Does Weight Loss Still Happen When You Are Sick?

A few weeks ago, I succumbed to the massive cold virus of the season. Being mildly asthmatic, all respiratory viruses make me feel like Loki being thrashed by the Hulk in The Avengers.

This was considerably annoying considering that I had grand plans for those couple of weeks of my life. And of course one of my biggest fears is: what happens to all my weight loss plans when you get sick?


At a few other of my less productive attempts at weight loss, getting sick was basically the death of my plans. The scenario would play out something like this:

1) Come down with illness
2) Eat what I wanted and not worry about it.
3) Gain weight
4) Heal from illness but feel so defeated that I don't return to my weight loss plans.

So what did I do different this time?

I didn't allow myself to feel defeated.

In fact, I gave myself permission to not log points when I'm running a fever of 101.8 without shame. To eat whatever I wanted when I can hardly taste anything.  So there were a number of occasions that I admittedly at things that weren't always Weight Watchers friendly but were definitely needed in the face of food that tasted bland.

As suspected, I did gain a couple pounds. But I had prepared myself for the possibility that I might have gained a couple pounds at most back, but that those would easily go away pretty soon once I was feeling good enough to get back in the food tracking gain.

Guess what? I was right.

Not only did I lose those couple pounds, but I lost those again and then some bringing my weight loss between last week and this 4.2 lbs.

My total since starting Weight Watchers is then, get this,

22.2 lbs!!!

My point is this: don't allow yourself to remain depressed and defeated. The main goal when you are sick is getting well. Then, and only then, you can get back into the game.  But until then, let the virus take its course and don't worry about it.

Before you know it, you'll be getting back into the swing of things and life will be better.

The Willpower Myth and The Oatmeal Comic

I don't own this. Visit the comic The Oatmeal for more of these gems.

For those who are "language sensitive" I apologize for the crudeness.

The reason that The Oatmeal often gets the laughs and the cringes is because of the frankness. That overwhelming element of truth is that most of us feel utterly helpless in the face of dieting and at some point feel as though we have absolutely no willpower.

In an admittedly older article from 1999 in the New York Times
Scientists Unmask Diet Myth: Willpower, Dr. Michael R. Lowe says:

''Willpower as an independent cause of behavior is a myth,'' Dr. Lowe said. In his clinical practice, he takes a behavioral approach to weight control. In part, that involves counseling dieters to take a more positive attitude about their ability to lose weight. It also involves some practical steps. ''Most importantly,'' he said, ''you need to learn what behavioral steps you can take before you get in the situation where you're in the chair in front of the television with a bowl of potato chips.''

Willpower requires us to be in a constant struggle against feeling deprived of something and somehow having the inner fortitude to conquer it. In such cases, we're always doomed to be the person in the comic freebasing pie.

Instead, it's about planned behavior modification. For example, I was craving cake. And starting to go a little crazy over my cake craving. But having been living the Weight Watchers thing for a while now, I know I can get away with small amounts of things I crave and I can be satisfied. In fact, while I was craving cake it wasn't like some of my cravings in the past, where I was thinking about giant slices and gobs of fudgy frosting. All of that, over time and thanks to modifying my eating habits, became far less appealing. Could I eat a few bites? For sure. But the thought of too many forkfuls of gooey cake was a little nauseating.

So instead I made a snack cake and divided it into 12 small pieces. It was rich. It was chocolaty. It gave me the satisfaction I needed without the feeling of remorse, regret, and failure that accompanies a binge.

It's much more about replacing our bad habits with good ones. How do you react to the urge to stress eat, and how do you reward yourself for a job well done? The choices you make in those circumstances have much more to do with success than notions of willpower.

Willpower sets a set of high expectations. No one is that perfect and no one can achieve it.

Nineteen Pounds Down and a Long Way to Go

Welcome to my brand new blog!

As a feature on my regular, random-thought-laden blog Qué Sara Sara, I started back in January my journey to weight loss glory using Weight Watchers Online.  I titled this series The Fat Fatwa, and started blogging periodically about the struggles with weight loss.

The truth is, that the further I went on this journey, the more I realized that there was so much more there to be said than anyone in the media was actually saying.  And also, so many of my friends who were struggling with similar questions, similar struggles, and many who had been struggling with these issues in silence. It is time we lend a voice to all of those who are tired of being bombarded with weight loss solutions that aren't solutions, and promises of easy weight loss broken over and over again.

It's time that you see someone like myself who is in the middle of the battle. Not merely a before and after photo, but a real human being in the middle of a long weight loss journey.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present: The Corpulent Crusade.