The sense of time in weight loss projects

After discussing the near-impossibility of predicting your weight change even with the most careful logging of calories and exercise, a few folks wisely commented  about how hard it really is.  It seems that the general consensus of both experts and people who have had a lot of success losing much weight, is that you have to take your weekly results on the scale with a grain of salt (or maybe, salt substitute.)  The key, they agree, is taking the “long view” of the process.

This got me thinking about something that I’ve seldom if ever seen discussed in terms of weight loss projects.  In fact, other than in the field of money and investment, I don’t recall having ever seen it discussed much.  It is our psychological sense of time, and how that is related to long-term projects like this.

If there is a “theme” to this blog, it’s that weight loss takes more than just exercise and diet.  That it is a complicated, and often frustrating process, which takes all the psychological “tricks” you can dream up in order to succeed.  Whether those “psychological tricks” are ways to motivate yourself, learning to manage your frustration, or finding ways to enjoy exercise or to overcome your reluctance to give up a favorite dessert, it’s the psychology that may make the difference.

Our sense of “time” is certainly a psychological, not a physical thing.  The main challenge is that we have to both think about the present and the future.

The Time It Takes

Having turned fifty a few years back, what I mostly remember about the event was realizing that fifty is the age after which, if your friends hear you suddenly died of something like a heart attack, they shrug.  Before that, they would have said, “he was so young!” but once you’ve passed the big five-o, not so much.  Especially if they knew you were heavy, and especially especially if they’re thin, because, as we’ve already discussed, thin people just assume you could have lost that weight if you “really wanted to.”  “He should have been like me,” the scrawny ignorant bastards would have thought.  In the nicest, sweetest and most well-meaning way, I knew they would tell themselves that if I keeled, I had it coming.

If for no other reason than to deprive them of that misguided satisfaction and to save them from all that bad karma, I have to do this and do it now.  Of course the real reason is I love what I’m doing and experiencing in life far too much to see it wrecked by health problems.  I was feeling sluggish, blood sugar wasn’t controlling itself as well as it should, and in short, major commitment was needed.

In late January I found an article in the NY Times that inspired me, and I think that helped get things rolling again.  It was on people who make big changes in their weight or body.  The article (“Fitness isn’t an overnight sensation” by Gina Kolata) captured some of what I’ve known about big weight loss projects, mainly that these projects take time.  Time is either your friend or your enemy in this kind of project, so we might as well face that head on.  And there are three very distinct aspects to this “time” issue.