In my practice I get to see a great many people lose a great deal of weight and I've noticed two trends.
Firstly it's usually somewhere between a 15 and 20 pound weight loss when folks start noticing, but it's the second trend I want to talk about, the, "You should stop losing weight" trend whereby if you lose enough weight, folks will start telling you to stop.
In my experience it happens at somewhere around the 15-20% mark (i.e. a 30-40lb weight loss if your starting weight is 200lbs). Now there is a difference in terms of how starting weight affects this phenomenon and the higher the starting weight, the less likely this phenomenon will occur but as an anecdotal rule, if your starting weight is less than 250lbs and you lose more than 20% of your starting weight, somebody will tell you to stop. They'll often even do so despite the fact that you may still want to lose more weight and may still have a significant amount of medical risk associated with your weight.
Sometimes they'll even come right out and say you look bad.
I've got two theories about this. There's the less likely theory - jealousy, but honestly I don't believe that plays a big role for most folks. I think the more likely theory is the fact that consciously or perhaps unconsciously as a function of evolutionary biology, we interpret weight loss as reflective of illness.
The fact is that many major and sometime fatal illnesses have a wasting away component to them and I wonder if we as a species have it hardwired in us to recognize weight loss as a sign of illness. Many of us too have personally watched friends and relatives waste away and seeing a friend or a relative lose weight may trigger memories and emotions that less than pleasant.
For all those obesity researchers who may be reading my blog, I think this phenomenon would be a fascinating study and it's certainly not one I've read about. There'd be two ways to study it. One with a prospective study whereby the folks losing weight keep track of when they first run into someone whose concerned about their weight loss or perhaps an easier study using photographs of folks as they lose weight with captive audiences and well designed questions.
Anybody out there experience this phenomenon?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
"You should stop losing weight"
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7 comments:
I have witnessed this, and I agree that sometimes the fear of illness and wasting comes into play. I have had people tell me that someone has said this to them, and I have had my patient's spouses express this about my patient. I even had one older man who had lost weight at a very reasonable rate and was still moderately overweight report being told this by his physician who told him to stop because he looked "gaunt". I gently explained to the man that all of my patients who are older have wrinkles and saggier skin around their face and that he perhaps was not noticing it because the excess fat was padding these areas. He definitely did NOT look any more "gaunt" than any average man his age would look.
I also have another theory about this pheonomenon...we have forgotten what a healthy weight looks like. I, a dietitian I might note, weighed 245 lbs. I now weight 195 lbs. I do "carry my weight well" perhaps due to being very physically active, but I am clearly in need of continued weight loss. People say to me "you look great, you don't need to lose more weight" My husband lost weight after an illness, gained weight and sits very active,healthy, and fit at a BMI of 22. His relatives are forever telling him that he should gain weight, that he looks ill. I would love to post a picture, he clearly does not look ill. He is a healthy weight, a perfect weight I might add. (not just based on BMI but waist/hip etc).
It is a sad sign of the times when we base a health weight on how a person looks, especially when we think that a healthy weight looks too thin!? Have we really become so comfortable with seeing overweight all around us?
I have encountered this. I started at 280 and I am down to 200. I would like to be 185-190 and I have said so to those who ask what my goal is. Everyone invariably tells me to stop losing weight, that I have lost too much, that it's unhealthy, that I am sick, etc. My wife, m co-workers, my friends, some even get angry that I would consider losing more weight. It's a bizzare attitude considering that I lost my weight by changing my lifestyle. My response to them is that my body will stop losing weight when what I put in equals what I need and I'm not going to eat more just to appease them.
I belong to a weight loss support group and began at 230 pounds (5'2"). Once I achieved 155 pounds EVERYONE told me to stop. It was not just the odd person either. People who barely knew me would say "you must be at your goal by now! Any more would be too much". This of course caused me to falter and struggle. It was 'confirmation' to these people that my body was saying I was skinny enough. Hmmm. 5'2" and 155 pounds on a small frame is hardly skinny. Even my doctor agreed than every pound counts but a BMI of 25% was high enough and that was 136 pounds. This really did create a mental block and I'm still hovering between 155-165 pounds five years later. I'm comfortable enough to fit into a size 12 which is the normal size so my motivation is sure not there. This is a great observation Doctor!! Thanks!
I could write a book on the subject! Going from 330 (or more.. that's as high as my scale went) to 165, I really found out who my friends were. Some (maybe not surprisingly, ones who had weight issues themselves) tried to sabotage me by constantly buying me McDonald's, bringing over chips, etc, even though I explained to them that I would really prefer they not. It's sometimes uncomfortable when you exceed other peoples' expectations of you. I was really conscious of my potential to make other people feel badly about themselves and their own struggles.
On another, similar note - my sister, who had always known me overweight, had a hard time looking at me. She wouldn't look me in the face, and when I asked her about it, she said I made her uncomfortable, that I didn't look like myself and she felt like she was talking to a stranger.
This may happen, but I think most people applaude weight loss, especially a big, dramatic loss of weight.
The question I have is how normal is it to keep off such weight? Not very, from what I've read.
I completely agree! Just because one is overweight does not mean they are unhappy or unattractive.
Thanks for posting this!
(Hand shooting up) I have! I actually found this blog by googling the title of this blog.
About 8 years ago, we moved, and although I was already overweight, I promptly gained 50 pounds and kept it on.
So as of Sept. 2007 I was a 5'5" seriously obese female weighing 220. Since then I have lost 61 pounds (it now being June 2008).
No one noticed my weight loss at all until I lost 50 pounds. At the 55 pound mark, people starting commenting and saying to stop loosing weight, and asking if I am ill.
I think that people are not use to seeing me thinner.
I have at least 9 more pounds (according to ALL of the online bmi calculators) to go to be in the normal range, and I'd like to loose about 30 more pounds!
So, now I just agree verbally, and continue on...
By the way, no one told me to stop gaining weight....
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