The very simplest, most accurate answer is that I eat too much and don’t exercise enough.
However, just acknowledging that did not help me lose weight. Instead, I felt ashamed, guilty, and unworthy of good health, because I obviously did not deserve it.
What I had to come to terms with - and am still struggling to deal with every day - is that I face some steep obstacles in being healthy. Depression, PCOS, ADD, and gluten intolerance all make it more difficult for me to make good decisions regarding what I eat and how much I exercise. Those obstacles, however, do not excuse me from the responsibility of taking care of myself. It does not matter where my difficulties lie in comparison to others - whether I have it better or worse. The only thing that matters is that I do the best I can.
I used to believe that I couldn’t lose weight, no matter how hard I tried. Then, several years ago, I lost thirty pounds over three months by exercise alone. That put paid to that excuse. Currently, I’ve lost forty pounds primarily by limiting my calories, and I will add exercise to my daily habits so I can lose more. In the meantime, I cope with bouts of depression, take the meds necessary for PCOS and ADD, and avoid all foods with wheat, regardless of how it affects my weight, because that’s what I need to do.
“I eat more calories than I burn, and have an injury/disability keeping me from being more active.” I got severe patellar tendinitis from spinning and weight lifting (and losing a bunch of weight in the process). I put on a few pounds while in physical therapy for 4 weeks, but now I’m in the clear - size 6 jeans, here I come. I gained 25lbs in college - it’s a bitch not to have 2 hours a day to workout, like I did religiously in high school. Life post-college is so much more structured and less hectic, I love it.
Frankly, I’m amazed that so many people are honest in the poll. In real life, I feel people make many more excuses. I love when people blame genetics or their thyroid. If it’s your thyroid, get on meds for it - you don’t even need insurance in many states; mine is less than $3.50/month.
Cheese has calories. Beer has calories. Fried chicken has calories. Burgers have calories.
Luna bars have calories. Potato salad has calories. Macaroni salad has calories. Chocolate has calories. Even vegetables have calories.
Sardines are quite yummy.
As I have grown older, I have lost the capacity to just poop everything out.
I walk. Occasionally, I tell myself that running or exercising would be a good idea, but then I remember that running/exercising causes pain and I don’t like pain.
I was athletic and slender [hourglass figure, not skinny] until 1990, then something happened metabolically that the Navy refused to diagnose [obviously diabetics can only have ONE thing wrong with them at a time :rolleyes:] Lifetime PCOS, full on type 2 diabetes, no pussyfooting around with insulin resistance.
Look, call it what you want, I was active, I walked the dogs in the woods half an hour twice a day, I watched everything I ate, I took my meds [and believe me, I had a very strict nutrition profile for 10 years and I rarely cheated. I probably ended up with 3 to 4 pieces of birthday/wedding cake a year at most and wasn’t into candy. I am a vinegar and salt junkie.] Next thing I know, 150 lbs in 3 years. Fought it tooth and nail, went through fighting with the Navy trying to get diagnosed for over 10 years with the average accusation of ‘sitting on my ass eating candy all day’. I do one splurge meal a year, our mutual birthday. I do rehab twice a week for 2 hours each session. NO I cant go for walks. Thanks to my athletic injuries while young catching up with me and my CPPD, my feet have calcium crystals building up in the joints ruining them, I have arthritis in both knees, and I have femoral-acetabular impingement, both sides of the sacrum are impinged with calcium crystals and my lower spine has disc damage.
About the only way I am going to lose weight now is if they go in and surgically remove every fat cell in my body … I cant go any lower on my nutrition, it is already bottomed out. There is no magical med I can suck down, and not much I can do physically.
SO if I have the temerity to go out in public and be seen sucking down anything except a naked salad and maybe fish with absolutely no sauce of any sort, and bare naked steamed veggies I get glared at as if I was mainlining chocolate covered bacon with a side order of krispy kreme donuts.
yay world, thanks for fucking up any chance of enjoying any sort of family or friend get togethers that includes anything for me other than a glass of ice water.
I’m fat because I love food and sitting on my ass, and hate most forms of exercise. Period. Not making excuses, because I’ve spent most of my life as a fat person doing that. Two things finally made me decide to make changes:
Watching “Half-Ton Mom” on TLC. I realized that I did not want to end up like the woman in the show, who died young (from complications during bariatric surgery if I’m remembering correctly) and had to be buried in a double-wide coffin. She left two young daughters behind.
My mom has thyroid problems as well as high blood pressure, and is obese. I am obese also, but my blood pressure is fine and so is my thyroid and blood sugar. What’s causing me problems is my circulation, especially in my legs. I have to put my legs up often, or I start having pain and swelling. My dr. just prescribed me Motrin for the inflammation, but I’m trying to get her to authorize me going to a vein specialist. I’m worried that my daughter will have health problems as well if she becomes as overweight as I am, so I have to set a better example than I am now.
I joined the Y and registered my daughter for ballet and hip-hop dance classes, and began taking weekly belly dance classes myself. I’m the heaviest person in the class right now, other than the 7-months pregnant lady. I felt very self-conscious at first, and only lasted 40 minutes of the hourlong class before I had to sit down. I’m not going to quit, though. I wanted to do yoga also, but it’s at the same time as belly dance. So I will work out in the weight room or the treadmill instead, at least once a week to start. It’s a lot easier for me to get myself to go while my daughter has her dance class, plus there is a women-only workout area, so I won’t feel quite as self-conscious. I’m also forcing myself to eat more fruit and veggies, and fewer starches. It’s harder than the exercise, though - I just had a Tastykake half an hour ago. Still, I know I have to start somewhere.
Well I do have unhelpful genes (the men on my father’s side are all fat) which means I can’t eat as carelessly as, say, my wife. But the fact that I have a sedentary job and only exercise 1-2 times a week is the main reason I’m about 45 pounds overweight.
I chose the obvious “eat more than I use”. I blame it on my job…yeah, that’s it…not my fault.
Okay, it’s all my fault. I sit at a desk all day and snack periodically. Biggest factor. I suppose it would stop if I wouldn’t bring in stuff to snack on, but then I’d have to, you know, work.
Whenever I take time off I lose weight. Last summer I renovated our master bathroom from the studs up. A number of times my wife had to remind me that I hadn’t eaten anything in 10 hours. I was performing manual labour, and while not particularly intensive, occupied enough of my time to distract me from the time that I would have been snacking. Having dirty hands didn’t hurt either, since I didn’t want to bother to wash up since I was going to go back and get dirty again. People at work commented on the weight that I lost over 2 weeks.
[Homeresque]
Stupid self control…
[/Homeresque]
I am about 180 now, but was 130 when I started working the desk job (140-150 would probably be an ideal weight for me). I think it progressed with my wifes needs for medication, as I didn’t want her to feel bad about the effects they are having on her.
I balk at the notion that being fat has only one potential cause, but I selected ‘‘because I eat more calories than I burn’’ (though technically I don’t think I’m fat any more.) That is at the most fundamental level why ANYONE is fat, even people with genetic disorders are ostensibly fat because they eat more than they burn. I would also add, ‘‘Because the environment in which the majority of us live has becomes saturated with food options that deliberately exploit our biological inclinations to eat sweetening and fattening things.’’ and ‘‘Because I was raised eating a certain way and it never occurred to me to question it.’’ Recognizing that many factors go into obesity is not the same thing as refusing to take responsibility for it. If that were the case, I’d still be obese.
Well, there are two reasons I’m currently fat the one I chose is the reason I’ll never be ‘thin’, which is I’m big boned. According to most BMI calculators at 6’6" I need to weight 215 to be on the top end of normal. When I was in college, 4 years ago, I had my body fat tested and at 0% body fat I’d weight 260. I doubt I’ll ever lose that ~60 lbs of muscle without doing myself some serious harm.
That being said when I got out of college I started to enjoy my life, go to bars and eat expensive meals, and since I wasn’t playing football any longer I decided I didn’t want to work out. During that year I went from 320 to 500+ pounds. I’m not sure how heavy I got but after I’d been working out for 2 hours a day for two months I found a scale that could weight me and I weighted 480. Since then I’m back under my playing weight, 310 this morning, but there has been some muscle loss which I’m guessing at about 20 lbs. My goal is to get to 260 which should put me at 10-15% body fat.
I’ve been holding off putting a picture in the Doper photo gallery until I run my half marathon this summer by which point I should be at my goal weight just so I can pull it out for threads like this and show what obesity looks like (my BMI will still be 30).
I don’t really have any mobility issues. My knees hurt a lot but it’s nothing debilitating and losing weight will help a lot. My elbows do hurt a lot with any activity, including walking, but I’m just going to have to live with it.
I have cut out junk food and in the last 4 weeks, I’ve gone from 222 to 209.
Antispychotic medications can seriosuly suck!
Weight gain associated with antipsychotics and anti depressants are a quite common issue resulting in noncomplaince. It’s like being hit while you are down - you feel like crap and can’t be bothered getting out of bed most days let alone exercising and suddenly even looking at food makes you put on weight.
I am presently one medication to try and control the wieght gain effects of my other medications - I am finally losing weight.
I was eating more calories than I burn–six months in a homeless shelter and the associated free food will do that. I’ve lost something like 80 pounds by burning more than I eat and need to lose at least another 50.
I walk all day long at work and now after years of Doping and Farking, weight is slowly coming off. It helps greatly not having a talking refrigerator available, but there is a candy machine that calls my name every farking day.
I see this as a poll about honesty. I probably do have a slow metabolism (my temperature at waling is often below 97) but in the end, I eat more than a I burn.
You will not gain weight from an over-active thyroid; you will lose weight. I know someone with an overactive thyroid (she has a visible goiter). When she ate something bad and got sick, she lost 7 pounds and, although she eats a lot, has been unable to gain it back. She weighs 93 lb and is around 5’4".
I chose “something else” because I couldn’t pick more than one. I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an auto-immune disorder where my body attacks my thyroid, making me hypothyroid. I also have a congenital adrenal disorder, which requires me to take corticosteroids, which make you hungry, slow your metabolism, and can cause insulin resistance and diabetes. I had a doctor who gave me too large a dose of steroids and I gained 70 pounds in 6 months and had the typical “moon face” that people on steroids get. My new doctor has lowered my steroid dosage (very slowly so I don’t go into adrenal crisis) and I’ve lost 60 pounds over the last 2 years–it’s a lot harder to lose it than to gain it.
I’m ridiculously healthy by the way. My cholesterol levels are beautiful, my blood pressure’s fabulous, and I went from having insulin resistance to having perfect numbers at my last test last month. But the thyroid medication and the steroid affect each other, so I have to have blood tests every 4 months to make sure that slowly reducing the steroid dosage isn’t screwing up my thyroid too much. And next week I see my gyn, who’s also a diet doctor, to ask him why my weight loss has slowed to a complete stop. Maybe he can kick-start me somehow because I still have a ways to go from pregnancy weight I never lost before the overdose of steroids began.
I missed the edit window but I wanted to mention that I exercise 6 days a week for 50 minutes to an hour. But I crave starches (my doctor just nods when I tell him that–he knows it (steroids again), and there’s not much he can do about it) but I’m trying to eat protein with them. I’m trying to cut down on them still but it’s hard.