinion! ;)

Oh now that would make sense.

 

1 hour ago, ShadowFacts said:

It gets to be a drag, trying to figure out what works for oneself

Yes, and it can be a lot of aggravating trial and error. Maintenance is a tricky bastard too, especially over the holidays. Here are a few things that helped me a lot in case anyone wants to give them a shot: weigh your food (this was quite the shock for me, and it also explained the slow weight loss), fill up on sugar free jello before eating out, and always look up restaurant menu calories online and decide what you'll order beforehand - don't wait until you're in the restaurant surrounded by people ordering a triple bacon butter burger.

[SlackerInc]

Now I've seen the latest episode.  Definitely throws a new wrinkle in, to have Kate getting surgery.  But is Chrissy going to do it also?  If not, this could get really tricky.  It's nearly impossible not to lose weight after one of those bypasses, so she will really be under the gun.  I suppose maybe they could use girdles or even CGI if it comes down to it?  IDK.

I kind of hope Kate starts researching into it more, and gets scared off by some of the horror stories.

Edited November 27, 2016 by SlackerInc
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