I just had the most depressing thought about weight loss

[Haole Girl]

If the wealthiest woman in the entertainment industry can't control her weight, how can I?

:cry:

[Aristus]

1. Even money can't overcome food addiction all by itself.

It requires patience and perseverance. Those things can't be bought, either.

Oprah looks pretty good no matter what her weight.

And so do you, HG... ;-)

[Haole Girl]

2. I know

But... but... if I had that much money I'd hire people to cook ONLY the best low-fat dishes, have a personal trainer, and arrange the most interesting form of exercise - daily - until I was thin.

Thanks for the compliment. However, if I don't lose weight soon I will open myself up to a host of problems (including, but not limited to, the same heart problems my father developed).

[Aristus]

6. I'd do all those things, too. But no amount of money can eradicate

my affinity for cheeseburgers, pizza, and enchiladas molé.

But I agree with you; health is a concern. But remember this, HG: exercise is more important than being thin. Make good health, rather than waist size, your goal.

If you ever need encouragement or advice, you know where to find me. :-)

[Haole Girl]

11. Thanks. Very kind of you...

what I need to do is stop procrastinating. I can just hear Elizabeth Edward's words. She once talked about how she was like most Americans... saying her diet would "start tomorrow."

[Aristus]

14. I know it's easy to procrastinate.

I have a pretty good idea how hard you work at your job on a day-to-day basis. When you come home dead on your feet after a long day of slaying dragons, why the heck would you want to exercise? It's a paradox; we come home too stressed and exhausted from work to exercise, and yet exercise can relieve stress and provide you with more energy.

[Chan790]

27. Well, yes.

But cutting ground turkey or TVP (soaked, then drained) into your ground chuck (Hint: this is how the fast-food community "cheats" to meet health-standard benchmarks when they're imposed on them, like in NYC. TVP has the same texture and mouthfeel as ground beef and no discernible flavor.) will lower its' weight-impact. Better, because TVP readily absorbs liquids (and thus, flavors) but not lipids, the "adulterated" foods usually outperform the "regular" in blind comparative taste tests. (Which is great as long as you don't have soy allergies.)

Pizza, with tomatoes, extra sauce and less cheese is still yummy. It's better for you and makes one hell of a delivery system to get vegetables into small kids. (Good cheese is like Brill Creem, you don't need or want a lot.)

Nothing is ever going to make the molé healthy but it's good on anything and you can choose other things to top with it. I like to pour it onto veggie burritos. Makes a great dressing on a "naked" (no tortilla) taco salad of beans, corn, cilantro rice, lettuce, pico de gallo and even a bit of cheese.

[grasswire]

31. she does have a trainer and a chef

Bob Greene is her trainer's name, and he makes money from the association.

[Skittles]

3. that's not her biggest problem

THAT would be her ego

[Haole Girl]

4. Don't know much about her personally

I stopped watching her show the day she claimed "Most Americans are racists."

[Skittles]

5. notice how she's on EVERY cover of her magazine?

:puke:

[Aristus]

7. Well, it IS called The Oprah Magazine.

Who is supposed to be on the cover? Nellie Bly?

[Skittles]

10. maybe OTHER people she fucking admires????

oh wait.....:rofl:

[Aristus]

21. HA!

:spray:

[Haole Girl]

8. I did notice that

And ditto on the :puke: !

[siligut]

45. Now Ralph Lauren is in on her shtick

I didn't like RL before and now I don't like them in an icky way. At least before they tried to have some dignity. http://www.ralphlauren.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=10968465


I am not even going to bother with the irony of the model's size

[LisaL]

29. Now she's got her own cable channell.

I loved quite a few show on the discovery channel which is now Oprah's channel. What is going to happen to those shows? Is the channel going to be mostly Oprah all day long?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. My dear Haole Girl...

Aristus is right.

Money won't make you thin; I doubt it would really help you get thinner.

You have to want to do this, and money won't get you there...

You know, I've been going to the gym, but over the fall, I stopped going. I was just too preoccupied with school, and going got to be too much.

So now I've put on a few pounds, and I don't feel good. I need to get going to the gym again...

Money, or the lack of it, makes no difference...

Eat sensibly, work out as you can, and you WILL lose weight.

:hug:

[Skittles]

12. Ms. Peggy

there's no need to go to a GYM - get you some free weights and some home fitness videos and WORKOUT AT HOME

[CaliforniaPeggy]

13. There are machines at the gym that are good for me...

And I have friends there who encourage me...

Plus I can talk politics to them too!

It's as much social as it is workout...

And I need both!

:hi:

[Skittles]

32. yes, you need both

the gym AND an at-home regimen for when you blow off the gym!!!

[Aristus]

16. Good call on the free weights, Skittles.

Women who are at risk for osteoporosis, and that's most women past a certain age, need to do weight-bearing exercise to tone the bones. Everybody knows about calcium supplementation, but it's the weight-bearing exercise that really needs attention.

[Skittles]

34. it's what motivated me to do strength/resistance training

seeing my grandmother - and now my mum, very bent over, even though they were both fairly active gals :o

I've taken up kettlebelling lately to keep it interesting! I LOVE it! It was much harder than I thought and I had to start off with 10 lb but a couple months later and I am up to a 25 pound bell! :D

[Haole Girl]

15. Knowing... and doing....

they are two completely different things.

I so badly need the "Just do IT" Nike theme in my life!

Thanks to you... and Skittles for the suggestions. :hug: :hi:

[Chan790]

17. Simple.

Money cannot buy health or change poor habits if you're unmotivated to actually change the underlying causes. <<<Words from a trust-fund kid who once ate his way to closer to 400 than 300. (currently about 250 which means goal is less than 60 away.) Given I have an advantage over you and Oprah that I'm under 35 so my metabolism is not slowing down and can be substantially improved with effort.

Oprah is fat because she believes weight-loss is a goal rather than a lifestyle change; that she only has to do "this" to lose weight then can return to her shitty life-habits again. That's a problem of entitlement; she's Oprah dammit so it should be easy for her. There is no quick-fix, diet or magic bullet for what is wrong with Oprah; worse she believes in new-agey schlock that insists there must be because she wills and desires it to be so. "The Secret" won't make you thin.

Oprah will need a kick in the ass every day of the rest of her life from someone uninterested in the fame and publicity she can bring to the table, a thing which allows her to cheat because she will not change. Becoming famous by being Oprah's trainer might be good for the trainer but it does nearly fuck-all for Oprah and she lets them get away with it.

If you want to lose the weight, what will you do? I'll say that quitting drinking (and I was an unrepentant cocktail lush), drugs (HST was my god, coke my false messiah), promiscuity (I like sex...a lot. I'd probably sell a kidney for it.) and smoking (2 packs of unfiltered Luckys a week.) were all easier than giving up potato chips in favor of an apple and going outside.

[Haole Girl]

22. Food is an addiction, no doubt

:hug:

[petronius]

18. Because you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it,

people like you...

http://blog.mattalgren.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/stuart-smalley.jpg

:)

[Aristus]

19. True...

:P

[Haole Girl]

23. Haha...

Thanks. :-)

[MilesColtrane]

20. Don't fret, Haole Girl.

Some of us believe that curvaceousness is highly desirable.

[Haole Girl]

24. Sigh...

don't encourage me!! :P

Thanks. :blush:

[thirtiesgirl]

43. Which is great...

but keep in mind that not all fat women are 'curvy' (meaning having a more proportional body shape; hips and shoulders are in even proportion, and in greater ratio to one's waist; i.e., like a fat Coke bottle). In my time spent in size acceptance and "fat appreciation" communities, I've generally found that most men prefer a curvy fat woman to a fat woman who's not. It's unfortunate for those of us who are not curvy that even among size acceptance communities, where acceptance is supposed to be the operative word, we're seen as 'less desireable' because we have less proportional body shapes.

[jotsy]

25. .

:hug:

You love you, first, last and foremost. Many a trick afoot to make women feel inadequate about their appearance as the profit motive knows no shame or bounds. As long as you are comfortable, happy and healthy, fuck their parameters, pardon the french, I generally try to avoid using that kind of language. The very expression of weight control strikes me as a robot pulling a lever, which reminds me of a saying I've drummed up. Man as machine is not merry in the making. Can't go wrong being about the best who of you and focusing on that as primary criteria for quality.

Having said all that I know how it feels to want to breathe better walking up hill, so I gotta few suggestions and what not to consider.

Can you swim? I've got a community center here through parks and recreation, for $4.00, I can hit the gym, treadmills and stationery bikes, and soak in the hot tub before or after grabbing a few laps. Take the bleachers at the local high school a couple times a week and flank it with a walk around that track to warm up and cool down. The idea is to kick up your metabolism a notch, get the body more accustom to burning calories with a little more enthusiasm, the trick from there is giving it good stuff to chew on, and to watch the clock. That late night goodie run and my talent for all things kitchen, cookies seriously included, is my nemesis for sure. Lastly, if clogged pores are any kind of an issue, know that Yogi Tea makes a detox product, I know about it and try to keep it handy because I've got a tummy that can get a tad bit toxic when stubborn, try a few days of that, chase with good doses of extra water and find a sauna. Twice over a month should help determine if the process makes a difference.

Please keep in mind, I got no expertise in these matters, certainly run anything that sounds like peril to you by your local opinion leader and good luck. Our deepest beauty is in us not on us.

[Haole Girl]

26. Thank you very much for your suggestions...

I'll keep y'all posted on how I do.

p.s., I love you too!

:loveya:

[LisaL]

28. She isn't at her fittest but she isn't at her heaviest either.

I imagine she lost quite a bit of weight from her heaviest days.
Which is probably realistic for her rather than forcing the body to be something it doesn't want to be.

[Phentex]

37. She seems healthier too...

She DOES control her weight with fitness and healthy eating. She struggles like other people but I think she is off the see saw.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

30. Oprah said she had a thyroid problem.

Then she said she didn't have one. The onlie thyroid disease community is not happy with her. Hypothyroidism affects 30 million or so Americans, but doesn't get discussed. If you're not absorbing your food and your metabolism is that slow, and your temp is subnormal, just cutting calories won't work.

Losing weight is far more complicated than calories in versus calories out, so physics majors, spare me the lecture.

www.stopthethyroidmadness.com

http://thyroid.about.com

[Phentex]

39. I wish I could say that, lol...

"Losing weight is far more complicated than calories in versus calories out, so physics majors, spare me the lecture." I love that! :)

I am not a scientist and I have no proof other than real life but I really think there IS more to it than calories in, calories out. I think people say that when it works for them and they have no other issues.

[lukasahero]

42. Actually the complexity isn't in the calories in vs out

It's in how one burns and stores calories. It's still a matter of more out than in = weight loss but not everyone burns/stores calories equally and not everyone is getting the medication they need to help manage their metabolism.

Probably shouldn't have gotten started but, as someone who is hypothyroid, sometimes I get tired of it being used as an excuse.

[Lex]

33. Because money can't buy everything.

nt

[applegrove]

35. I once walked an hour a day and didn't drink diet coke and lost 20 pounds. Time to do that again.

[thirtiesgirl]

36. hrm...

I've been hesitating to mention this here, because every time I bring it up in a forum that is not particularly about size activism, I get lots of flak for my viewpoint. But because I'm a size activist, that means I don't just shut up and let people hate their bodies and talk about putting their bodies through extreme, unhealthy regimes simply to drop some weight. Which is why I'm speaking up here.

One of the things I get so much flak about as a size activist is that "we want everyone to be fat," which couldn't be further from the truth. Size activism is about self-acceptance for people of any size. It's about accepting your body and yourself for who and what you are. It's also not about forgoing exercise and physical activity, if those are things you like to do. If they're things you don't like to do, that's fine, too. A true size activist will not judge you on whether you participate in physical activity or not. We're too busy working on our own self-acceptance to judge others on what they do or don't do.

And in Oprah's case, all evidence seems to be pointing to the fact that her body wants to be fat. OP, please click this link to read a different perspective about Oprah's body: http://kateharding.net/2008/12/09/dear-oprah/

Consider this: no matter what kind of food Oprah may eat, her body is telling her something that she doesn't want to accept - that she is a fat woman, and her body will eventually return to that shape because that's the shape she is. And rather than accepting it, coming to terms with it, and doing what she can to show the American public that she's not going to hate herself for being fat, Oprah has chosen to go on a series of rollercoaster diets and do more damage to her body and her metabolism by yo-yoing her weight up and down over the 25 years she's been on television.

Accepting her fat body doesn't mean she's going to be unhealthy, either. There are many fat people in the world whose blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides are fine. It's been proven many times over by medical research that's *not* funded by big pharmaceutical companies that a tendency towards diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol have more to do with one's family history than they do with one's weight.

And even if Oprah's weight does affect her blood sugar, blood pressure, etc., isn't that her business and not something she needs to share with the world at large? As long as she's handling her business and taking care of her health, shouldn't she be able to show the American public a strong, confident, self-loving fat woman, rather than a person who's unwilling to accept her body the way it is?

...I know that statement might seem a little naive, considering that Oprah's a TV STAR, and tv is a notoriously shallow medium when it comes to personal appearance. But my point is SHE'S OPRAH, and for 25 years, she's been setting a precedent when it comes to race, gender and so many other issues with her television show. Couldn't she have done the same for her own fat self, rather than showing us a fat woman who does everything within her power to NOT ACCEPT HERSELF for who she is? Wouldn't it be a far more powerful message to send that she loves and accepts herself for who she is, body included, rather than constantly trying to change her appearance to fulfill some impossible standard of beauty and "social acceptability" that her body is just not made to maintain?

[Phentex]

38. She seems to have changed her thought process...

she seems to have embraced herself as a healthy person rather than a person trying to be thin. She does work at eating healthy and exercising but she admits to eating things she likes and not starving herself. I think she is beautiful at any size.

[xchrom]

40. cause it's not easy -- i always try to remember this at meal time.

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

mostly plants -- and exercise --

i find it helpful to keep a workout journal -- it goes with me to the gym
i record the amount of time spent -- what i did how many repetitions of each thing -- and it helps to diagram each work out.

disclaimer: i am not a vegetarian.

[Phentex]

41. That cover is Jan 2009. She's changed since then...

physically and mentally. I think she is an inspiration.

[surrealAmerican]

44. So what if she is extremely wealthy ...

... it doesn't mean she's any better than you in any way.

Money is not a marker for virtue, or intelligence, or self control, or ability to do anything other than make money.

[Deep13]

46. Literal answer: eat less, exercise more.

Wealth and fame have nothing to do with it. If it did, no one would ever lose weight because no one is as rich or famous as Opra. Yet, many people pull it off. You need another outlet for your anxiety besides over-eating. Fortunately, exercise might provide that. You also need some clear idea of what you really need to eat to maintain a healthy weight. As Americans, we tend to think we need a lot lore than we really do. One of the most important factors is genetic predisposition to being fat. Sadly, there is not much you can do about that and if you are genetically disposed to excessive weight--like I am--then it is an uphill fight. Still it is one that is winnable, as I hope to demo9nstrate this year.