Probably for the same reason I often have difficulty finding a good selection of size 13 shoes (the average is what, 9 or 10?). . .they don’t stock as many of that size to start with.
Simple, lack of motivation. Most fat people, including me, find it hard to find motivation and will power to do it. We know why we should lose it and that life would be better, but that isn’t enough motivation. Trying to lose weight is like a chain smoker trying to quit. I for one suffer from a mood disorder (mostly bouts with depression and low self esteem), and I fill up emptyness inside me with food. The best thing for a fat person to do is at first try not to gain any weight. After that, he/she should set a goal of 10 pounds at first, and then go from there. It takes a lot longer to lose weight (and I mean fat. YOu don’t want to lose muscle mass and necessary fluids). Pray for your friend so that he/she might receive that necessary motivation to lose weight and to heal up wounds he/she might have.
This is why poorer people on food stamps are so fat.
- Low self-esteem
- Depression
- Refusal to take personal responsibility
- Inability to deal with stress
I’m in the medical profession and some of the worst offenders are nurses. I see so many fat nurses it’s disgusting. Sometimes I’ll walk thru the employee cafeteria at the hospital as a shortcut. It never ceases to amaze me what I see these people put on their plates.
Artemius, I think you hit it on the head. I agree with 1, 2, and 4 of your list there. However, I think that 1, 2, and 4 lead to number 3 because those 3 are what makes a person “afraid” or “not willing” to take personal responsibility.
Although I’m not overwight, obesity runs in my family and it’s something I’m concerned about–both my parents have adult-onset diabetes, which is not fun.
Something that I’ve noticed is that the typical American lifestyle makes it difficult to exercise. You have to make a conscious decision and often go out of your way to work out. When I lived in England, I lost weight, even though I was drinking a whole lotta beer and eating way too much fish and chips. Why? I didn’t have a car, so I walked everywhere, which I could do, since the town I lived in was so pedestrian-friendly. Contrast that with American cities, which have few sidewalks and bike lanes.
Why I was overweight for so long:
It was “easy”.
I didn’t have to make time to exercise. I ate whatever was put in front of me, ordered whatever I wanted off a menu, and didn’t pay any attention to my portions. No extra work there.
For a long, long while I was unhappy with my shape, but not ENOUGH to warrant making any drastic changes.
I think about food a LOT more now that I’m thin than I ever did when I was heavy. Because now I’ve got to plan ahead. Now I’ve got to budget for treats. Now I’ve got to shop with a list.
Thankfully, I believe that diligence is worth the time and effort. But for many years I did not.
I know that’s supposed to be funny, but for some of us it’s demeaning.
I eat low-fat, low-calorie and have my entire life. The heart failure did not come from being fat. Rather the fat came from the heart failure. I used to walk several miles every morning now I can’t even walk to work four blocks away. No matter how healthy you think you are one little virus can undo a lifetime of taking good care of your body.
I wanted to lose weight. Desperately. I was depressed, hated the way I looked, and thought I was stuck that way forever. It was made worse by the fact that I did plenty of cardio and lifted weights, and yet I was still gaining fat.
My husband read a study that even an extra ten pounds of fat will decrease your life expectancy (sorry, no cite). I didn’t want to just accept the way I looked, because it wasn’t healthy. My goal is a healthy weight for me (I’m 5’3" and active, so probably 140), not supermodel thin.
In my case it took the Atkins diet before I could lose any weight and more importantly, understand how to eat right. I know all of you anti-Atkins people think it’s a terrible diet, but you’re forgetting one thing: if I knew how to eat right, I wouldn’t have gained weight to begin with. Now I eat only enough to get full without being stuffed, like eating vegetables, drink lots of water and I don’t sit around desiring food all the time. I’ve lost 35 lbs and I still have anywhere from 19-29 lbs to lose (I’m not sure exactly; I’ll know when I get there).
I want this bad enough to not backslide when I reach my goal. Like Earl S-H T, and anyone else who has kept weight off for a long time, I’ll have to keep it up for the rest of my life.
Deadly Accurate and other:
Continued success in achieving your goals. You might look into these Human Growth Hormone precursor products that help reduce fat and increase muscle mass. I’ve talked to a couple of people (women) that shed a lot of weight when combined with their diet and exercise so I bought some but have only been taking them for less than a week.
I’m not overweight (6’0", 173 lbs) and am actually pretty proud of my 50 yr. old physique. I take great pride in how I look and maintaining a healthy weight. I watch what I eat and work out 3-4 times a week (weights and cardio) faithfully. I realize some people are genetically predisposed to being overweight but I just can’t accept that argument for the epidemic obesity I’m seeing.
One other key. As the Atkin’s diet advocates, pay particular attention to labels and sugar content. Sugar is the evil force and not fat, per se. I try to avoid anything that has over 8 or 9 gms (3 or 4 is even better). of sugar per serving and try to avoid sugar altogether. It stimulates insulin release which results in storage of fat.
To get on my WW horse - WW works, if you make it work - and you didn’t.
I spent most of my life overweight - obese, in medical terms. I think I agree with those who say it is easier to stay the way you are than to make the change. I know that I spent a lot of time crying over how fat I was - but didn’t do anything about it.
Susan
Your theory might make some sense if those price comparisons weren’t wildly inaccurate.
Your theory might make some sense if those price comparisons weren’t wildly inaccurate.
try and cut down on some of the judgmentalism. nearly ANY system works – when you work it. that does not automatically mean that A system will be workable for ALL people.
another Atkins dieter here. i’ve only been following it for about 6 weeks. both my husband (who voluntarily took it up also) and i can report measurable progress. both of us still have a darn long way to go, if mere aesthetics is the main criteria. (hubby might faint if he actually knew just how MUCH more i really “ought” to lose.)
why do overweight people stay that way? others have already pointed out the reasons/excuses that probably applied for us. lack of time to exercise (hubby’s; mine is i plain ol’ flat-out despise the thought of exercising just to exercise. i do hard manual labor with the best of them, but jumping around in a leotard equates to a waste of time in my mind.)
poor understanding of dietary choices would be a reason. since i’m the main meal preparer, i would happily use any number of time-saving mixes or easy-to-fix prepackaged foods when it came time to make dinner. sometimes i’m just not in the MOOD to do a bunch of from-scratch cooking, or i don’t have a lot of time (after running other errands before arriving home from work). and some of those timesaving little helpers turned out (with my new Atkins outlook) to have been very bad choices to add to the menu. but i didn’t know that at the time, so waddayagonnado?
i’d definitely say that the psychological angle is probably one of the biggest components in the lack of “will power” in dealing with weight issues. learned helplessness could indeed apply for those unfortunate enough to have made numerous unsuccessful attempts at dieting. the expectations that seem built around so many diet schemes can also create disillusionment: “Lose Weight Overnight!” “Eat Everything And Get Thin!” “Follow This Plan For the Body Of Your Dreams!” and the concept of dieting itself has many false assumptions built within many people’s minds; they think that merely following some plan, whatever it may be, that allows them to drop weight will make everything alright, and that once they’ve lost the weight they can go right back to how they used to eat before. if they truly understood that they needed to both cut calories now to drop the pounds AND monitor their eating afterwards to keep the weight off, they might never have bothered starting a diet to begin with.
another interesting psychological component that i’m not sure anyone else has touched on is…avoidance. on a deeply subconcious level, people can sometimes use their fat as a barrier to keep things away from them. so if, say, someone were deeply afraid of being rejected by potential life partners, being fat could be a means of justifying never trying to approach someone in the first place (“Oh, why try to date? No one wants to go out with someone who looks like this?”) even more interestingly, it can occasionally be used as a means of cutting down on temptation. you’re not likely to worry about being tempted to cheat on your spouse if you’ve made yourself into someone who’s not likely to appeal to a third party out looking to do some foolin’ around.
eating to fill an emotional void… to counterbalance a lack of self-esteem… because you’re bored and there’s nothing better to do… because it temporarily makes you forget about other problems in your life (or gives you something to focus on instead)… there’s a zillion reasons why people can be overweight.
one of the worst is that food can just taste so dang GOOD!
There are hundreds of reasons. No one can answer definitively. You gain 5 here, 10 there and after the years sneak by you are fat. Losing is a challange, especially if enjoy eating out and drinking socially.
But there are other reasons too, ones that I could never eplain. Further, I know people who eat more sweets and drink more beer than I and are still thin, so it is physical as well.
To get on my WW horse - WW works, if you make it work - and you didn’t.
If WW works, how come so many people fail? I guess they just didn’t try hard enough?
I’ll concede that some people are willing to do whatever it takes to lose weight: include starve. I stayed hungry on WW, ya know why? Partly it WAS my fault, because I was still eating when I wanted to, and not when my body was calling for food. When I did WW, though, they NEVER mentioned “Hey … eat when you’re hungry, not when you’re bored. And quit eating after you stop being hungry.” It was all about the Points: stay in your range and you’re okay. Maybe it’s different now, but at the time it was all about that magical number, and nothing to do with WHY you got fat to begin with.
Simply put, for me WW dealt with the symptom (the weight) and not the cause.
I do Weigh Down Workshop now and I have found freedom. I no longer have to follow a bunch of stupid, unnatural food rules and worry about whether or not I’m being “bad” by having a piece of cake. I eat just enough to keep me going (and I eat whatever I want, to boot) and I’m learning what to do when I have “head” hunger instead of stomach hunger. And I’m losing. I’m not losing as quickly as someone on, say, Atkins would be losing, but I’m not depriving myself either and following the “clean” and “unclean” food code anymore. And I don’t have to pay $10-$15 a week, either 
If WW worked for you, that’s great. But just because it doesn’t work for others doesn’t mean they didn’t want it to or they didn’t “make it work.” The human body can only take so much actual hunger before it will drive you to eat.
It’s hard to make a plan work when they are only giving you half of the information you need.
To answer the OP.
I love food. I hate working out ( bores me to tears). The things I enjoy most don’t require great physical abilities. I am quite comfortable with who I am. I am fat because I don’t burn more energy than I consume,plain and simple. I prefer the easy going, laid back lifestyle. I accept the fact that my lifestyle choice is the reason I am fat.
I don’t consider myself to be grossely obese. About 50-60 pounds overweight. My cholesterol is around 190. I am rarely depressed. I am not concerned what other people think. I am a good and decent person with a great sense of humor and I give out smiles all day long. If you don’t want to associate with me because I am fat then that is your choice and I won’t give it a second thought.Stress is very rare in my life.
Fact of the matter is that I have only one life to live and I fill it with the things I enjoy most when I am not doing the things I have to do to make life easier. If those things I enjoy most were physical activities then I probably wouldn’t be fat. If this means that I die sooner than others then so be it , but nobody has any guarantees.
I think that everyone has a lifestyle to support the weight they are at.
To change their weight, they would have to change their style.
For some people weight doesn’t make them fat–look at muscle guys they are overweight; but not fat. For some people fat is functional, sumo wrestlers, for example, or people who swim in cold water a lot.
Notice that everyone who goes on Survivor loses weight? Shows ya it can be done.
New to SDMB here, and also Overweight, but working on it. Why am I overweight? Because I didn’t care. I was actually proud of how big I was. 6’4" 400lbs. Claimed I was a proud member of the “Broken Bathroom Scale Club”.
You’ve heard the phrase eat to live or live to eat? I was the live to eat side. I’m a loner, and 100% computer geek. Didn’t care what anyone thought of me. Work on computers at work, come home, and get on the computer again. Only exersize I got was walking between my truck, and home/work. Eat infront of the computer at home, and then go to bed, and read for an hour while eating something or other. Always had food in my hand.
I now know that I was eating because I was bored. I started a diet at the end of March. Why start dieting? Because I found a reason to care what I looked like(See the post about successfull diets for that story) Now I only eat 3 meals a day. No munchies inbetween meals. Also started to walk around the block once a night. Only eatting 3 meals I would be sitting at the computer, and realize that I wasn’t really doing anything fun, just sitting there thinking about food. Found stuff to do, cleaned my room, washed my truck, Just went out driving, anything that was active. If I stay active I don’t think about food, and don’t get hungry as much.
Short answer - I was overweight, and didn’t loose it because I was bored, and filled my time by eating. Also because I didn’t care what I looked like. To see how I got around that read the “What Is Your Successful Diet Story?” thread.
Ok so the short answer wasn’t so short either.
Um, CharlesW?
You’re not in the successful diet story thread. I looked.
Are you in the process of writing it or something?