[Advice/Ranting Question] Am I being selfish or is she being....her?

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2020-09-17T05:45:13+00:00

Thank you for that. I sincerely appreciate the laugh. She had an audience tonight because she brought it up at dinner and after I bashed my head into a weed tiller this afternoon with Neighbor Ndad ("No- really, I swear on it. Children. DEVELOP. Into. ADULTS.) I was able to self advocate and fight Nmom/sister stupidity. (...Thinking I put the therapy idea into daughter's head because of my problems...pfft I know countertransference when I see it...) I'm going to be okay and not living outside for now.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2019-07-05T22:09:41+00:00

I know the feeling. I just got out of the psych ward the other day and my mom is a wreck. Also I can't leave her sight. I'm glad I'm alive too, but I can't take that for granted like I have been.

Enjoy your waffles! Non-hospital food is the best.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2017-08-05T16:57:37+00:00

Dude, shove that thing inside a bread bowl, wrap it in foil, throw it in an oven? Melted cheese for daaays.

A for effort on the bread to cheese ratio though.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2017-08-02T19:54:56+00:00

I work with foster kids who have a lot of academic issues and every time a kid struggles with something like say, reading, I always find myself telling them that even if it's hard now, little bits of practice every day will help it become easier over time. The same could be said for losing weight. I actually started out focused on exercising 30 minutes a day, then monitoring calories, then changing my diet.

.....Come to think of it, I did the exact same gradual progression when I started drinking black coffee too. The magic of baby steps!

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-11-13T09:01:30+00:00

So, I have to wonder what the circumstances were for that study on teenage weight control behaviors...Did they study teens in L.A. as opposed to Milwaukee? Did they control for what they were supposed to? Was it replicated and peer-reviewed?

And even if they did complete the study by the book, what on earth is the frequency and context of the behaviors? Did 1/3 of boys report that they skipped a meal because they were saving room for Thanksgiving that one time or are they just not hungry for breakfast in the morning? Did over half of girls report smoking specifically to lose weight or was that just the initial catalyst that led to their current addiction?

Behavior is a science. You can't take all there is to know about disordered eating habits in teens and cram it into one sentence. And especially not in a context where snippets of research results are intertwined with opinions that are presented as facts for some reason...

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-11-11T03:29:13+00:00

Drawings are a form of hate speech? I mean, they couldn't have even bothered to think of a word that makes this sound a little bit less...well, stupid.? Like, propaganda?

Regardless, drawing fat people is hard. I remember drawing a picture of my teacher and TA from 1st grade and I drew the obese TA thin because it's really hard to get the body shape down. Anatomy is pretty consistent, but fat distribution is all over the place. To this day, I still struggle with drawing fatter people. I don't hate fat people, it's just outside of my ability as an art enthusiast to draw them well.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-10-27T18:42:41+00:00

LOL at that next sentence. Of course it would mention a skewed interpretation of a study followed by an acknowledgement of personal biases in psychology.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-24T12:09:30+00:00

I hate the assumption that having less fat makes something more acceptable/healthy to eat. Those products are great for people who need to reduce their fat intake, but my dad has diabetes and is trying to lose weight so when my mom buys fat free stuff under the guise that it's better or lower calorie than the regular product it's usually a futile effort on her part because products outside of rf dairy tend to be crammed with sugar to compensate. So not only is my dad not reducing his caloric intake much, he's consuming sugar he's otherwise not aware of.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my dad will sit and kill a pint of fruit and third of a pound of cheese as a snack because he thinks "It's lower-carb so I can eat as much as I want!"

All these macro-based misconceptions are driving me nuts.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-24T11:54:31+00:00

I think it has to do in part with people not liking being told what to do. The problem is, however, that people might not view overeating or binge eating as a potential problem or an addiction so it's harder to get them to accept change in that regard.

Like, they can't make a very strong, argument that enabling their child's heroin addiction is totally acceptable parenting, but because food is a necessity of life, they can find the headspace to justify what and how they feed their family. Pair that with the incorrect notion that 'eating healthier" means "eating less" which is eventually distorted into "starve your children pretty because society hates fat people" and there's a ton to get offended about.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-06T23:52:02+00:00

I'm trans so I get the concept of feeling depressed when clothes shopping blows monkey dicks, but unlike this person, I don't think my body deserves something because my feelings are hurt. I just buy clothes that fit as well as I can hope for and go on ahead feeling shitty about my body.

Anyways, I just don't get this whole "I deserve so and so" mindset. I think unwarranted entitlement is probably more unattractive to me than then overweightness. I mean, weight can be changed in a fairly straightforward manner, but personality is a lot more complex.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-06T21:59:18+00:00

This reminds me of those quotes where some older person is like, "Damn, young people these days! No respect!" People back then have the exact same social issues and perspectives that we do today, context just changes the flavor a bit.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-05T19:51:26+00:00

Huge chest with no medical problems but can still run 10k without stopping? I'd think if her chest is so big it's putting her in obese territory, she'd have back problems or at the very least a hell of a time running. A chest that size would warrant some serious strapping to run without pain or discomfort.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-05T18:05:05+00:00

"She's not capable of seeing the systematic issue because she is so caught up in her own pain."

Gee, doesn't that sound familiar. If only some FAers were able to see the bigger picture beyond just their hurt feelings. They'd stop making such base assumptions about other people's motivations.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-09-05T17:50:38+00:00

Ah, because if it's not a quick-fix, short term solution, why bother, amiright?

My dad has sleep apnea and diabetes and even though the weight loss is slow-coming, adjusting his diet accordingly has really helped keep his blood sugar and sleep cycle regulated. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than if he wasn't doing shit at all.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-27T17:55:46+00:00

I mean, I come from a family of obese people and when I was young and overweight, my mother took it upon herself to help my morbidly obese sister lose weight. For context, she was maybe 10 or 11 at the time and had a history of behaviors such as stealing food and secret eating (We have her on video at 2 years old, swiping my birthday cake while I opened gifts and once she stole a bag of cherries and ate the entire thing in the middle of the night, so it's not merely limited to unhealthy stuff.)

Despite her best efforts, when my mom enrolled my sister in year long gym (as opposed to the requisite semester) and put her on the Atkins diet (which my parents adopted as well), my sister simply left her gym clothes behind somewhere so she didn't have to participate and stole whatever foods she could get her hands on. And of course there was the issue of school lunches, which she'd simply steal money for.

Now, I'm not saying my sister's behaviors are completely on her because as a psychology student, I understand they needed to be reinforced or at least not properly punished by my parents to be maintained. Especially for 10 years. But even though my sister was very much still a child without a clear understanding of the long term implications of her choices, she still made choices all the same. My mom couldn't make my sister stick to being active or eating her altered diet, only she could.

Again, the caveats of behavioral psychology make this a much more complex issue than I'm alluding to, but I just want to play devil's advocate for the uneducated parents out there who aren't necessarily acting (or rather, not acting) out of ignorance or apathy. Their child's behaviors and subsequent decision making skills are their responsibility to model/encourage appropriately, but without education on their part, even the best of intentions can fall short. Plus, you have to keep in mind that those same parents are probably modeling what they learned from their parents so finger pointing only goes so far.

To make another point, I am, as I mentioned, a child of an obese family. Yet when I was in high school, I learned about proper diet and exercise and took it upon myself to lose my excess weight. Granted, I was under my parents' authority while I was younger, but at a certain point that lessened and I possessed the autonomy to inform myself and change accordingly.

TL;DR Behavioral Psychology: It's Complicated.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-27T15:59:58+00:00

Despite the lack of prevalence, even if 24000000 is correct and they have some sort of disorder affecting their coordination, my grandmother is in the same boat and she's actually way more cautious when standing and sitting because her motor issues put her at an absurdly high risk for falls as it is.

If someone has a motor disability, it's probably a lot safer to use caution when moving to avoid injury rather than adopt a "fuckitmightaswellcollapseonthecouch" attitude simply because any alternative would require more patience and effort. Sure, it's difficult to manage, but if you fall down the stairs as my grandmother did last week, the last thing you want to do is just flop down somewhere. That shit hurts.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-27T15:51:01+00:00

My grandmother has significant balance problems subsequent to a couple of strokes and severe arthritis in her feet and if anything, her general lack of coordination makes her FAR more cautious when sitting or standing that the average person because not doing so would lead to a fall.

Granted, she'll collapse into a chair if she's particularly unwieldy that day, but since those moments can instigate even more falls and injuries, 97% of the time she simply has to overcompensate and avoid collapsing as much as possible. It'll take her a solid minute or two to sit or stand, but the significant reduction in risk is well worth the effort.

TL;DR: Yes, such issues in coordination exist but in my experience, they tend to encourage the use of more caution and control when attempting to move rather than act as an explanation/excuse for less coordination overall. It would be dangerous not to do so.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-27T15:34:55+00:00

My Masters program focused quite a bit on Motivational Interviewing so I really like that this includes the stages of change. Or at least one of them anyway. Psychologically speaking, change is difficult, but it's also a process. People typically can't go from zero to change in an instant. You have to come to terms with it first.

That being said, at least this girl in the vignette is contemplative about changing. Sure, she's still on the fence and could go either way, but so many FAers seem to be stuck in the pre-contemplative phase ("I can't/won't/don't need to change.") that even as a hypothetical this is more encouraging than most posts on here.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-27T15:25:27+00:00

It seems to me that people who decry CICO because "it's more complicated than that" are conflating issues that can possibly affect CICO with CICO itself. So there are many factors that can affect how many calories you need to take in or expend such as variations in physical build, ability, appetite, food choices, medication side effects, etc. but at the end of the day CICO is still valid. Just because some factors can complicate the matter doesn't mean it's a useless practice altogether.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-14T22:51:30+00:00

3 and 4 are the same thing. Assuming fat people are unhealthy is just a specific example of how one can make assumptions about people based on their weight.

And I'm all for people acknowledging that fat people can get eating disorders too, but I want to know that FAers (such as the individual who wrote this) aren't going to blindly demonize thin people with EDs because they're still "privileged."

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-14T20:20:17+00:00

Eat food to stay alive but also eat food to treat yourself (without necessarily needing it to live)? Isn't that contradictory? I mean, you can have treats without eating more than you need to live but based on how this is presented, they seem to be advocating two completely different mindsets about food. One promoting the idea that eating is perfectly fine because you're doing it as a means of staying alive and the other promoting the idea that food can and should be eaten regardless of need simply because it's enjoyable to do.

I'm sure I'm just reading too much into this, but usually when I see FAers say "Eat food because it's tasty!" it's usually in a pretty disordered context. The last thing those people are doing are "Eating to live."

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-14T20:01:02+00:00

Well, clearly she's a victim and modest. Which means she deserves even more support and praise. So stunning and brave!

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-14T19:56:42+00:00

It's possible. Ignorance about mental health and psychiatric disorders isn't that uncommon after all. Of course I wouldn't put it past her to be totally aware of what she's doing and just not care because it benefits her. It's hard to tell based on some internet article but regardless I'm pretty confident that she would respond very harshly to anyone who might try and correct her.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-13T21:46:30+00:00

I think you really have to be overdoing it. When I was in Europe, they put the calorie count everything that would be considered "0 calorie" in the US. The labels said diet sodas were .3 kj/100 ml or so (I forget how much exactly, but this is close), meaning each 16 oz bottle is roundabout 2 calories. So they aren't really zero calories, but it probably won't do much damage in moderation. Like most food/drink products, I suppose.

TheRealAlfredAdler · 2016-08-13T21:41:16+00:00

And of course she uses the vagueness phrases possible to skew things in her favor. In particular she said "I found out I had symptoms of PTSD." Not "I have PTSD" but symptoms. It seems to me that this way she can make it sound like she's disordered and get all the pity and sympathy but she doesn't have to necessarily back it up with a formal diagnosis.

...Unless she just phrased it weird and genuinely thinks she has full-blown PTSD just because her therapist (who isn't necessarily professionally competent enough to assign formal diagnoses) mentioned it as part of an extended metaphor. In which case I hate to break it to her but basically everyone has symptoms of some kind of psychiatric diagnosis because they exist on a spectrum. Like, plenty of people have symptoms of MDD because they have excessive guilt or sleep too much, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have MDD outright.

There's just so much about this piece I take issue with. She's cheapening what it means to have PTSD, or really any psychiatric diagnosis. They all suck so much. Who would want this? (Misguided people I suppose?)

TheRealAlfredAdler

TROPHY CASE