Are fat people weak and lazy?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’m a pretty good looking woman. Normal body weight - never in my life have I been technically “overweight” - though on occation I’ve been “heavier than I like” and have dieted. Good skin, decent facial features, pretty eyes. Nice shape.

My husband of 13 years has never, since I started dating him, been a “normal” weight. His “light” is about 20 lbs over the line for overweight on a large frame guy (he does have a large frame). He is a pretty darn self confident guy, and there are other things more important to me (and a lot of women - including fairly attractive women) than having the body of Adonis.

42

How about a friend? If you aren’t ready for the wide world, there is World of Warcraft and the Straight Dope boards. If you are ready for the real world, join a bookclub, go to church, show up at McCain or Obama’s local office tomorrow and volunteer, join the SCA or a Star Trek ship, visit the elderly at a nursing home, become a Big Brother(Sister?), take a martial arts class…

43

I actually just today worked up the courage and went to the local martial arts place but they were closed.

44

Good for you for going! Now you know when they’re open and you can head back. Let us know how it goes!

I know what you mean about food being your only friend–bonus is it doesn’t talk back, you can control it, and it’s relatively cheap to get it whenever you want. But it’s empty in the end, isn’t it. I can only assume I will be back under its thrall soon enough but for now it feels good to be under control and eating more healthfully. As mentioned, the lack of sugar spikes does make it a little easier to focus on other things and not get as obsessed with food.

I can also recommend Weight Watchers for the communal aspect of the meetings. If you struggle with food, there’s a lot of people there who know what you’re talking about. Our leader is very supportive of whatever contribution you want to make as far as sharing feelings and tips. It’s social but has a goal so you don’t have to feel a lot of pressure to make friends. If nothing else, you’ll get information on eating more healthfully.

45

Overeating, like all other harmful addictive habits, is probably a sign of other problems. Perhaps you need to find out what is causing the need to overeat. Please do not let what you think others think of you affect the way you feel about yourself, as there will always be a$$holes out there that judge people on size, color, income, etc. Hold your head high and do your best to change whatever it is about yourself that YOU don’t like…and accept the rest. :slight_smile:

DISCLAIMER: This is my first post on here, forgive me if I screwed it up, as I am not familiar with the controls yet!:smiley:

46

I don’t think this is true, either. For the past two years, I’ve spend 20-60 minutes every day on exercise, and I don’t like it any better now than when I first started. I don’t hate it, but enjoy? Not even close. I’m much less motivated by enjoyment than the simple fact that I feel better about myself if I wear sizes 6 or 8 than I did at 10 or 12. (though I still can’t overcome my sugar cravings to the point that I lose the last 15 pounds that I’d like to. sigh)

The thing is though, once you make a habit of it, you can continue to exercise without much enjoyment anyway because you begin to feel like you need to do it. Not mentally (though I do feel terribly guilty whenever I can’t exercise for one reason or another), but like there’s something physically amiss if you don’t expend the same amount of energy on the activity. Or, maybe that only happens to people who were hyperactive kids. Anyway, some of us don’t have to like exercise to do it anyway over the long term.

47

That’s interesting. I’m a lot like your brother in this respect. I don’t really enjoy eating, either, and I’m substantially overweight.

But I think it might be a correlation, not causation thing. I probably don’t have a very good appetite because my metabolism has slowed down a lot in the past year in my current deskbound job. When I start exercising more and my metabolism speeds up, you’ll probably see me losing weight and eating more at the same time.

ETA: I can’t stop thinking of exercise as a waste of time when I’m doing it. Not that I don’t think it will work or that won’t reach my goal if I stick with it – it’ just that I’ve got so much other shit to do that day.

48

Maybe you’re just feeling hopeless? Hopelessness can sometimes feel like “weak and lazy”. I’m betting you would be more motivated to cut back on your eating if you were able to see drastic results immediately. But because weight loss doesn’t work that way, it’s easy to say “What’s the point?” and keep doing the same thing.

You just need to start with something small and them move up incrementally as build self-confidence. What’s more of a challenge? Changing your diet or exercising? Put your energy in the easier one and then spread it out as you start seeing changes in your body.

49

That’s actually not a bad idea. I think it would be harder for me to stop eating junk food than to start doing some exercises. And someone else mentioned about making a goal of 5 mins walking a day for two weeks.

I could do that, not change my eating habits and just walk for 5 minutes a day for two weeks. Then, at the end of the two weeks, make another goal. Like maybe not having junk food for one day in the following week.

50

Are there situations where you eat poorly? Maybe you can avoid them.

I just got laid off and have found that I was very much a social eater. Now that I’m home all day I don’t eat the bad things nearly as often.

Also, there is a monthly weight loss club in MPIMS you might be interested in (if you don’t already belong.

51

At the beginning of 2008, I made it my goal to get in better health. I wasn’t overweight, but I had noticed that I was starting to get squooshy. I was about five pounds away from being out of the “ideal” BMI range, and I didn’t like the shape of my face in recent photos. Not the end of the world, but as my parents are obese, I felt like I was heading down a bad path.

So I started doing small things.

Like, I would often stop by the grocery store on my way home from work and pick up a delicious dessert. Even if I didn’t have cravings, even if my dinner had filled me up, I always felt like I needed something sweet and fattening to top off the day.

It occurred to me that my nightly desserts weren’t necessary. So I made them weekly treats–limiting them to Sunday. I thought I would feel deprived but I didn’t. In fact, it made me appreciate the pleasures of chocolate cake even more. And I also like the $ savings.

Around this time, I starting walking to work every other day. I remember worrying that it would be too much of a chore, that it would be so inconvenient and painful that it wouldn’t be worth it. Within two months, I was not only walking every day, but walking both ways. And absolutely loving it. If you had asked me back in January if walking 7 miles every day was feasible, I would have laughed in your face.

Do I have a super model body? No. But no longer do I wince when I walk by a mirror. And it gives me pride to be able to say that I’m doing all I can do to keep my body in shape.

You can do it if you set the goal at the appropriate level and never stop widening your stride.

52

My theory is snack food.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon. I saw lots of volunteers come and go. And I’d say most the overweight males who came in settled down to an average weight by the time they left. Often there were dramatic losses- one guy lost 80lbs in a few months. It was pretty normal for a guy to drop 50lbs or so. I watched at least 3 or 4 people lose dramatic amounts of weight to the point where you couldn’t recognize old photos of them.

Sickness was a part of it. A round of amoebas can take off 10lbs like nothing. Exercise was a smaller part. We all walked around everywhere we went and had standing-up jobs, but it was too hot for any formal exercise and we spent a lot of leisure time lounging and sleeping.

But I think the big difference is that snack food was not a part of the diet in Cameroon. No chips, no cakes, no candy bars. You could, with some work, procure a bag of peanuts or some popcorn if you felt like eating between meals. But it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Soda was also too expensive to drink regularly, although beer was a pretty big part of the local diet. So mostly you ate at meals. You might have a hard boiled egg or some peanuts at the bar. But no “sitting in front of the TV snacking.”

The local food wasn’t particularly healthy- street food was deep friend and oily and home-cooked food was little more than wads of millet. But we didn’t have any cheese, much dairy, or very much meat. I guess mostly it was carbs and a small amount of veggies, with the occassional fish or cube of steak thrown in.

Oddly, female volunteers tended to gain weight. Was this because they were more likely to cook at home, or females react to a carb-heavy diet differently, or simply because they were in a culture where rounder women are considered prettier and frankly nobody really cared what they looked like?

Not sure, but I wanted to chime in that there is one diet method that works wonders for men- move to Cameroon.

53

As a woman, I’ll be sure to stay away from Cameroon!

54

I would love to give you a great big hug. That’s all I can say right now.

55

Hiya, been lurking for nigh on 2 years… first ever post… yaaay…:smiley:

Well personally speaking i’ve been lazy all my life but only been fat for a couple of years… don’t know how this contributes to the discussion though…

56

I am definitely addicted to sugar and recently started a policy where I can only eat it on Sundays. It has been so recently that I don’t know if it works yet. It will be a few weeks before I know I guess. In fact, what I decided to do was restrict all my killer-carbs to Sundays, so today while I’m watching football I may have some Pizza too. We’ll see if it works.

57

Floaty, have you discovered this website yet?

www.sparkpeople.com

It’s a wonderfully supportive group of people who, like you, just want to make some healthy changes in their lives. They have a nutrition tracker, a fitness tracker, motivational pages, recipes, etc so it can be a little overwhelming at first… but the site expects you to start small and guides you through the whole process.

I’ve lost about 10 lbs and 3 inches since joining (it’s free.) More importantly, I feel in control of my health. I’m RACINGSLUG if you want to add me.

58

As far as exercise goals, once you are up to walking for a little, I have found that mixing it up some helps keep me going.

Some days I am happy to work on the elliptical and watch a DVD. Some days I need to walk *to *some where. Those days are the days when I don’t really want to work out and so if I were to use the elliptical I would be checking the time every 30 seconds. By defining a *to *goal, instead of a *time *goal, I find it is easier on me. (Also, now that it is getting cooler, it is just nice to get out.)

59

It’s easy to think that fat people “are simply weak and lazy, otherwise they would stop eating too much and exercise”. But I think it’s wrong similar to how saying to a depressed person “You just need to pull yourself together and take a walk” is wrong. Yes, taking a walk helps a depressed person (and eating less junk and exercising helps a fat person), but a depressed person is unable to get off the bed and take the walk because of the depression (there are chemical changes in the brain).

So, for many people who eat food for comfort (as your posts indicate), and then get the huge guilt trip for being fat and unsexy and unhealthy and weak and lazy… and to deal with these huge guilt and the loss of self-worth, what’s the only thing on hand that will comfort them?

So: I don’t think you’re a bad, or a weak, or a lazy person. You have a problem, but you can solve it. People all over can solve it, and have solved it, just like people who stopped smoking or other drugs.
But, like kicking other bad habits and picking up new good habits (exercise), not every person is the same. Some people love exercise - so it’s easy for them. Good for them. But they should have some empathy for those who simply hate all sports. Maybe you are one of the middle ones: you can’t stand aerobics, but you like a team sport like soccer/volleyball/ etc? Or martial arts (which might also help with self-confidence). Some people need a very good friend to come and motivate them - if your friend shows up every morning at 7 am to walk with you to work, it’s less easy to weasel out of. Many big cities have jogging/Nordic walking groups which meet regularly for that purpose - to exercise together and have a fixed date (and you meet new people that way).

Some people are in situations where it’s easy to eat junk food, others have easy access to healthy food. The amount of money you can spend on food, as well as the time to cook yourself, plays a big role. (Healthy food like salad is more expensive than a hot dog, but not eating a chococalte cake every day saves money again.)

Many people need support - from a good friend, or Weight Watchers, or an online community. Some people stop addictions* with hypnosis or acupuncture. Maybe you have a borderline depression and are trying to self-medicate with sugar and fatty foods. Or maybe your mood has become depressed because of the sugar spikes and the guilt. I’m not a doctor, but it couldn’t hurt to rule out all possibilities. So because everybody is different, there are many ways, and not every solution fits everybody.

This means you might have to try around a bit what method or combination of methods works best for you. But there is a solution out there. You are not a hopeless case. You can do it. {{{{Hugs}}} I hope things work out for you.

  • I know we need to eat food to live, but eating too much and unhealthy food when you’re not hungry is an addiction, in this context.
60

This was a really interesting website, and I’ve decided to start up there and see if I can help myself become healthier, as I too shared some of the feelings of the OP.
So thank you for showing me that site, as it really is quite interesting, and empowering- I’m actually looking forwards to trying to stay on balance and to try to see if i can slowly become healthier.