I’m sorry you were offended, but please consider that typically people look for excuses as to why they cannot change their weight. So many times I’ve read and heard from overweight people how they have some (undiagnosed) medical condition which causes them to gain weight, yet they eat large amounts of high-calorie food and are mostly sedentary. If someone is overweight yet they exercise often and eat normal portions of lean meats and vegetables, then I could understand a medical reason being the cause. But most often it looks like it’s much more of a lifestyle issue than a medical one.
You may not be looking for any advice, but I figured I’d post this anyways because even if you’re not looking for advice, it may be helpful to someone else.
I have a good friend who had such severe problems with digestion that in high school he had to be hospitalized. When he got out of the hospital, he was home-schooled. It was a similar condition to IBS, but more severe.
He’s managed to build up a pretty impressive body. He told me his measurements before and I forget them, but it’s something like 5’8" 190 lbs. He’s a muscular dude.
If you want to know how he got this way, a lot of it was making the gym a mainstay of his days. He does weight lifting, and he goes pretty heavy. Now in all fairness, I must admit that it’s probably easier for him than a lot of people, simply because he enjoys going to the gym and it’s always easier to keep working at something if you enjoy it.
The other part he didn’t enjoy so much. Deser2, I think you mentioned earlier that the struggle to gain weight can require as much effort as losing weight, and it did in my friend’s case. The way he described it to me was like this: If you eat 4,000 calories a day, you are going to gain weight. It’s not impossible to gain weight, it just sucks. What he did was figure out which foods his body could digest, and then eat. And once he started feeling uncomfortably full, he kept eating. The process he described to me sounded horrible, but it got him to where he wanted to be.
The point of this post was just to say that I have seen first-hand that if you have enough determination to push yourself through discomfort to get what you want, you can end up with a very, very nice body in spite of your digestive issues.
Yeah, I don’t think you want to play Chemistry degree war with me.
Bottom line: of course you can gain weight. It simply takes more effort and attention than you are currently willing to spare. That means it makes you look like a big whiner when you complain about it, though.
So your original point was shot to hell (the one were you basically called me out on not having a disorder affecting my weight gaining ability) so instead you attacked my chemistry degree? Well done sir. But I’ll keep playing the penis waving game since it’s slow at work today - BA in Chemistry from NYU. I then went into the finance industry and decided to stay here instead of going to get my graduate degree/doctorate so I never took it any further. But then again, we’re talking high school chemistry/biology level shit here so…
As to you second, more general point - yes, I am aware that I CAN gain weight. My initial post was slightly hyperbolic - but the original argument stands - for someone like me to gain weight takes as much effort as someone overweight trying to lose weight. And comments like yours are just as obnoxious and pointless as “Well just stop eating so much and you’ll lose weight”.
And To The Wind of My Soul: Thanks for the post. I’ve kind of resigned myself to the fact that without a ton of time spent in the gym, my weight is pretty much going to stay where it is. I just find working out (weight training, gym equipment, etc) to be SO. GODDAMN. BORING. I just can’t do it. I don’t mind exercising in the form of some sort of sport or outdoor activity but you’ll never ever catch me in a gym, ever. So while I may not be 100% happy with my body weight, I know that won’t change without substantial effort on my part - effort which I don’t have the time or inclination to put forth.
Back around the time in high school I referenced in my original point, on top of the calories I would spend about an hour each day working out to build up some muscle mass. Didn’t help. The doc said that an hour a day probably wouldn’t be enough to make a noticable difference. That was pretty much when I said fuck it. Maybe now that im in my thirties an hour a day would be enough but after working 9 hours, coming home and taking care of the dog, and eating, that hour a day would pretty much eat up any of my free time during the week. So like I said, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my body is what it is.
Thanks for the post though - it was appreciated and I’m sure there are a few people that may benefit from it, especially those without the means to see a doctor regularly about their issues.
What sucks about things like this is that I, who is categorized as obese, have all those other things in check. I am in perfect health except for being fat. Do those discounts only hold if you have all those other numbers in check PLUS being at a healthy weight? Not all of us fatties are unhealthy!
No, they’re separate as far as I know.
An hour a day can make a difference, but it has to be a real weightlifting-specific workout. You won’t gain significant muscle on the workout machines (treadmills, etc). You also won’t gain significant muscle just by lifting some weights. To build muscle, you need to lift enough weight to cause micro-tears in the muscle and repeat it many times. If the weight is too light, you won’t add any significant muscle no matter how many reps you do.
If you are interested in gaining muscle, make sure you are doing a workout which is specifically designed to add muscle. And, your diet will need to be such that your body has what it needs to build muscle. Otherwise, you’re just doing a calorie-burning workout, which may add little to no muscle.
Gotta admit, this sort of thing is a peeve of mine. Not a major one, but still annoying.
I disagree with hajario on how hard it is to maintain a reasonably healthy weight, but one of the key things, for me at least, has been to realize that I can’t eat everything I want, the way I could when I was a lot younger, and to (a) make good choices about what to eat on a day-to-day basis, and (b) gradually (the work of decades, really) train my food likes and dislikes in healthier directions.
So when my co-workers, like yours, tell me there’s no reason for me to eat healthy, that I’m fine, etc., my answer is that the reason I look like there’s no need for me to eat healthy is that I eat healthy.
I don’t add that since I’m bad at resisting temptation, a big part of that is trying to minimize it upfront, and I’d prefer it if they didn’t shove temptation under my nose, but I certainly think it.
I didn’t ask about your qualifications because I don’t care what they are. However, you volunteered them anyway. That seemed like as good a time as any for me to note that I better them, but I suppose you are permitted to disagree.
Anyway, it seems like you’re giving up on this pretty easily for something that could have severe ramifications for you down the line. My advice would be to get the opinion of a dietician with IBS expertise and a resistance exercise therapist team and see if you can get a personal trainer thing going on. It certainly needn’t take as long as you seem to think it must, and I would venture to guess that you probably have easy access to a gym on your NYC finance industry job site.
My complaint was more tongue in cheek than anything. I really don’t have much issue with rewarding people for losing weight if thats what a company wants to do. And thank you for the advice (no sarcasm) but as I said, right now I just don’t have the time and drive to put in the work I need. I am aware that eventually I will need to take a much more active but I’ve been a procrastinator my whole life and that probably won’t change any time soon. I do have a huge problem with the “oh you’re so lucky you’re skinny” type comments but I’ve been hearing those my whole life so unless I’m in a particularly shitty mood, I usually just brush em off.
And yes, we do have a gym actually on the ground floor of the building. It’s not cheap but it’s certainly a better deal than if I went to a NYSC or Planet Fitness or something. But again, I know me. I know that I even if a managed to get into a routine for a week, after the first weekend I would most likely stop going. I’ll admit - I’m 100% fucking lazy. So if any of you people looking to lose weight want to figure out some sort of lypo-suction-transfer-system, I’m all for it. 
Another part of the problem, which I am certainly not going to address, is that the foods that don’t bother me just plain suck. Anything fried has a chance of fucking up my stomach. Anything heavily seasoned. Sometimes bread will do it. Raw onions - ALWAYS. Cooked onions, never. Spicy foods - NEVER give me a problem. I can eat 4 or 5 raw or pickeled jalepenos and not have a single digestive issue. I eat a cracker and that could cause problems. My body - it’s a weird and wild ride.
Filmore: When I mentioned the “exercise machines” I was talking more along the lines of weight-machines as opposed to free weights. I know that cardio-type exercises will actually have the reverse effect.
Look, nothing you’ve posted here really gives me any sense that giving this a no-bullshit go would be particularly difficult for you. A dietician isn’t going to recommend that you eat nothing but deep-fried corn-cobs all day and a physical therapist isn’t going to tell you to give up and forget the whole thing because your gym doesn’t have the equipment you’d need to do deadlifts. The real reason that you haven’t bothered to give it a go isn’t because you don’t think it will work, but because you don’t really give enough of a shit. That’s fine as far as it goes. However…
Over the course of your life, the time and effort you’ve put into gaining weight (one time, in high school) has been truly minimal compared to the time and effort the average overweight person trying to reduce has put into losing weight. You have no reason at all to say that the difficulties of the two tasks are in any sense equal.
I don’t really give a shit what you do with your life, but it would be nice if you’d quit drawing specious equivalencies between your struggles and some other person’s struggles that you have no personal experience with but that a tremendous body of empirical research has shown to be an extremely difficult task.
No where did I ever say a dietician would tell me not to bother because of my gym’s equipment or tell me to eat fried foods. You may want to re-read my last post again because it seems you really didn’t understand any of what I wrote. Did you happen to miss the section where I said I’m not willing to put the work in right now mainly because I’m lazy? Or that I don’t want to eliminate certain parts of my diet? Or that even if I did start a gym routine, I know myself and know that I wouldn’t stick with it? You saying “you don’t give enough of a shit” just sums up exactly what I wrote in my previous post.
This doesn’t make any sense. Just because I decide to not put the effort into gaining weight doesn’t change the amount of effort needed if I actually decided to put in the work. There is absolutely zero difference in what I would need to do to gain vs. what an overweight person would need to do to lose. I would have to watch what I eat just like an overweight person albeit mine would be for higher calorie foods and proteins/carbs vs low calorie and low fat items for the overweight person. I would have to spend time in the gym working out just like the overweight person. If, once I gained the weight, I went back to my old eating habits and (non-existent) exercise rountine my weight would come right back off vs the overweight persons weight coming right back on. So point out one reason that makes it even slightly different (other than me not doing any of those things which is the same as an overweight person not doing any of those things).
Again, they are not specious equivalencies. See my last paragraph. They are almost exactly the same.
This is not totally correct. You’re only looking at the mechanical aspect of weight lost/gain. One huge difficulty to lose weight is that your brain is constantly telling you to eat. You have to fight those urges 24 hours a day. All day at work your brain is urging you to get a candy bar and soda. Every time you eat a meal your your body is telling you to supersize the meal and get dessert. You dream about food when you’re sleeping. Losing weight is like trying to break a drug addiction.
In your case, it really is a case of just eat more (of the foods you can tolerate). You may have challenges because of your diet, but you’re not having to suppress cravings to do it. Unless you’re constantly fighting drug-like urges to eat less, it’s not the same thing as trying to lose weight.
That’s the reason losing weight is difficult. You have to fight constant urges and cravings to eat more. It’s not that it’s difficult to order a small sandwich at lunch. It’s that you have to fight this voice in your brain saying “Get the 12” meatball sub with extra cheese. And large soda. And chips. And a cookie. And another cookie for later".
If you keep this up, Deser, I’ll be able to ghostwrite your autobiography.
PS. Read fillmore’s post above. Read it a couple times. Take a walk. Read a book. And when you come back, for heaven’s sake, try to resist the urge to post again.
Look, can we stop making absolute statements about how hard it is for one person or another person?
I’m a severely overweight person who lost a quarter of my body weight - 75 goddam pounds - easily, simply, and without craving. All I did was start walking to work. It made my commute a bit longer, but it’s fun and easy and it means I get to look at all the flowers in the spring. The energizing effects of moderate exercise have meant that I don’t need blood sugar assists mid-afternoon, so I naturally stopped snacking. I’ve kept the weight off for 4 years without restricting my diet in any way, just keeping in mind not to gorge myself. I got extremely lucky. But losing weight is not always tortuously hard, and gaining weight is not always trivially easy.
But it is usually very difficult for most people, and anyone who is trying to change their weight has my sympathy. And any person gets to make the decision that it’s more work than they have the energy for right now, and that doesn’t make them a bad person.
Interesting. As I was reading your post, I was thinking about my condition, which is IBS-A (that’s both C and D)-- the syndrome is very close to a living hell, when in full effect. With mine being mostly triggered by stress, it’s equal parts mental, as well as physical, since it drains you of a lot of water, which is dangerous for many obvious reasons, but in context of the discussion, especially ones you can attribute to weight (it’s not unusual for me to lose 10+ lbs, which I certainly would rather keep).
That said, I also have high metabolism, and previously hovered around 138 @ 5’8". Gaining weight, even with IBS, is still very much possible, but it does require a lot of work. I’ve managed to put on a lean 30 lbs of muscle, mostly due to dedicated exercise and an attempt to increase my calorie intake (4,000 daily, which can get expensive when you include supplements). Depending on how severe your case is, I can completely see where you’re coming from, but I’m confident its an exception. Most people stay where they are in weight, because they don’t prioritize the change enough-- that’s the simplest and most polite way to say it, and it’s certainly not with any intent to pass judgement.
The thing I hear voiced less than it should be, is that the majority of any effort is many parts mental, and so it cannot compare to the efforts of another person, directly-- it’s largely a matter of perception at that point. “Harder” and “easier” have some bearing, but they don’t add much value to the debate, since both are moving targets. One example: losing or gaining the first portion of weight is typically easier than the last bit, since your body tends to adapt and resist your training. And so getting up and starting presents one significant hurdle, staying past the first few months, another, then fighting past a plateau, yet another, and so on.
The irony of this, is that it’s not so much about working hard, in my experience, as it is about being humbled. With my journey, you find many people who relate to the effort required, and simply respect others who commit and make honest attempts to meet goals.
It’s not the same, but it’s also not fair to portray it this way. Your brain and body adapt to whatever cycle you’ve lived with and consider normal. You can discipline yourself to eat one meal a day, or six-- when you swing from whatever that routine is, though, your body will resist, in some form. This is really describing two sides of the same coin.
“Just eat more” is something I’ve heard people express, but without actually doing so, it’s not as easy as just saying it. Eating requires time and effort to purchase, prepare, and consume, and you get full. To eat more (and properly, I’d add), you have to slowly adjust your portions and properly adapt your body to burn energy, so that it has a reason to eat more, not just eating for the sake of it. Forcing yourself to eat requires a lifestyle change, just the same as reducing what and how you eat does. Your Diet can be very complex, which sadly, isn’t aided by a lot of outside sources.
If anything, eating poorly and doing nothing about your health is easy-- that much has been assured, because it’s cheap and available (no coincidence). Eating properly and doing work (by the very nature of the word), requires added effort, and that affects everyone.
This doesn’t seem too terribly different from forcing yourself to eat when your mind/body is telling you you’re not hungry. In both scenarios, you have to make a conscious decision to override what your body wants to do.
And from the exercise side of things, it’s even less different. Whether you want to gain or lose weight, it would serve you well to put in time at the gym, but that can be very difficult to do day in and day out if it’s something you don’t enjoy.
It’s different in that to gain weight, you only have to force yourself to eat more at mealtime. It may still be hard, but it’s only hard for short periods of time. When you’re not eating, you’re not battling urges. You may struggle, but it’s only that short period of time when you’re eating. An overweight person may eat a big lunch and then spend the afternoon fighting the urge to eat more before dinner. But if you’re trying to gain weight, you only have to spend that time at lunch eating more food. You don’t have to fight food urges between lunch and dinner.
And the gym is not where you should be going to gain weight. You will not gain weight at the gym if you cannot gain weight otherwise. Your body will not add muscle if you are in a calorie deficit. So if you can’t gain weight just sitting around your house, you’re not going to gain it in the gym. You’ll probably lose weight because you’re burning even more calories.
I won’t argue science with you. I’ll just say I’ve seen weight lifting help men who were struggling to gain weight, including ones with digestive problems, and leave it at that.
And those losers that get assistance just for being affected by a famine. I had to skip breakfast today, where’s my fucking peanut butter paste?