Weightloss and HCM forum?

[Laoshur]

Hi, all,

I am really seriously looking at losing weight. I believe that my weight gain was a direct result of my discouragement from years of fearing being told that my breathlessness and chest pain were the result of being overweight (long before I was overweight) and out of shape (at a time when I jogged daily but also ignored left arm and chest pain daily). Thus, I am sure that HCM contributed to my being overweight. More recently, my chf with its constant fluctuations in weight have further discouraged me. However, I can either wallow in this or I can get to business and work on losing weight! With God's help, I will choose the latter.

I believe that sharing this with others who share similar difficulties could be rewarding and encouraging. But, to be honest, my experiences with talking about weight in nearly any context have made me want to avoid mentioning it to anyone. I find that people often inadvertently discourage me by telling me all their diets that worked for them, even though many diets are irrelevant to me. Most diets that are designed for US residents simply do not work here. There are no plates to measure serving sizes. It is virtually impossible to avoid any single type of food, etc. However, I did find a diet that has some promise for me here, called the "Bite diet." I would like to try it and have some encouragement and accountability from others on this site.

So, I have been dreaming of a weight loss forum for HCMers on this site. I envisioned a positive-encouragement-only site in which the only posts could be either people talking about their struggles with losing weight and having HCM and cheers for those losing weight.

I am never sure whether my blaming HCM for my weight is just an excuse or not, but I am sure that it is not helpful for me to use it as an excuse. I read many similar things and wonder if we could all help each other. What has kept me from suggesting this is realizing how difficult it would be for people to keep from making comments that offended others.

What do you think? Would such a forum be a help or a hindrance? Could we agree to avoid making suggestions and limit ourselves to encouragement? Would such a forum be in keeping with the goals of the HCMA? etc.

Rhoda

[Largehearted]

Rhoda.

I think such a forum would be a great idea. Since I cannot do much by way of exercise it is quite difficult for me to lose weight. Having a group that chats about things regularly could be good.

Peace,

Leon

[shirleymahoney]

Rhoda and Leon

I too have had a problem, since i haven't been able to be as active as i want i use to blame the meds but i think it is the fact i can't be as active as i want to be, guys i think it would be great to have forum for this it would encourage us to work harder at it , it is like exercising alone verses having a friend you apt to work harder at it and it is more fun

Shirley

[Linda]

Weight is a struggle for so many of us, whether we have HCM or not. I can see a lot of people being interested in such a forum. I'm all for encouragement.

Rhoda, I'm not sure what you mean by avoiding suggestions. I think I'm reading into that too much. Different things work for different people. I know some people swear by Atkins, but I can't make myself take the time to study and follow it. Actually counting calories is easier for me. I'm interested in learning what your "Bite diet" is. Is this the type of info you want to avoid? I wouldn't mind reading a brief explanation of what worked for someone. It might give me better plan. The exercise class wasn't the magic solution for me - now I have multiple broken bones

Linda

[Abbygirl2]

Great idea, I too would enjoy such a forum. My inability to be active AT ALL has really began to show over the past 2 yrs.
I personally would really enjoy a place to gather and share ideas and encouragement.
For me, getting serious about my weight is **weigh** overdue.
(ok, so I am not that funny at 4:30am- I tried)

Pam

[Largehearted]

Pam.

You must have been taking lessons from Burton again !

Leon

[shirleymahoney]

Maybe when they get the chat area going maybe we could chat about it there and Pam i thought it was cute and i know Burt is going to have something to say, he won't be able to resist

Shirley

[Burton Borrok]

OK,
If you want me to, I’ll weigh in on this issue also, although I don’t know what I could bring to the table – maybe a chocolate brownie or something. I’d say there would be nothing wrong with doughnut holes – except somebody already brought them to market, -and incidentally, that’s where they store all the extra calories. If you think about it, the doughnut holes have more surface area in percentage of the whole then the whole doughnut would have, so naturally the hole would soak up more cooking oil and wind up being richer in calories bite for bite – or on the whole - and that’s the whole truth.

I do not like the term diet in the sense of losing weight, because denying yourself just does not work. Massive studies were done which supports the findings that about 97 percent of the people who restrict their intake of food wind up heavier then when they began – over a five year period. Consequently people have conjectured a number of hypotheses;
1 – Your body wants to remain at a given weight.
2 – If you restrict your intake of food you body becomes more efficient at processing what it does get.
3 – If you restrict your intake further you are starving your body – with all the problems that can cause.
4 – The minute you ‘fall off the wagon’ your more efficient body puts the pounds back on in a fraction of the time it took to take them off – and you actually wind up heavier.

On the other hand, Americans are notoriously overweight, especially in this land of plenty. We spend more time eating, thinking of eating, and ingesting too many tidbits along the way, and our foods are much too high in calories to stay at our ideal weight and condition. Therefore, it is my position that if you want to weigh less – especially when you can’t burn off the excess calories with physical activity, you have to outsmart the digestive system.
1 – Eat everything you want, but only take a little of the ‘bad’ foods on fewer occasions. (If you deny yourself altogether your cravings will overcome your willpower in time.)
2 – Eat more vegetables and fruit. (This will leave less room for the ‘bad’ foods, and you will be less tempted.)
3 – Eat hardy. (That way your body will not shift into overdrive or start processing what you eat more efficiently.)
4 – Try finding healthy foods that you would like to eat. (Expand your selection and enjoyment of healthy foods to help minimize your taking the good tasting bad foods.)
5 – Forget the scale. If you develop better choices of foods, while still keeping an occasional nodding acquaintance with the less healthy but good tasting foods, over time the weight will slowly find somebody else to ‘hang out’ with. You won’t notice much right away, but one day you will suddenly notice that the outfit that was so tight on you before, now fits perfectly. You’ll begin to feel better, and when you finally do step on the scale you will find that those unwanted pounds will have magically disappeared.

Some people have fluid problems which require daily weigh-in, but don’t fret about the pounds as you would on a diet. That approach will just make you crazy – and you will wind up being heavier ‘in the end’.
Burt

[Laoshur]

OK, sorry about the absence! We finally found out yesterday that the reason we had no internet is that someone on this part of the campus entered an illegal website, so the government shut everyone down until they could find out who the guilty party is. I certainly hope the illegal one was not the HCMA site!!!!

A few months ago they switched to floating IP addresses, so that has made it difficult to pin down. Well, today we are back online, but heard that they may not have found the offender. So, tomorrow we may go down again. Who knows?

Anyway, back to this topic: The "bite diet" is something my sister told me about. It is a diet in which you get to eat 11 bites of food (well-balanced) and a slightly sweetened drink twice a day and 21 bites of balanced foods with a similar drink twice a day. I cannot get the foods that they recommend, but I do suspect that limiting the number of bites eaten per day cannot help but limit what I eat and hopefully allow my stomach to shrink so I can lose weight long-term.

As far as what I am hoping we could avoid, it is everyone telling everyone else how to lose weight. I think that most people are like me, I just want to run and hide when someone says that they lost X number of pounds doing X. I feel frightened that I will do X and fail to lose, or worse yet, that I will start X and fail to persist and feel like a failure. So, I see nothing wrong with someone's saying that they are trying such and such a thing because we will all just watch to see if it works.

I confess that I have not tried very hard this week. Starting up teaching again has been difficult and we have had students here constantly, so it is hard to do. However, that is not an excuse, so I will try to do better through the coming days!

Thanks for being here to listen!
Rhoda