Why do obese women all dress the same?

[Omegaman]

@Roderick Femm

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).

This is why I love you man.

I can see your heart all the way over here.

Your friends must love the living daylights out of you.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@Completely

Well, I think the main issue with this whole discussion is how each of us define “hard”.

I am the only person who knows how hard I feel I work to maintain a healthy weight and avoid becoming fat. Another person may feel that their effort to do the same was “4x” harder, but in fact, they put the same actual effort, dealt with exactly the same degree of cravings and spent the same amount of time reading labels and exercising. That same person may look at me, complain that I must be “naturally thin”, then whine about how, if I had to work as hard as they did to lose weight, I’d be fat too. :rolleyes:

For them, they report the work as “waaaay harder” than other people’s, when in fact, it’s about equal. It’s all about perception of the term “hard”.

I feel that, personally, I work very hard to maintain a healthy weight. It is difficult, it is a struggle sometimes to discipline myself, but to me, it’s worth it. Being healthy in the long term, to me, is more important than the fleeting pleasure of that extra brownie. Unlike Cowgirl, I fully understand that being fat is directly linked to a myraid of serious sometimes life-threatening health issues, like diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Good health, to me, is more important that that second cupcake.

I know from personal experience that various medications can increase or decrease the food cravings I experience. I’ve lost over 100 pounds, and while I’d love to say that it’s due to my willpower, I’m pretty sure that a great part of that loss is because I’ve changed a couple of medications.

And nobody knows what desperately craving food is like, unless they’ve been on steroids. Sharks in a feeding frenzy are amatuers compared to me when I’m taking steroids. Unfortunately, I have to take them every now and then.

[maggenpye]

@Roderick Femm

every one of those fat cells is screaming to be fed.

So *that’s *what that noise is!

Brilliant post. Calm, informative and entertaining.

Maggenpye: down from 98.5 kg to 81 and counting.

[Completely]

@Lynn Bodoni

I know from personal experience that various medications can increase or decrease the food cravings …And nobody knows what desperately craving food is like, unless they’ve been on steroids.

Um, taking powerful drugs and experiencing their side effects has what, exactly, to do with this discussion?

[maggenpye]

@Completely

Um, taking powerful drugs and experiencing their side effects has what, exactly, to do with this discussion?

Because they can affect appetite and weight gain/loss.

What’s so difficult to understand?

[Zoe]

Brain chemistry, which is sometimes controlled by medication, can totally affect a person’s appetite and the way a person relates to food. So can being withdrawn from carbohydrates for a long period of time. I have experienced both and completely lost any compulsion to eat.

Unfortunately, the body adjusts to the medication and the appetite (for me) slowly increases. Also, the carbohydrate withdrawal was allowed to continue for six months and no further. The doctor was afraid that I was going to mess up my system.

[Malacandra]

@Roderick Femm

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.

1. 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).

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

TLDR

[Cat_Fight]

@Roderick Femm

I
4. 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.

This is why I figure the nature/nurture debate is flawed for many overweight people from ‘fat families.’ If they were fed junk food and glucose by their overweight parents up until their teens (or whenever they were allowed to make their own decisions about food), then the wheels have already been set in motion. I don’t know if it’s my genes or my parents’ relationship with food that have kept me thin, but I’ve observed other people’s food traumas (constantly dieting mothers, fast food every night for dinner) enough to know that I lucked out. Well, for now.

[VinylTurnip]

@Airman Doors

You are aware that it is not necessary to share every single intimate detail of your life, right? Some things are best left unsaid. This is Exhibit A, right up there with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and menstruation.

Shhh… I’m trying to masturbate, here!

[Maeglin]

@Vinyl Turnip

Shhh… I’m trying to masturbate, here!

You masturbate while thinking of Guin struggling to tie off a rope?

Stop the world: I want to get off.

[Malthus]

@Maeglin

You masturbate while thinking of Guin struggling to tie off a rope?

Stop the world: I want to get off.

You are ‘getting off’ on that? :eek:

Is there nothing someone on the Internet will not masturbate to?

[Guinastasia]

Ummmm… :dubious:

IRRC, didn’t we once have a coprophile post here?

[VinylTurnip]

Admitted, I guess you mean? I’ll wager there are a few dozen more in the closet. You know who you are.

[Guinastasia]

Yeah, I seem to remember some guest who came in with an “Ask the Poop Fetish Guy” or something like that.

[Malacandra]

@Malthus

You are ‘getting off’ on that? :eek:

Is there nothing someone on the Internet will not masturbate to?

“Please specify breed of goat”.

[Guinastasia]

I hate to interupt this lovely little circle jerk here, but has anyone noticed that the OP has disappeared on us?

Hmmm…
Okay, back to goat felching.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@Cat Fight

This is why I figure the nature/nurture debate is flawed for many overweight people from ‘fat families.’ If they were fed junk food and glucose by their overweight parents up until their teens (or whenever they were allowed to make their own decisions about food), then the wheels have already been set in motion. I don’t know if it’s my genes or my parents’ relationship with food that have kept me thin, but I’ve observed other people’s food traumas (constantly dieting mothers, fast food every night for dinner) enough to know that I lucked out. Well, for now.

I was slim/normal as a child. My mother was on Weight Watchers for most of my childhood, and the WW diet is actually a fairly nutritious diet (except for the liver, but that’s another thread). I didn’t start gaining weight until I got pregnant, and after I was pregnant, I was put on antidepressant medication. Then I ballooned.

I think that you might be onto something about the nurture factor in fat families, but they’ve done twin studies, too, and it seems that nature is a definite contributing factor to the likelyhood of obesity.

Personally, I think it’s partly due to the great amount of high fructose corn syrup in our modern diet. I also think that we’re so cautious of child abductors that we don’t let our kids out of our sight, so they don’t get nearly enough exercise. We don’t really have walking options in many of our cities, either.

Being able to live on fewer calories than other people do used to be a distinct survival trait. It’s only in the past few decades that this ability has become a negative, and only in a few areas. I don’t think that we should be surprised that many people find it easy to put on weight, and very difficult to take it off.

[DellieM]

Right - having sat here and read all the posts in response to the obese women all dressing the same, there was a constant undercurrent of ‘fat is unattractive’, ‘obese and unhealthy are not desirable traits’ etc. And for all you wonderful posters, fat, thin, man, woman, chicken, tall, short etc - rousing applause for stating the obvious - fatties are not necessarily going without love night after night, nor affection, nor do they have a shortage of admirers, and not always is being fat a matter of discipline.

I am short and I come under the banner of obese. I’m a standard size 14, and how I dress doesn’t matter. I met my husband in a carpark and couldn’t take my eyes off him. He’s 6’3" and weights 110 kgs (don’t know in imperial) and at the time we met I was severely thin to the point of bony. It was love at first sight. Since that moment 4 years ago, he has maintained his weight, and I have put more on - and I am loving my life and the vitality and joy that every day brings - and one reason for this is that I never worry about my weight.

I have a beautiful friend who was a size 8 for many years, and seemingly overnight following her marriage, she ballooned to a size 18. I’m talking fat face, fat ankles etc and the comments of people around her were awful. Except that she was fighting thyroid cancer and the treatment she’s on has ballooned her weight. But instead of telling people why, she let them talk and I had to ask her why and with dignity she said "apparently, being fat is more important than the fact that I’m still alive".

So to you stupids out there, my husband and I and a lot of other posters too I’m guessing may be overweight, but as one poster said, we’re too busy raising our family, paying the mortgage, laughing with friends etc, to find 3 hours a day to ‘work our sinful arses off’. I add also, I’ve never been happier in my life, and additionally, I have paid my taxes all my life and we have private health insurance, life insurance, mortgage insurance and death and disability insurance, so don’t worry, any health expenses associated with our choice to eat fried foods, or that second bowl of icecream will never impact on your wallets. So take your pious beliefs and eat them. With King Island Double Cream.

[yellowval]

@DellieM

So to you stupids out there, my husband and I and a lot of other posters too I’m guessing may be overweight, but as one poster said, we’re too busy raising our family, paying the mortgage, laughing with friends etc, to find 3 hours a day to ‘work our sinful arses off’.

See, I was fine with your post until this part right here. There’s been a lot of talk about skinny folks bashing fat people, but what’s with this assumption that all thin people must be spending their whole lives miserable and at the gym three hours a day or starving themselves? Do you really think thin people aren’t raising their families, paying off the mortgage, and laughing with friends, too? Get real! I (who am not “skinny,” rather “normal” after having worked for almost two years to get to this point) personally spend about half an hour to an hour a day at the gym (sometimes more on weekends if I have the time—I actually do enjoy it) and I find plenty of time for other activities. And it’s no more true to say that thin people are all spending three hours a day at the gym than it is to say that all fat people are stashing food away so they can binge on it. What I’m trying to say is that the stereotypes quite obviously go both ways. If you don’t like thin people stereotyping you, why are you doing the same to them?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@DellieM

Right - having sat here and read all the posts in response to the obese women all dressing the same, there was a constant undercurrent of ‘fat is unattractive’, ‘obese and unhealthy are not desirable traits’ etc. And for all you wonderful posters, fat, thin, man, woman, chicken, tall, short etc - rousing applause for stating the obvious - fatties are not necessarily going without love night after night, nor affection, nor do they have a shortage of admirers, and not always is being fat a matter of discipline.

I don’t have a problem with fat people; it’s your life, your stomach, and your body, and you can treat it however you wish.

I don’t think it’s worth trying to lose weight because of what other people think. I do think it’s worth attempting to lose weight WRT your future health.