Thoughts on Rapid Weight Loss

Mariasol has a great post up about online diets, and it got me thinking about rapid weight loss.

In some ways, I feel like I really shouldn't be talking about this. The most I had to lose was about 30 lbs, and I had a perfect weight loss experience. I was one of those people whose metabolic needs and personal food preferences dovetailed perfectly with Atkins. I lost thirteen lbs in my first two weeks on Induction, and hit my first goal of 132 lbs exactly three months after I started. I went on to lose a bit more and over the last four and a half years have managed to maintain, with only a bit of upward creep here and there which was easily fixed each time with a brief return to Induction.

Back when I was actively posting on Low Carb Friends I was part of a challenge, where we'd all post our goals and cheer each other on. There were a few like me who found it easy, but there were more than a few who struggled. Even when they were doing everything 'right' they still weren't losing as fast as some others, and it was hard for them. They weren't alone -- there were plenty of people on LCF as a whole who were having the same problem, people who had a great deal of weight they needed to lose, much more than my piddling 30 lbs. It's no wonder some of them fell for the kimkins scam.

I can understand that, the need to get it off NOW, even though I don't have personal experience with it. My best friend had weight-loss surgery a few years ago, and I was there for the whole thing. I didn't agree with this decision, for a variety of reasons, which I shared with her but being a best friend, once I'd registered my opinion, I snapped into best friend mode and supported her all the way. Up to and including traveling to the foreign country where this surgery took place with her, emptying the drains that had been inserted in her stomach, cleaning up the puke from that first popsicle she ate too fast (I told her to slow down with that!) and giving her the anticoagulant shots once she was discharged. And to her credit, G (not her real initial) was a model patient, except for that first popsicle. She did, and continues to do, everything she's supposed to do and has maintained a healthy wait for years and looks just beautiful.

One of those things she's supposed to do involves ongoing medical supervision, which she gets religiously and which brings me at long last to the point of this post. If you were, for instance, to gain 100 lbs in just a few months it's to be hoped either you, or someone in your life, would think of getting you some medical attention because, clearly, that rapid a weight gain is an indicator that something could be very wrong with you.

So why, then, do people think they could lose that much weight in the same time period without medical supervision and not expect any adverse consequences?

I know the answer to that, of course. We all convince ourselves we're the exception to whatever, and point out that archetypal individual who did thus and thus and suffered no ill consequences. I have one in my family, my paternal grandfather smoked for nearly seventy years, having started when he was twelve, and lived to be 89. Well, he didn't escape it entirely, he did, after all, die of lung cancer ("If only he quit sooner!" said my grandmother) but still ... 89!

Of course, my maternal grandfather smoked too, starting in his twenties all the way to his death from throat cancer at the age of 55. But back when I used to smoke, guess which grandfather I looked to as proof of my superior genetics and how I could do something so damaging to my health and still get away with it?

Ultima ratio regum, the final argument of kings, in this case, our overweening desire to do or have something so badly that it completely overwhelms our common sense.

I need to go do some laundry in preparation for New Mexico. Where, incidentally, I plan to eat all manner of stuff I normally avoid. Induction when I come back!

Elle