exasperates? 
I’m pretty sure he meant exacerbates.
yepp, sorry, brain fart.
I feel compelled to mention a colleague who is a skinny little thing, probably a size two and kinda bony. She eats normally, doesn’t put on weight, and doesn’t work out as far as I know, but she does have an out-of-whack thyroid.
Just offhand, I’d guess that a wacky thyroid could also function in the opposite way and make a person more likely to gain weight than to keep it off.
Couldn’t a malfunctioning thyroid be a factor in at least some cases?
Yeah, there is. My mom told us many time of her dad, who regularly ate ice cream a half-gallon carton at a time. Thin as a rail all of his life. My brother inherited these genes (the skinny jerk 
) and ate more than me and one of our sisters combined each day. He TRIED to gain weight because he was so thin–no dice.
Unfortunately, I did NOT inherit those genes! 
Yes, though its a more rare occurrence than people think. Hypothyroidism can lead to weight gain, hyperthyroidism can lead to weight loss, among a host of other problems. Sorry, no link, easy enough to look up if you are curious enough. IANAD
So because you don’t sneak food, no other fat person does either?
So because you know some fat people who sneak food, all fat people do too?
I can honestly say that I do not know any obese person who actually sneaks food.
That’s the whole point of sneaking the food, doing it without others’ knowledge. :smack: Several of the obese people I’ve known in the past admitted to hiding junk food/candy in the house and sneaking around to binge on it behind their spouses’s backs.
Of course not every fat person sneaks food. My point was that the food-sneaking, along with eating huge portions, going back for multiple helpings, etc is typical of the obese people I have known.
Yes, but hypothyroidism shouldn’t be used as an excuse to be fat. I’m hypothyroid, and I’ve worked really hard to be a healthy weight. I don’t starve myself, and never deny myself any kind of food. I do go to the gym 5-6 days a week, and (mostly) stay at or below 2,000 calories a day, with a “free day” about once a week. I’ve managed to lose 25 pounds very, very slowly. It is a commitment and it is hard (and probably harder for me than it is for someone who isn’t hypothyroid), but I finally decided that just because I had a thyroid disorder didn’t mean I had to be fat, and it certainly didn’t mean I should just keep on getting fatter.
I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture. But I do know that my mom has been slim all her life and my dad has been increasingly fat all of his adult life. My brother, although he eats incessantly, is so skinny that he never wears short sleeves or shorts. I am, shall we say, not (5’4" and about 155lbs.).
I am a compulsive eater. When I’m not eating, I’m thinking about it, at least in the back of my mind. I’m thinking about it right now. I have a sweet tooth. I have a fat tooth. I have a starch tooth. The only calories I ever met that I didn’t like are alcohol and avocados.
I have lost weight several times. But it has been in an anorexic sort of way; I was still obsessed with food. My father too is obsessed with food - shopping for it (he’s also obsessed with bargains, having grown up in the Depression and put himself through school on the GI Bill), cooking it, and eating it. One of his two living sisters is obsessed with it. My mom enjoys her meals, but really just doesn’t care all that much. It is a very real psychological difference. In my brother’s case, it seems to be a real physiological difference, because he eats enormous quantities (granted, he is a non-junk food vegetarian, but he has always eaten enormous quantities) and is only a step above a concentration camp victim.
I guess what I’m driving at is that you can’t lump everyone in together. Men lose weight easier than women; that’s a known physiological difference. Some people just don’t seem to gain weight very readily, while others do - I think that’s pretty undeniable. There appear to be genetic bases for being fat or thin. There also appear to be early childhood bases for being fat or thin. There are compulsions which may or may not be genetic. And then there are a few people who are simply idiots. But to argue an idea that all or even most heavy people are *anything * other than heavy is absurd.
On preview, yellowval, why aren’t you on thyroid meds, in which case it shouldn’t make any difference? My thyroid has been dead for twenty years, but I take medicine for it.
I am on thyroid meds, and have been for about 13 years. It helps, most of the time. It’s probably a good part of the reason that I didn’t get fatter than I did. But I’ve found that thyroid meds don’t always correct all the symptoms completely (and that doctors don’t really seem to care that much as long as the blood test comes out okay, but that’s a different thread). So no, I’m not just one of those people who claims they have a thyroid disorder but doesn’t do anything about it, if that’s what you were getting at.
One doesn’t need an excuse to be fat. It is not an ethical choice. You are making a category mistake.
Ah, to my knowledge I never had symptoms, so that’s where my error lay. And no, my point was to recommend that you get on thyroid medicine if you weren’t.
Me neither
I was pointing out Completely’s logical error, which he again displays (bolding added):
A lot of people seem to do that. It’s like there’s some moral component to being overweight that “normal-sized” people have some sort of outrage trigger about. You’d think we killed and ate their puppy or something.
I think there is definitely a “moral” (for want of a better word) component to the way we (including me) look at hefty people (including me), which is the same way we look at drunks or druggies. That is, as people who are willing to let ourselves be ruined rather than exerting self-control. For the reasons I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t think the world is quite as simplistic as that, but let’s face it; people do tend to over-simplify things, and people absolutely LOVE to feel superior to other people.
I guess you mean you eat any kind of food you want? but just constrain the portion size? Because you’d have to deny something to stay below 2000 calories. Or, you don’t have the desire for more than 2000 calories and therefore don’t have to deny yourself anything?
Now you do. I’ve never been Captain Thin and am not even now, but Mrs M is worse than I ever was - finally making some effort to shift it (but with the typical fattie’s out of “Oh well, I’m not really trying…”, and I’m casting no stones that I haven’t deserved myself a hundred times), and she most definitely does have a history there. I’m talking about finding the empty wrappers from chocolate biscuit packets or chocolate bars in the bedside drawer, and I never saw her eat a mouthful of it.
Untrue, and having shed 80-odd pounds from a known high of 288 (possibly higher) I meet both qualifications for that last sentence. I have to resist the urge to overeat, especially after any alcohol intake, but I have not been feeling physically hungry. Neither have I been experiencing a pathological aversion to food.
Let me qualify that “not hungry” - when it’s been a while since the last meal, sure, it’s felt like it was time for the next one. But that has not in itself obliged me to overeat. Part of the battle has been to get into the routine of eating enough to stop feeling hungry for now - not to insure me against future hunger or to feed myself as much as I’m “entitled to”. That’s the habit that’s needed breaking.