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markicksass:

Very interesting, but pretty discouraging, article.  One thing I noticed about the slide show is that the Bridges look happy in the before picture, but not in the after pictures.  Nearly every picture has a stern face, not a smiling face.  It’s just not what I’m used to seeing when I look at before/ afters on Tumblr.  Usually it’s the other way around.

Also, the fact that they were on an 800 calorie diet seems so low!  I doubt I could keep that up for a week, let alone months.  Even the maintenance they are doing sounds incredibly time-consuming and regimented…

Just a note on this, since I’ve got some first-hand knowledge and while the article was accurate, it decontextualized things a bit… the stern faces are actually because that’s how the photographer told them to pose. They’re really very kind, generous people who smile a lot.

In order to provide a little more context, in three weeks we’re traveling right back to Davis to attend a dinner honoring them as Davis’ Citizens of the Year (article includes a photo of them smiling!). So they’re active in their community, and I can tell you that you can’t walk two blocks in Davis without someone stopping to say hello to them. It’s true that they organize their lives to accommodate their weight management practices, but it’s equally true that they have rich, full, active lives that are not determined by those practices. The weight maintenance serves their lives, not the other way around.

And I think the exercise/food tracking routine they have IS a lot of work, but also remember that they’ve made it a habit- they’ve been tracking their food intake for 6 years. I’ve only been tracking mine for 8 weeks, and I can tell you that once you get started, it’s not as much work as you think it is, and in some ways it gets easier over time. They’re retired and live in a really flat area that’s SUPER bike-friendly, so they have an easier time fitting in their exercise routine than we do (taking the bike to the grocery store is a lot more feasible in Davis than it is in NE DC), but I definitely have found that by establishing some habits, it’s easier than I thought it would be and as a bonus I actually DO have more energy to keep it up. YMMV, of course, but it’s been my experience that while all this IS work, it was more work in my mind than it was once I actually got started. 

(I really, really do not want this to turn into a weight-loss Tumblr, but I can expand on this if people are interested. Hit my askbox.) 

The 800-calorie thing WAS drastic. I don’t want to get into tons of details because it’s their story, not mine, and I don’t want to stomp all over their privacy, but they’re pretty open about it: for a variety of reasons, they did a medically-monitored liquid fast for months. But they would be the first ones to tell you that the key was that it was medically monitored (like, weekly appointments), because dropping to 800 calories a day is a very serious thing, and is absolutely not for everyone. Seriously, no one should walk away from that article thinking they should restrict their calories that far all on their own.

(Source: tiffanyb)