[QUOTE=dre2xl]
There are a lot of varying degrees in effort for the same people. I can pick at the meat in a burger + fries platter and stop there, because I’d be full by the time I finished eating the meat. That’s how most thin people I know operate, and I don’t consider myself (or them) particularly virtuous. I’ve known fat people who were fat because they ate normal diets, and I’ve known fat people who were fat because they had some sort of obsession with food that we’ll never have, and I don’t hold judgment against either type because they go through struggles I’ll never know.
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I am sympathetic to this view, but I would like to make some clarifying points (just on the off chance that there are people in this thread who are interested in clarity). These points are based on 3 years of amateur study of nutrition, weight loss and weight maintenance, which was part of the process of my own loss of 150 pounds or so, of which I am maintaining at about -125 pounds (i.e. I have re-gained 25 of the 150 pounds I lost). The three years of study includes frequent consultation with professionals in the field. I mention the weight loss not to prove my virtue, but only as a kind of credential.
- Each person’s normal weight, ability to lose weight and ability to keep weight off can only be judged against his/her own body’s standards. No two people are the same in this regard.
1a. Of course, one’s weight is no-one’s business but one’s own. A number of people upthread have said they don’t care what you or I think about their weight, and I support that 100%. If you don’t like to look at me or them, don’t look. Or think what you like, but keep your opinions to yourself. (This item is not supported by research, it is only my opinion).
- Statistically, weight comparison charts and BMI charts reveal a significant relationship between weight and some health risk factors. However, these charts are not infallible. For example, at my heaviest I had normal blood pressure and only borderline bad cholesterol.
2a. Where your fat is stored makes a difference to those health risk factors. Fat stored around the middle (as distinct from the buttocks, for example) is more dangerous statistically. So pear shaped is less risky than apple shaped.
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For the vast majority of people, how much they weight, and especially how much of that is fat, is a factor of things they do (what they eat and how much exercise they take). This does not negate #1, it only clarifies it. If you weigh more than you used to, it is because you are taking in more calories than you are burning. “Healthy” diet vs. “unhealthy” diet is less relevant here than total calories.
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This one is very important, because it speaks to why diets mostly don’t work: once you have been fat, if you lose weight it is much harder to keep it off than it would have been not to put on the weight in the first place. Reason: by getting fat you add a lot of fat cells to your body. When you lose weight you do not lose fat cells*, they only get smaller. And after getting smaller, every one of those fat cells is screaming to be fed (by means of chemicals in your bloodstream) and they grab every available possible extra bit of unused nutrition in hopes of replenishing themselves to their former size. There is abundant research to support this. If you and I are the same size, but I was once fat and you were never fat, and if we eat the same amount, where you will maintain the same weight I will put on weight. I have to do more exercise or eat less to maintain than you do.
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Generally, it is easier for men to lose weight and maintain weight loss than for women to do the same. I’m not sure why this is so, but I imagine it has to do with the different way that men’s and women’s bodies treat the storage of body fat.
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Generally, it is easier for younger people to lose weight and maintain weight loss than it will be for the same people when they get older. This is because for most people, metabolism tends to slow down with age (although it does not have to do so, this can be fought by increasing the amount of some types of exercise).
One conclusion I draw from all this is that I have no right to open my yap about your weight, unless you invite me to. This includes remarking on how much some thinner person can eat that I can’t; it also includes not making a fuss about what a martyr I am to trying to keep my weight down.
*Eventually you can lose fat cells, if you keep weight off for several years. However, by the time you have kept that weight off for several years you probably have the discipline that it takes to keep doing it, regardless of the presence or absence of those fat cells.
Prediction: this post will either kill this thread cold (from boredom, mostly) or 93.7% of potential readers will skip right past it. 
Roddy
Edited to clarify #3.
Uh, if you really believe this than you really need to do some basic research, or just ask your doctor. The only people promoting this myth are those in the radical fat-acceptance movement and their claim has been thoroughly debunked.