"marengo" wrote in message
...
This seems contradictory to me. In reality, food has become even more of
an
obsession, only in a different way. If they are "very aware of their
current weight and actively mange it," they are still not able to live a
"normal" life without obsessing about what they eat.

I think the difference is in the mental attitude towards the scale and the
weight. When facing a weight gain, you have two solutions :
1) Watch the number as your jaw drop. Feel a huge feeling of dispair creep
in. Think that it can't be possible. Then :
1.a. Go into denial. This indeed can't be possible. Scale must be wrong or
broken or something. Stupid machine. Better never to use it again.
1.b. Go in full blown panic attack. This is it. This was too good to be
true. All these deprivations for NOTHING! Life sucks. F-word! I'm going to
drown myself in ice cream until it feels better.
1.b. Inflate the stuff. You have become obese again! You need to CORRECT
that! You decide to go on a fast for a few days, in order to lose the
balloon that has replaced your belly. Then, it will be veggies and white
fish only for several weeks. Got to beat that stupid body into compliance!
2) Take note of the new weight (that's the aware part) as a general data
about your life - like you would take note of back pain, running nose or
feeling tired. Wonder if you did anything special that could have caused
that small weight gain - and this is a small weight gain, nothing you can't
lose comfortably over a few weeks. You start going through some of your
weight loss routines again, the ones that seem to be in relation with the
cause of the weight gain. You watch your carbs a bit more, or you try to
focus a bit more on your hunger and satiety. If this was stress related and
you're really going through difficult times, you don't hide behind a tree,
and accept that either you have to face it, or you seek some help from a
therapist to go through the difficult times.

I think that's what they meant. Many dieters go through variations of 1),
though in less caricatural intensity. I think normal people are able to go
through 2) in an unconscious manner. Many are tuned enough to their body to
*feel* weight regain - they will feel a bit sluggish, unwell, heavy... Then,
they will do the corrections in an unconscious manner. Or it will hit
conscious level, but they handle it better since they don't go ballistic
about weight gain. That's all these people who notice a little weight gain,
and "eat a bit less".
It has been suggested that this is why exercising plays a major role in
*maintenance*, while its role in weight loss is less important. Beyond the
immediate effects (muscles growth, calories burn...), exercise makes you
aware of your body. If you run daily, you can *feel* weight gain early on.