to wonder about obesity

[crashingwaves]

Please, please, PLEASE don't think that this is a fat-bashing thread, I hate it when people do that and I'd never ever do it myself.

The thing is, I love food, I do like nice food and I do overeat on occasions. My BMI is 'overweight' - I could do with shifting a stone - I'm most definitely not a size 8 smuggie person.

What I'm wondering about isn't even people a fair bit bigger than me. But really, really large people (I'm thinking around the 20 stone + region) Isn't it quite, well, difficult in a way to maintain and gain weight at that size, as you really would have to be eating an awful lot (unless a medical reason, I realise things like PCOS can contribute.)

I suppose I was wondering as my friend has a friend who is only 21 and weighs 18 and a half stone - to be honest I think she is in denial a little bit as she says things like "Oh I know I don't look this big" when to be honest she does - I understand that - but given that at that size it is fairly easy to make small changes and still lose weight, I guess I just wonder why people don't. That did sound quite bitchy and judgemental and I'm honestly trying hard to avoid that.

I can totally see how people get big, I've "been there" myself but I guess what I mean was when the scales hit 13 stone I thought "f*ck!" and went on a diet - surely if the scales hit 20 stone you would ...?

I probably deserve a flaming - can I just say mega apologies if I DO offend you as I honestly don't want to do that!

I have been overweight all my adult life in a family of skinny people. I think there is a genetic tendecy- My grandmother is the same shape as me- But food was never about sustenance for me. It was about comfort, trying to feel full.

I've lost a stone and a half on a thread on here, and am treating my eating as seriously as I have to- It's like an alcoholic or a drug addict, I really am addicted to food. I would eat all day if I could. I know that sounds dramatic, but it is dramatic for me- I always feel like the unattractive one, always insecure, letting food control what I did and did not do.

I'm a size 14 now, 5"11, healthy bmi, getting ok with my body. But it's not a battle won by any means. It's a big change for me, and I don't blame anyone who would prefer to have a bit of freedom in their eating lives and be a bit overweight.

I also have to confess to a girl crush on Mamazon. :o

It may be of interest, also, to note that some people do have heavy builds- My best friend became severely anorexic in her teens- She lived on black coffee and an apple a day. She was still a healthy bmi and a size 12. It wasn't until she took off her clothes that you could see she had no fat whatsoever- Her hips, with no fat, were a 12.

I'm so sorry about your mum, Fernie. That's terribly sad.

I have wondered about this myself - I have gone through periods of binge eating, i.e. several years where I've regularly (several times a week) eaten 3000-4000 calories a day in junk food, literally eating until I felt too sick or in too much pain to eat any more, until I felt short of breath from the fullness, eating until my mouth and throat were raw. Sorry if it sounds horrible but it's true, I was eating as much as it was physically possible for me to eat. And over about 3 years I gained maybe a little over a stone, never weighing much more than 9 st total. I still do this maybe once a week or fortnight, but my weight is fairly steady at about 8st now (I'm short so this isn't as thin as it sounds).

I can't explain why this didn't make me obese, and I'm sure not every overweight/obese person can be eating more than I was. I can't imagine how anyone could eat any more. So I don't judge, because I do feel it's just luck that I stayed relatively slim/normal.

People do talk a lot about fast/slow metabolism, but I wonder if it's also to do with the digestive system and how efficiently we absorb nutrients from what we eat. This is going to be horribly TMI - but I found that the morning after I had a big binge, it would basically 'go through me' , so perhaps I just wasn't taking in and storing as much of it as another person might?

I know sometimes people with digestive disorders (like Crohn's disease for example) where the gut is not absorbing properly, they have difficulty gaining and keeping on weight. So if there's some variation in the 'healthy' population as well, that might affect weight gain as well, to a lesser degree.

Ive been on the frikkin low carb for 2 weeks, have ketones in my urine and havent lost a pound. Thats life fpr some people

But for those who think they are obese due to genetics or having a slow metabolism, surely that's all the more reason to eat the right things and do more exercise?

There will always be people who can eat what they want and not gain a pound, but that really shouldn't feature in how we look after our own bodies.

I have never been a regular MacDonalds eater, but occasionally have have a fillet of fish, or a sausage and egg mcmuffin, and never really paid much attention to the calories or nutrition.

With being on this diet at the moment, I read the labels on everything. Went in there with MIL on Friday, I dont know how many calories I had (had a big mac, but left the bun, no fries, and a bottle of water, so figure it was reasonably healthy)... and MIL had double cheeseburger, fries and a medium chocolate shake.... which weighed in at 1200 calories altogether , she is an 8 stone lady and not dieting, but even so, the amount of fat in the milkshakes is unbelievable and plenty of people think that a milkshake is a healthy option..it isnt in there!

Oh buggering bollocks, now I need a Maccy Dees

{tantrum}

OP isn't talking about people who are merely "heavy", she's talking about people who border on supersize or bigger. 80+ percent more body mass than they should have. Plump is easy to become, within the realms of normal, but carrying around a whole extra person's worth (or more) on your body?

I feel the way you do, OP, though I don't wonder about adults (I'm used to that), but I do wonder about parents who let it happen. I'd be so totally freaked out if my body started going that way, and even more distraught if my kids seemed likely to get that big. Cold sweats, not being able to sleep at night, not being able to eat because I was so upset kind of thing. It usually takes a lot of calories to stay so big, especially among children, and even more difficult among those who aren't disabled.

If a person is overweight or obese, they have, at some point eaten way too much food. End of.

As a kid I was always slim, even in my teens apart from enormous boobs, I was very slim, a size 8/10 with a 34DD bust... it just all seemed to expand gradually as I got into my 20's.. eating crap, not doing as much exercise, drinking most nights... by my 30's I was a 16/18 and at 5ft 2 that is heavy, but I kidded myself that I still looked ok...and carried on eating whatever I liked..

I have never eat a lot, quantity wise, but would skip breakfast, have something with pastry usually for lunch, and dinner would be calorie laden too, with too much bread and butter.

I also love coffee and had a couple of lattes a day, then two or three cans of coke througout the day...

Losing it is hard, and it is so easy to give up, so I sympathise with anyone who is trying to lose weight, but I am determined not to be fat in my 40's as well and so far have kept at it.

Until I bought a computer, I was a size zero...but hey, that's only the old (mid 80's) UK size 10. Now, I'm a size 20 and weigh 90kilos, whatever that is in proper money.

But let's look at what's happened...always prone to depression, back then I was a neurotic skinnie minnie who thought I was fat (eating disorder from 13 to 21), was always fidgeting, masked my inner despair by smoking 50 fags a day and rarely sleeping, would often stay up all night to create some divine fancy dress frock, or a hat. As you do...

When I fell pregnant with DD1, I was 47 kilos. Regained pre-preg weight. Regained it after DD2 as well. Then I got married, depression got worse, never lost preg weight gain after DD3, DD3 contracted meningitis and was on a life support machine, my weight went up;

DH has sex drive of a giant panda - makes me feel unwanted and unloved, he won't kiss me but a chocolate bar will. He has affair with the cnut lady next door...weight (and smoking) go up...but whilst mending our marriage, DS is made. I stop smoking...weight goes up more.

Throughout this time, pissing around on't'internet to take my mind elsewhere has made me sedentiary, I develop asthma due to our rented flat being riddled with damp and mould, hello steroids. Also, my hypermobile joint chickens come home to roost, and I go from being able to cross my legs behind my head to being barely able to move some days, developing SPD in my last two pregnancies.

Finally, the strain of living next door to a complete psycho (who by this time was stalking and harassing me), what DH did, living in a dangerous and overcrowded shithole...well, the depression hit rock bottom and I finally relented and begged my GP for the anti-depressants he'd been trying to give me since I was 17. (He can shove the counselling though) Weight shot up.
Managed to move house, but some things just don't leave you. My DD3 will always be horrifically scarred because of that bastard disease, I will always have in the back of my mind what DH and so called best friend/neighbour did, and simply cannot move sometimes...my joints are agony and sometimes, I cannot even raise my arms above my head to get dressed.

So, today, I'm a fatty fatty boom boom. I no longer smoke (after 25 years hardcore nicotine chasing), but am still on the happy pills. While I'm trying to keep my head above water happy-wise, I simply don't have the willpower to lose weight right now.

All of the above is how this size zero sexy chick (I always though I was an ugly old boot though) who was small and bendy enough to be a magician's assistant for a while, turned into a fat, hideous beast who, some days, just can't move.

Clearly food intake is the deciding factor. However there are complex psychological and physical factors that are only starting to be understood that render some unable to control their food intake.

If it were really as simple as eating less and moving more there would be no obesity.

No woman is fat and happy with it, happy in general maybe, but not happy with the weight.

Yes, the internet has certainly not helped, I spend far too many hours sitting at my screen when I could be moving around.

I also started suffering from really bad panic attacks and anxiety after my Dad died when I was 24, and spent a few years taking beta-blockers which contributed to slowing my metabolism down as well as my heart beat.

This also made me think that a racing heartbeat was going to kill me, so I limited the exercise I did, because I became convince I would drop dead

Don't buy

Scales
Junk food
Clothes in a bigger size

You will not gain weight. Nobody likes to walk around naked

Well it works for me

squeakytoy to betablockers make it harder to lose weight? - I am on these high blood pressure and have been for years? (I am overweight btw lol)

As for exercise, I always thought that being active, walking everywhere was a key thing in staying slim. Then I broke my leg and sat on my ass for two months. Apart from losing muscle, nothing changed, although I did feel depressed.

Btw I'm not a smuggie size 8 either, I won't be even when I'm dead and skeletalised, my hip bones are at least a 12 with no flesh on...

Exercise does little to alter your weight. It really does take a lot of exercise to work off a few calories. I am just as active at size 16 as i was at size 10. It's mainly down to what you eat. I put on a lot of weight comfort eating during an extremely stressful time of my life. Now I can't lose it. I eat healthiliy but that doesn't do it either. You need to consume less calories than you need to lose weight. If you do that you feel hungry. It's harder than people think.

Fernie, yep, I didnt realise it myself for quite a while, but they do slow you down, they decrease your metabolism, so your body doesnt burn the fat as it normally would.

I have spent a lot of time reading up on (and putting into practice) nutrition and exercise recently. Walking is ok, but unless you are putting effort into it, and raising your heartrate, getting slightly out of breath, then it wont really be very effective in weight loss, you have to do cardio which gets your heart beating faster.

I had slightly high blood pressure for a couple of years and when I went back to the GP after 3 weeks of exercising and my diet, my BP was absolutely normal again.

Being overweight is a vicious circle as it will make your blood pressure higher too..

I have weight issues and tried to address myself for ages but always slipped back,so I joined weight watchers and other than one blip i stick to it.

its good having a structure. the basic formula for being overweight is the output does not match the imput. it all started in my early teens I had knee problems and so bored + no excercise, all a downward spiral from there, parents didnt care what they put in front of me and then blamed me for putting on weight, when I had my own son I will not let him be the target of bullying like I was and I will not be the parents mine were.

If you are 20 stone plus address it asap after that point the more weight you put on your fat cells double for the sake of it, making it much harder to change.

I'm overweight for a number of reasons, starting with pregnancy. I was always a normal healthy weight up until then, but somehow put on 5 stone, most of it in the first few months.

So had emergency C section, PND but was getting through that and managed to lose 2 stone.

Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Mastectomy, less exercise, chemo & steroids, another stone back on.

Got through all of that, and managed to lose the stone again only to find the cancer's back, lungs and liver this time. Back on chemo, weight gain and unable to do much excerise. The weight is creeping on again.

I used to feel shit about being overweight, now it's totally irrelevant.

The programme that inspired me to get fitter was Biggest Loser. I got the DVD, the Wii Game, and the book.

I suppose like giving up smoking, everyone has to find the way which gets through to them, and works for them.

I had tried WW and Slimming World in the past, and failed, the diets didnt interest me, and other diets were too difficult to maintain, especially with cooking for a husband and stepkids too... no time or money to faff about doing my own separate meals.

Biggest Loser is my saviour. Real people who get real results through hard work I suppose, and the diet advice that they give is logical to me. Its about changing your lifestyle forever I suppose. Swapping bad carbs like white bread for wholemeal, and keeping it that way.

We are eating healthy in this house now, and even my husband has lost his bit of middle aged spread without even knowing he had been put on my diet! .

Another of my failings was not drinking enough (water that is, too much alcohol was never a problem!! lol... )... so now I force myself to make sure I drink at least 2 litres a day... my skin has honestly never looked better.

Wubblybubbly

You're right, there are much more important things is life than thinking about weight. Really hope for a full recovery for you.