How Fat is Too Fat?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I was a bit hesitant to post here, because my weight is a very sensitive issue for me. I’ve heard all my life that losing weight is as simple as eating less and exercising more. But in reality, it’s not that easy.

As astro said, it’s the mental issues that get us. I have been overweight almost my entire life. I was on a diet from the age of 10 until I got out of my mom’s influence at about 19. Now, at 34, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. I’ve gone to the doctor and had them look at my BMI and express disbelief at the number. I hate being fat. I want nothing more than to lose all this weight but I just can’t seem to do it.

In my experience, people who have been thin at some point in their life usually have a much easier time of losing weight. I’m not sure of the reasoning but it’s how it seems to work. When you’ve been overweight your entire life, when being overweight is part of your own self image, it’s very hard to even imagine being thin. When I think about losing all this weight, what I think of is ‘but then I won’t be me anymore’. That just adds another level of difficulty to the whole process.

As it’s been mentioned, the biggest problem is our relationship with food. I’ve been on so many diets, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about good nutrition. I know, theoretically, how to eat right. But the problem is, when I’m eating right, all I can think about is the other stuff. It’s this intense craving, like an addiction. Day after day you have to deal with that, and it doesn’t take long before you start to crack. You’re constantly surrounded by food, and unless you stay inside your house and have your food delivered to you, you’re going to be constantly tempted. It would be like having a recovering alcoholic living in a bar. And when you do, you feel like you’ve failed once again and what’s the point of even trying anymore?

And to hear people say over and over, "well if you’d JUST eat less and exercise more you’d lose weight’…it really makes you feel like crap. If it’s that easy, why can’t I do it? There’s just so many roadblocks for people who are significantly and chronically overweight, it often seems like an impossible task. If you have, 10 or 20 pounds to lose, it might be hard but you feel like it’s a reachable goal. But when you have 200 or 300 pounds to lose, it seems a completely unattainable goal.

I’m sure I’ll get some flack about how it’s my fault I’m fat. Yes, I know ultimately it is. But it’s not so easy to just flip a switch and suddenly have the mindset to completely change the lifestyle I’ve had my entire life. I wish it were.

42

Humans aren’t lazy. We’re creatures of habit and loath to change those habits. If I offered you a choice between a Big Mac and French fries on the one hand, and a marinated, grilled chicken breast and roasted vegetables, what you choose tells me a great deal about your habits. Consciously, you may know that the Big Mac and fries is a unhealthy choice, but if that’s what you’re used to, that’s what you’re going to eat.

I’ll make this simple. I’ve lost over 95 lbs. I didn’t do paleo or low-carb or Mediterranean. I did it by eating less, making healthier choices, and moving periodically. When I make good choices, I eat well and I lose weight, or at least maintain. When I make lousy ones, I feel like shit and gain. Since I refuse to go back to what I was, and since I hate to feel like shit, I make good choices most of the time and I eat less of the bad ones. And I know this works because all of the “science” and the conventional wisdom, says I shouldn’t be doing as well as I am because I’m older and I stopped smoking and I have a family history of obesity and a lot of stress and a million other excuses for not losing weight.

And that’s what it comes down to. When I was ready to cut the bullshit and stop making excuses and start making better choices, I lost the weight. Until then, weight loss was a pipe dream.

And, yeah, this does sound harsh, but it’s the truth. Losing weight is probably the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but I had to cut through a lot of emotional baggage to do it. And I’m far from perfect; I still eat emotionally. I just don’t let it sabotage all of the work I’ve done. I also have excellent support systems, and that’s been a key to my success, as well.

43

simple. don’t re-introduce too many carbs. the body has more than one way to power itself which don’t require one to shovel sugar and starch down his/her gullet.

it’s worked for me.

44

If you stay low-carb, yes. There’s something profoundly disingenuous about claiming that diets don’t work because you regained weight after you stopped dieting, though.

45

I consider myself pro-fat-acceptance (if such a term exists) and it’s really helped me lose weight (no, really). I particularly like the health-at-every-size (HAES) movement which says, “Stop focussing on what the scales say, and get up and move your body in a joyful way!”

When I stopped hating myself for being fat, I finally had the head space to work on losing weight. I’m only a year into the journey, and 3 stone down with at least 3 more to go, but accepting my fat self has been a huge part of the mental side of weight loss.

46

I think the point was that you didn’t stop low-carbing at the “end” of your diet. You made it a lifestyle choice, and that’s why it’s still working for you.

If a method isn’t sustainable – if you can’t make it a habit – long-term, it won’t work.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is sticking with it long enough to develop the habits – to learn to love moving, to learn to love and prefer healthier foods. I used to love McD’s fries and shake (obviously, since I ate them so often). Now, the thought of eating them again makes me queasy. Yuck. That’s not something that will happen immediately, but you CAN learn to prefer healthy foods over crap.

A person NEEDS to come to enjoy the new way of eating and moving, or they’ll give up on it and end up as bad or worse off then when they started. Not everyone is going to love the gym; so there needs to be trial and error until you discover that you love Zumba classes (or whatever).

47

I think when it severely affects your mobility, you are too fat. If your weight is the reason you cant walk more than 50 feet, climb a flight of stairs, or can’t wipe your own butt without some contraption, you are ‘too fat’.

If I fell off a ladder and broke my leg, I could say it was an accident and that its not entirely my fault I was injured. But if I refused medical treatment, and left myself unable to walk, didnt do physical therapy, etc then its my responsibility. FA types are like someone with a broken leg who demand everyone cater to their own negligence and denial.

I have people who are unable to board my bus because they and their wheelchair are too wide/heavy to board. when you are too big to not only drive, but cannot get on a bus (that is designed to accomodate disabled people), you are too fat.

48

For me the problem is that I gained far more than I weighed to begin with with low carb (plus I did the bulk of low carbing in my teen years). So all the talk about how people should lose weight is making some people fatter. I would’ve been much better off had I never done any low carb dieting because it pushed my set point up for some reason. Like I said though, low fat doesn’t cause rebound weight gain above and beyond what I lost in the first place.

But if a person is going to gain the weight back, and gain more than they originally lost they are better off not trying (or at the very least avoiding methods that will make them fatter than they were to begin with). They would be better off focusing on healthy eating habits, exercise and body acceptance instead.

49

I think this is the best answer so far.

50

Fat people are not immune to the laws of physics. If you take in less than you use, you will lose weight. End of story. Those who fail lack willpower, endocrine complexities be damned. For many people, that might mean that they have eat parsimoniously if they don’t want to up their level of activity. For the rest, it simply means getting off their fat backsides and burning some calories on a regular and daily basis. Everything else is just dithering around the hows and whys.

51

Then go prove it. The vast majority of people generally cannot lose weight long term and keep it off solely via lifestyle changes (obviously there are outliers, but they generally hover in the 5-20% range), even with surgery the success rate is only 50-60%. Go give them your advice and see what happens over the long term. People generally cannot sustain the lifestyle changes necessary to result in drastic, long term weight loss anymore than they can voluntarily engage in the lifestyle changes that make ‘abstinence only education’ work. On paper it works great, in the real world the failure rate is 90%+. You can pound your head against the wall calling people sluts and easy all you want, abstinence only is a failure.

Until medical science understands the biology of weight regulation, condescendingly telling people to use willpower or about the laws of physics is doomed to fail. I don’t care if you do that to yourself, but why do you have to pollute society with your hate, prejudice and condescension? Why not just let fat people be fat until medical science understands how bodyweight regulation works, and even then leave it up to the individual to determine if/how much weight they want to lose.

Seeing some of the attitudes in threads like this, why would someone want to lose weight? I don’t want to be the kind of person who responds to contempt and visceral hate (which is usually hiding behind a laughably thin veneer of caring about health or health care costs) by desperately changing myself to win approval. I would hope other people wouldn’t either.

52

snip. Fixed that for you.

They cannot do that thanks to lack of willpower, nothing more. There are plenty of neurological, and biochemical issues that play into that factor, but few of them absolve a person of the simple responsibility of how much, and of what they put into their mouths. None of that has much bearing of how much, and how often they choose to engage in any non sedentary physical activity. You cannot avoid having to eat, but you CAN avoid overeating, and eating poorly. I have no pity for this at all.

53

It’s not so much that fat people lack “willpower” as understanding that for fatter people eating, even if not profoundly hungry, is not a carefully considered decision that they can mull over at leisure. It’s a fundamental mental and physical drive that presses on you a good deal of the day. It’s not quite a compulsion but it’s in the same neighborhood.

We aren’t idiots, we understand perfectly well that it’s a thermodynamic equation. The issue is not simply changing behavior, it’s unraveling a huge web of physical, mental and situational forces that press you to turn to food for emotional satisfaction. The issue is not willpower, it never was, it’s finding a new balance point where you can live your life and control the factors that press you to eat. That’s a difficult task on many levels and it takes multiple changes in lifestyle to work successfully. Putting your fork down works only if you can maintain that emotional center.

54

They can. The question is how badly they want to. It does require that one completely change their approach to food and physical activity. For some people, they’ve decided that the opportunity cost is too high. They are making the choice that they prefer their current lifestyle rather than physical fitness.

That’s their choice, but that in no way indicates that healthy lifestyles don’t work for weight loss. It just indicates that people are unmotivated to change, even when the cost is fairly high.

Why is this? I don’t know. In my experience, lack of self-care is an indication of low self-esteem (possibly even to the point of self-loathing), low self-confidence, and/or depression. Maybe throw in some denial, too, e.g. “I’m not my body, I’m my mind” kind of attitude, when the truth of the matter is that, as embodied beings, we are both body and mind, and neither one is less important or less valuable. (And it honestly pains me to think of people who devalue themselves this way. I’ve done it, and it’s not a good place to be, emotionally.)

Damn straight I couldn’t lose weight while spending all my waking hours sitting in a chair and eating entire pints of ice cream by myself. (Which, yes, I used to do.) I lost weight by drinking more water every day, eating more vegetables every day, and starting to walk 20 minutes every day. Eventually I worked up to running for 45+ minutes a day. I keep it off because I still run (or bike, or practice aerial circus) every day. I can’t maintain weight or reasonable fitness by dieting my way down and then going back to eating fries and shakes every day. The good news is, if you can tough it out while the habits are forming, eventually fries and shakes every day totally lose their appeal. Nowadays, crappy, processed fast food makes me physically ill to eat. Low quality food tastes bad to me.

Low-carb wasn’t a thing back then (at least I’d never heard of it) but I doubt I would have tried it or been successful at it, because it’s not a sustainable way of eating (for me) as a permanent approach to food. And that’s the point. Whatever you do for the purpose of “losing weight” is something you will have to do every day for the rest of your life. If you give up bread and potatoes, you give them up forever – which anyone would balk at – or you gain the weight back. So you can’t approach it as something temporary, or even as “losing weight”; ultimately the goal is to maintain a lower weight.

55

That’s a false dichotomy.

It IS simple. But it’s not easy. Simple things do not have to be easy.

Quitting smoking is really, really, really simple, way simpler than losing weight. It’s obviously very hard, though. Losing weight is simple, but it’s difficult. I know; it’s been a lot of effort for me.

56

I’m sure it’s not the same for everyone, but boy do I relate to this post. I LOVE food. I derive so much enjoyment from watching food tv, reading recipes, cooking new things, even grocery shopping! There is quite literally nothing else in this world that gives me as much pleasure as food, which is why I agree that for many people it is a true addiction. I am mildly embarrassed to admit the extent to which food has this power over me, but it’s true.

When I read tips from nutritionists (“try eating a teaspoon of almonds to curb those cravings!”) or people who’ve never struggled with their weight (“just eat less, duh!”) or people who don’t care about food (“I wish there was a pill you could take instead of having to eat!”) I just can’t even comprehend it. I’d rather be overweight and continue to eat what I want than have a kale salad for dinner.

I am not lazy; I work out 5x per week. I really do try to make smart choices when I eat, but sometimes I just want to eat junk and nothing will stop me. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs… So, leave me alone if I want to have a bowl of Lucky Charms for dinner.

57

You are too fat if you have to be removed from an aircraft because you cannot be secured in your seat.

58

I’ve been through enough of these threads to know that, yet again, explaining (with all the authoritative citations from the literature) how the human body is a complex machine that defends its weight through a variety of mechanisms at many multiple levels and why the implication that “fatties” just lack normal will power is simplistic ignorant drivel if not hateful ignorant drivel will be a waste of my time.

The issue of this thread however, if some of you can exert the will power to stay focused on it, is why the weight, even the fat, is worthy of focusing on, as opposed to the behaviors.

Again, expert medical opinion (which I know all you thermodynamic experts know much more than) is clear:

Losing much more than 10% of body weight is difficult but doable. Maintaining that loss long term is something very few can accomplish. But the goals of developing the habits of eating a nutrition dense diet in moderate portions, becoming physically active, and achieving a moderate degree of physical fitness, are pretty damn achievable by all, and by themselves are associated with good health outcomes.

Those who are posting here who have been frustrated that they have not achieved long lasting weight loss allow me to encourage you to ask yourself why you want to lose the weight. If the major motivation is feeling good and living a longer healthier life, then I suggest a change in the focus from the scale to the habits. Every day that you maintain the habits is a success no matter what the scale says. If the goal is earn the approval of ignorant idiots like some of those who post here, I will tell you their approval aint worth much.

For those who are actually interested in learning something about the science behind obesity this Science article is a worthwhile read. (In addition to the full MedScape article that was the first cite.)

Those who wish to remain ignorantly believing that obesity is based on will power deficiency (or “self-loathing”) can continue to be too lazy and undisciplined to to learn anything else. (Yes, there are those who read the first line of big novel and believe that they have reached the “end of story.” Not sure if they deserve our contempt or our pity.)

59

I can tell you’re feeling ignored, DSeid, and I don’t blame you. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve observed many of the threads on this topic and have always found your input to be very valuable. You are clearly the most educated person we have here on this subject.

60

Ditto. I don’t often have the stamina to participate in these threads but would like to second this sentiment.