to think you don't have to be a greedy binge eater to be fat?

[entropyglitter]

A teatime thought for the day....

I am around 20 kilos over weight, which is a lot and makes me look fat.

I just calculated that, averaged over my adult life, that equates to an extra 25 calories a day. Or 1.25% of the RDA.

I imagine my poor brain just can't quite tell the difference between making me feel full and satisfied at exactly the right number of calories to be neutral and never put on weight, and 1.25% more than that and hence ending up like this.....

I am overweight as I don't exercise enough, and eat too many carbohydrates. Over christmas, I ate too much cake. I enjoy gymming once I am there, but how do I find the motivation to go when it's warm inside and cold, dark and rainy outside (after work is the only time I could go = evening).

Greedy is a moral judgement. Overeating/underexercising is a fact.

I'd stick with the facts. Another fact is that with modern life it is far easier to be overweight than the right weight. I am working very hard to lose weight at the moment and it isn't easy. Step one was to change my job, not exactly an easy thing to do. Step two was to establish my business and recover from all the work stress, depression and sleeplessness. I've had for the last five years (at least). Again not exactly a piece of cake (if you pardon the pun). Step three was to embark on a diet and exercise programme, which I'm doing now. I tried for years to so step three without first doing step one and two, with very little success.

So anyone who says to lose weight you just need to be a bit less greedy and move more can fucking fuck off. Ten years ago I ran the London Marathon and weighed nine and a half stone. At Christmas I weighed 13st 2lbs. Clearly something happened in the interim that was about a bit more than greed. Life, basically. Now I weigh 12st 10lbs so it's coming off, for good I hope.

Just gonna wade on in here.

2 years ago was 16 stone, now 11 stone and need to lose another stone to be bang in the middle of the 'normal' BMI bracket (at the moment, at 5'7", I am at the upper limit of normal).

I've kept a log:
I went from 16 (size 20) > 15 stone in 1.5months
15 > 14 stone in 2 months
14 > 13 stone in 4 months
13 > 12 stone in 7 months
12 > 11 stone (size 12) in 9 months

Needless to say, taking over a year in getting to where I am from 13 stone has been a heartbreaking slog. I'm currently training hard for 6 hours a week, over 5 days a week (weekly running distance is 20+ miles over 3 running sessions, 2 gym sessions of strength training). I'm feeling mega-fit and hoping to go sub-2-hours in a half marathon in a few weeks' time. But I have a visible, stubborn layer of loose flab all over (esp. belly - exacerbated by loose skin from losing weight).

I use foodfocus.co.uk to log calorie intake (obsessively - no chance of under-estimating - I weigh everything), and always under-log exercise by 10% to allow for calorie burn innacuracies. According to their calculating system, even with 10% of days being 'treat days', I should be losing 1 pound a week.

I think I have managed to mess up my metabolism by restricting calorie intake for such a long time. As others have said - the body aims for equilibrium and if the status quo remains unchanged for long periods, your body just 'copes' with that calories in/out ratio.

I need to lose this last stone. I'm fed up of boring my friends and family by being on a diet all the time. I can't give up now, though. But I don't know what to do except carry on... getting fitter and fitter and fitter... hopefully one day I will be able to have a life outside of a sports bra again.

This ramble is basically just to show that the energy in vs. energy out equation can be invalidated by circumstances. BUT it absolutely works beautifully for about 6-8 months, I reckon.

Excellent post undertone

My mate's just lost 5 stone, in a little under a year, she has 1/2 a stone until her target and its the toughest by far.

I've lost 2 stone, I want to lose another two, but my weekly 3-4lb weightlosses aren't happening anymore, I'm restricting more, and lucky to get a 1lb loss consistently. But even 1lb a week will get me to target in 6 months.

Its not easy.

It is so depressing isn't it

No, but it bloody helps

aldiwhore 5 stone... in a YEAR!? HOW!?!? Did she chop off a leg?

Presumbly Lighter Life/Cambridge Diet/Exante - I know a few people who have lost large amounts quite quickly with it. I dropped 18lbs in a month with Exante after having DS.

RitaMorgan what's Exante? Never heard of it before.

Meal replacement shakes/soups/bars/porridge - it's the cheapest brand available and there isn't any counselling or meetings involved.

I have been skinny, and a bit fat, and there is quite a difference in the way I ate during both states.

When I was skinny I was out of the house all day, doing two jobs and busy. I never feel much like eating when I am busy, so would often skip lunch, maybe having a banana and a few cashew nuts on the go.

I still drank like a fish and ate chocolate at some point most days.
As a fattie, I was out of the house less, a bit bored, and never missed a meal!
I also ate snacks-healthy-ish ones, but just overall consumed too much.

There is a lot of evidence now to suggest that thin people do skip meals now and again, naturally, which regulates the amount of calories they take in.

This thing about it lowering your metabolism is arse-it would if you starved yourself for week it would, but a meal now and again is actually good for you.
We are hunters! We need to keep our bodies lean and sometimes a little bit hungry.
Now I am getting busier the weight is going. I have lost over a stone without thinking about it, just from being busier.

I have lost 3 stones 10 pounds in 7 1/2 months. I expect [hope] to lose around 5 stones when I come up to the year. No fad diets, meal replacements, slimming clubs or surgery either, just healthy food , portion control and lots of exercise. It is possible.

I agree with northernwreck as well. I used to be underweight , I was working as a staff nurse on a busy ward and I often couldn't take my meal breaks. I would be actually running around and sometimes wouldn't eat at all till I got in at night. When I became a SAHM I gradually put weight on as I had time to eat and plenty of food in the cupboard to snack on. It did go on over 15 years ago until I ended up well within the obese range [37.5 BMI].

It is worth remembering that we are omnivores so we can eat anything, including crap. Protein is good for keeping you full. Soup is good for keeping you full. Veg is good for filling you up. Fat and oil is good for carrying vits and minerals, and making things taste good. Sugar is good for a treat. I need to get a bit fitter and get on my bike again. Small changes....

Having thought about the OP's remarks again she's made a big miscalculation as the more you weight the more calories you need to sustain that bigger weight.

Put simply, you need to eat around an extra 250 calories a day+ to maintain being over 20kg overweight. Stop eating them and you'll get back to being not overweight in a couple of years.

An extra 25 calories a day would give rise to a weight gain of a couple of pounds as that would be the new equilibrium....

FWIW I lost almost 4 stone last year, and have kept it off. I have had to change my eating habits. I eat very little grains (if any at all) very little sugar and very little processed food - I do eat fruit, veg, meat, fish, dairy, eggs.

As usual, you are getting all the closet ed sufferers responding here and telling you that even a normal weight is 'fat' so you must be huge and eating mars bars for breakfast. It's nonsense. Perception is actually skewed the opposite way to their claims- I was watching Supersize vs. Superskinny recently and in fact the people who are severely underweight (to the point of having just as many dangerous health issues as the 'fatties') look like what is currently percieved as 'normal'. And people in the 'overweight' category have longer life expectancies (go read the BMJ if you don't believe it) than 'normal' people. Quite likely you are eating a bit more than normal, have some genetic propensity towards maintaining weight, and don't exercise enough (not excercising enough is a huge problem today, way more than eating too much as most people eat as healthily as people did in the 60s, we just all sit in cars and at desks too much!). You are obviously fairly overweight, but as you say, it can be a matter of small lifestyle issues rather than binging constantly- this is good as it makes it easier for you to change, e.g. walk for 10 minutes more each day and you could lose weight easily. WRT feeling hungry when you exercise more, this is normal but eating smaller meals more often might help by letting your stomach contract a bit. Don't, however, expect yourself to look like a 'normal' model type, though, because you won't and they are just as unhealthy as the morbidly obese. IMO the expectation that if you get to your healthy weight you will look conventionally attractive is a huge cause of weight loss failure as you don't and then you are disappointed and wonder what the point is. You know when you are healthy because you can do things like run upstairs without getting short of breath, jog for say at least 10 mins, play actively with your kids, etc. 'Looking fat' is no indication at all of general health.

people are fat for one simple reason.
They consume more calories than they burn up.
Simple.
Stop eating/drinking so mucha nd do more exercise.
Worked for me and I lost 15 lb in 55 days.

wibblebibble So its OK if she's overweight? There are plenty of healthy weight women that do not follow ridiculous diets in order to be thin. They do exist.

kunahero Have a bleedin' medal

goodasgold I think wibblebibble means that within the healthy BMI range people sometimes still feel they are 'fat' because their body shape isn't like the shared cultural ideal. Technically my weight is in the healthy BMI range, and I'm bang in the middle of the healthy body fat % (26.2%), but I don't LOOK like a slim person, IMO.

foreveronadiet makes a very good point. The same small number of calories a day would just take you to a slightly higher equilibrium, not fuel continued weight gain.

You must have been eating increasingly more and/or becoming less active, quite possibly at such a gradual rate of change that you haven't noticed, to have continued to gain weight.

This chimes with my experience. I have three equilibria that my body settles at, within a range of just over a stone. The top one is 'eat whatever I feel like and don't think about it' and while this is generally healthy food and not masses of extra stuff, as that is what I feel like, the number and variation of biscuits, crisps, glasses of wine, second helpings etc has little or no impact, as I'm already at a weight that this average consumption supports.

Whereas, at my lowest weight, 'eat healthily, carefully and do lots of exercise' (or 'eat a bit sporadically and feel very stressed' - not recommending that one) eating and drinking much extra anything over a short time, so pushing the average up a little bit, causes my body to suck it up and convert straight to fat, as if that equilibrium is not maintained, my body wants to jump to the next one (the middle 'sensible eating without paying too much attention and regular exercise').

Anyway, I think you need to move away from blame and moralising, whether 'greedy' or not, you are overweight, and focus on doing something about it.

I may be talking to myself here built was thinking about this last night and I think the difference between my 'medium' (slim, sensible eating) weight and my 'high' (eat whatever I want, look a bit solid, wobbly and double-chinned) weight is somewhere in the region of 200-400 calories a day. What happens is I gain 7-10 pounds (3 - 4.5k) and stick there. Adding weight beyond that point would take some serious effort.

I think your initial calculation is way out, 25 calories a day could not possibly have supported your weight gain and continuing to eat the same amount every day does not fuel continuous gain.

'but' not 'built'

I think that the behaviour which makes someone over weight/ under weight can be very subtle sometimes and small changes make big results.

As someone who was annorexic for years some of the behaviour has stayed with me and helps me to keep slim. I am a healthy weight and I am not promoting anorexia

I weigh myself regularly- then I can see the impact of my lifestyle.
I eat my lunch off a side plate- like my 2 year old dd- I have seconds if I want but I don't have a massive plate

I eat desserts with a t spoon- takes longer to eat- realise you're full

I try to exercise daily - it really helps my stress levels and metabolism

I eat a lot of fruit and veg with meals and eat that portion first

I am always on the go- cleaning etc. All burns calories

you don't have to be a greedy binge eater, but you are over eating. that simple. what do you plan to do about it? Try cutting out sugar, stimulants (caffeine, sweeteners, alcohol etc), and simple carbs (processed food) for just a couple of weeks and you will loose weight and feel much better mentally and physically.

If you have had a lot of these in your diet you will probably feel like crap for the 1st couple of days while your body adjust to not being abused.

Caffeine and sugar are the 2 big things to ditch if you want to ditch the weight.