I am a healthy weight now and have been for about 6 or 7 years, but I was a chubby teenager and early adult. I ate like crap and didn’t exercise. I remember blaming it on genetics and/or hypothyroidism (though I was on medication for my thyroid for a short time - didn’t make a difference) and would say that I have big bones. I am 5’7.5" and was just under 200 pounds at my heaviest.
I drank beer all the time, popcorn always had butter, I loved condiments like mayo. I ate carbs, carbs, sugar, carbs. I’d drink a coffee blended drink that must have been 800 calories for the large size I always got. I had A&W for dinner at least a few times a week. A typical home made dinner was a big steak, potato with sour cream and bacon, some veggie fried in butter, and a bun with butter on it. Always ate dessert, which meant at least a cup and a half of ice cream or some sort of cake. My bowls of cereal were enormous - I’d fill the huge bowl with cereal and drench with milk. I even remember making this snack of melted butter, sugar, cocoa and oatmeal in a cup and eating it raw. Spoons full of peanut butter from the jar. Nacho chips with melted cheese and tons of sour cream. Most of a full sized bag of chips.
I couldn’t ride my bike up a hill. I remember saying that I had asthma to some friends so they would stop making fun of me. On one of my teenage fitness kicks I tried to run around my house 20 times. I made it around 3 times.
Man, I think of what I used to eat and feel sick at the thought. If I don’t eat properly for a few days now due to work or travel, I feel sick. I get headachy and generally feel gross. Never again.
It takes effort and money to eat healthier, but now that I’m on the other side, I could never, ever go back.
Every attempt to lose weight has involved the most nitpickety tracking of every calorie and every gram of fat and carbohydrates, and the denial of things that taste good. I can’t imagine being able to do that on a constant, daily basis, to go year after year without the foods I love. I think I’d rather keel over and die, frankly. It sounds like (and has been, when I’ve tried it) the most miserable of existences.
So call me lazy. Call me stupid. I don’t care, really. I can’t make myself into an obsessive/compulsive nutritional computer that doesn’t really care whether he tastes good food ever again.
Bottom line: I eat *way *too many sweets! I did start walking a year and a half ago and running last fall. Once the snow clears, I will go back to running again (and my little dog too!) But it really comes down to giving up sugar!
Combination of being genetically predisposed to keeping on weight; as well as simply eating too much and not exercising enough.
I have friends who eat and exercise the same amount of me and are very thin. At the same time, I know that if I got off my fat ass and exercised more and ate less, I’d be thinner. So it’s both.
It’s two things–I like sugar too much, and I also have a large frame anyway. I am quite active and enjoy exercise, and have been eating less as well. Still pudgy though.
(My younger sister has the same large bones–actually she’s taller–but she is thin. It’s quite interesting because it’s so obvious that she has giant bones, a good amount of muscle, but no fat.)
I ate more than I burned. I do have a medical issue that affects my mobility (calcified tendonitis in both hips), but I’ll be damned if I use that as an excuse to stay unhealthy, and there is no doubt that it would be improved by carrying around less weight. I have been counting calories and exercising almost daily for seven months now, and have lost 17 pounds. I basically eat what I want; I’m never starving, and I don’t deny myself foods - I’m just accountable for what I eat, that the balance sheet has to stay in the black. This is a weight loss plan for life, not for a year or two.
Unfortunately, I can’t answer what I think is true. I wish this were a multi-answer poll.
Saying “it’s genetic” or “it’s glandular” doesn’t override “I ate more calories than I burned”. If you’re fat, well, you obviously ate more calories than you burned… unless you’re some sort of mystery of nature.
I think that genetics, environment, whatever can make you burn fewer calories than others, but it doesn’t make you fat. Ultimately if your dietary intake were reduced enough, you’d lose weight. It may not be much fun, though.
Oh, and to be accurate, there probably should be an answer that “I used to eat more calories than I burned”. Just because you see a fatty doesn’t mean they haven’t been on a downward trend for quite some time.
Me too. I still eat yummy food all the time, I just eat less of it. Once I learned about portion sizes, my life changed, for real. I don’t nibble on veggies and plain baked chicken breast all day. I had a small bowl of cereal (a cup, with a 1/4 cup of milk) this morning and a turkey, swiss, cranberry and lettuce wrap for lunch, and am having shepherd’s pie for dinner followed by ice cream cake for dessert. But it’s all the right portions. And I went for a 45 minute run this morning too.
I eat way more than I burn. I eat the wrong kinds of food and way too much of it.
I do exercise every day. Not nearly enough to burn the amount of calories that I eat. But if I didn’t exercise at all, I would be much larger, and most likely larger in a way that I don’t like, as opposed to being overweight in a way that I actually kind of get off on.
My daughter never showed any inclination toward obesity. All of a sudden though, now that she is 11, I am noticing her eating more like me…that is, still eating after everyone else has gotten their fill. For that reason, mostly, I have revved up efforts to really increase the activity and decrease the eating. Because a lot of my own acceptence of my size is wrapped up in my sexuality…and in my heart, I don’t want my daughter to be overweight for the same reasons that I enjoy being big.
There are so many reasons. Just picking one would be silly. I gained many pounds while I was pregnant and kept them on through a year long bout of PPD. I’m also a bit lazy and don’t get enough exercise. I also take a medication that makes me even lazier and prone to crave the simple carbs I need to avoid. I also have PCOS and insulin resistance (and have since I was a young thin person), which is why I avoid those simple carbs. For a long time I had a real problem with binging. It wasn’t poor self-control so much as a need to block out something…well it’s a lot more complicated than that. I had mega-binges, like 12k calorie binges.
I have a feeling genetics has quite a bit to do with our metabolisms and body types, but I don’t think it’s an excuse. I think more than anything I was in denial for a long time about my size and tried to pretend I was okay. There was so much going on in my life BESIDES the eating issues it took a backseat to the cutting and the smoking and the internet addiction.
I’m fat, but there’s so much more to me than my weight. Damn. Sorry. I get carried away.
Anyway, I have been in a slow and steady low carb program for a few years. Most of the time I stick to it, and I lose. Sometimes I’ll let something set me off and I’ll binge, but not as bad as I used to. Instead of four cakes I’ll eat one. Seriously. At one sitting. But those days are few and far between now that I’m on a med that helps the OCD drive to shovel food into my mouth until I’m sick.
I know one thing about my body. There has never, ever been a feeling of being satiated when I eat. I mean, if four pies don’t make you feel satisfied nothing will. I have to plan my meals, my daily carb and calorie load, and stick to it or I will gain, I will go off my plan and I’ll lose control. I can’t just decide one day to have dessert. I can’t say “Oh I’ll have the bun with my burger this time” because it does something to me physically. It makes me binge. It makes my blood sugar do strange things, and causes my face to break out in blotches and my feet swell and I get a thickness in my throat that is only soothed by pouring chocolate syrup and gravy down. I want so much to be able to control it. To have an occasional treat without losing my MIND for the next month.
No, it’s not just because I take in more calories than I burn. I don’t care what anyone says. There’s more to gaining than calories and there’s more to losing weight than “self-control”.
Oops, according to the op I’m not in the overweight category and I clicked the wrong answer to boot. Doof.
I am overweight because I eat too much and don’t burn the calories and I discovered years ago that the more I dieted the more my not dieting weight went up.
I’m not fat, but my other half is, and wanted to give a different reason why. A vote for ‘something else’.
She suffered from Post-viral fatigue twice and gained a lot of weight from that. She rarely has more than one meal a day now (stomach issues cause eating more food to be a problem), but would be classed as very much overweight to most people. It’s a catch 22 now though, because it is incredibly difficult to do exercise. Plus, there’s the arthritis.
So she doesn’t eat more calories than she burns, it’s all pretty much even now (she isn’t gaining anymore since then). Just very difficult to get it down again.
I answered for my formerly fat self. I’ve lost almost 65 pounds since April 2009, with about 10 more to go.
I wasn’t a Big-Macs-and-donuts binger, contrary to popular stereotype. We eat mainly a semivegetarian diet. I love fruits and veggies and whole grains. But yes, I drank regular soda, I liked cream sauces on my pasta, I ate when I was bored or tired. And I have a sedentary job, I work at home (so no parking farther out, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc), and I live in the sticks so it’s not convenient to walk to the store or run errands on foot or by bicycle. For about 15 years it was simply not a priority to me to watch my diet and make time for exercise that was once built into my lifestyle.
On the occasions when I did decide to try losing weight, I did fine as far as going to the gym. But managing my diet was always a problem: OK, salads, baby carrots, no more soda . . . and then what? I simply ran out of ideas and got bored.
Weight Watchers gave me a reasonable system for incorporating virtually any kind of food, making reasonable substitutions (not everything has to be fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free), managing portion sizes, navigating restaurant menus, figuring out how much exercise is enough, and still allowing the occasional splurge.
I bought a couple of size 8 skirts today. That rocked. Sure beats last year’s size 22.
I was naturally thin growing up and along the way developed a complex that led to anorexia. I got through that and seem to have destroyed my metabolism. A large part of my weight gain (from 120 to 180) in the last 7 years is my own fault for eating too much and sitting on my ass too much. But even when I watch everything I eat, work out daily and exercise more my weight never drops below 170 lately. The IBS doesn’t help either.
I’m not trying to make excuses for being overweight and really am trying to fix it but it’s really frustrating.
I’d say I’m fat right now, though I’m not sure I’m over the 25-higher-than-recommended-for-weight line.
I’m ‘fat’ right now because I am consuming more calories than I am burning. Pretty simple.
I have been lucky enough to have a steadily high metabolism <and been at least mildly active> up until I hit 38. At that point that lovely metabolism went away, as did much of my activity; now, even with increased activity, I am finding it increasingly difficult to lose weight.
I don’t think anything’s wrong, I think I just have to kick it up more than just a notch to get results.
That rocked. Sure beats last year’s size 22.