In every thread on the topic of obesity, there will always be a percentage of posters who are in denial of the truth. And the truth is that the vast majority of fat people are fat because they eat too much. This doesn’t sit well with the apologists and the PC crowd, hence they come up with creative, victim-laden excuses for the reasons behind obesity.
I’m 6’2". When I was 23 years old I weighed 190 and looked great. Three months ago I weighed 280 and looked like shit. Today I weigh about 240 (haven’t been on the scale in a few days, but probably about that) and look better, but not good enough.
How did I get fat? Easy; I ate too much, exercised too little. That’s true of every fat person I’ve ever known. I suppose there are the odd exceptions, but there aren’t many.
The thing is, I never wanted to get fat, so the answer the OP’s question - why did it happen - I think it’s because I was never taught good eating habits. (Granted, I never got ridiculsly fat and had to use a power chair, but the principle’s the same so I assume my answer is relevant.) Growing up, we ate mounds of absolutely everything, portions were big, and you were expected to clean your plate. Snacking was never discouraged. When I was a kid and a young adult, I burned all the calories off because I was always exercising. Once I got into a more sedentary job, I wasn’t, and it creeps up on you.
In pricnciple losing weight is simple; Eat less, exercise more. That program works, period, end of story; it is the only way to lose weight and it is invariably effective. But it’s hard. Changing a lifetime of habit is insanely hard; it takes really looking at what you’re doing, thinking about things you’ve never thought about before. It took a lot of factors adding up to finally convince me to make a change. I couldn’t have lost 40 pounds in 3 months five years ago.
Never underestimate the power of denial. As a self-aware compulsive eater, I can assure you that most morbidly obese individuals do feel as though they’re unable to change. My dear mother will snack on Veggie Stix all day, tell me about how “She had a little cake, not very much…” last night or begin with “I didn’t eat much last night, my husband and I split (insert a ton of different foods they split)… and you know, I was stuffed!” :smack:
When I was a kid, I can remember her telling her sisters, “Man, I’ve tried EVERY diet and none of them work.”
Sadly, I was probably 25 or so before I realized that was impossible. I was in my late 20’s before I noticed that my mom is largely unaware of what she eats and nigh on 30 when I realized that, Oh shit, I’m just like my mom!
Without an external version of me to compare against reality, I think I would’ve had a MUCH harder time realizing that I’m not the victim here. Her rationalization sounded perfectly natural in my head growing up. “My family is just big.” “I ate two dinners because I was running around earlier!” “Surely one more cupcake won’t make a huge difference.”
It’s the same inner voice that kept me smoking for 10+ years, to be honest. You’d be surprised how many years a person can tell themselves they’re only going to engage in self-destructive activity one more time (or until Monday/next year/next birthday/whatever) and before you know it, you’re 150+ lbs overweight or have a chronic smoker cough and yellowed fingers and feel like there’s literally no coming back.
I have not had a drag from a cigarette in almost two years. Even so, I have to remind myself *every day *that I do not need a cigarette. I have to battle an inner “Oh, just have the one, it’ll be like old times! One won’t hurt!” Every. Day.
Now, smoking was a habit I picked up about 13 years ago and quit almost 2 years ago. Compare that to overeating which I’ve been exposed to literally from the get-go. (As I’m sure many people are. I know many families who use food as a substitute for love, no lie.)
I’m 31 now, severely overweight but tracking and limiting my food (AGAIN) and walking more days than not as it’s the only activity that doesn’t make me feel like my knees might break in half. My relationship with food is fucked. It is either my savior or my tormentor, there’s just no in-between for me. Every day will be a struggle and every bite measured and tracked to ensure it’s for fuel instead of comfort or self-destruction. If I were 50 when I figured that out, I don’t know that I’d be wholly convinced it would be worth trying to change.
I have no trouble imagining that some people haul their supersized asses around in scooters because defeat and even death is easier than fighting against yourself every day.
Yeah, and what’s with all these poor people? Have they just given up on having a decent income and improving their lives? Are they too freekin’ lazy to do something about their situation? I didn’t grow up rich or go to a great school. When I realized where things were headed I worked my butt off, got an education, and got a bloody job. What’s wrong with these people?
And what’s with all these homeless people lying around? Why don’t they get their act together? Why don’t they get a freakin’ job, or at least take advantage of the help that’s out there? If I were homeless, I’d get my act together pronto and get off the street. Substance abuse? Come on. Show a little will power and quit. Oh, I suppose it’s society’s fault. What ever happened to personal responsibility?
The world, of course, is not that simple. Some what’s been said here sounds as obnoxious, compassionless, and ignorant as the statements above. There’s a real question to be asked, just as we can ask why there is poverty and homelessness in our affluent society. Personal responsibility is well and good, but asking these questions from a position of utter contempt is not the way to arrive at an anwer. It’s also really ugly. “There, but for the grace of God, go I” is a better starting point (I couldn’t think of a secular equivalent).
I’m 5’10" and weigh 165 lbs. I sit around a lot and eat pretty much whatever I want to. I know plenty of people who work hard to shed extra pounds, with little success. My heart goes out to them.
Thanks for that, Uncertain.
Just as long as it’s not in a bar.
“Large frame” I would say is different from simply fat, in that it refers to how you’re built. Say, broad shoulders, wide hips, big feet, height, etc.
I have an aunt who’s six feet, she’s got big wide shoulders, and really long legs, big feet, etc. But she’s really not fat – she’s just BIG. But she’s in shape, if that makes sense.
I’ve been known to eat when I’m bored. It’s like, “oh, there’s nothing on TV, I’ve got nothing good to read – oh hey! We have cheetos!” I think I’ve said before though, I don’t eat much during the day, and that’s my problem. I don’t eat too much, but I really don’t get much exercise. (If I had the cash, I wouldn’t mind joining a gym)
One thing I will say is that I can’t eat much grease anymore, thank god! If I go to McDonalds, afterwards I usually regret it. Their snackwraps are good, though – I like the chicken honey mustard. But mostly I go with Subway. (Roast chicken breast on Italian herb and cheese, with provolone, onion, lettuce and tomato.)
MY weakness? Sweets. Anything sweet, sugary, gooey – cookiees, ice cream, chocolate, etc. I do try to manage, somedays I do better than others. I try and take it one day at a time.
My point here? While the main physical factor for weight is eating less and exercise more, there’s a LOT more involved it seems – a lot of it is mental, and a lot of people have issues they need to work through. (Some people, for example, are injured and can’t exercise for a period of time, or sometimes someone starts taking a new med that starts slowing your metabolism, and has to adjust one’s eating habits, etc)
And I definitely think it’s not just eating less so much – it’s eating RIGHT.
I got the same reaction when I had physical therapy for dislocating my shoulder in the gym four years ago. The doctors and the physical therapists were very kind to me and encouraged me by teling me that I would be stronger after the therapy than I was before the injury, but the patients there who were overweight and had knee replacement were rude to me.
We’ve already discussed increasing portion size on the past couple decades, but the other factor in increased obesity is that people get a lot less exercise now than they did in, say the 70’s and 80’s.
I rarely see kids riding bicycles on suburban streets anymore, and the bike racks at schools are usually empty. More of us work in offices, sitting at computers now than standing up at mills, factories and processing plants. Most manual labor jobs now have more labor saving machinery to help. Even gardeners use riding mowers more now than push mowers. All this labor saving machinery results in fewer work-related injuries and less calories burned throughout the day. In the suburbs, most stores aren’t within convenient walking distance from residential streets, and most people won’t walk more than a block.
Most people come home from sitting at the office all day to sit in front of their computer or their TV after work, which is conducive to mindless munching.
We lead a much different lifestyle than humans did for a couple million years; walking, running, throwing rocks at wild animals, climbing trees to pick fruit and building our own homes out of rocks and tree branches. We lead a much diferent livestyle than people did jsut 60 years ago, when they worked in factories and came home to read, listen to the radio, or went bowling, ice-skating or played other sports after work.
I ride public transit most of the way to work, but the office is 4 miles from the last train stop, so I bike that much of it. It takes all of 10-15 minutes each way. I see a few other bike riders every day, and they’re all lean. They all smile a lot too. Because my bike ride is difficult, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I am finished. I also get a dose of endorphins from the exertion. Probably more than I would get from a krispy kreme. It’s easy on my knees and my back, which jogging isn’t. I know that there are millions of excuses not to ride a bicycle. I also know this simple activity could really help most people’s health, but it takes a little effort, and that will stop most people from even considering it.
I’m male, 5’ 10", and weigh 175 pounds. I feel fucking huge. Throughout high school and college, my weight was around 160. I’m 43 now, and I’ve got a little gut that wasn’t there 20 years ago. I hate it, and this is the point where I’ve said “enough is enough.” 15 pounds.
I’m struggling to lose it, but I certainly don’t want to become larger. Calorie counting, no sugared drinks, no late-night snacks, and a pedometer attached to my belt so I can count how far I walk in a day. Living in Austin, where pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods are few and temperatures are high, doesn’t help. I’m looking forward to moving back to upstate New York, where day-to-day life in the winter involves exercise; shoveling snow, more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, more opportunities to spend time outside without sweating your ass off.
For me, 15 pounds over my ideal is the point where I’ve said “I feel fucking fat. This is my line in the sand.”
Mine is about a pound and a half. If I eat too much tonight, I’ll run an extra three miles tomorrow.
That’s probably the answer to the OP after all this fat-apologist vs. put-down-the-fork bantering. People are different. So are their tolerances.
So…there’s really no tactful way to ask this… which came first for you, PCOS or being heavy? A lot of what I’ve read suggests that it’s more likely to occur in women who are already obese, which of course makes it even harder for them to lose weight.
I’ll admit that the same sort of thoughts that the OP has have crossed my mind. I have a wicked sweet tooth, and I’ve been as much as twenty pounds overweight because of it (currently I’m about ten pounds over what I ought to weigh). I struggle some with being torn between eating things that are yummy and not wanting to gain weight. So I do understand that it’s not easy to resist at times, and I guess I get that 50 pounds could creep up on a person. But I don’t understand how people let their weight get really gets out of hand. It seems like you’d need to turn off the kind of thinking that suggests that maybe eating everything you want isn’t so good for you.
But the question is why do they eat too much?
You’re addressing a symptom, not a cause. Obesity isn’t caused by people eating too much in the same way poverty isn’t caused by people not earning enough. There are reasons why some people eat more than they should.
The fact of the matter is that we simply do not know how to make populations of people lose weight and keep it off in the long term.
If you want to argue that people gain weight and don’t lose it because of a moral failing, that’s a fine argument to make. Not one I agree with, but that’s a reasonable argument. But just saying “they eat more calories” doesn’t really shed any light on anything.
There are lots of reasons why certain populations (e.g. America) are more heavily overweight than others (e.g. Japan). Things like amount of walking and use of mass transit, restaurant portion sizes, free availability of excess calories for little cost, financial success, cultural affinity towards certain types of food, social eating, lack of exercise… these all seem to correlate. Yet, we just don’t know.
In evolutionary terms, we are designed to eat. It is nonsense to say “most obese people don’t know how many calories they eat” as if this explains obesity. Most – nearly all, on a global scale – human beings don’t know how many calories that they eat. We eat because food is enjoyable to us, we eat to survive, we eat to feel social, we eat to comfort ourselves, we eat for all kinds of reasons. And yet, some people get fat, some don’t.
None of this changes that if a person eats less or exercises more that they will likely lose weight (in the short term, especially). But, I think it’s clearly demonstrated by experience that if it were easy that most people who are fat – in other words, not the rare exceptions of injury or disease – would lose weight and keep it off. There are so many reasons to lose weight in terms of health, love life, perception of others, even success in the workplace, but yet Americans, as a population, are still fat.
Before you ask, yes, I’m a fat person. Yes, I actively exercise and eat healthy, and my weight has been on a downward trend for quite some time. Am I perfect? No. But I can say – as someone who has consistently tracked calories – that I simply do not lose weight easily and gain weight very easily compared to other people doing the same workouts and the same diet. Further, like many people here, I was fat before I was even really old enough to understand how nutrition worked. Hell, I was fat as a literal non-ambulatory infant, and was put on my first diet under 1 year of age while I was still eating baby food. As a small child, my parents had to literally lock away food. I was just always so hungry. How does that fit in with moral failing theory? Was I just born a “bad person”?
In short, yes, a simple explanation to “how do people get fat” is “too many calories ingested and not enough burned”. If you want to know “why do people get fat” and further “why do populations of people get fat”, the answer is a lot more complex. Treating obesity as a moral failing in certain individuals is medieval thinking and does nothing but hurt genuine medical efforts to help people reach healthy weights.
My wife is on the way to severe obesity. She is 5 ft 5 and weighs about 200. She does zero exercise. She likes all the bad foods. She sneaks chocolate and candy bars and sticks the wrappers in the garbage can thinking I won’t see them. She watches Dr. OZ and tells me about the impact fat has on health. She knows full well what she is doing. I am not a cop. I can not oversee her eating. I can not make her get up and walk. If I say anything, she gets angry. She is unemployed and therefore has no health insurance. Her actions jeopardize our family. Yet if I bitch, she just eats more. Yes, she knows better.
I find it amazing how many people, overweight and lightweight alike are ignorant about overeating and obesity. How do people get so fat?
No one wakes up one day and decides that today is the day they are going to overeat and gain that coveted BMI of 40 or 50. No one set out to be obese. It happened slowly, over a period of years. Why are they like that? There are many reasons. It isn’t as simple as “I’ll stop eating” or I’ll diet tomorrow.
My health care provider offered a 6 month group counseling program for those who wanted to lose weight. When they told me it was required I of course, objected. I didn’t need no damn group counseling I needed a pill or something. In retrospect, attending that group is one of the best thing I have ever done for myself. I highly recommend it if it’s available and you’re struggling with your weight.
Until someone discovers why they overeat, and what triggers that behavior, they are almost powerless to change it. People overeat to avoid attention, to get back at another person, to punish themself, or out of boredom to name just a few. Until that trigger is identified and addressed, they remain in the dark and without any real power to change it. Losing weight is as much mental as it is physical.
My group was run by a MD, PhD, MFT and nutritionist. We met weekly and were required to log what we ate as well as the exercise we did on a daily basis. I averaged a 3.5 pounds weight loss each week during that class. Now, I eat 3 meals a day and have a snack, usually an apple or other fruit, and nothing else. Maybe 1500-1800 calories total. No fast food, no junk food, no sweets etc. Food is fuel, nothing more.
On the white board was the following message. " Big body, small life, small body big life. If you understand that, then…
My email is somewhere around here if you need more information.
That is very sad. I would rather be fat and die young than live a life where food is fuel and nothing more. There are worse things than dying young.
I used to think this way. These days, I am not quite in the mindset that food is only fuel and nothing more - I still appreciate a tasty and well-prepared meal - but I no longer consider food one of the great pleasures in my life and something to look forward to throughout the day. Honestly, being able to leave that mindset behind has meant freedom for me. Freedom from food. Sounds silly, I know, and this would be better suited to a MPSIMS thread on weight management, but my life has improved immeasurably since I stopped thinking of food as one of the great enjoyments of life, and started thinking of it as something that provides fuel for me to do the other things that I enjoy. Seriously, freedom.
Anyway, sorry for the hijack-y response. More on-topic, I will say that I do completely agree with fluiddruid’s post. Burning more calories than you take in will inevitably lead to weight loss, but if that were as simple and easy as it sounds, there wouldn’t be multimillion-dollar industries set up to help people do it. It’s a complex, thorny problem.
Worst. Buffets. Evar.
Not only is there something wrong with you, but you’re breaking one of the fundamental laws of physics, and if we can hook you and your ilk up to some treadmills, the world’s energy problems could be over. More energy out than in. Sweet lord it’s a miracle! :dubious:
But you can enjoy food without having to starve yourself. You can enjoy it in normal sized quantities. I know I’m a small eater, but I’ve been in places where the portion sizes are huge. I don’t see how anyone could possibly eat them all. Maybe the problem is that we see a normal sized portion as a small ration and a huge sized plate as a normal or enjoyable portion.
So, Food is your life.
I think we may have identified the problem.
It’s actually very simple. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to make some permanent changes. I always thought I could diet, then eat normally. My huge light bulb moment was recognizing it was my “normal” way of eating that made me fat. So, I changed how I ate and then…kept doing that. And will keep up those changes for the rest of my life.
Goodbye daily venti caramel with whip, hello weekly tall non fat latte with one splenda (just one of a hundred examples).