You should’ve had a poll option for “not overweight”. I live in an area where 80% of the population is overweight or obese (“Brownsville Herald”). It is actually difficult for me to find clothing locally–the sizes I wear are scarfed up by 7 year olds! It all amounts to “don’t eat more than you need!”. The people in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas tend to be short and overweight–there must absolutely be a genetic component.
If so, then this poll was extremely jerkish. It bugs the crap out of me that people think fat people don’t know they consume too many calories and don’t burn them up. That’s what it means to be fat. The other explanations are a method of trying to explain WHY they eat too much.
Let’s look at me: I am genetically predisposed to being fat, based on viewing my parents. I have a mental disorder. I took a lot of medicine, even as a young child, that caused me to be hungry more often. I know because I finally took a medicine that did not, and I lost a ton of weight: at least 70 lbs without doing anything differently.
And, in all that time, I made my stomach a lot bigger than it should be. That means that I need a lot of food to not feel hungry. And, with my OCD, I cannot stand to feel hungry. I can’t get my mind off of it, and I feel like I’m going to die.
All that, and I was still losing weight by excercising until I was given a benzodiazepine, and stopped caring. And then, after the incompetant doctors got me addicted to it, they decrease it too fast, and now, I’m stuck in enough torture to have to worry about it, and my balance is so far off that I can’t really do any of the excercizes I normally did. In fact, I can’t leave the flippin’ house without a lot of help.
So if this is one of those PSAs from skinny people, even those of you who used to be fat, well, all I can leave you with is an invective we can’t even say in the Pit. Heck, if I knew for sure that was your purpose, I’d consider taking my first Warning and using it.
If you maintained a 70 lb weight loss for five years, wouldn’t you now be minus 150 lbs?
I eat too goddamn much. No excuses.
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I work at home, and my wife is a really, really good cook who ocasionaly confuses food with love.
I started taking an antidepressant back in 2005 which made me gain about 50 lbs. I went from 150 to 200 lbs over the course of about a year. A love for beer and junk food, and an avoidance of exercise have kept me from losing the weight.
I’ll admit that I have a slow metabolism and “fat genes.” I also have a huge frame. I get my “fat genes” from my mom, who has a petite frame and my frame from my dad who has been 175# and 6’ since he was 17.
However, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you have these things, the answer to being not fat is to eat better than and exercise more than people who aren’t pre-disposed to being over-weight.
So, I answered that I don’t eat the right things and do enough exercise, because I don’t.
It’s all my own doing. I hardly put any thought into what or how much I was eating. I knew I was overweight, but for years I downplayed the need to do anything about it.
I’m not sure what spurred it, but in December I decided it was time to change. I came up with a simple and sustainable plan for myself, and as a result, I’m down 17lbs in 11 weeks, I’ve acquired better eating habits, and am stretching my food money farther.
Congratulations to everyone who has lost weight and kept it off.
It’s complicated. Yeah, it’s because for too long I ate more calories than I burned. That’s the mathematical side of it. There’s still the question of why.
Part of it, of course, is that food tastes good.
Part of it is that my relationship with food got totally screwed up. I was already somewhat overweight when I got pregnant with my second child. I had hyperemesis throughout that pregnancy and barely gained an ounce. To everyone’s surprise the little guy came out weighing four kilos. And he had an appetite. Until he weaned himself rather abruptly at one year, he was getting the lion’s share of his nutrition from breastmilk, and he looked like a miniature Nikita Krushchev. Man, did he eat. So I went from not being able to eat, to needing to eat quite a bit to keep up with his appetite. Those of you who haven’t had problems just eating and drinking can’t understand what a joy it is to be able to eat a banana again and not worry about it boomeranging on you. I ate and I loved it. Then suddenly he stopped nursing. After two years of a screwed-up relationship with food, I didn’t manage to readjust. I ate less, but it was still more than I needed.
I also struggle with depression and self-esteem problems, and I self-medicate with food. I’m learning to stop that now, but I did it, and a lot of other people do the same thing.
I started following SparkPeople the day after Christmas (no, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a very happy Christmas) and I’ve lost almost ten kilos since then. More importantly I’m getting my relationship with food back under control. I love food, but it’s not medicine. I’m building new, better habits. It’s going to take time, but I’m doing it.
So yeah, I’m too fat because I ate too much. But I didn’t eat too much because I thought, Gee. I’d like to be fat! I had reasons for my eating, and I couldn’t stop eating too much until I was ready to deal with the reasons and figure out better ways to deal with those problems. And if that’s true for me, who am I to say it isn’t true for other people who are overweight?
I am big boned. I have a cracker of an arse bone.
Another “I take in more than I burn.” However, I do exercise - quite a lot, actually - and being determined to keep up with my son has done more for my stamina than running marathons did. I exercise formally when I can, but keeping up with my son has the same effect, but requires less planning. I wasn’t aware a three-year old kid could run three hours without stopping for the sheer joy of it before I had him.
I was edging up there when I got pregnant the first time around, though I was still within the realm of normal. But after I had him, it was hard to have the motivation to do much of anything, especially before he could walk. Once he was mobile and I found out I had high cholesterol, I lost 25 pounds. I still had some to go, but got pregnant again. I gained far less weight this time around and have lost all of it, but still have some to go. Keeping up with my son and breastfeeding have so far been more than compensating for calories in, but when my daughter weans, I’m going to have to reevaluate. One thing about having kids, though, is that my relationship with food has changed drastically simply because of logistics. I don’t have the time to sit around and eat like I used to anymore or even the mental energy to think about it all the time, so though food still tastes as good and feels as decadent as it did before, I only have time to eat for fuel.
Strangely, it seems that exercise, not what I eat, is better cholesterol control for my body. I can eat chocolate every day and still have manageable cholesterol if I exercise. Stop being active and the cholesterol shoots up. Since I started moving more, I’ve lowered my cholesterol by more than 80 points, which both tells you how high it was to begin with and also what an effect the exercise has. I try to focus more now on my health rather than my weight. It seems like the weight takes care of itself when I do it that way.
Hmmm…I’m not sure which option to go in. I am fat because I used to take in more calories than I burnt.
This started shortly after birth. I was slightly underweight when born, then quickly gained weight on formula milk and shot up the charts to the top of the upper percentile for baby weights.
As a toddler, I was wanting to eat all the time, which resulted in my parents putting padlocks on all the kitchen cupboards long before ‘childproof locks’ were widely available, because I would try and sneak into the kitchen and steal food.
As a child, I just wanted to eat, eat, eat all the time. My intake was strictly controlled by my parents but I still gained weight. I was put on diet after diet after diet - I’d lose a bit of weight and then when the diet was loosened, I’d put it all back on and then some.
As a teenager, I became more aware of the link between eating and weight and I used my thin friends as a guide to how much I should eat. I still remained overweight though. I’d go on stricter and stricter diets, eventually eating just one small meal a day and overdosing on diet pills. I still remained overweight. I couldn’t keep that up, so I stopped the pills and started eating normally. My weight shot up significantly but I felt a hell of a lot better.
Now as an adult, I’ve maintained the same weight for about the past 13 years, and I eat a normal healthy diet, and get regular exercise, but I’m still overweight.
I often wonder if I would be as fat as I am now if I hadn’t have gone on so many diets as a child and teenager.
I also wonder about a genetic component, as my (adoptive) family are all naturally thin people (I say naturally in that none of them has to actively watch what they eat).
I know I’m big-boned, because I went to a nutritionalist and got weighed and measured in about every way possible and was advised that the lowest healthy weight I’d probably be able to get to would be about 70kg.
I used to be overweight and it was the tried and true eat too much/exercise too little routine that got me there. When I started at the job I’m at now, I hung around a group of people nicknamed “the lunch bunch.” That’s because this group of people ate out every day for lunch. Every. Day. Within 6 months I put on a good 20 pounds, bringing the grand total of weight gained since I started law school to 30 pounds. On my small frame, 30 pounds is a lot. It was extremely noticable. It probably would’ve been more, but I move around a lot at work, I don’t sit at a desk all day, which helps.
Like almost everyone else here who has lost weight and kept it off, I was able to do it by changing my lifestyle, not going on any particular diet. I keep track of what I consume during the day (some days I’m more meticulous about it than others, it all averages out) and discovered running, which I really enjoy. I’ve accepted the fact that if I want to eat a lot and not worry as much about calories, I’ve got to make it up with exercise. If I’m feeling lazy about exercise, I’ve got to be more militant about my calories. It’s really all about balance. I’m training for a half marathon now, so I’m giving myself a lot more leeway with food, but I’m still not eating anywhere near how I had been. I only go out to eat for lunch 1 to 2 times a week and make sure my calorie intake stays “in the black” as another poster here mentioned.
It’s not easy, but lifestyle changes are really the only thing that’s going to effectively take off weight and keep it off.
Ate a little bit too much and didn’t exercise at all, for too many years. My weight gain was really slow and gradual, and for a long time I convinced myself that I wasn’t really that overweight and definitely not “fat,” but eventually photographic evidence became impossible to deny.
Last year I started monitoring my caloric intake and running for exercise. It’s not been a smooth progression, but I’ve lost about 30 pounds and am still losing. Slowly. I’m definitely a crapload more fit than I used to be.
Multiple reasons - no single answer from this list covers it.
Years of eating more than I burned and a lack of exercise, yes, certainly - I can’t go back and change that, but I have been working very had on doing much better for the last year. Combined with this are hormonal problems, NOT glandular problems. I do have PCOS, and whether the weight caused that, it caused the weight o both is a toss up - regardless, it’s there, accurately diagnosed. This doesn’t make it impossible for me to lose weight, just harder, but I’m getting there. Finally, I’ve always been an emotional eater. I’m much better about this too - I’ve slowly leaned how to tell when I’m hungry and eat then, not eat just to eat.
So, no one reason, but nothing that I’m not working to get past either.
A combination of factors: hormonal (not glandular) issues (PCOS) plus an auto-immune disorder plus arthritis plus chronic pain plus genetics. Literally every woman on my father’s side of the family is, by age 18, at least a size 18. Most are much larger than that. And that’s before babies. I look like all of my aunts and all of my cousins.
And here’s the thing – unlike my aunts and cousins, I don’t live on a “soul food” diet of fried everything, fatty salty pork until it’s coming out of the ears, meat in the vegetables that are boiled to death and swimming in butter/fatty pot liquor and dessert every night washed down with copious sweet tea (or pop or kool aid). I’m a vegetarian. My greatest vices are starches – see PCOS and resultant glucose instability. But the genes are the genes, in some cases, and in mine, blood will out.
I need some inspiration like if some good looking woman came up to me and said “if you lost 25lbs. I would so jump your bones!”
The reason I’m fat is because eating a bowl of ice cream is way more satisfying than eating a salad.
I wish I could have voted “I have a naturally large frame” and “I eat more calories than I burn.” Both are true.
I’m a foodie, I love to cook, and I love to eat. I used to love to work out, and was able to lose 80 lbs and maintained that for a while, but then I got a series of illnesses and an appendectomy, was knocked out of the gym for a while, and just never really made it back. I need to go back, badly. I actually miss it, but now that I have a baby it’s hard to find the time.
I’ve actually changed my relationship with food recently. I’ve cut out grains, potatoes, and refined sugars. I eat mostly grassfed organic meats, pastured eggs, organic dairy, and mostly organic fruits and vegetables. My snacks generally consist of nuts or fruit. It’s delicious, and while I have no idea how much weight I’ve lost because I don’t get on the scale, my clothes are starting to fit better. When I dieted before, I always paid really close attention to how much fat and fiber I was getting (Weight Watchers). The diet I’m on now actually looks at fats as a good thing! My tastes are totally changing–sweets are now cloying, and things that weren’t sweet before (like the fat on the grassfed porterhouse steak I ate for dinner) now taste like dessert.
I think I chose the only correct answer (hint: it’s the popular one). All of the other B.S. aside, it’s calories in vs. calories out. There’s the semi-P.C. option of mobility issues, but damn, if you have mobility issues, just take few calories in.