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brazil84 comments on The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet - Less Wrong
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Cool, I will check it out. FWIW I'm pretty much satisfied that generally speaking, obesity is a mental problem and not a problem of metabolism.
This is very interesting to me. Perhaps going to Weight Watchers is like "announcing your goals," i.e. signing up for Weight Watchers "satisfies your self-identity just enough that you're less motivated to do the hard work needed."
http://sivers.org/zipit
Even buying a glossy book on weight loss might have such an effect.
Perhaps it is even better to approach weight loss indirectly, to take the following attitude: "I'm going to start eating better and exercising. If I lose a little weight, great, but if not I am still better off." i.e. not only don't announce your goals to other people, don't even tell them to yourself.
Funny thing-- I'm pretty much satisfied that conventional dieting is a mental disorder. The failure rate is caused by a lack of respect for feedback from emotions and body. A roll-your-own diet designed by a calm person is adapted to that person rather than based on fantasies of self-control and self-transformation through suffering.
http://www.moveandbefree.com/1/post/2011/07/discipline.html
I've read a fair number of accounts from people who found that they simply weren't getting enough food if they followed the rules at Weight Watchers, and also that Weight Watchers was teaching a number of strategies for ignoring hunger-- it was training eating disorders. This doesn't mean it works out that badly for everyone.
Well would you mind defining "conventional dieting" and "mental disorder"?
I would guess this is probably true to a large extent. I think that among other things, early success can cause overconfidence, which can undermine one's ability to deal with bumps in the road. But even putting that aside, it's easy to not appreciate what you are up against.
I'm not too familiar with Weight Watchers, but from what I understand, you get a certain number of "points" per day and you can use those points on pretty much any food. My criticism of this is approach is that
(1) some foods are, for lack of a better word, addictive; they screw up your brain's ability to make intelligent decisions about food. So you are better off keeping those foods to a minimum even if they are technically permitted by one's diet.
(2) A point system gives you a lot of choices about what to eat and when and the mental process of choosing depletes your mental energy.
(3) A point system is hard to use at special events. Who wants to be seen weighing and measuring food at Thanksgiving? But at the same time, any kind of "cheating" has the potential to set a bad precedent.
Since you did not tell me what you mean by "mental disorder" or "conventional dieting," I will assume that "conventional dieting" means attempting to lose weight and keep it off by means of eating a balanced diet which is restricted in energy content.
While engaging in (and maintaining) such a diet requires a lot of thought about one's food intake, I don't see any basis to categorize such thought as a "mental disorder." It need not make one miserable; undermine one's relationships with family or friends; or stop one from holding down a job.
So basically I think you need to re-think this idea particularly if you yourself are trying to lose weight.