To be irritated by people who say they can't lose weight?

[BeerSnake]

umm just eat less and get out more. Or am I being unreasonable?

The price of food has gone up. Some people are on low incomes, so they eat carbohydrate rich food to fill them up. You don't know the personal circumstances of most people. Me, I work an eighteen hour day every day, including high days and holidays. It means that I don't always get the chance to eat at regular times. I also cook four, sometimes five different meals a day. I put on weight easily. Okay, I've lost four stone, but it's taken me a year, and some weeks I've put on a couple of pounds. I'm not making excuses to you for my behaviour, it's not your sodding business. But I am pointing out that there are other reasons than eating less and going to the gym, that would be the gym I can't get to in the six hours in which I try to catch some sleep.

Totally unreasonable. Ugh. Not nice at all. So many reasons people are overweight and struggle to lose it, so little understanding.

See, I'd rather be fat than nasty.

I can sort of see where the OP is coming from. When I'm enjoying a biscuit or five at work some of my colleagues will often make a comment like "I wish I could eat what I like". Conveniently ignoring the fact that I bike 13 miles a day, swim four times a week and the only exercise they do is walking from the car to their desk.

To the OP I would say that life isn't that simple. Like many people I have noticed my metabolism slowing down with age and, despite the fact that I do a lot of endurance sport that I didn't do ten or fifteen years ago, I would have to eat a lot less than I did at that age to be the same weight.

Op, I think you got the flaming you were after.

Well done you.

i can't lose weight

I don't think it's good to get too hung up on exercise, especially if you don't have time to do it. Exercise is only part of the equation and it's perfectly possible to lose weight without it.

Particular metabolic disorders such as PCOS respond to specific dietary regimes (eg Low GI works for PCOS).

And "eating healthily" isn't necessarily the same as "eating less energy in the form of food than I expend during the day", which is the only way you are going to lose weight.

I agree that there are lots of complicated reasons why people don't lose weight. But GENERALLY SPEAKING if you eat less than you need on a daily basis then you will lose.

Still not sure why the OP is so upset about it tho........

Oh and I'm the one who runs 15 miles a week. I also said I don't eat much, and I didn't mention that whenever the scales creep up I have a couple of days of Dukan diet. Maybe it's easier for me than a lot of people, I don't know, I was just saying that I don't sit on my arse and eat what I want and expect to be thin.

In an article in the Guardian this week, a researcher and nutrition coach called Kristin Dixon-Scott is quoted as saying that "fat is a metabolically active organ. It's not just storage, it actually secretes hormones that affect your energy levels". So in short "even if you don't really feel much pain, you just feel like crap."

This certainly jibes with how I feel - I am very overweight - nearly twice my ideal weight - and have struggled with my weight since my teenage years. I suspect part of the reason I have put on weight is because I was bullied as a teenager - strangely being overweight seems to make me invisible, and maybe that was subconsciously what I wanted.

Also, when you are carrying around a lot of excess weight, that is bloody knackering, as well as putting a lot of strain on your joints and back - and that makes exercise very difficult. It is easy to say, just take a 15-20 minute walk each day, but if I walk much past the end of our road, I get back ache. In the late spring, a friend and I did a 4 mile walk with our dogs (2 miles out, a rest at a cafe, and 2 miles back) and I could barely walk upstairs by the time I got home - and the next few days were agony.

Plus I have been struggling with depression since the bullying, though it was only diagnosed after I had the dses - and even then it was initally thought to be PND - it's only when it didn't go away that we looked deeper and a psychotherapist told me that it is not normal to be suicidal at 14 (as I was). Strange as it may sound, that was news to me.

I suffer from catastrophically low self esteem, and can honestly say that I don't like myself very much - and it is not easy to look after yourself if you don't like yourself - you are much less motivated to care for something you don't like. I have sometimes considered that I may be (subconsciously) committing suicide very slowly by not caring for my weight - who knows.

But the one thing I am not is stupid. I don't need the OP to tell me how to lose weight - but if they walked a mile in my shoes, in my skin, in my mind and emotions, they would not tell me glibly that it was so easy.

It's a bad cycle of insulin resistance being linked to serotonin etc and not good at all - my friend had PCOS and depression and researched it all in depth and it's all so interlinked. I don't think we are even close to fully understanding the link between being overweight and depression/ metabolic disorders in general.

SLM I'm sure you are beautiful. I'm not being nasty - you are.

Dont think it was aimed at you NR...

If people move to a healthy diet of 3 balanced meals with no junk food, every day and take some exercise and get some sunshine then their seratonin levels will rise and they will feel happier which is more important than losing weight although they will probably lose it too. However it is a very complex subject.

The bottom line as most of us know is virtually no one left Belsen fat so most of the excuses about low metabolism, big bones etc are not the real issue. If you eat fewer calories than you need you lose weight.

In something amazing like 7 days a recent experiment found diabetes sufferers got their blood sugars much better when they went on to something very very low like 800 calories of very good food a day. I'm not suggesting people cut down to that level but it was a fascinating experiment.

I certanily agree that you don't need any time for exercise to lose weight. I'm not even sure you really need a lot of money. If you have a tin of tuna or other tinned fish for lunch and make up a load of brown rice and eat it heated up in smallish quantities with meals and peel a few carrots you've got a pretty healthy meal for not that much money.

The bottom line as most of us know is virtually no one left Belsen fat

Ermm, no need really, is there?

northernruth it wasn't directed at you, but rather at the OP.

So with my dislocated hip I was playing netball 3 or 4 times a week. Walking thirty - forty miles a week and swimming twice a week. I also saw a dietitian regularly who was checking food diaries etc. I don't like sweets, crisps or chocolate my only downside is an occasional slice of cheese yet I am still overweight. I have had to cut back my exercise as my hips have flared up too badly but please op tell me the solution save the nhs and myself loads of money as no more needing to see a dietitian etc and no more subcriptions to netball team. How quickly can I loose a stone???????????

It's a well known fact now that just because you are slim looking doesn't mean you are healthy, you can look slim from the outside but have a lot of hidden fat around your organs without knowing it so therefore are at just as much risk as a overweight person. So even thin people shouldn't be complacent.

Quote from wikipedia about belsen for you xenia
Why not let's make a remark about that?!?!?!?!

? ...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

"This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.[5]"

After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly a section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in Thessaloniki against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favor" granted by the Germans.

You seem to feel very frustrated with people who are overweight. I think saying 'can't' is a bit strong - is it that word that annoys you? But this can mean impossible or lacking ability. Many people may feel they lack the ability to lose weight for a number of reasons.

As someone who has always been overweight (size 18 now but used to be a 24), I would never say I 'can't' lose weight because it is my responsibility what I eat, just as I would never blame my parents for hiding food as a teenager, humiliating me and making me feel like an unloved freak. They didn't know how to help me - they didn't understand me. But I am old enough now, and educated, and yet I still turn to food for comfort, I am greedy, and I lack willpower. And it is so hard to fathom why. Millions of people around the world have psychological issues related to eating - especially women. It is really not as simple as calorie counting. I can't tell you why; I'm not a psychiatrist.

However, just as I don't blame others for my weight, I would hope people would not judge me, and accept that people battle with different demons - drink, drugs, aggression.

Im not very overweight but am heavier than i ought to be. I run nearly every day and eat healthily. Im not saying I dont have treats but I am the most active person I know and yet I am the heaviest i've ever been! I think it is very hard to maintain a healthy weight AND still enjoy your food. I didn't even lose weight when marathon training, unfair!!!!