Rage, Rage Against the... the how hungry I am.

A short but wonderful visit from my husband's brother and his wife has left me thinking a little bit more about weight loss this week.  Husband's brother is a surgeon, which means he comes equipped with all sorts of "medical facts", some of which made me want to "smack medicine in the face for being a jerk".  Like the first bomb he dropped on my good mood:  Weight loss, obtained by diet and exercise alone, has a 20% success rate.  Ouch.  I don't know if you "get math", but that's a really low percent, and I've never been able to obtain sufficient hubris to just ASSUME I'm one of the 20%.  Of course, betting on your own failure might make you more RIGHT, but it sure as heck doesn't make you more BETTER.  Or you know, something said with better grammar.  Just the same, even assuming I can work hard and overcome, that does give you a glimpse as to how difficult this whole thing is.  It is still very much a hard cold slap in the face.

The next fact he had, I've actually heard before.  Exercise makes you hungry.  If you're a woman, exercise makes you RAVENOUS.  Your body doesn't understand that fat can be bad, because bodies were built to protect against starvation, not against Super Super Morbid Obesity ( http://www.johnhustedmd.com/bmi.htm It's a thing.  I just learned that.  And to be honest, it doesn't sound NEARLY as super as they want you to think.)  A woman's body looks at exercise and screams that it will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO BEAR CHILDREN IF YOU DO THAT STOP STOP STOP, then tries its dangdest to make you eat everything you see to punish you for it.  Because of that, he recommends that it might be better to avoid exercise to lose weight.  You'll have an easier time sticking to the diet if you don't trigger your body's panic response.

For him, the rainbow through the fat-clouds seems to be bariatric surgery.  I know, I know.  You're thinking, he's a surgeon, of course he'd recommend surgery.  But just the same, if you'd heard all the amazing health benefits from the surgery, plus the 80% success rate in maintaining weight loss, you'd be signing up for the miracle surgery too.

Okay, so personally, I don't think I'm quite ready to subject my internal organs to the surgeon's knife.  Not that it doesn't sound great, not that I don't think I have weight to lose and diabetes to avoid, I'm just going to stick with the cheaper, less invasive (read: scary) methods of weight loss for now.  Oh, and I am going to work out, too.  Because I have a fool-proof secret method for not over eating as a result.  You want in?

I call it the Screaming and Bitching and Crying and Whining Method.  As you can imagine, my husband is a HUGE fan.  Basically, you let yourself succumb to the emotions of hunger, but not the normal behavioral response, i.e., eating.  You let yourself feel depressed. And angry.  And in denial.  And you blame others.  Basically, you go through each of the stages of grief every single day.  But the most important part is that you DO. NOT. EAT.  Well, more than your daily allotted calories, that is.  Eat a little, geez.  In my experience, if you do this for three straight weeks, your body decides to give up on you, acceptance arrives, and you don't feel quite so wickedly, painfully, torturously hungry anymore.

That's it, Folks.  My great big secret to weight loss.  So if you'll excuse me, I've got some working out to do.  Then, I've got to go weep openly over a tray of leftover brownies I'm not allowed to eat.  Awesome.