Thats a very damn good point. As a science/engineering/math kind of person thats not the kind of mistake I would be likely to make if I was on a diet. But, now that you mention it, most people are NOT that kind of type and could very well be upset that that arent loosing weight. They are just gaining it more slowly now and that point totally eludes them.
Something happened at SOME point in the course of (let’s say 100 years)
What was it? Was it the apologists advocating leaving the fat people alone? Was it the diet’s people shove down their throats?
Surely, ALL of the diseases we have currently, we had back then. Surely, ALL of the debilitating cases (which might cause Obesity) were present back then.
SOMETHING changed recently to ALLOW people to become fat.
That reason is opportunity, period.
You sound fat.
Ha ha! Thanks for this contribution.
Now then, I’ll have to agree with billfish, and say that begbert is talking about is not natural. Most times when I sit down at a restaurant, I do *not *eat the “clean [my] plate” because the plate is the size of my head. In fact, I was just at a restaurant on Monday, and I split a plate of pasta with my friend because the portion size was ridiculous. I ate half of what they served me, and was still full. Do you not realize that portion sizes 'round these parts are flatly absurd? What is not natural about getting exercise? No, most of us aren’t farmers, but walking or riding a bicycle to get someplace is perfectly within the ordinary, and it’s exercise. Also, no one is saying you are not allowed to eat a cookie, and must sustain yourself on rice and celery. I don’t know if you know this or not, but a lot of thin, active, healthy people eat food that tastes good. But if you’re regularly driving a car 1/2 mile to be served grease and corn syrup through a window, you’re doing something wrong.
How are we defining “opportunity” here? There are certainly studies that show that ultra-refined sugars, fats, and carbohydrates are worse in general and cause some degree of psychological reaction than whole/organic/minimally processed foods, and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t at least part of it.
For example, even if a glass of 100% unsweetened juice, a glass of “juice” from the cans at the supermarket, and a glass of soda have about the same number of calories (and they do!), your body and your brain are going to react differently to the former’s mostly unrefined fructose vs. the latter two’s highly processed corn syrup. I’d say it’s primarily a question of the culture and availability of the latter instead of the former that’s doing it to my generation
Add in all the Depression parents teaching “clean your plate” and “don’t waste” (and even my mother, born in 1950, preached this) while restaurants are increasing portion sizes to up the perceived “value” of the meals and you have a pretty coherent theory for why overeating is more prevalent these days.
Finally, there’s some theories that people in a culture that’s too flush with food/water can lose the ability to tell when they’re hungry vs. thirsty or how full they are.
It holds water in the same way that “just stop stealing” will solve the crime problem, and “just stay abstinent” will solve teen pregnancy. Trivially true, but unhelpful. Yes, if everyone stayed abstinent, there would be no teen pregnancy, but saying that does nothing to solve the problem. If I try to live on 1500 calories of oreos and chips. I will be miserable and hungry all the time, and there’s no hope that I can continue like that. If I think I am eating 1500 calories, but am really eating 2500 calories and not losing weight, I’ll eventually go back to 3000 calories, since dieting obviously doesn’t work for me. If I try to lose weight on 800 calories, I’ll destroy my metabolism, and when I inevitably crack my fat will come back with friends. Hell, if I go down to 1500 calories of healthy food, but completely cut fat out, my body will fight to hold on to what fat I have, since it thinks there’s a shortage.
I’m not going to give a number, but I would bet a large portion of the overweight community is on some form of diet or another. A percentage of these dieters are on too few calories. Eating less would not help them. A percentage of these dieters are on the right track. Eating less might help them, or might hurt them, depending on whether or they are on the high side of the right track, or the low side. Some of these dieters are eating the wrong things. They are doomed from the start, so eating less won’t really help them.
To answer your question, I think there are few that wouldn’t lose weight on the correct diet, but the correct diet isn’t always “less,” and is almost never just “less.”
The difference is you don’t have hordes of criminals or pregnant teens on message boards seemingly in denial that stealing is what landed them in jail, or that sex is what got them pregnant.
My definition of opportunity is not any different than yours I’d guess. In an older era when people had to ‘physically’ work their asses off, they weren’t fat. As society has evolved, more people sit on their asses, diets have changed (to more accurately reflect the lack of time most folks have). The combination of both of those factors (along with a lot of schools getting rid of mandatory everyday PE) have allowed people the opportunity to grow fatter and fatter. It now takes the average person sufficient time and effort to stay fit and/or lose excess weight.
So my focus isn’t the people who have “reason’s” for being fat, although I’d propose that just about every fat person on the planet has his/her reasons.
I had a thread awhile back about the cost of “healthy” food vs the cost (in time and money) of easily accessible food which I listed as one possible reason for the growing obesity problem in the US.
There are probably a ton which have all helped along the ‘opportunity’ of getting fat or the lack thereof of the “opportunity” of going to the gym.
Lifestyles have changed and we as a people have sat on our collective fat asses and let the changes occur and have done almost nothing to try and change the direction we are headed.
I, personally, am in the gym for approximately 1.5 hours daily (except Sunday) I understand that this sort of schedule won’t fit some folks schedules but I have 2 kids myself, a wife and a couple dogs (average lifestyle maybe?)
I find the time because I have the DESIRE to be trim, fit and not obese. Some folks just don’t give a shit, or two.
It’s somewhat true, although I find the current increasing availability of organic/free-range stuff pretty heartening.
Hell, I don’t have that much time to spend on hobbies I LIKE. =P I get in about three hours in the gym a week, which is enough to keep my muscle mass where I like, and I walk about 1-2 miles a day. I’m in no denial about the fact my weight is because I like food and a lot of it, I suppose, but my threshold (I suppose getting back to the OP) is “can I get around and do what I want to do with my life”. My belly pudge doesn’t prevent me from doing anything I’d do anyway, so it doesn’t bother me enough to make me want to change.
That’s probably the other thing–having even a few tens of extra pounds doesn’t seriously hamper most people on the day-to-day, and since almost everyone has it, it barely even affects one’s dating prospects or whatever.
That is probably what the heroin addict said of his first few times.
I think there is a progression in most people like what has been stated upthread. At first you are only a few pounds overweight, then 40. Somewhere in there you realize the problem but are unwilling to change your lifestyle. Finally, you end up on your ass, physically UNABLE to exercise and when you reach that point diet alone is probably not going to help all that much.
Losing the weight after you have it established is a bitch. I understand that and have NEVER been fat, ever. It is the price to pay for leading a lifestyle that you choose though.
I wish it would change, it is adversely affecting the health care of millions of people.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/prc/proj_cope_health%20care%20costs%20fs%2004.pdf
I’m not sure I believe this–I mean, even “obese” by BMI standards is still within the range of “having mobility and some ability to exercise”–I should know, I’m there, and I’d need to put on another 50-75 lbs before I got anywhere near needing a powerchair. I mean, I can still run a 7min mile without too much trouble and I haven’t run in years.
Must be nice–my eating habits were developed when I was pumping iron a lot and playing a lot of sports, and they didn’t change fast enough–I gained most of my above-normal weight in two years after college was over.
The problem is that it takes a lot of will to lose weight, and there are precious few immediate incentives to do so. Mine was “I can’t actually do a good-form situp anymore.” but that’s even too abstract for many. The questions I think we SHOULD be asking ourselves is “how can we encourage more healthy eating habits to prevent obesity” and “how can we make it easier and more effective (as a function of pain involved) for the obese to lose weight”. This thread has been singularly unhelpful in the latter regard.
One simple government sponsored solution is simple. There is currently a differential in the cost of bad food vs it’s healthy counterpart. Government can stop the subsidies going to the “easy mac and meat”. I don’t know what the solution is to people’s time in the day though.
Like you said, you either make it priority or it gets lost in the other priorities.
You might be 40 or 50 lbs away from a chair but it sounds like you have some sort of will to lose the weight. Some folks when they get that far gone will have no will, whatsoever.
I recall hosting a young man in his early twenties for a month. He ate easily double what I do, and he was thin as a rail. I’m short and fat. Not scooter fat – I don’t have trouble walking and I can fit in an airplane seat with the armrests down, if not comfortably – but I can’t find many clothes to fit me in an average shop.
How’d it start? It’s kind of a saga, I warn.
Well, both sides of my family have tendencies toward obesity. That’s a start. Mom didn’t have the best eating habits, and she’s also an excellent cook. I grew up liking fried chicken, steak, potatoes, rice, noodles, alfredo sauce. Vegetables were often something frozen and dessicated with dull texture and flavor. This began to change when I hit high school – we ate more fresh veggies and I started to enjoy them more, but my best friend was also overweight. She was somewhat heavier then, I think, than I am now. Her idea of a great lunch was a chicken breast floured, dosed with seasoned salt, and cooked in vegetable oil… and a box of mac and cheese. Tasty? You betcha. Healthy? Only if you’re about to go build a barn.
So I was about a size 14 when I got to college. I actually looked pretty good – somewhat chunky, could stand to lose a few pounds, but I look at pictures of myself then and I was at least attractive. But now that I was on my own, at last I could eat french fries whenever I wanted! I can just get that candy bar! I’m really craving those oatmeal-creme cookies! Up to a size 18 in two years.
I didn’t much like the way I looked, but working out was so dull and I didn’t have the energy to play sports.
Some history on that: I’ve never been terribly physically gifted. The aptitude tests in kindergarten included physical and balance tests and convinced the administrators that I was a special-needs child. I tried in high school, oh Lord did I try. I ran cross-country. I ran two miles every morning. I was in tip-top shape. I practiced all season and came in dead last at the only meet I went to. For someone who’d succeeded in just about anything else she’d tried in her life, it was a crushing blow. I tried track next: long jumps, high jumps, hurdles – well, I liked hurdles and was almost good at those. Hundred yard dash? Relays? I tried everything they would let me try. It was the same year that I’d done cross country and I had barely a scrap of fat on me. I had a tiny bit of tummy still left. I also had wide hips, a large rib cage, and big feet, so I still didn’t look a thing like the girls in the magazines or the cheerleaders, so I was obviously still fat and the exercise was obviously doing nothing for me except making me sore and miserable every waking moment. You’d think that a year of constant physical activity would get those muscles in great shape, but I was miserable and exhausted every minute of every day. I was tired before I got onto the track. And I was never good at anything in either track or cross-country. I finally begged my father to let me drop the team. He came out to talk to my coach, who was sorry to see me go – not because I was some great athlete, but because I wasn’t: “She works harder,” my coach said, “than any of the other kids out here. Works harder than the best we have. She’s not a natural at any of this, but she gives it her all every day and comes back and finds more she didn’t have. I can see it breaking her down and I understand, but I’m sorry to see her go.” I was proud and mortified all at the same time.
But: college. I was overweight. I walked everywhere, but I ate badly and I overate. I didn’t do any real exercise apart from walking to class and I avoided that as much as I could. We had a gorgeous gym I used perhaps five times. I liked swimming, but I was shy as hell and didn’t want to take up a lane someone could be using to practice for the university team. I tried the machines and briefly once felt what had been described to me as the athlete’s high – where suddenly it feels good to move. For about five minutes I understood why people would intentionally spend two hours in the gym.
I graduated from college. Unsurprisingly, driving everywhere and working a lot of jobs that required me to sit down all day long did not help my weight, especially when I ate mostly what I had before. We couldn’t afford much, and the cooking skills of my housemates relegated most dinners to Hamburger Helper. Making lunch before work would certainly have helped, but if I forgot or left it at home or just didn’t feel like yet another sandwich there were – and are – vanishingly few good options around town for a quick, low-cost good-tasting healthy meal. Kidney stones had become a problem – a result, I discovered very recently, of a high-sodium high-protein diet. I did try Atkins for about a week and decided it must work on the principle of making the dieter absolutely hate food. I never wanted to eat and felt exhausted and miserable for six days before I decided I’d rather be fat than feel that way.
I started taking karate classes. At last, an exercise I really liked! I exhausted the hell out of myself for 90 minutes two or three times a week and started getting fit. I didn’t lose weight or go down clothes sizes, but I was stronger and more energetic. I had better balance and could walk briskly from I-35 to Lamar and back down Sixth Street without getting tired (for non-Austinites: about a mile of city sidewalks). Six months of regular workouts like that, though, and I stayed a size 22. How was my diet? Eh, not great. When my schedule changed and I moved, though, I never had time to take classes. Back down the same old roads.
I tried eating better. Egg-white omelet loaded with veggies for breakfast (I was amazed at that recipe. I finished cooking it and stared blankly at one serving size. It was enough for two meals, easy. I need to pick up the ingredients for that one again…). Strawberries and almonds and non-fat milk for two snacks. Small sauteed chicken breast on whole wheat bread for lunch. Light veggie-heavy stir-fry on brown rice for dinner. The occasional sweet potato. I was eating great, wonderful, tasty food. I learned a fabulous recipe for oven-baked potatoes that I still make now. I craved a bag of Doritos but I was eating tasty healthy food!
Still didn’t lose weight, though. Not an ounce or an inch in two months.
I finally said “screw it, apparently your body is going to be fat. Also, nobody will ever love you. You might as well get as much pleasure you can from the one thing that you like.” I ate Ben and Jerry’s and Church’s chicken and all the rest.
After a few years of this and two or three more pants sizes, I finally hit the point of desperation: seeing the scales at 295. :eek: I went to the doctor.
Type 2 diabetes – mild. PCOS – mildish. Diverticular disease. Chronic kidney stones. Oh, and depression. On the plus side, low cholesterol and normal blood pressure.
Changed to a diet of double-fiber bread and pasta, lean meats, and lots and lots and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. I did a complete turnaround on my eating. I discovered I really quite liked whole wheat everything, including the charming nutty flavor of whole wheat pasta, and fruit was plenty sweet for me without adding sugar or syrups. An average piece of cake might as well be radioactive: I can try to eat and enjoy it but I’m likely to just leave half of it to go stale. I started tracking my food, too – and honestly, leaving nothing out.
I was eating maybe 1500 calories on a day when I felt like I was gorging myself. Less on other days. I lost weight for a couple of weeks and I was overjoyed! Finally, a change!
Then I stopped losing the weight again. I stayed stubbornly at about 275 for over a month even as I ramped up the healthy eating and the exercise. Some weeks I’d actually gain weight. To hell with this, I thought again. I’m too old and my body won’t lose the weight. I have too much stacked against me. I don’t have time. I don’t have the money to buy the really good food.
I’m trying now, as I turn thirty, as my grandmother is now begging me to take care of myself, as I watch my mother’s body deteriorate to overeating and a handicap caused by injury and worsened by diet and inactivity, as I watch my father’s pain as he watches the woman he loves kill herself. I see her walking with a cane and not ever really wanting to leave the house, not even to do things she loves. I soak my pillow at night with tears, terrified that I’ll never achieve the things I yearn for, mortified at the way I know I’m seen, staggered with the enormous task of changing everything.
I did it to myself, I know it. I can point to a hundred different factors and they’re all valid. I reached the point where it would be easy to turn back and now I look behind at the cliff I’ve climbed down with the stomach-sinking certainty that I need to go now and climb back up. I can blame genetics and mistakes in upbringing and lack of money and education and depression and biological predispositions and I still ate every potato skin and ice cream sundae. I still crave the bad foods, and I’ve reached a point where just saying ‘Stop eating them, then’ is vividly not working. I make tiny healthier choices every day, moving a little closer all the time to a healthy lifestyle, trying to change myself, but I’ve met with disappointment every single time.
So what are you going to do about it? I’m going to keep trying. Because I want to play Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream next summer and not look like a puff pastry. Because I love those fifties-style sundresses and want to wear one and look as hot and sexy as the girls in the magazine ads. Because I have a beautiful face and eyes and lips and hair and if they weren’t shrouded by flesh, people would be able to see them and maybe I’d get a date. Because I had great legs once and I want them again. Because I want to get clothes off the rack. Because I want to order a tailored outfit without the extra $40 bucks for ‘plus size’ measurements. Because I hate feeling like a lump in a chair. Because I remember feeling energetic and alive and I want that back. Because this woman wants to be small enough to be swept up in someone’s arms – or at least sleep nestled with someone without making their arm go numb. Because I love my mother but I sure as hell don’t want to be her.
But don’t come to me with your smug ‘Well, eat less, fattie!’ attitude. Go to hell. Or better yet, come with me. Work out with me every single day. Walk with me. Run with me. Sweat with me. Eat good, healthy food with me. Provide me with inspiration and shove your ridicule up your assuredly muscular rear end.
I thank God that you need never understand what gets a person away from where I am now. If you had to go through this, I would feel for you. I wouldn’t wish this on the worst person in the world. Feel blessed, sir, that you have no clue.
Today I’m 287. I’ll be smaller next week. And I will fight more than you will ever understand for every pound – in my mind, in my heart, and in my schlubby body.
For me, it is insanity. If I eat less that means giving up something that makes me high, keeps me company, makes things more interesting. The thought of it is at best empty and at worst unbearable. I don’t have anything else.
But you’re right, it doesn’t matter why I am so dependent on food. I just need to find a way to eat less but ease the ache of doing so.
Just a note though on something you said. Someone who is obese or overweight isn’t necessarily overeating currently. As mentioned, they could be in the process of losing and still be really heavy. When I am in that position, I constantly have a narrative going in my head about how I’m losing even if people are looking at me and thinking the worst.
And when I’m in the food I constantly have a narrative going about how there must be something good about me despite what a fucked up failure I am with regard to food. I’m never the same weight for very long, always gaining or losing.
I wish I could lay it all down but I can’t. It will always be an issue and that’s really hard to face. So I give myself permission to just this once enjoy my drug. Hold out for a few days, give in again. Can’t carry money or credit cards with me or I will buy a binge. Every moment it’s in the back or front of my mind. Eternal vigilance is the price of sobriety, but I’m so tired of it.
I wish I could lay it all down but I can’t.
I read your post, and I enjoyed it tons. 
Oh crap, I didn’t realize the bad pun until after I typed it, but I’m now that it’s there, I’m going to delete it.
It’s very hard to try to encourage and motivate someone to exercise if she hasn’t had the Come-To-Jesus moment with herself yet. There’s a dear gal of mine who routinely expressed dissatisfaction with her weight, so when I offered to run or bicycle with her, she’d decline. When she’d order the most fattening thing served in the largest portion from the restaurant, she’d reject my suggestion to go with something lighter, or to eat some of it, and take the rest home for later. She’d often accompany the rejection with something like “I’m going to start eating better food and watching my portions, but right now I’m really in the mood for [insert what you will here].” As encouraging as I tried to be, I wasn’t going to nag a grown woman about what she ate, or the amount of physical activity she engaged in. After several years of this, I just quit. Every time she’d lament her weight, I’d just say nothing. There was nothing I could do to shake an epiphany into her. And when it finally happened, it had nothing to do with me.
I don’t much else to say except, Congrats Ninja! It’s a long road; it didn’t come on overnight, and it ain’t coming off overnight, but you’ll make it. Stick with it, or I’ll find you…
snrk
You know, I used to get through running two miles every morning by pretending I was in an Indiana Jones movie and the Nazis were after me. Mean old ladies are scarier! 
For anyone trying to lose a lot of weight, I very strongly recommend you join a running or triathlon training group. Think you’re too big or out of shape? Read this article for an amazingly inspirational story about a very overweight woman who now reguarly does triathlons: Lynn Sparks Danskin Triathlon
There are all levels of training groups. Find one in your area which is tailored to newbies just trying to get in shape. And don’t worry if you think you’re too big. Many of the intro training groups will have 2-300 lb people in them.
And if you’re going to join a training group, seriously consider a triathlon group. There are triathlons of all different distances–they aren’t all Olympic length. You can train for a short triathlon. But the biggest reason I would recommend triathlon training is that the athletes seem to be a very supportive and non-judgemental bunch. Being in a group like that will make it 100x easier to exercise than trying to do it all on your own.
Care to quibble about definitions, do you? Keep in mind I can take “natural” and run with it all the way back to those prehistoric times in the 1930s when people had to burn a lot more calories just to get through the day. The natural place to store excess calories is in the spare tire. The natural thing is not to leave food behind. And, of course, the natural thing is to get exactly the exercise necessary to provide for yourself and not a shred more, to conserve that precious energy. Welcome to nature!
Of course, portion sizes are insane nowadays. And of course it’s prudent to eat three bites and chuck the rest, or take it home to microwave later. (Or, like I do, never eat out anymore.) But if you’ve convinced yourself that either of these approaches is the natural or even normal approach, you’re out of touch with reality.
Similarly, it’s prudent to exercise like you’re hunting mastadon. But it’s not natural, or normal, to do that without clear cause. On another point, what is natural and normal is to use the most time and energy-efficient way to get around, and nowadays that’s usually a car. I know for myself I couldn’t possibly use a bike to get around - I don’t have that kind of time to waste given the distances involved.
As for the trailing few sentences - so what, so what, and so what? The issue of what a thin, active, healthy person can get away with while maintaining their weight has little to do with what a fat, inactive, unhealthy person would have to do to lose weight. If I want to lose weight, I do have to shun cookies and sustain myself on rice and celery. Eschewing fast food won’t cut it, however cute it is to characterize the issue as being that trivial (and that easy).
Wow. Putting aside that that would probably kill me, it’s stunning how many people here seem to think that strenuous exercize is trivially easy. As one who has never had any stamina (at all) even back when I was thin in high school, that’s absurd on the level of square triangles.
Some people can run miles. And some can’t.
Are you saying more efficient forms of transportation have made expending more than the bare minimum of physical effort obsolete? It seems like you’re bemoaning how helpless today’s humans are to resist the ancient urge to consume and store as much energy as possible whenever possible, yet dismissing modern ways of exerting all that extra energy (exercise) as an inefficient waste of time, thus making it unrealistic to expect people to exercise or otherwise get up off their asses regularly.