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And for most people, that borderline is a wake-up call, yes.
I personally suffer from depression. Being fat didn't help with that. But for some people they look in a mirror and they think to themselves "I'm already fat, I might as well let myself go all the way" and that leads to all the pathologies of personality I just mentioned.
Right now, I'm going through a water fast, and it's difficult and uncomfortable. Losing weight is, in general, difficult and uncomfortable. The avoidance of discomfort and the pursuit of pleasure is the Western zeitgeist and I'd be damned if I let down my ubermenschian will to power by obeying the fickle whims of a decadent body.
Yeah, okay, and I've done that too. The thing is that straightforwardly losing weight isn't difficult. Just don't eat for a week or two! That's actually fairly easy to do willpower-wise. At least, in comparison to what it will take to keep that weight off. That's not one big sustained decision, but countless smaller ones across much longer spans of time, and often in complex and inconvenient situations. I've known many, many people who lost substantial weight. I know extremely few who managed to keep it that way.
I think this is why fad diets are effective regardless of what the fad actually is; they take the countless smaller decisions and roll them up into one big decision to follow [fad diet]. In 2020, in order to help to maintain my weight during lockdowns, I decided to experiment with keto (conclusion: really effective for me for losing fat while maintaining muscle. Not worth it in the long run for losing out on so many sweets and baked goods, but a good tool to have in the toolbox for future body recomposition goals), and I found that it made the decisionmaking when food shopping or eating very simple and easy on the mind. Does it have carbs? Then I don't buy it, and I don't eat it. I didn't have to wrack my brain or fight my willpower to justify or to make that decision, I just had to defer to the one big decision that I had made weeks/months back.
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I'm going to have to go through the 'keep off that weight' dietary and lifestyle change phase eventually. I won't lie, that will probably be even more difficult than the fasting phase I'm doing right now.
But I both want and need to do it. And I hope I get through it.
Well, from experience, what you're going to find when you're done with the fast is that your body is intent on getting back to your pre-fast levels of fat. It will try to make this happen in both overt and subtle ways. Mostly just the urge to eat more often, or larger portions, than you did before. If you're not careful, this becomes the new normal and pretty soon you weigh more than you did at the beginning.
The only thing I've found that actually keeps me from gaining fat is lifting weights. There's a lot of broscience about this, and some real science too, but I can tell you it works for me.
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Generally speaking, your body’s “whims” are its way of telling you what’s missing. Granted, its need are adapted to an ancestral environment that no longer exists and therefore may be maladaptive, but I don’t see the point of this ubermenschian will to power. Does it make you feel good to run roughshod over your body’s desires?
A little, yeah! Being a slave to bodily appetites is both unattractive and a perceived failure of my own character. It feels greatly satisfying to have a physical reminder of it.
Now, granted, I don't want to starve myself to death either. I have a epicurian taste for food. But I also want a long lifetime to enjoy such things, so the short-term discomforts will be worth the long term pleasures.
Ah, that makes more sense to me!
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