How LCing is like Investing and Why Some People Quit
 

If you’ve read my post on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you’ll see that I’m an analytical type of person that likes to use logic to explain why certain people behave in certain ways. This time, I came with a theory that explains how successful low carbers in some ways are similar to successful investors, where as many who quit are similar to the day traders during the recent bust, along with some other similarities between financial health and physical health.

At a glance

Successful investors invest smart and stay on course during ups and downs, just as successful LCers eat smart and stay on course during ups and downs. Whereas, day traders get excited about some large initial gains but bail out when things look down, just as may LCers who quit because they expected initial weight loss to continue but gets discouraged when they hit a stall or even when some of weight comes back.

Details



***Disclaimer*** BXM is an index fund that tracts Standard and Poor’s 500, which is pretty much a benchmark for overall market performance. I don’t own any shares of BXM, nor am I qualified to give investment advices. I only used this graph since it happened to have all the information I needed.

People on this board tend to be similar to the like the types of investments shown on the graph.

1. 3-month T-Bills: People who have been LCing for a while and now and now have settled onto a slow but steady weight loss.

2. 30-year T-Bonds: People that are experiencing moderate weight loss with some fluctuations, like the ones in Akins OWL.

3. BXM and S&P 500: People who are on induction that experienced a huge loss in the beginning but hit a stall after the initial phase.

I am going to focus on the people who are on induction compared them to the BXM fund since veteran LCers who experience are less likely to quit since they know to except it. They are similar to veteran investors that accept the fact that there will be down periods in the market.

If you take a look at the BXM fund from June of 88 to June of 04, you’ll see a large overall gain. However, if you look during the boom and bust years, there is a sharp rise and fall. Most of the day traders became active (I’ve known a few up them, including one that lost about $150,000) during the boom and bailed out at a loss during the bust. By looking at the graph, even if they bought the fund at its peak and held onto it through the bust, they would’ve had some modest gain in the end.

Now back to LCers on induction. I and many others enjoyed a great loss during the beginning of induction, which is like investing in the fund during the boom years. Then suddenly, my weight started to fluctuate, even gaining up to 4 pounds at one point before stalling out, which felt like owning funds during the bust years. That also seem to be one of the most commend complaint on this forum, people wanting to quit after their great losses have stalled or they even regained some of the weight back.

At this point, some people educate themselves and find that this is quite normal. In fact, the fact that the most people will experience stall at one point was stated DANDR book as well! However, others get stuck on the day trader mentality by bailing out and chasing the next hot stock/fund, or in this case, the next fad diet that promises quick weight loss. The problem is that day traders tend to lose money in the long run so they have less capital to invest even if they do decide to invest more wisely. This is similar to people who yo-yo diet that become more metabolically resistant after each diet cycle and have harder time losing even if they come back to LCing.

As bad as it may sound, day trader mentality is actually found to be quite normal in humans. Common sense dictates that you buy low and sell high, but why do day traders buy high and sell low? Many psychological studies shown that people tend to get something equivalent to “investor’s high” during the boom, which causes them to seek out more hot stocks, but gets into a herd mentality where if they see a group of investors bailing out, they will bail out as well. It’s hard to buy a boring value stock when everyone and even media are hyping about a hot stock.

Financial Health and Physical Health

Coming back to LC diet, many of the people learned about LC WOL from word of mouth or from TV shows. The problem is that unless they educate themselves from the start, they will often miss out on the possibility of being stalled for a while or how exercise is a mandatory part of programs like Akins. Without being fully educated, they may start LCing as the new hot diet that everyone is talking about but bail out after they hit their first stall and chalk it up as another fad diet that didn’t work.

Once thing I learned from financially successful relatives is that the best way to get rich to get rich slowly. I believe that this holds true on weight loss as well. In fact, Dr. Atkins stated that the reason why his WOL have phases is that he believes that slowing the weight loss near the goal will ensure that you keep it off permanently.

One book that I recommend that everyone read is “The Millionaire Next Door”. This book will do you your financial health to what DANDR and other LC books did you your physical health. Just as DANDR changed how people thought about food, TMND changed how people thought about millionaires. For example, people thought that carbs where good and fats were bad, just as people thought that your “average” millionaire lives in big fancy houses and drive shiny new foreign luxury cars and used tons of debt to buy up real estate and resell them for 1000% profit like they tell you in late night infomercials. In reality most of millionaires hate debt and fancy stuff (like avoiding carb and other junk food) and gained wealth over the years (like may successful LCers who lost over the years).

Expending on the real estate, I know several people who are doing well with real estate but it’s nothing like what they say in the infomercials or get-rich-quick seminars. The proper way involves intense research of the property, hard work, and willingness to accept the fact that some properties may just break even or even sold at a loss. Sure sounds like same traits that successful LCers have, doesn’t it?

Summery

I think that as LCers, the best way to spread our WOL is to let others know both good and the bad side. That is, while it works well in the beginning, most will also experience stalls and induction flu. Let them weigh the cons and have them decide, because it would be better for them to not to try LCing in the first place then have them try when they are not ready and give up on it.

Very good post!!!

Interesting post, but I wanted to share how I was able to eliminate the "bad side" of the diet. I am a scientist who has been dieting on and off for 38 years and I still have records of what I ate and plots of my weightloss going back to 1989. The graphs all looked like the BXM curves (but with a negative slope until I went "off" the diet) until this past year when I achieved a continous loss to goal with no stalls or "flu" (there were of course +/- 1 or 2 lb variations due to water & gut contents). I've been LCing pretty consistently for 6 years, but am now convinced that food allergy/intolerance is the prime cause of stalls/flu. After years of yo-yoing, by avoiding all grains, soy and the few seeds/nuts that I crave or am sensitive to for the past 10 months, I finally achieved a negative 30-yr T-bond type curve, losing steadily toward my goal with no stalls, cravings or frustrations, while eating an extra 400 calories of fat every day. None of my 18 previous graphs look like this one.

Without irritants that cause inflammatory responses in my system, I didn't have any cravings or physical or emotional ups and downs that affected my eating (despite lots of work-related stress). I also credit lots of fat (65% of my calories) and magnesium supplementation for my even-keeled moods and satiety (which I don't remember having since I was ~10 yrs old).

If it's not too much of a hastle, can you scan and post your graph? I want to see how it looks for a long term dieter. You described it pretty well but a picture's worth a thousand words!

A very well thought out, interesting analogy. This has been extremely interesting, bull, along with your Maslow's hierarchy post. Thanks for the great read and another very unique way of looking at things.

Great post. Very informative and straight to the point.

This is it! This the key factor for success! It goes hand in hand with patience and persistance.

I don't know how many times I preach that, when people just throw it back in my face! Somehow their 50-100 pounds is more important to get off quickly than mine!

These are the people that (if they don't change their ways) will fail on this WOL!



Exactly, although I don't hold being a millionaire as a measure for sucess in life, the people who do it properly aren't leasing the porshe.

I came up with his analogy in part due to the similarity of my credit card addiction and carb addiction. I've been credit card free for almost 6 month now but before that, I swore to lay off of the cards but ended up cheating thinking, "just one charge won't hurt, I'll just pay it off by end of the month". That lead me to a "credit card binge" and I had to finally cut off of them off, even a low interest rate card that I kept as an emergency (it's now replaced by an emergency fund). It's similar to people who think that "just one bite" won't hurt. There are people who can stop at one bite, but I don't think that most can.

I believe CNN did a poll on the New Year's resolutions in January, and found that Americans rated improving financial health to be more important than improving physical health. With the saving rate being negative now (first time since the Great Depression) Americans failed miserably in improving financial health and I'm not surprised that physical health department is going downwards since the most cannot meet the first goal.

Unfortunately, our friends in Canada seem to be heading in the same direction since their savings rate is at 0%, and their diet is becoming more "Americanized".

Interesting. I wonder why I can be so disciplined with my credit card but until fairly recently so undisciplined with my carbs! :)

I guess everyone has their own vice. I haven't really cheated once I got serious with Akins but had plenty of cheats with credit cards until the current streak.

Credit card addiction/carb addiction - never would have made that leap, and it really makes sense for me. What a great post.

It's all just a symptom of wanting to fill the void, whatever that void may be - at least IMHO.

And the Canadian diet is pretty much the American diet, isn't it? Can't spit without hitting a Starbucks or McPuke's. However, our obesity (BMI over 30) rate is slightly lower (around 23%) than yours (30%). Of course, the number of fat teens has tripled, so I'm sure we'll be catching up sooner rather than later!

I've linked my personal debt to my obesity as well.

Both are being conquered as we speak! :)

wow great post!!
i also like what you said about your credit card debt being connected. i too am now working on paying off all the credit cards.
i also agree that both are to fill a void!!