In the last 24 hours, I have had to take stock of my life and my activities up until now concerning diet.

I visited a forum on Dr Bernstein's site where folks were talking about the aim of their low carb diet. Their chief aim was to get their blood sugar stabilized because they are diabetics and pre-diabetics. Weight Loss came second.

Weight Loss came second!

Then I started to think, what if my main concern was health and not weight loss?

Think about how you would actually treat yourself. When you are trying to get healthy, you treat yourself with love and care. When you are trying to lose weight, I tend to get depressed and angry at myself.

If my my main focus was health then I would exercise more often and eat better foods, and not worry so much about junk food.

Please be honest with yourself!!! Because I feel that the majority of Weight Loss folks would be like me. Focussing on Weight Loss.

Oh we tell ourselves that weight loss is for for health (which it is), but our real mental focus is getting those pounds off and the emotions surrounding that!


All I ask is this, Take a good hard look at your motives, really question yourself, Are you too concerned with numbers on the scale and not your health?

Hey Daver!

Great question. But while I think of an answer.. Umm do you take Paypal?? I need to pay my $60 for my lifetime membership in Davekins! I need to get all this weight off now no matter what it takes!!! hee hee


Kristi

Funny!!

You make a very good point Dave. All my life it has been about weight... not health. Now I have health problems because of the way I tried to lose weight.

Thank you!! I will start treating myself better.. for my HEALTH!!

Norma

I started out on low carb to loose weight, but now concentrate mainly on the health aspects. I love that I'm loosing too, but health is my main reason for sticking with it.

I have a lot of diabetes in my family, as well as cancer and stroke. (NO heart disease!). I feel that eating low carb, with mainly natural and unprocessed foods is the best way to eat.

For me, it started out being about weight and then when I had a better handle on the science end, it became about health.

I don't know how many times I would do this, but it was a lot and I recognise this behaviour in other folks:

It becomes about the scale, and the ups and downs of the scales is an emotional roller coaster. We search for the next best thing, we get despondant at a stall, and then we cheat.

I know my behaviour is disordered and it's time for a change!

Great topic and something I will definitely put some thought into. I was just telling Su (HalAngel) that my goal weight is 150 - too high for someone my height (5'3") but as she said it is better to be 25 lbs above your "ideal" rather than 125. I definitely want to lose 57 more lbs to get to 150 . . . . . but I want to be healthy, too. I want to be 50 is the new 30-40ish rather than 50 going on 70.


Dave: what is the weekly fee is we don't want to get the free pics?

Could it possibly be reasonable to completely stop weighing? I hardly want to entertain the thought...



Kristi

I can wake up in the morning and actually "feel" thinner and relatively attractive. Relatively. It's all relative! Then the scale has a number that I don't like. I feel like crap. This is true even if I put my clothes on and they fit better--the scale number is more important when it comes down to the mood/attitude with which I begin my day.

This is a great topic and something that I have been thinking of about the past week. I had to take the weight ticker out of my signature because every time I would look at I be upset!

Also, I am trying not to weigh for two weeks! I am way too emotionally dependent on the number on the scale. It will set my mood for the day. In 'The Secret' Rhonda says to take the number of your perfect weight and put it on the readout of your scale. That way when you weigh you will see your perfect weight! I don't know if I could do that!

I love the thought about how we would treat ourselves if great health is our goal rather than weight loss!! That is 'food' for thought and it has no carbs!!!

Great thoughts, Dave!! Thanks for posting this!

When I first started on Atkins in 2004, it was so I could lose weight quickly. I assumed I would move to a "balanced" WOE once I had taken the weight off.

But, very shortly after starting the diet, in my quest for quick and easy low carb recipes, I came across more and more information telling me how fat wasn't really bad for you, and sugar really was. The more I read, the less important losing the weight became and the more I was interested in the positive benefits for my health.

Even when I fell off the wagon and gained weight, I never went back to eating the empty sugar and starch calories. In fact I blame most of my weight gain on eating a maintenance level of carbs while reducing my activity to almost completely sedentary. Not to say I didn't cheat, but the cheats were occasional and the majority of my diet stayed lowcarb because I knew this was the healthiest way to eat.

Now that my life circumstances have gotten to a new steady state, I'm hoping to tighten up my eating and hopefully lose the weight again, but I eat the way I eat because I know this is the healthiest diet I can be on. (And I mean diet as in 'the food I eat' not 'means to achieve weight loss')

Melodie,


Hmmm. Food for thought. I'd have to lose my ticker... Oh, boy! I don't know about this!


Kris

I don't own a scale. I go by how my clothes feel.

My decision to come back to LC was to lose weight...so that I felt better! I do amateur martial arts sparring...I wanted to be faster so I felt lighter would be faster. So far, so good.

Well, I lost my ticker, but kept the weight stats in smaller font. I also included other measures to keep a balance and not focus on just the weight. I wrote about all this in my journal, but I really feel good about my decision.. Got my leather jacket zipped! Can't wear it out of the house, but that will be next!


Kristi

Bump for a great thread....I agree,... 55 and fat....hey where are the 25 year old ladies? I don't think so....health is what really matters in the long run.
I quess if you are young and want to get out there to find a little "sumthin...sumthin" the focus is on other things...but you can not forget your mind and hope that you will have it when "sumthin" takes a back seat.
Hard to convince a "real young" person though.

Hey Cpt. Jack, I'm 73 and I'll have to admit looks are my #1 priority even now. I'm still waiting for the time when it doesn't matter any more, although I remember at 15 I thought it would come at about 30 or 35.

Health is definitely next on the list, and it does matter, but if I listened to my cardiologist I would surely be eating different! But I would still be fat too, and he didn't like that either.

Rozi

Hiya Dave! Mind if I quote you in my siggy?

--what if my main concern was health and not weight loss?