And that’s another thing. I see people lose weight, but gain a Molly Holly-type ‘holier than thou’ attitude, like they lost empathy cells in the process. What’s up with that?
To answer the OP, there are several reasons I’m fat and not trying to lose weight
1)I get to eat whatever I want! Whee! I do try to make the main meals healthy and eat tons more whole grains and veggies than I used to, but I get my treats whenever I want them!
2)I don’t get come ons from all kinds of strange men anymore (just from that one special strange man)
3)It sure beats the bulimia I practiced in college
To echo some of the earlier posts:
For me it was mainly self-esteem.
I’m only moderately overweight now, but I used to be 50 lbs heavier. When I was in my early 20s I was quite thin (perhaps a bit too thin for my build). I gradually gained a bit of weight through my mid to late twenties, then gained 40 lbs all in one year due to medication I was on.
When I was young and thin, I had horrible self-esteem, for a variety of reasons mainly having to do with my total lack of coordination and athletic ability as a kid, along with some health problems (since my body didn’t work quite right, it must be ugly, I reasoned) and I always felt horribly embarassed whenever I got any attention from men. I never felt attractive at all. When I gained weight, it was easy to hide behind the weight and keep people away by being the sarcastic fat bitch. Not many people got behind the facade.
A health problem (herniated disk L5 S1) scared me enough to think about seriously losing weight, but it took a while to find something that worked (tried WW, but felt miserably deprived almost all the time, then tried Atkins, which is the right plan for me). My self esteem still sucked, however, but eventually (about halfway to my goal weight) I looked in the mirror and started seeing myself how other people saw me. It was amazing.
Without the health scare, I may never have lost the weight.
Main reason people don’t lose weight:
Diets don’t work. Diets treat the symptom (eating too much, eating foods not good for you) rather than what is usually the cause (emotional eating — eating for reasons other than being hungry). If diets worked, every dieter would only need to go on one diet.
Anyone who:
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is not at the weight she would like to be, but does not want to diet, and is willing to do some work on her mind/emotions (rather than on her body – her body will change as her mind does) and more importantly,
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anyone who attaches any self-worth whatsoever to how fat or skinny she is (most of us) should read Geneen Roth’s books. A good starter is When Food Is Love – but she has many great books.
It’s funny, just when I saw this thread I was about to post this letter that I wrote to a cow-orker who complained to me today about her stepdaughter gaining weight. Said cow-orker, a good friend of mine, has been nagging stepdaughter not to eat so much, and to lose weight, “because I care.” Mind you, the girl has gained maybe 10 lbs at the most – this is NOT a health issue. Argh…
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kputt, yours is one of the worst generalizations I’ve ever heard.
I’m assuming you’ve studied reports on the relationship between food stamp receivers and their weight?
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SnoopyFan check again. Yea I got a phone call so it took awhile to write it.
I’m probably an oddity, but…
I’m fat because I don’t really have any reason not to be. None that would justify the workload of not being fat.
I’m even quite capable of being non-fat - I have an iron will and in the past, through a strict adherence to diet and LOTS of excercise, I lost around 200 pounds of fat in 8 months. 160-170 of actual weight, but due to extensive strength training I’d gained an estimated 30-40 pounds of muscle.
Anyway - I lost all the weight for various reasons - one of them was to try out the idea that society seems to impose that your life gets better if you become unfat.
Well, it didn’t. I made a huge, dramatic change - 370 to a well-muscled 200 - and my life didn’t improve one bit.
Way too many people let their physical appearance affect their self esteem. I was the same way as a kid, and being fat can certainly screw you up. But I grew up, I guess, and realized that it was stupid to take stock and base my self-identity and self-esteem based off shallow perceptions of mean-spirited idiots. And so I don’t rely on others for validation for my self esteem.
As such, I didn’t go from timid to confident, from having a bad self image to a good one - it was unchanged, since it wasn’t based on my weight.
I was healthier, certainly, but for various reasons I have no expectation of living more than a few years, so that didn’t and doesn’t concern me. If that changes, and I do expect to live a long time, well, I can always end up doing it again for health reasons.
Of course, being in good shape was nice in itself - but not nice enough, in itself, to justify all the effort expended to be that way.
Women took a greater interest in me, of course - which is to say, greater than zero - but that didn’t really do anything for me. For various reasons, I don’t suspect I’ll ever be able to maintain any sort of intimate, long term relationship. And I’m simply not interested in banging random chicks. Of course, I might miss that one in a million dream girl that comes into my life - but if weight is a factor in her rejecting me, then is she really a dream girl anyway?
I don’t think I’m any less of a hard case than other fat people. Some of them look at my story and think that I’m not a real hard-up case like they are because I managed to lose the weight, and naturally, they couldn’t. So it was just easier for me than it would be for them. Bullshit. I’m about as genetically wired to be fat as any of them are - except the extreme cases - I just worked harder than almost all of them had ever tried.
Not that I blame any sort of genetic disposition or anything. While some people are more prone to being fat than others (there are lots of people I know that eat worse/more than me and don’t have an ounce of fat on their body), ultimately, except perhaps in the most extreme .001% of cases, it’s fixable. So the responsibility ultimately lies on them. I really hate anyone who tries to skirt that responsibility and claim something else is responsible for them being fat.
I’m somewhere near 340 now - I’ve gained about 40-60 pounds per year normally since I was 16 or so. I lost all that weight 3 (or 4? I can’t remember, honestly) years ago - and have regained it at about 25-30 pounds a year since. I managed that relatively low rate by simply cutting all of the pop out of my diet and drinking water instead. The weight loss thing wasn’t a total loss - had I not done it, I’d probably weigh like 500+ pounds right now. I’m probably going to end up losing 40-50 pounds soon just to keep things from getting to the point where being too fat is a handicap. I’ve still got a decent bit of muscle under all this, so it’s not like I’m debilitatingly fat.
So, anyway, as to the OP, I’m fat. And I could fix it - as pretty much everyone can - but in my case, I know for sure that I could - but it’s simply not worth it.
Health? Not an issue. Self esteem? Don’t need to be physically attractive for it. Women? Meh. So it’s cost-benefit analysis - minimal gain of feeling a little better at the cost of huge, dramatic life style changes and effort. Not worth it, unless something comes along that requires me becoming unfat.
Well maybe I said something wrong. I wanted to say that based on a government study of some sort (according to the media), that people on these welfare food programs are overweight because of the food that they are allowed to buy with this stamps or whatever, and you know that the food they are allowed to buy isn’t healthy at all. I’ve noticed healthy foods and name brands, which are generally more healthy are more expensive than your junk food and your no-name brands aren’t.:smack:
The body wires in various preferences and behavioral tendencies in certain environments to minimize activity and maximize consumption. This would be great if we were cave men but it is is deadly in a high abundance, low physical activity environment.
Fighting against your own wired in brain and environmental programming nature is extraordinarily difficult. If you are a heavy tending person who has lost weight and wants to keep it off you are always dieting. There is no point at which you can stop and say “I’m not fat anymore. Problem solved!”
It is mentally and emotionally exhausting to maintain a diet. Thin or otherwise non-fat people have absolutely no conception of this. None. Their appetite control is taken care of automatically by their brains, and pushing away from the table or saying “no” to a snack requires only a fraction of the mental discipline and effort a fat tending person has to generate to reach the same conclusion, over and over and over again.
Fighting against one’s nature is very difficult and after awhile people just get tired and give up and simply quit fighting, and make the best cease-fire deal they can with their appetite and environment.
I have a friend who said she gained alot of weight once so that men wouldn’t be attracted to her & she wouldn’t have to deal with that kind of attention.
For some people, not eating as much can be like not masturbating all the way.
If you want to see how hard it is to change your eating habits, try this. Have porn scattered around your house. Look at the porn often throughout the day but do nothing about it. When you’re watching tv and a food comercial comes on, start leafing through a porn magazine. Three times a day masturbate almost to the point of orgasm but never let yourself actually have the orgasm. How long do you think you could keep doing that? I bet many people couldn’t last a day. Now imagine having that feeling week after week, month after month. It’s tough.
But it can be done. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking some simple solution will make it happen. It takes a lot of willpower to control bad eating habits. People who have a normal metabolism don’t have to deal with the same food struggles as the really obese.
Gosh I wish masturbation burned more calories…
Funnily enough, I’ve just lost my appetite.
I have “dieted” my way to 250+ lbs. I have gone on every diet imaginable. Sometimes I have the “willpower” to stay on them, sometimes not.
My pediatrician had me on diet pills when I was in fourth grade. My mother and grandmother hounded me over every bite I put in my mouth my entire childhood. My first husband told me after one successful diet that he would leave me if I ever gained weight again. (Guess what happened?)
I have gone to every diet doctor, shrink, diet program, Overeaters Anonymous etc. that exists. Last year I went on anti-seizure medication that a local hospital based program prescribed “off-label.” I lost maybe 10 lbs., but slept 20 hours a day. The only thing that I haven’t done is get a bypass. I’m too scared to do that.
I’m a smart woman. I have a happy, stable marriage. I own a successful business. I have good friends. I am a good friend.
But, I’m fat. Fatter than I ever imagined I would be.
I am hungry all of the time. I crave sweets non-stop. I know that other people don’t feel this way. This goes way beyond willpower.
My doctor is concerned that my blood sugar levels are high. I feel as if I am eating myself into an early grave. God, if I can’t diet when my health is at risk…
Guess I feel pretty sorry for myself. I hate it that people look at me and think that I don’t care how I look, am a slob, etc. I dress well, wear tasteful makeup and my hair is terrific. I probably shouldn’t worry what other people think, but I’m not stupid.
Has anyone out there ever overcome this weight thing?
I’m overcoming, Marsie. 43 pounds gone, but I still have a long way to go. But I’ll get there someday.
Where in Kentucky are you from, btw? I grew up near Paducah.
Why am I overweight?
I’m a nurse; I know how to eat properly, I know the benefits of exercise and not smoking. I don’t smoke–never did, parents didn’t, never took up the habit. I eat fairly well with a little junk food (and too-large helpings—I know what a proper serving size is). I walk miles while I work. I don’t jog, power-walk or tae-bo.
Why am I overweight?
I’m tall, I’m good-looking, I have 2 teenagers, why do I need to be less fluffy? People are constantly surprised that I’m 40. They say I look at least ten years younger. I’m luckily and through no doing of my own blessed with good genes. I’m a curvy woman. I’m Hispanic—my culture celebrates a “healthy” look. When I was 5, I sat next to a kid I knew slightly and stated to him “You’re fat”. He answered “My mom likes me this way”. I delightedly responded “Mine, too!” I had meant no offense and he took none.
I’m in excellent health and the BMI says I’m overweight at 5’9" and 190 lbs. I don’t diet and I don’t binge. I don’t drink much alcohol and I drink a lot of Diet Pepsi.
That’s why I’m overweight.
I’m overweight because of emotional eating.
Uh…, last time I checked, cheese, bacon, sausage, and eggs are all approved for the atkins diet. In fact, it’s encouraged.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an obese adult who hasn’t at least tried, at some point, to do something about their weight. I’ve been up and down the scale, with numerous different plans. But I didn’t find one that felt like a real solution for me until about 8 months ago, and since the first of the year, I’ve lost almost 60 pounds. But I’ll tell you why, for years prior to that, I did nothing. I had bought into a popular diet industry mantra that says “You can eat anything, if you eat it in moderation”. This might be true of some people, even a lot of people, but it’s not true of me. I’m addicted to sugar; white flour, white rice and white potatoes spike my blood sugar, setting off my cravings which sets off my binging. I finally came to the realization that I’d just have to give those things up for good if I wanted to be successful at weight loss. But, before I implemented this plan, any time I was losing weight, the weight-loss was an all-consuming thing. I spent all my time planning food, thinking about food, craving food and fighting the cravings. This was an effort I could only sustain for limited amounts of time. With the new plan, I often don’t feel any desire to eat between meals, so it’s not so time and energy-consuming.
There’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned, and it surprises me: unattainable goals. The media almost always shows people as being really fat, or perfect. Movies, TV, magazines, all seem to send the same message: it’s OK to be fat, but if you’re not fat, you must be a size 2. I’m never gonna be a size 2. I’m hoping for a 16! But I dare say that there are some fat people who think, “If I can’t attain the ideal, why bother trying?”
I’m losing weight for my health. Somehow, I’ve managed to reach my 40s being relatively healthy in spite of my obesity, but statistically, I wasn’t going to remain that way. I want to grow old and be healthy. Looking better is merely a bonus.
It wasn’t that hard to manage alcoholism - had nightmares about drinking for a couple of years, but have been dry since October '86.
Food is much harder. Right now I am down 90 lbs from where I was a year ago, and very worried about whether it is all going to go back on. I have been able to just quit eating, but for no longer than four days - that’s not the solution, but is moderation possible?
I liked the post from pseudotriton ruber ruber about the hypomanic period a year ago - there is a world of truth there, sad to say.
If you watch people do these things with such horrible consequences, when you shake your head you should be thinking “I guess that means there is some reason, whatever it is.”
My question is specifically for uneducated people who make no effort to go to university - Why?
I’m perplexed because I have a close friend who is uneducated, and only getting further and further behind. He would prefer to be better educated, but he lacks the desire to study and does absolutely nothing that would help him become less ignorant. He indulges in poor study habits without guilt and does not find his vapid mind to be personally unappealing. He has even admitted that every aspect of his life would be improved if he were better educated, but I don’t understand why he makes no initiative to begin a lifestyle change towards that goal.
I’ve never met a college dropout who enjoys being that. But this is one aspect of a person’s life that is under one’s own control and is avoidable. So why do some uneducated folks just not care enough to improve their lives?