Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonism - GLP-1, common in obesity medicines - is not essential to weight management, according to preclinical research led by Richard DiMarchi and Matthias Tschöp, with funding from their startup company Bluewater Biosciences.
I’ve always been baffled by how people keep their weight off so easily. I live in a walkable city, love walking, walk everywhere as my primary means of transport, and frequently take 3-5km leisure walks multiple times a week. Yet I only ever seem to gain weight, it’s beyond maddening. My meals are nothing outrageous either
Of course, my weight is the first thing my doctor points out every time like I’m not keenly aware of how much my body hates me…
Are you healthy? I am thin but not as much as I’d like (mental issue) and always have to remind myself that the result of a healthy lifestyle is a healthy body. Not one that necessarily looks like your ideal form. I can walk & dance, stand on my hands & cartwheel, eat healthy, exercise and work on athletic goals not size goals.
If you are happy with your lifestyle and feel like you are nourishing your body and exercising it, weight lands in different places for different people (or as I found, different for same person at different ages.) But you feel good? That seems like a good result.
If you don’t feel good, that is when I would push the doctor for more tests to figure out what the heck is going on.
I’m a performer! I do yoga every night and am generally active. No major health issues, just unhappy I can’t fit into old clothes and tired of my doctor bringing it up
What’s funny is that there are fantastic performers who are much, much larger than me, which further shows the disconnect between effort and result
Changing the framing can help from weight loss to health improvement.
You may always be overweight by health standards (BMI) but if your blood work is good, you’re happy with how you are able to do the activities you like, you feel/are strong, you eat quality foods, and are mostly a happy person then I would say that you’re successful.
If you're interested in what worked for me
Calorie counting is a good step. I’m not skinny because I have an active lifestyle, I’m skinny because I force myself to listen to my body in how much I put into it and when I give it more it’s because it’s telling me it’s doing something good with it.
Calorie counting helps you understand how much you’re actually eating. After a week or two of it you can look up what your maintenance calories should be and create a general plan for how to get that much food in a day. The goal there is to learn what a healthy maintenance portion is and to get your body comfortable with it. Breaking a large meal into smaller plate sizes and only getting more after 10 minutes if you’re still hungry is a great trick too.
Once you’re no longer hungry all the time on maintenance you can start doing a cut (start with 500 deficit, don’t exceed 1000). Have a goal weight and once you hit it maintain your controlled maintenance calories until it’s instinctive.
Also, building muscle and more cardiovascular exercise are great additions to walking. Muscle burns more resting calories and is denser than fat, a good goal weight can look very different depending on how much muscle you carry.
I did try calorie counting and frequenting a gym when I was in college. I barely lost any weight and ended up more miserable because of the regimen, so I stopped. I really don’t think it’s a hunger thing either, I have ADHD and frequently skip meals unintentionally
I really don’t know why my body just isn’t receptive to anything and my bloodwork doesn’t shine any lights
Yeah when I did my big loss it really sucked for like a month or two until my brain adjusted to the fact that I wasn’t going to give it what it wanted. I’ll also admit my big loss was not at a time where my mental state or material conditions were great, so it may have been more obsessive than most people are willing to engage in. And thats key here, the goal in life is to be happy and good, I’m happier skinnier and with an active lifestyle I have no judgment for those who find this process misery inducing and choose not to lose weight or look for alternative means of doing so.
You have adhd you mentioned, so do I. So firstly, actually getting my adhd properly treated is vital, I can’t maintain good eating habits when unmedicated because I lack structure and willpower.
But also, do you eat out of boredom? And have you tried making food in your home inconvenient to snack on. I have to do that sometimes, especially making food that’s easy to snack on out of the way. I’ve also found starting with a seltzer or gum helpful between meals. Aside from stuff like that, putting half what you expect to eat for your meal on your plate then waiting a bit after finishing before deciding if you want the other half is something else I’ve found helpful.
I’ll try the half plate tip, thanks :) Seltzer is the main thing my partner and I drink. We have a sodastream we use heavily (no syrups)
Good luck!