This is exactly it–the heart of this whole damn argument, IMHO. Thanks, choosybeggar, for saying what I have been trying to say.
I think I’m in love. 
You’re absoluetely right. I can control my eating. Experience has taught me that, in order to reach a weight that would generally be considered “thin”, I’d have to eat nothing but carrots for around 2 years. Wanna go on this diet with me?
No? Then shut the fuck up.
Hell yeah, Max. This nicely sums up everything that’s wrong with the OP.
LOL.
That really about sums it up, doesn’t it, Max? Fuck all this analysis and careful debate, eh?
Good show.
Where is Webmastr, I wonder? Finally realized he had no legs to stand on and didn’t have the balls that Doc Moss had?
stoid
Here’s what happened to what’s his fuck:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55505
I always get so fustrated when threads like these show up, does it show?. I mean, even if it were true that I could lose weight if I just tried harder, it doesn’t give you the right to insult me, does it?
Oh lord, that was exactly what I tried to say three pages ago. Thanks, Max Torque, for clearing it up.
I could lose weight. I could lose several sizes in a few months if I wanted to; I’ve done it before - but it involved starving myself. I was hungry for two years so I could fit in a size eight, and the whole time I just looked at size twos and thought about how cute they must be. I had no breakfast, tuna and crackers for lunch (no mayo), an apple for a snack, and lean chicken for dinner. There were several nights I nearly broke down and devoured some Ben & Jerry’s, but I trash-talked myself out loud (“Think how fat and ugly you will be. You’ll have huge thighs again and everyone will hate you,” etc.) until I just went to bed hungry and crying. I worked out for two hours every day - on a stationary bike, doing work out videos, sit-ups, push ups, free weights, and running.
When I look at pictures of myself from that time period, I look quite skinny. My body was great. I still had a pudgy tummy regardless of the 150 situps I did a day (every goddamn day!), but I was close enough to my goal that it didn’t matter. But I wasn’t happy. I got more dates, but they were lousy dates, and no matter how much weight I lost, I was still unhappy with myself.
The thing that totally changed my mind was when I was out to dinner with my ex-best friend, and he was talking about his new boyfriend. This friend was actually bitching because the guy had once been fat, but lost a lot of weight, and Kenny hated how his flesh just hung there, empty, and he had stretch marks. And I realized that unless I was thin from the start, I would always be fighting an uphill battle, and I didn’t care enough to fight it anymore.
Does that make sense to anyone? Please say it does. I’m ten times more happy now at a size 14 than I ever was at an eight. If I had never been fat, if I had never been teased and ridiculed because of my weight, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.
If I could go back in time and be thin from the start, maybe I would choose that. Heaven knows my life might have been easier. But right now, this is my fat, my body, my life, and I won’t just toss it away with some diet so I can fit someone else’s standard of perfection.
Well, yes and no, Biggirl. I have the right to insult anyone I please. It doesn’t make it right, though. It is wrong and hurtful and mean.
… but this thread is reminded me of “Survivor”. I didn’t watch the show but overheard my co-workers talking about some “huge” fat guy who walked around naked. I finally saw a clip Richard Hatch while channel surfing and thought, “Okay, so he’s bit overweight – whatever.” THEN I discovered that he’d recently lost over 100 lbs and thought, “You poor bastard. If people are calling you fat now, what did they call you last year?”
Oh, and word on that “wanna eat carrots with me” comment. Well said!
Just wanna hit the “People are different” line home a bit more.
I currently weigh about 235 (give or take). I used to weigh about 285-290 (this is pounds, not kilograms). How’d I lose weight? Well, I kept pumping myself full of crappy food, and lots of it. I still do, in fact. I didn’t really start excercising that much more. I didn’t DO much at all, in fact, I just kinda sat around a lot.
In short, I have no explanation for how I dropped 50 pounds over the course of a year and a half.
So don’t feed me (no pun intended) this crap about “You can do it if you tried”, 'cuz I know I can. But there’s more at play to a person’s digestive system than what they eat and how much they jog.
SPOOFE you need to market that cool diet of yours.
Juanita you’re right about the difference between a person’s right to say something and whether they are right to say it.
Er, no. It’s called ‘having a life’, and also no one has bothered to answer my previous post (or MC’s last post, I note).
Anyway, I realize now that I was wrong in assuming that fat people were miserable about being fat. Maybe I was wrong in assuming that only a small percentage of obese people are obese for reasons beyond their control. (Although I don’t recall seeing any cites that said 'XX% of fat people are obese because of reasons beyond their control and could not lose weight without extreme efforts. But I digress).
I also guess I should apologize for assuming that most people at least tried–or would like to try to–improve themselves. Look, I am not being sarcastic here; I honesly believe that humans are the only animal that has the ability to think about improving themselves, both in mind and body. I have thought a lot about why I have become so disgusted at the sight of fat people (not just in the US, btw), and no, I have not come up with an answer. However, I was brought up to believe that our bodies are our temples (not in the religious sense), and that we are what we put in it. I would thus never smoke, I drink only in moderation, and despite my absurd fondness for cheese and sweets, I eat them only in moderation.
Anyway, maybe I get ticked off at seeing someone who (to me) is simply not taking care of their bodies – to me, that seems like a waste, not to mention the excess food they eat. (For the record, I have never seen a fat person ‘eat less than me’ - and I tend to eat quite a lot, because I am also very active).
Is that an apology? Maybe, maybe not. I still think that many fat people could lose weight if they tried, but not as many as I did before. I will try to avoid linking weight and ‘effort’. And I apologize for name calling (plunkers and oinkers were a bit, um, OTT).
I still wonder about a) the large portions in the US, and b) the higher percentage of people in the US who tend to be on the more-than-portly side, but a recent attempt to pose this question in a somewhat more intelligent manner got shot down (more, I think, because of who the thread starter was – me – than the actual content).
-
Why should it matter to you that they’re fat? Why should they want to lose weight?
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This country is one of the richest in the world. That gives way to more food. People like to eat, they eat. Problem with that?
I reeeeeaaaaaaaally wanna cut you some slack, WM, I really do. You sound so contrite and sorta sincere…but c’mon… have people been telling you they don’t try or don’t want to try? Have you been reading this thread or not? have we all been telling you how thrilling it is to be fat?
Sigh…
Anyway, I think you’ve gotten your answers to your questions, you just don’t seem to like them. Americans ARE exceptionally fat. We are also very rich, with very sedentary lifestyles, and we also get mixed messages from birth:
Be skinny!
Eat this!
Lose wieght!
Supersize it!
And on and on. It’s a complex dynamic.
By the way, I don’t think this has actually been brought up directly: superfatness is a direct result of attempts to get thin. A person gets a little chubby early in life, and instead of having a sane and responsible attitude about it, that person starves themselves. Then they eat and gain back the weight they lost plus more. Starve again, gain again. Over and over. The result? Fatter than they ever would have been if they had just left it alone to begin with.
Why is this? Messing with the setpoint metabolism. When the body starves, it lowers the basal metabolic rate to conserve energy. When you go back to normal or perhaps binge eating, your caloric needs are even less than they had been previously, so the same amount of eating results in even MORE fat. And so it goes.
I am a living, breathing, pissed off example of that. I was a chubby kid, but of course felt huge. I was miserable and unhappy (Because ya know…the worst thing in the world is to be fat. And that is even truer now than it was when I was a kid.) , so I dieted frantically, doing all kinds of wacky crap to lose weight, including starving, living on diet drinks, eating nothing but fruit, nothing but chicken, hot dogs and bananas, staright calorie restriction, etc. I would lose weight, and then go back to eating normally, and back then, back to binging. I was a hardcore compulsive overeater. I ate constantly, in huge amounts, and was sick. So i bounced back and forth between the two. Over the years, I kept getting fatter. Lose it, get fatter, lose it get fatter. Finally I got a handle on the compulsive overeating, made a lot of progress. Still not perfect, but way better. My top weight of all time, by the time I was really healing from my compulsiveness, was about 240.
Then I went on Depo_prevera birth control, which I learned later makes even thin women gain a lot of weight. I put on 50 pounds in 6 months with NO change in diet.
It’s 4 years later. Today, I can definitely have a compulsive moment or a compulsive day. But compared to what I ate when I was 20 or 30, I eat…maybe 40% of what I used to. 50% on a bad day. Some days I barely eat at all. I just don’t want to eat like that anymore and havent’ in a long, long time. I also walk and swim regularly and go through good bouts of working with weights.
And I weigh 300 pounds.
And interestingly, the only way I have found to actually LOSE weight is NOT to starve…reducing my calories just screws me up and I don’t really lose anything. No, the only way that works for me these days is to eat lots of meat, fat, and vegetables. Which is hard to do if you love bread, pasta and sugar. But I’m trying.
And I am not a special case, not at all.
So you would look at me and think I sit around pigging out all day. And I did…20 years ago.
stoid
Is it just me, or is this the defense used by all the morons on the losing side of an argument?
While there is certainly an element of truth to that, I am one who has found that debating on the Dope to be a black hole of time suck. One serious, thoughtful, carefully crafted rebuttal post with cites can swallow up 3 hours, no sweat.
I often feel like Al Pacino in Godfather III.
stoid
<Highjack>
OK, Let’s try those numbers:
I’m 6’0", and 240#. The current “Ideal Weight” data sugests I should be no more than 185#. That puts me at 55# overweight, or 30% over my “ideal weight” (well, ok, 29.7%). My bodyfat percentage, however, is 18%. Hmmm… The US Navy defines “overfat” as 22% (I’m unaware what the CDC has to say on the subject). So, I meet your and the CDC’s definition of unhealthy, but the military thinks I’m just fine. Hmmm…
May I suggest that the CDC’s numbers are not so definitive? Specifically, they’re using the wrong definition of unhealthy weight. OTOH, if you wish to talk % bodyfat, we’ve got an objective topic.
</Highjack>
Webjerk, where the hell are you, asshole? My overweight (weight-lifting, gun-shooting) wife and I would like to re-introduce you to an old Canadian tradition: Rochambeau. You’ll lose, 'cause my wife wants first hit (she’s tougher than nails).
That is very true. More and more we have people everyday accepting that alcoholism or drug abuse is a disease but obesity? No, that’s still an issue of will. That, somehow, overeating is “just” an issue of indulgence or lack of willpower.
But if I stuffed that problem with alcohol? I’d have people up and down this country helping me, upholding me, refusing to vilify me for my physical addiction. But when it’s food? Hey, that’s just because you are lazy, or don’t have enough willpower or don’t care enough to change yourself.
It’s the same deal, folks. You can take alcohol, drugs, sex and food and put them all together into the same mix of addictions.
It’s NOT a moral failing. It’s NOT an issue of willpower. It’s an issue of addiction. Yeah, okay, I could get really mad and spew but you know, I’d really rather try to educate folks who maybe DON’T know any better. Just like to those that hold racial issues; it’s not worth it to get mad; it’s a lot more worth it to educate them.
Let me give you this: Go to an overeaters anonymous meeting. Don’t talk, just sit and listen to what these people have to say. Still don’t think it’s an addiction? Go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting. You’ll hear the SAME stories but booze substituted for food.
And very, very often, large people live on less than 900 calories a day or they gain weight. WHAT?! You say; how can that be so?! It is so because they have chronically dieted and have so unbalanced their metabolism that to eat more than a starvation diet causes them to gain weight.
I really, really, just want to educate you. You really, honestly, have no idea about what some people go through. For a little bit of what it’s like let me give you a day out of my friend, Lisa’s, life.
She gets up every day to take a sharp, hard walk around her neighborhood in an effort to boost her metabolism (she dieted from the age of 7). She’d love to jog or run but she can’t because she is so big (350). During this walk she gets yelled at, mooed at and harassed the entire way. She returns home to eat a balanced breakfast of 200 calories. Then she showers and goes to work. Where she is continually bombarded by co-workers telling her that she has a “nice face” but too much fat. She eats lunch (a meager 250 calories) alone because she can’t deal with the crap from co-workers. Then she goes home, takes another long walk to cat-calls all the way and looks forward to a 300 calorie dinner.
Do you really think that all those people being rude to her motivates her? That’s like saying your son has a reading problem and you encourage him by berating him as a dumb ass until he cries…
Oh, please! This lady, who is a strong and wonderful lady, really could do without the cat calls and other shit that follows her. How fair is it that she’s berated for doing nothing and then berated if she does?! How fair is that?! That’s nuts! That’s insane! She’s harassed for doing nothing and harassed if she does… Damn it all but mind your own business! She’s talking a walk and doesn’t need a bunch of ignorant idiots shouting at her. And mind you, all this work she does is just to MAINTAIN the weight she has. In order to loose weight she’d have to have her stomach stapled and even then, on her calorie restricted diet there is no guarantee it would do her any good…
So, really, get educated. Vilifying, demeaning or devaluating people isn’t the way to motivate them. Be supportive, get educated and accept them. We were not all born 6’ tall at 120 pounds and blond. Just accept the fact that folks come in a variety of sizes, shapes, colors and weights.
We are stronger through our differences than we are through our commonalities.
has your friend tried a low-carb (NOT no-carb, I think Atkins is very unhealthy) regimen? I’ll bet you anything that she would find that she could handle a lot more calories if they were in the form of protein and green vegetables. She can also have fats.
Anyone with that kinda grit after no success should have no problem sticking to a low-carb routine.
Tell her to try the Carbohydrate Addicts program, or even Suzanne Somers’. Cuz she aint’ gonna last on 900 calories, and it’s not healthy for her.
stoid
totally sympathetic cuz I’m in the same boat
Sorry, I honestly don’t know what getting your stomach stapled means, or if it works or not, etc. But my initial assumption is that it is to reduce the amount of food you eat, which you indicate may help her lose weight.
But you also say that some large people already live on less than 900 calories a day; your example indicates that your large friend is living on 750 calories a day.
So I am just curious as to what stomach stapling is supposed to do, because I thought it was supposed to limit the amount of food taken in; it would appear that your friend can hardly limit it much more. If she is really going through that much effort (walking, extremely light diet bordering on starvation) and still weighs 350lbs, I have nothing but - well, empathy, I guess: although some posters have indicated they don’t want to people to ‘feel sorry for them’, I do feel sorry for someone who is trying to lose weight and apparently can not.
But is it seriously possible to not lose weight (if not pass out or possibly end up in in the hospital) on a diet of 750 calories a day? Despite all the posts talking about friends who ‘eat less than I do and are active and still can’t lose weight’, I personally simply have never met anyone like that: they all (almost to a T) fit the typical ‘stereotype’ of a fat person: overeating, all the wrong foods, nothing even remotely resembling exercise. Is it possible that these friends etc. are only lightly eating ‘in public’, and then making up for it by in-between snacks in private?
Look, I am not saying this is or is not the case; I am trying my damnest not be an insenstive jerk, so don’t flame just because it is another webmastr post on the fat people thread. I am just reading a lot of things that go against my previous common sense; if I am wrong, I will be more than happy to admit so.