It's very possible to have every intent and desire to be on time, and still fail at it. Some people have problem with things like attention and executive function that make planning in time very difficult.
For you it might be an issue of not caring. IT's not for everyone.
This reminds me of all these obese people who a are obese because of "health issues", to cover their horrific lifestyle. 98% of the cases, probably (I am being generous).
Same with the timekeeping : some feel that they are so unique and mentally impaired that keeping time is beyond them. But they just do not give a shit about others.
I was 30 kg overweight and had all kind of excuses (including a medical condition). I then moved out of this comfort zone and lost the extra weight.
Some peopke will not be able to do that, this is their choice. I will not pity them and certainly not allow for any specific arrangements if I see this is their fault. And yes, when you see someone drinking coke after coke and inguritating mountains of food you are not at risk of hitting the unfortunate 2%.
So get a watch, leave an hour early. If an hour is not enough, two hours.
Yes, this is impacting but then you choose which time is more important for you.
I apologize if you are in the 2% of people who cannot afford a watch or read the time with understanding.
I'm one of those perpetually late people. There was a time when I was slightly overweight. I changed my diet, started lifting weights and running, and ended up running a marathon 18 months later. But I couldn't fix my lateness. Pretty sure I had to run to the marathon starting area to be able to start with my group.
I've found that exercising control over my body is easy. The body is stupid. It does what I tell it to do. It complains, but it will only fight back when it absolutely cannot physically perform the task.
Not so much with my brain. The brain is smart. It fights back. I can look directly at a (digital) clock, and my brain can refuse to process the time on it.
I can dig around and produce piles of evidence of all the different ways I tried to fix this, all the different treatments I sought, how much sincere effort I put in, and a complete lack of results. Don't take executive function for granted.
Also, our lateness usually hurts us far more than others around us. Nothing is "too important" to be late for. And the things that usually make us late aren't generally important. Most of the time, they're complete wastes of time that didn't need to be done at all in the first place.
I was like this, and so is most of my old friends still to this day. I still snooze and never come in to work at a regular time, but I've never missed a morning meeting when one is planned.
I just scope out my getting ready, the drive in, account for extra traffic and finding parking, and then add an extra 5-10 minutes on top of the worst case time.
I can't remember the last time I was late to anything now, so it's rare enough that it has to be because of a car breakdown or anything else extraordinary.
Everything that involves more people than you are "too important" to be late for if there is a fixed time set.
I'm atrocious at time scoping. I view the time to get to a place to be the time on a vehicle in the best case, for instance. I ignore elevators, parking, traffic/transit delays, all of it. In particular the almost inevitable time spent searching for all my things to get out the door.
Getting ready in the morning is a particular challenge because it varies tremendously. Some days I might fuss around with my outfit and makeup for an hour, other days I can get out the door in 15 minutes.
It's not just the time I "feel like" spending, it's time looking for things, time getting distracted... and time just badly planned (I think I am so early, when I'm not, because I plan these things badly).
I‘m exactly like this. The only way that helps is to get ready 30-60m ahead of the time I had originally planned to, and then wait it out. But since I hate to wait on other people, I don’t do this as often.
So you’re saying that your 30 minutes is more valuable than mine? And that your hatred of waiting on other people is more important than whatever you were supposed to do? I don’t care if you’re 30 minutes late once or twice and you tell me, but if you tell me “oh sorry I’m late, I saw that I could have left on time but I’d rather have you wait on me than be on time” then that’s an instant way to piss anyone off.
I didn’t mean to say that it’s good that I‘m behaving this way. And I‘m not responsible for every emotion I have, you know. Some things need working on before you can get in control of them.
Please don't assume everyone's brain is like yours.
Being perpetually late is a psychological problem. Telling people to "just be on time" is like telling depressed people to "just be happy".
Yes, depression can be remedied, as can perpetual lateness. No, it's not as easy for people who suffer from these. Please assume that if it's easy for you to either not be depressed or be on time, then it's hard for you to understand the people who exhibit these behaviors.
Your article summarizes it well. It highlights the main point I am making:
Group 1) Those who don’t feel bad or wrong about it. These people are assholes.
Group 2) Those who feel terrible and self-loathing about it. These people have problems.
Group 1 is 98% of the population. This is why we perceive people who are late as [from impolite to assholes]
Group 2 suffers because of that.
Thus my analogy with weight: 98% of people eat like starving hippos and then claim all kind of bullshit about how they are biologically|mentally|genetically|any-other-y impacted and that being fat is not their fault. And "no fat shaming because we are so special". Yes - aggressive fat shaming so that you put your shit together and stop being a (now or future) problem for the population.
The remaining 2% suffers because of that.
I mentioned this a few times in my comments
--- extra story ---
I also remember a friend of mine who was overweight and had two medical conditions (ans possibly a mild psychological one) which made him what he was.
I saw him fighting back - by eating healthy, moving a lot (I was lightly sparring kung-fu with him) and I was super proud. There are some happy ends - he is still far from being a model but he met a super girl (thin and sporty by the way) who realized after going past the physical aspect that he was a super guy. Their children (now teens) tease him about that.
It feels like you're ignoring the biological realities behind some mental health conditions. In this case, ADHD. You can't just dismiss deficits in executive function as "not caring". This lecture is a great one on the subject:
The reality is that the circuits in the brain that manage things like impulse control and attention don't work as well in some people.
One of the primary treatments for ADHD is stimulant medications... and yes, as a coping strategy, getting panicked to the point of adrenaline spiking. Both of them activate norepinephrine. But it has limits. I cannot be a panic about leaving for work every morning, or every time I meet with friends.
Medication helps tremendously; planning things in the morning before the medication has kicked in leads to problems.
When I have worked at a job that requires me to be in at 9:30AM every morning, the result was a ton of stress and constant friction. The solution is to schedule that meeting some other time; when I've worked at places that didn't have that requirement everybody has been happier.
I can assure you that I never say to myself, what's more important: being at this meeting on time or spending 10 minutes searching for my phone? Or responding to this reddit comment? My understanding of time is not nearly good enough to make those kind of choices. Watch the video I linked; it's not intention that is the problem.
Knowing the current time is not the problem, but being reasonable about how long things will take is extremely difficult.
A lot of my life is organized around the knowledge that I am this way. I simply can't have friends who are going to think I don't care about them every time I'm 15 minutes late. For some people, that might be the case, but it's not for me.
FWIW, my BMI is 21; appetite was never a problem for me. But I know a thing or two about excuses and getting out of my comfort zone; I'm trans.
If you read my other comments you will notice that I do not ignore the real problem. You seem to be in the minority who actually has a medical condition and being late is probably one of the many impacts and maybe not the worst.
I am arguing with all the special flowers who "just cannot be in time", because this is fashionable, a mark of superiority or basic assholness.
It's quite possibly the worst. It has burned me plenty of times, and almost burned me badly a lot more. There were numerous classes and tests I should have failed because of my tardiness that I was able to talk my way out of, etc.
A lot of times I can "smart" my way out of the worst problems. For instance I missed a flight that was taking me to a cruise the next morning. The airport staff were unhelpful; there weren't really any more flights that night.
But I figured out on my phone that I could switch both source and destination airports and make a new flight. So for the "small" price of a $350 last minute ticket and $60 cab ride, I "solved" my problem. I literally booked the flight on my phone while in the cab between the airports.
A large price to pay for being 15 minutes late, but I saved myself from missing the entire cruise at a cost of thousands.
I really wish more people understood that being late for people like you (and me, and the blog author) isn't the same as it is for them, and can't be fixed simply. I need a support group, dammit!
I can't see why you've brought this analogy into the discussion, because the two things are not very similar. Refraining from being late to one appointment does not activate any bodily instinct that you need to be late to the next one.
This is the "I am so special so you should understand that I am late" (and wait for me), an analogy to "I am so special, so you should understand why I am overweight" (and I am taking your space in the plane, or your health tax later)
This comment is perpetuating many falsehoods about obesity. For most people with chronic obesity, it is not really a matter of willpower. Just because the direct cause of their condition is too high food intake, it does not mean that it’s a “choice”. Their bodies are programmed to require large amounts of food. Losing weight by willpower in the short term just increases the signals to eat, and may cause weight gain in the long run.
The only effective treatment in the long run is gastric bypass.
This comment comes from me travelling all the time between Asia, Europe and the US.
And comparing the volume of people in different countries, usually US or wealthy China vs. France (my country) or Italy or Japan.
The difference is striking. It doesn't come from the fact that Americans or wealthy Chinese have some physiological problem: they just eat TONS of food and drink pure sugar (last one is for the US).
One should not look for fancy explanations when the evidence is there: people are more and more obese because they eat shitty food and drink sugar.
And do not talk me about "the poors who cannot afford anything else". We have poverty in France as well, and these people are not horrifically obese.
Chronic obesity means chronic overeating. Except for the infinitesimal minority wich was obese 100 years ago as well because of the weird gene. When they become obese, they are programmed to be even more obese. Or "big boned".
And like with everything in life, willpower moves you ahead in most cases. There is one genius for every 100 hard working people (with willpower) and 100 slackers (in the same demographics).
I cut by 1/3 to 1/2 what I was eating. I eat the same things, just less. And more fruit, and almost no sugar.
Was it hard? Yes, to a point. Was it excruciating? No - I was just salivating while looking at a nice cake and my brain decided to say "no".
I still have a hamburger from time to time (say, every two weeks). It is European size.
My kid made a cake, I had two parts (even if it was awful, way too sugary).
I bike to the office because I love it, and play sports again. Just because I WANT TO.
I’m not saying that obesity does not come from eating too much and/or eating the wrong type of food. I’m talking about the mechanisms that drive this behavior, and what it takes to beat them. Willpower is not enough to beat actual, chronic/morbid obesity. The only known solution is surgery.
Your comments are bordering on fat-shaming, which I find completely unacceptable.
I "love" this stuff about how fat people need ridicule to snap out of it and stop being fat. Trust me, anybody who is fat is acutely aware of it without your advice.
As for your other ideas, by the time you're trying to sort out worthies you don't actually have a social state in any meaningful sense. You can find some fault with most people. "Why did you work in a mine when you knew it could cause black lung? Why did you spend so much time at the computer if you didn't want RSI? You wouldn't have rabies if you'd avoided rabid animals." You get the idea.
I am not ridiculing anyone, I just do not want any special treatment for someone who willingly gets into that state. Try to spend a intercontinental flight next to this poor 170 kg guy as I did once and you may agree that - because they decided to be fat - they should pay two places in order to accommodate everyone.
BTW, I was 30 kg overweight. Then decided not to be anymore.
"Why did you work in a mine when you knew it could cause black lung?" - because I had to in order to bring money for my family. I have in very high esteem such people. As you say, you get the idea.
"Why did you willingly eat nasty stuff knowing what will happen, and you absolutely did not have to because you live in a country where you can get healthy (= normal, not some bio stuff) food?" - that's harder to explain. But still - this is a choice, we are free people, just do not come later stating that "you should understand, I have all these reasons not to be on time". Sorry, overweight, to get back to the main thread.
It might be a little harder to explain why it was necessary that you play Starcraft until you get tendonitis; should we also deny treatment to that guy? Maybe we should deny treatment for venereal disease because nobody "needs" to have sex with multiple partners.
As an American person, I feel it is likely I have encountered at least as many fat people as you have, if not more, so appeals to your personal experience aren't that convincing.
First off: "Require" means what your body needs to sustain itself, which I would say is your TDEE. This changes when you gain weight or lose weight, or recomp.
Secondly: You can definitely "reprogram" when you get hungry, it only takes a few weeks.
> Losing weight by willpower in the short term just increases the signals to eat, and may cause weight gain in the long run.
This depends entirely on how you lose weight. As obesity (for the vast majority part, excluding thyroid and other physical problems) is a matter of habit, if you starve yourself from your usual diet for a few weeks in an attempt to reset your weight, of course you are going to relapse.
Temporary dieting can by definition never work. A diet is the habit of what you eat.
If you create the habit of eating like someone who weighs 50 kg less than you, you will start losing weight, fast at first, and then slower until it plateaus. I agree that not everyone is exactly the same, so basal metabolism between two similar people can vary a few hundred or so kcal/day.
Gastric bypass can in rare cases be necessary, but it's definitely a last resort, and unneeded in most cases.
God. This "free will trumps all things. You are in total control of your destiny. All things that happen to you are your own doing" needs to die. Slowly and painfully.
You are a tiny sliver of consciousness on top of a vast, powerful machine. That machine gives you ideas, manages your body, and dictates your desires. Using conscious will power to try to overcome innate points of equilibrium in the system that is you, is extremely difficult in most cases. And in some cases it is impossible.
I never once said it was easy, and I'm not saying that everyone has the will power for it. I'm merely stating that barring physical ailments, everyone can technically do it.
Neither of my parents worked out a day in their life, and neither did I until my late 20s. So I definitely understand the point of view of never learning good habits, but bad habits and not making choices are also a habit, even if you haven't realized an alternative.
It's always possible, but much harder for some people. It's in many ways like alcoholism or other addictions: it's not useful to pontificate to alcoholics and blame them for a lack of of will power when dealing with a serious mental impairment. Yet, willpower remains the single best cure against addiction, encouraging people to leave themselves at the hands of impulse is not healthy advice. People do lose weight and keep it off by willpower, addicts change their lives by willpower.
Gastric bypass is not a silver bullet, it's a major surgery with a significant mortality rate and is always a last resort for the most severe cases who have at least made an effort.
The other guy is right though. Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term. Given numbers like that, I don't see it as useful to cast it as a problem of willpower.
The existence of large national trends also, to my mind, points away from individual failings. I find it hard to believe that the willpower of the average person has simply dropped off steeply over a few decades.
> Other than gastric bypass, all methods of weight loss have like a 2% success rate over the long term.
That's not at all correct. Success rates of weight loss by dieting are around 20%. That's still low, but you have to ask yourself: is it because people really can't control their diet long term, or is it because the majority of the population prefers the self serving narative of obesity genes and viruses, addiction engineered by the food industry, "the calorie myth", the intractable failure of willpower over body impulse, and so on? Because that sounds a lot like a self fulfilling prophecy.
Mind you, I'm grossly overweight (peak BMI 34, current 30), and I know full well the power of my body for mind control. A skinny person can't even imagine the fight every chubby faces on a daily basis. Yet, due to wining most battles, I've managed to lose some and not turn into the 500 Kg monster by body "demands" - I could easily eat 4-5000 calories on a daily basis, to great satisfaction.
> In reality, 97 percent of dieters regain everything they lost and then some within three years. Obesity research fails to reflect this truth because it rarely follows people for more than 18 months. This makes most weight-loss studies disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst.
I also think this article is interesting because it includes some personal testimony from a successful long-term dieter that I think illustrates why most people are not successful:
> Debra Sapp-Yarwood, a fiftysomething from Kansas City, Missouri, who’s studying to be a hospital chaplain, is one of the three percenters, the select few who have lost a chunk of weight and kept it off. She dropped 55 pounds 11 years ago, and maintains her new weight with a diet and exercise routine most people would find unsustainable: She eats 1,800 calories a day—no more than 200 in carbs—and has learned to put up with what she describes as “intrusive thoughts and food preoccupations.” She used to run for an hour a day, but after foot surgery she switched to her current routine: a 50-minute exercise video performed at twice the speed of the instructor, while wearing ankle weights and a weighted vest that add between 25 or 30 pounds to her small frame.
> “Maintaining weight loss is not a lifestyle,” she says. “It’s a job.” It’s a job that requires not just time, self-discipline, and energy—it also takes up a lot of mental real estate. People who maintain weight loss over the long term typically make it their top priority in life.
It's also important to point out a strong self selection bias in such studies: we mostly deal with those who were overweight and needed to start a diet, so they probably had low impulse control to begin with. An important part of population with better control and similar cravings might have started their willpower exercise after gaining the first few pounds, it's disingenuous to discourage everybody using statistics applied to those who have a trackrecord of failure. If you gained weight by simply not caring about your weight (depression, cultural norms etc.) then you might stand a much better chance of success when you start to care.
The testimonial sounds like a clasic case of artificially lowered basal metabolic rate by crash dieting and associated loss of lean body mass. Such people need high resistance, mass building exercises, not catabolism-inducing aerobic. She might live a very long life tho.
> It's also important to point out a strong self selection bias in such studies: we mostly deal with those who were overweight and needed to start a diet, so they probably had low impulse control to begin with.
That's why I mentioned cultural norms, I really don't know how many of those Americans really want to lose weight, but it's clearly not a reflection of typical human capacity for self control.
There are many other nations that reached comparable prosperity and food abundance at similar times, yet don't have even comparable obesity rates. An extreme case is Japan, at 3.5% obesity rate maintained largely though willpower and cultural norms, by literally firing those that are too fat, or in any case applying strong social pressure and mandatory counseling.
You are right in your description, but I disagree with your conclusion.
Yes, the statistics of people in weight loss programs keeping their weight off is really low, but this could have many explanations:
* Are they included because they wanted a one-time solution to a permanent problem?
* Did they initially get coaching that they later lost?
* Did the changes they made temporarily not work for them personally in the long term?
Even if this is statistics of everyone that has ever tried losing weight, does it matter? Humans haven't evolved in the 50-100 years that obesity has exploded. This makes it conclusive that it can't be physiological, does it not?
So it could be culturally behavioral, as a society, or individual, and it's looking like the former, but does it matter?
What is more likely, that we as a culture fixes the obesity problem against any market forces pushing it, or that you die of obesity before that happens, unless you individually go against the grain of what is pushed upon you?
The only way to lose weight is to make changes you can see yourself living with for the rest of your life. This sounds heavy, but none of your reflex habits seem heavy to you, but might to someone else. That's exactly why thin people seem to have it so easy (which they do). They have had a healthy habit of exercise and limited portion sizes their entire life, so they don't even have to think about it.
You don't need exercise to lose weight, but you definitely need it to feel healthy. You need to find something you can either bare to do for the rest of your life, or best case enjoy doing. Soon enough it will be a habit you don't consider anyways.
Same goes for food. There is no trick to it, and not one diet that works for everyone (in terms of psychology). Some can do it by counting everything they put in their mouth. Some can do it by forcing them to sit down everytime they put something in their mouth (so you don't walk around and snack without realizing). Some just cut out any drink that isn't water. Some cut out any snacks that isn't their one absolute favorite. Some just eat once a day without regards to portion size. Etc etc etc. It is harsh, but no one else will do it for you. You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to, but it's not productive to hide behind lies as to why you can't.
So essentially you agree that we live in an environment that encourages obesity but in the end you think individuals should just "suck it up" and try harder. I think this is unlikely to ever see success for a large percentage of people and I don't think it's fair to fault people for not succeeding.
No, I'm saying if someone wants to live longer they should, because the environment around them is much less likely to change. It isn't fair, but it works and is the path with least resistance, not low resistance.
Impulse over powers free will in the long term. Try starving yourself to death. Unless you are exceptional your will power will fail you. Ultimately you are not the master of desire. Desire is the master of you.
I disagree. “Bodies programmed to require large amount of foods” only makes sense if someone is diabetic.
Otherwise it’s pure willpower (well technically being able to delay gratification) combined with healthy food. E.g start a meal with a raw brocoli and it’ll be physically difficult to put other things in your stomach after.
Yes it’s very hard but I did it myself, you always have to think I’m suffering now but I’ll be good looking one day (and yes it takes years)
Edit: though I understand that all people may not have the same capacity to delay gratification
If they were to be sent to a desert island, they would lose weight
Have them exercise, switch sugary soft drinks on refill with water and not eat the one pizza per day or something "they must have", replace that with filling but low calorie food if needed and see what happens
This excuse sounds like the excuses for why the US has more school shootings than every other country.
'It's very possible to have every intent and desire to be on time, and still fail at it.'
The people who try to arrive 'just in time' are the ones this usually applies to though.
If you've ever worked at a place where you have a long commute you'll likely have noticed that the people who are consistently late are those who live closest.
People who really struggle with time management and planning, yup. The lack of an ability to reason about time - to, fundamentally, exercise executive function - leads to these problems where the time estimates are always short.
For some people, it's hard to see all the pieces ("take a shower, brush teeth, put on clothes, pack your bag, take the elevator...) that go into one larger task ("getting to work") and reason about them. It's fundamentally a working memory/executive function deficit.
It's also shocking to me how every intent of leaving well and truly earlier than I thought can also fall apart. The lack of adrenaline in such situations allows a million distractions to creep in. "Oh, I can spend a few minutes to fix my makeup". "Oh, I haven't watered the plants in a while!" I can try to wall some of them off (I will NOT use the computer or look at my phone), but there's real limits.
There's a question of cost. Maybe you can be on time for a flight once in a while, but it costs you so much X (time, mental energy, money, whatever) that the same strategies would not help in day-to-day schedules. Ask someone with DSPS, for example.
You completely misunderstand how executive functioning deficiency works, it appears. While this was written by a person with chronic pain issues (you might not be aware of!), it applies to many other (often also invisible) disabilities: https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine....
"Just leave earlier" is about as useful an advice as "grow a new hand."
I am also sometimes early. I once arrived 24 hours early for a flight. On two occasions recently I arrived at a doctor's appointment the day before. The first time they thought it was quirky, the second time they looked at me as though there might be more wrong with me than they'd thought.
For you it might be an issue of not caring. IT's not for everyone.