How do people become obese?

[Truetoself]

Before someone is obese, they are overweight. Their clothes sizes also change. Why do they wait until they are obese to try and lose weight? Do the majority of obese people have mental health issues?weigh

I’m under 5 foot tall. I am only able to eat 1000-1100 calories every day without putting on weight.

OBVIOUSLY that was impossible so for 30 years I fought my body, tried every diet and exercise going. I had SO MUCH WILLPOWER that it took me 30 years to put on 8 stone.

Can you do the maths on that?

Thats an average of 1200 calories a day. I fought that hard that 2 digestives extra on top of my allowance caused me to put on weight. I was hungry every day for 30 years. Ravenous all the time.

Now I can eat 1000 calories a day and not be hungry (Mounjaro). It takes a 10mg maintenance dose for me not to ‘overeat’ and put on weight. This is just how I’m built.

No one can eat 1000 calories a day and not be hungry, it is not a moral failing. It’s just fucking biology.

Eat too much and exercise too little for years. A sedentary lifestyle and love of fattening foods, encouraged by the food industry. Upbringing in a household where (crap) food is love. Depression, loneliness comfort eating.

Being height challenged is a special kind of hell.

I don’t think it’s as simple as going up sizes knowingly. It’s buying stretchy items to start that span a few sizes and then letting them stretch to their limit before buying the next size or two up. It’s a process of denial almost? I know from myself with maternity leggings (and I put weight on all over - a lot) I was wearing them at 11.5 stone at the end of pregnancy as they were super stretchy then a year later still wearing them at 9.5 stone and they didn’t look too big they just had a lot of give in them so I can see how easy it could be. Also day today life is hard and busy people grab convenience foods and snacks and it’s easy to lose track.

My experience:

Shit! I can’t get over 12 stone,
must reign it in - absolutely. cannot.

ill get these size 14 trousers, they’ve got some give in them

then I’ll start a diet after Christmas cos I’ve got stuff to do.

just the one won’t kill me

I’ll just get size 16 these seem cut a bit small
I’ll start next week
shit I don’t want to go to the gym looking like this need to get a bit off with diet first

I know I’ll do keto, I love fry ups!
oooh can’t live without my toast.
But I can drink gin, right!
size 18 is still ok isn’t it?

I really need to lose some before the summer
I’ll start next week, I’ve got bbq and party this weekend
the weathers crap I’ll go to the gym

repeat for a few cycles and you’ll get there OP

it’s a slow shift in
body image
control
energy

I have a story for you.
a child was raped. She started eating for comfort, when she felt like she was going to burst, that feeling was stronger than the burning pain she felt. She got bigger and fat felt safe. If she was ugly, she would be safe. She got bigger and started to get bullied, she ate because ferling that fullness numbed the other more painful pain.

In the end, all that mattered was not feeling that burning hole. Fatter and fatter, more and more bullied, more pain, more secrets, more food, fatter and fatter... she tried to kill herself. She started seeing and hearing things. She got put in a psychiatric hospital and made to take anti psychotics.
She went through bouts of bulimia. Making herself sick until tiny blood vessels in her face burst. She wore thick make up to hide it.

She met a man. He tried it on with one of her friends. She married him anyway because married = wanted. He definitely cheated on her in the first years of their marriage but she could never prove it.

she got pregnant, baby nearly died during delivery, she had a pph. She ended up with post nstal psychosis. Thought the baby had died and been replaced by a demon. She wasnt ok for years.

They had children back to back and she got fatter and fatter. He would turn off his phone and stay out all night and she would eat cos it numbed the pain. She had toddlers, nowhere to go and needed to believe married = wanted and wanted= worth something.

She couldnt make herself sick any more no matter what she put down her throat nothing worked so she got fatter and fatter.

The children were diagnosed with disabilities. All the focus was on helping them.

She stopped caring where her husband was or what he might be doing. Funnily enough things got better. Her husband stopped staying out all night and their relationship is actually really good. They are firm friends. They haven't been intimate in 25 years, but they are settled.

Now she's over 30 stone and hasn't left her house in years. She feels emotionally safe living in her bedroom but she is too fat to wipe her own arse and she has heart failure and other things.

Her husband doesnt know this but she wants to be dead. The Dr's know she doesnt want any treatment or to be resuscitated and she is just waiting for it to finally be over.

Because every time they loose weight they stop the diet and their body makeup has changed and tries to get them back to their old higher weight. Plus a margin more. So for every obese person you’re probably looking at someone who has lost their entire body weight at least once. And honestly that’s a lot.

For every faux naive post here about weight loss I wish you a dose of obesity. So you could get an inkling of the self hatred, disgust, horrible comments and repugnance from others. It’d bring you down a peg or 6.

It's a whole host of issues and reasons, people aren't monolithic - including the fat ones.

For me, I've always been fat. I've always had an emotional relationship with food.
I come from a low income family where treats were sweets. We couldn't afford trips, holidays, many toys. So any celebration, achievement, occasion was marked with food. The "bad" kind.

I was also never pushed to exercise. It wasn't something my parents did so it wasn't something I was expected or particularly offered to do. And I carried this into adulthood. My relationship with exercise has been in short, sporadic bursts.

I'm genetically predisposed to being a fatty as my entire family is obese with very few exceptions and I have PCOS. I also suffer with bouts of depression in which I fall into binge eating cycles.

I've gotten my weight down many times, but I've always been overweight and I've spent the majority of my adult life in the obese category. I'm now in my mid 30s and still struggling to solve this issue.

I'm obese because I simply eat too much and move too little. But the reasons for that are more complex.

A variety of factors make people obese.
Diet. Drink. Social factors. Guidance.
Manufacturers make food that is full of fat and sugar. Ready meals in particular. Food is on the television from cookery shows to adverts for it. Supermarkets are vast. You cannot escape from ‘food’. And supermarkets have designed all sorts of extras. Garlic bread, naan bread ( and rice ), breaded mushrooms, onion rings you name it. Not just the meal. Extras nowadays.
Drink. Manufacturers make drink full of sugar. And we drink far more wine that we ever used to. Liquid cake.
Social. Many years ago the family ate what they were given. Mum decided what was for tea. Children didn’t. Nor did Dad. Now everyone wants to decide. But their knowledge of what a balanced diet is may not be quite so informed. It probably makes things more expensive too.
Guidance. Every so often someone brings out a report. Which announces with great authority that this or that is not good for you. One minute it was fat. Now fat is not so evil and it is carbs. Then it is only certain types of carbs. If you ask ten people what a healthy diet consists of you will get about seven different answers. Confusing for many. My sister lives in a different part of the country. We both have diabetes. Her diabetes dietary advice is way different from mine.

Modern life, advertising, social norms, makes people more likely to be obese. We drive everywhere too. People don’t walk so much.

For me hypothyroidism, steroids and antipsychotics all started within a very short period of time. I was always skinny and I think it takes your brain a while to catch up to what it's seeing in the mirror. It's like I didn't see it until I was actually quite fat. The reality is i actually eat less now then I did when I was skinny yet I'm fatter. I do have to basically starve myself to lose weight now. As before I could eat whatever I wanted and just didn't gain weight

We don’t wait.

We spend our whole lives dieting and failing.

Creeping fat… eating feelings…. not caring… not monitoring
and then once you’re there it can feel like a mountain too high to climb back from

Little bit by little bit. (Im not obese) but I started a new job and it altered my meal times and I got into a snack at 11am habit as it was ages til lunch. It was shortbread - id have 2 pieces of shortbread. Then a year later I had put on a tiny bit of weight, then the year after a tiny bit more and about 6 years into the job I was noticeably fatter.

But its much easier to get used to tiny gains and adjust. I can wear the same clothes across a 4kilo range so 2kilo didnt need any adjustment. Then you are used to that weight. Now you are only 2kilo more than your new normal..

I’ve never been overweight in my life and used to wonder the same thing as OP.

im now fully experiencing perimenopause and on a combination of HRT and an antidepressant and piling the weight on.

its not nice to have to make a choice whether to continue with the medication that’s helping vs putting on weight

Fucking steroids.

Oh yes. Medicine. Appallingly. Many medicines ‘ may gain weight’. In fact for me, a change of medication made me put on two stone. And triggered my diabetes. Well done that Doctor ! It may have helped one problem by boy it gave me others. And can I shift the two stone. Nope.

OMG OP have you contacted Nobel? I think that this year’s medicine prize has your name all over it!

The thing is unless it’s medication then it’s eating too much. Sometimes when people say look at my diet, I don’t understand why I’m overweight I am surprised because I can guarantee it’s loaded with carbs at every meal - granola, bread, white rice etc. It’s very easy to crank up the calories with these food items and they affect insulin. I think people who have done jabs can see just how they were overweight, they turn your appetite back to only wanting normal portions.

People are obese because they eat too many calories/large portions and don’t adjust down when things like menopause hit.

If you genuinely want to know try listening to these very short episodes. #4 is particularly relevant.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m002r3kd?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Prof Giles Yeo sees obesity as a disease which needs treating. Hardly anyone who is obese doesn't know how to change. They might however lack the ability to change.

I ate very little as a child. My mum would do anything to bribe me to eat, thus overriding any sense of feeling full I may have had. As an adult I don't have full feelings. I can eat a massive meal and still have room for chocolate after.

For me the life changer is WLI. I no longer have food noise and I often feel full. In fact I have discovered that I am now experiencing food as my slim friends do.

I like fatty food.

And mostly of the worst kinds of food. I also have zero willpower.
I also HTH

I was obese when I was 11, until last year I had never been anything below obese since that point and I’m 42 now. I am now for the first time ever as an adult experiencing ‘healthy’ weight and being a normal size, it feels anything but normal, I’ve been wearing size 10/12 for about 8 months and I still pick clothes up in the shop and think they wouldn’t fit a toddler let alone me. Our perception of our bodies and how we see ourselves doesn’t always match up to reality and what others see.

🤣🤣

You ‘make a point’ of losing the weight, and you acknowledge it’s not easy.

I’m going to take a guess that each time Youve done that, there are several things that have had to come together to make that not easy thing doable. Rather than not sustainable.

At which point it’s not rocket science to work out that if one of those things isn’t there for someone else. That weight loss doesn’t happen.

I'm reading the Clever Guts Diet by (the sadly departed) Michael Mosley . All about gut biome, v interesting stuff.

And actually it's NOT as simple as you need to move more, eat less.