Anyone feel like ranting and raving about things you have to deal with being 300+? I had to remake this thread into something because accidentally made a duplicate thread - so this is the best I could come up with
I can't put too much yet because I'm at work.. but here's an issue I've been dealing with lately:
What do you guys think about others involving themselves in your weightloss?
I realized recently that all my life no one has ever really "interferred" into the matter of me gaining weight. I've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger - without anyone stopping me and without realizing it myself. I have many healthy people in my life - so why didn't they interject?
To me I almost consider it similar to anorexia or perhaps even an alcohol issue - wouldn't you confront someone you love about those issues if they had a problem?
It seems that its really a "taboo" issue though I think if the world got more involved with helping others that a lot horrible health issues could be prevented.
Thats just my little rant of the day.
Last edited by cdtobehealthy; 11-09-2004 at 02:14 PM.
Reason: duplicate thread!
CD .... I understand what you are saying. BUT ... I do NOT want anyone telling me that I am fat and need to lose weight. I already know it. I have been told for as long as I can remember. Although you can't tell by looking... I have spent my entire life trying to lose weight.
Like I said.. I understand what you are saying. And maybe it is even right.
I often want to say something to loved ones myself. I want it for their happiness and their health. BUT ... I never felt justified ... "the pot calling the kettle black".
I know intervention has saved a lot of people. Intervention forces a person sobber through being put in secured, dry locations. BUT the bottom line always comes down to us doing it because it is OUR CHOICE ... not theirs.
I also know that most people who had intervention ... they did not like it at the time.
They probably felt betrayed, judged, hurt, MAD.
But it often saved their lives.
Gee ... this question is like "which came first.. the chicken or the egg"
This is a very sensitive topic to me. A "Do I or don't I" believe kind of thing.
I guess I am VERY sensitive about my weight. I think our past experiences make a difference how we react. I have to admit... I don't know if it would have made a "positive" difference. I just know... I am not able to deal with it myself.
Yea, I definitely agree that its probably a "how you grew up" type of thing. I don't really mean someone telling us now that we need to lose weight - but when you're still young and when you're not doing anything about it. The way I see it is that I grew up my entire life with the wrong eating habits - while having a sister with great eating habits and exercise - and she never really said anything to me. I dont even mean just "hey you need to lose weight" but even a nudge or just saying "hey come work out with me, come walk with me, try this delicious healthy food!" I mean no matter what the issue is - there is a "right" way to say something without causing hurt and a bad way to say something causing hurt.
A big part of me thinks that the fact that I was never really made fun of for my weight or judged for it - made it just that harder to recognize I had a problem. I had tons of friends, I had a boyfriend.. I thought I was happy - and when "bad" things happened regarding my weight I'd just push them away and avoid them (like small chairs, etc) because there were so few of those bad things.
It really is an odd issue to think about.
Another one of my pet peeves about weight issue - and it is closely related --- is when people assume that all "fat" people are the same. Often friends/enemies alike will assume what I eat! A lot of people don't believe that such a "huge" person could actually hardly ever eat meat or sweets! I don't like chocolate, I don't really like candy, I don't like most if not all meats (fried chicken is my weakness)... I just have a weakness for those yummy italian carbs!
My room mate will do it - he'll say "We should eat healthier" and I look at my shelf in the fridge - lettuce, veggies, fruits, whole wheat bread, spinach, etc -- and I look at his - cheese sticks, waffles, poptarts, hotdogs, american processed cheese, hershey's chocolate syrup - and I think "Who should eat healthier?!"
Is it so hard to believe that an obese person could eat healthy - and just not work out enough to lose the weight from the past?
One of the very few times I was made fun of in the past (Junior High) a boy said "D*mn! She's probably going to go home and eat 3 turkeys!" Not only do I assume that is humanly impossible, but I didn't even eat meat at the time! It just seems so stupid.
Ah, I love ranting Come on everyone! Rant about it all here ;p
Okay, cd, I'll rant, but mine is different. I *did* have plenty of "intervention" when I was young. Looking back at pictures now, it's hard for me to believe I was only a little chubby--I had a sense of myself from so early on as a freak.
My mother--who was VERY well-meaning, and is an RN and understands the risks--started taking me to a nutritionist when I was 7. I lost some weight, we stopped going to the nutritionist, I gained the weight back. I wasn't sneaking food then, and my parents weren't overweight, and we didn't have a lot of sweets in the house. I'll tell you the truth, I have no idea why I was overweight then. I never drank regular pop, I never had sugar on my cereal, I never ate "snacks." Never had mayo on a sandwich. There were more interventions: a bariatric center where I went daily for vitamin B shots; diets on my own; exercise; but I was always more or less overweight, and I always knew that both my parents wanted me to lose weight, and that everyone I knew at school laughed at me either to my face or behind my back. It didn't help things.
Around adolescence it got worse emotionally, and by high school I had started, perversely, sneaking sweets. I'd go for long walks--3 or 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon--partly for the exercise, mostly because I enjoyed it--and I'd stop at a corner store and buy a forbidden snickers bar and eat it while I walked. Something in me then embraced doing what I knew everyone disapproved of--in some ways, even myself. And that was when I really started gaining weight.
In my early 20s, I had some medical problems and was put on steroids, which enhanced my appetite something ridiculous, and I gained 100 pounds. By that time, the disapproval of everyone I knew made me wish I were dead--not that anyone was nasty, though strangers were. But knowing that my parents had wanted me to lose weight before, when I was so much smaller, I could only imagine how disappointed they were in me. But I couldn't stop at that point.
Okay, so that turned into more of a biography than I intended, but my point was supposed to be, I'm not sure early "intervention" is useful. I struggled until I was in my early 30s to understand that my father did love me. And he did. But because I knew he was disappointed in my appearance, for years I believed, deep down, that he couldn't. I'm glad that I figured out that he did before he died suddenly at the young age of 60. But boy I wish we could turn back time and someone could have talked to all of us, sensibly, about what the nutritionists and the vitamin B shots and everything else was going to do to my relationship with them.
Maybe this is something that's just different depending on your life situation, the reason for your weight gain, etc. It became an issue in my marriage, too; I'd be doing fine and then my husband would start to monitor, to ask whether I really wanted to eat that. And then as soon as he was gone, just to prove I could do whatever I wanted to, I'd binge on something. I realize how self-destructive that is, but I also know that I've done best at maintaining or losing when I do it on my own motivation.
My rant/rave/beef is with people who assume that because you are overweight, you are therefore not active, don't exercise and must spend most of your free time in front of the t.v. eating junk food. Grrrrrrrrrr... Despite being 300+, my cholesterol level is actually below normal, my bp is normal, my blood sugar levels are normal and I exercise regularly. I actually had some ignoramus make a comment to me at a seminar once (yes, she was a skinny-mini) something along the lines of, "Are you familiar with the signs and symptoms of diabetes? You should make sure you are." She was a know-it-all from another school who was sitting at the table with me and my 2 co-workers. They were about to bite her head off when I simply said, "I am familiar with them and I don't have any of them. Are you familiar with the signs and symptoms of terminal stupidity and tactlessness? You should make sure you are." She turned beet red and moved to another table.
Oh Chris, I know exactly what you mean ... I have had people come up to me in a supermarket and say "Do you know you are overweight? I have been on [put name of latest fad diet here] and I've lost weight - you can too!". One woman in the line at the checkout just went on and on and on and I just bit my tongue and told myself she was ignorant and just wanted to help. I actually had a woman from up the street from me, come to my door, tell me she was selling Herbalife, and then say "and I know you are the person in my street that needs to lose the most weight, so you have to go on this". Needless to say, I didn't .. but I did get harrassed by her and her supervisor (phonecalls and visits) even after I told them I wasn't interested.
Doctors can be as bad. My cholesterol and bp and everything else is fine, yet when I went to a doctor once, and asked him to refer me to a dietician, and asked what the best sort of exercise would be for me (as I have disabilities caused by a car accident) he actually said the best diet for me would be just to halve everything I ate, and the only exercise I needed was to put both hands on the side of the table and push backward. What a jerk!
At the time I had a very low metabolism (diagnosed after extensive tests by a sympathetic doctor) and was eating around 800 cals a day and staying the same weight. People are very judging, and if there is one redeeming aspect to all this, it's that since we have been there, done that - we can be more tolerant of others because we know it's not always how it looks on the surface!
Oh jeeze you two, those stories are horrible! I can't believe people can be like that. They fit right in with my story about people thinking you eat any thing and everything in sight. My main weakness was working out - I never really did it.. but I did usually eat healthy (just more than I should've eaten probably). And I loved playing sports! No one ever expects that either.
Another thing is when guys always think that you will "like" them just because "fat girls are desperate" and they'll make comments about it! This always happened to me in high school, guys talking about how they would never "do me" or whatever.. and its just like ".... why would I want you?"
People can be so stupid about things. I've had people ask me if I want a food (strangers) and I'll say no - and they'll say "oh Come on.. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!" and they'll argue with me! They'll just keep saying that they "can tell" that I want that kind of food, etc.
CD this reminds me of a Christmas I had a few years ago ...
I was invited to a Boxing Day (not sure if you have it there, but its the day after Christmas) lunch at a neighbour's house. She had lost her daughter a few years before, and had taken me under her wing (which turned out to not be a good thing!).
They had a smorgasbord type of lunch, with everything laid out on dishes/platters. There was so much food! I put what I wanted on my plate, and then went to sit down. She turned around and said "oh come on, take some more, you don't have to hold back for us!" As I had already taken probably more than I would normally eat, I said "oh no, I'm fine" and smiled.
It would have been ok if she had left it there, but she actually got a fork and started shovelling things onto my plate, all the while saying "I know you can't be fat without eating lots more, we are like family, you don't have to hold back in front of us - eat as much as you do normally!"
I was stunned ... and it was so awkward, because I knew she wasn't being b*tchy, she was just trying to make me feel at home. So when I got a chance, I explained to her that I didn't eat a great deal of food - yes I made bad choices about the types of food I ate, sometimes - and that it was easy to assume that all I did was sit around and eat all day, but it wasn't that way.
She seemed to understand, but things changed after that, and when I moved about 6 months later, she didn't bother to keep in touch.
For me, I think part of the recovery from my old patterns of eating/living has been forgiving the people that have done these sorts of things, so I can look back on it without pain/hurt, and realise those people were just ignorant.
It's like my family situation too - my mother was always overweight, and was desperately scared of me becoming overweight too (which I wasn't) - and so she dragged me from one fad diet to the next while I was a teenager, wrecking my metabolism in the process! The thing is that I know that she was only trying to do what was best for me, so I can't blame her for my weight gain. In some ways I think that people like us, that are tackling a big issue in our lives, have an advantage over those people who have just cruised through life - because we have to actively work on our attitudes as well as our bodies!
Ok, I've talked enough! (you did ask for a rant!)
My beef is right along the same lines as you guys....The fact that most believe that We don't know anything.
I do know basic Bio! I do know what is healthy and what is not. In fact, I know alot more than them most times! Just because I am obese, does not mean I am stupid.
Our brother in law who is a personal trainer, has been asking my husband questions about me...(he does mean well but,) Since I do not wish at this time to go to him, He was saying to my DH things like, she needs to get in a weight training program, she would lose weight quicker! Well, I do know that! I know that muscle burns more, I am aware that my resting Metab would be better!
Look, I read Prevention, I have read and researched alot over the years. We understand a lot more than most people give us credit for.
My issues for the most part have very little to do with the chemistry of it all, It's the emotional stuff that screws with me.
I wonder if they would like me to quiz them on if they are aware of the chemicals and science of their cigarettes? Hey, I quit smoking 15 years ago, gee, if I can, why can't they? They are A types, workaholics, have perfectly clean, beautiful homes......that makes them prime canidates for health issues too, even with them being thin. I am mostly a relaxed person, my home is dusty and cluttered, but basically clean, I enjoy my down time and my pets.
I just wanted to ad a little rant here too - and for me this happens a lot!
I hate it when people just assume that I am hungry all of the time. I can eat a normal meal just like anyone else - and if I am at other family, or friends houses, they assume that I will still be hungry and want more food.
Usually they will say that they are "full" and "couldn't eat another bite". But they will try to push anything left over on me, as if I am a garbage can, ready to eat whatever is pushed in front of me. If they are full - chances are that I am full too.
But because I am a bigger girl, they must think that I have a bigger appetite.
My mom does that! I mean I know it has nothing to do with my weight, but she has this "motherly" habit of thinking that I'm not eating enough ever.. usually I am avoiding eatinb ecause I get nervous around people but I know my needs and I'll eat a bit But its so annoying because she keeps saying it infront of everyone and I keep having to refuse and it makes me think that everyone will think I'm doing it just because im embarassed (which isn't always true).
Ranting and Raving...What's YOUR beef???
Assume...makes an a** out of u and me
Despite being 300+, my cholesterol level is actually below normal, my bp is normal, my blood sugar levels are normal and I exercise regularly. I actually had some ignoramus make a comment to me at a seminar once (yes, she was a skinny-mini) something along the lines of, "Are you familiar with the signs and symptoms of diabetes? You should make sure you are." She was a know-it-all from another school who was sitting at the table with me and my 2 co-workers. They were about to bite her head off when I simply said, "I am familiar with them and I don't have any of them. Are you familiar with the signs and symptoms of terminal stupidity and tactlessness? You should make sure you are." She turned beet red and moved to another table. 
