Body Image and Issues after Weight Loss Including discussions about excess skin and reconstructive surgery

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Old 04-17-2013, 05:36 AM   #1  
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Default Do you believe obesity is not your fault?

I have been searching the Web for surgical information and a ran across this phrase on the bottom of the page regarding Obesity......and it stated..
Obesity is not your fault?

So my question is do you think Obesity is not your fault?
and if it not our fault....then who's fault is it? This just made me stop and scratch my head...about the different theories why were fat.
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Last edited by Roo2; 04-17-2013 at 06:40 AM.
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Old 04-17-2013, 07:47 AM   #2  
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I think obesity is a very complex problem that people try to apply simple answers to. There are a lot of factors that weigh in on what causes it and I think it very much varies from person to person. I would never dare to apply the same reasons to why I am fat to someone else.

I know some of it is genetics, my Mom's side of the family is filled with short robust ladies who are the most wonderful women I have ever met and they embrace their largeness in a way I never could. But in my immediate family I am by far the largest. My older brother is 6'4 and weighs about 220, my little brother is 6'2 and weighs about 200, my baby sister is 5'1 and weighs about 110. So I don't think I can blame my problem soley on genetics. They all have very active jobs, kids, and have never really had to worry about their weight. My Mom has struggled with hers over the years but she's kept off about 100 lbs for the past five so I think she finally found a diet that works for her.

Some of it is emotional for some people. I know I had a terrible habit of stress eating, but the weight gain was more of a consequence of deeper emotional problems I was dealing with. I don't think I was binge eating because I was sad about being fat because I really didn't realize how big I had gotten until about a month ago - denial can be an amazing tool when you aren't ready to deal with something.

It seems like us ladies trying to lose weight are dealing with a double edge sword. We are punished and denied by the "skinnies" of the world for not being the ideal but then we are also shamed by fat acceptance people who think we should just accept and love who we are and not try to change at all. And both sides try to use really "one size fits all" arguements to explain why we are the way we are.

I know for me I want to be thinner because I'm going to die at a young age if I don't do something given my family history. With rampant diabetes, heart disease, and cancer running on both sides of my family I need to take responsibility for myself and do what I can to prevent what I can. I have no desire to be really really skinny - I would just like to be able to fit in a booth at a restaurant without having an anxiety attack.
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:21 AM   #3  
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Well, that's complex.

Did I have control over it? Sure. Is it harder for some people than others? Yes, I believe it is. So... is it my fault that I am an endomorph who didn't figure out for DECADES that carbs (any carbs) induce cravings and make it difficult for me to control my eating? When, even now, the ADA and many doctors still spout that "whole grain carbs should be a part of your diet." Maybe for MANY people that is good and OK, but it's not for me and a lot of people. Grains and starches are just bad news for me.

Is it my fault that my metabolism is fairly slow (and I know this is true now with watching how much I eat, burn and lose (or don't lose)?

So... when I get stressed or just want to cut loose and such and my husband who wants to do the same, the results are different. 2 weeks of just eating to fill hunger and "hanging out" for me can mean a 10 pound TRUE weight gain. For my husband, 1 lb, maybe. AND, because I probably ate a lot of carbs, etc, I then have to get over the sluggish blahness I feel to get back to eating right and the desire to exercise.

When one person has to be constanly vigilant and others just have to be somewhat watchful, that's a HUGE difference. And I'm not making excuses. It's a reality.
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:31 AM   #4  
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In true Libra fashion, I would say yes and no.

Yes, I'm smart enough to know that as I was stuffing my face with several thousand calories a day that I would gain weight. My fault? Absolutely.

No, I can't do anything about being carb sensitive, coming from a family where both sides aren't just heavy, but flat out fat, etc., means that genetics played a role in this as well.

But, at the end of the day, now that I've figured out that I need to watch my carb intake, I will need to have a meal plan every day, I will need to always count my calories, I know that the ups and downs are basically "my fault."
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:47 AM   #5  
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Roo, I'm with you. I'm not going to blame anything else. What's the point? Its not going to make me feel any better.
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:57 AM   #6  
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I would say yes and no as well. I know I wasn't eating as well as I should have been during the course of my life. I also know that I wasn't exercising enough.

However, I am also aware that my family was at fault because they forced me to eat everything on my plate even when I was no longer hungry. From a very young age, they taught me to eat large meals multiple times a day and to eat a plateful of junk food every night. It was their responsibility to make sure I had healthy meals as a child (I'm only 21). Its also in my genetics to have a large body frame, which makes me appear larger as well.

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Old 04-17-2013, 10:13 AM   #7  
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I think it's a question that has both a yes and a no answer.

As for me, definitely yes, the majority of it was my fault. Nobody held me down in a chair and shoveled food in my face to make me gain all the weight I did when I was a child. I know I had bad eating habits. I could easily polish off a whole anything that was junky and tasted good, and I would. I know no one forced me to drive to all the fast food restaurants in town and eat whatever I ordered in my car cause I didn't want to wait til I got home to eat it. No one forced me to get 2-3-4 plates of food at a buffet. Those were all me, my choices, and no one made me do it. That wasn't anyone's fault but mine. As a child, maybe it was my parents' fault for not teaching me healthy eating habits early on, and maybe it was their fault for not stopping the little problem before it became a real problem. But once I grew up and had control over my own thoughts? I knew eating so much was bad for me, and I knew that if I stopped eating so much I would lose weight, but it was up to me to make the choice to stop those habits and no one else.

But as a general rule for all people? It's a yes or no question and depends on the person. Maybe you have a medical/mental issue that causes you to eat more than you would if you didn't have that issue, and no, that's not your fault. But if you're aware of this issue and you don't do anything to fix it, despite knowing you can and how to fix it, and you continue on with the behaviors anyway? I don't really see how that's not your fault unless you have some other issue that causes you to prevent the main one from being fixed, like financial problems.

There's all kinds of whys, hows, and what-fors for what caused us to be overweight/obese. The bottom line is we ate more than was necessary for our bodies and we didn't do anything to keep that from happening. Whether that was due to sheer ignorance, a medical issue, or apathy depends on the person, and it's really kind of an ambiguous thing to think about in terms of who's "fault" it is.

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Old 04-17-2013, 10:34 AM   #8  
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I pretty much agree with punkrocksong.

Why I think I'm obese:
- genetics
- honestly, because i wanted to be big to avoid male attention
- i binge eat
- it's my drug of choice

Why I think society as a whole is overweight/obese:
- fast food is designed to addict us. french fries are made so salty that we want to have a huge coke with it.
- we don't do as much activity anymore because we don't need to do much to get our food.
- we are all coping and struggling to cope with all the stress we have now days

I hate people it when people are discriminatory to fat people though. When they judge them. I think it's awful. People can be really nasty and say things like "all fat should go die" or "fatties should be sent to holocaust camps" and other stupid stuff like that.

nice question!
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:36 AM   #9  
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Can I say 50/50?

I came from an obese family. Like, EVERYONE is huge. I mean, if genetics has a role in the world, my house growing up was a prime example, given NO one ate fried food or junk food. I was the only one who wasn't obese, at least while growing up. I was a vegetarian and extremely active. I was borderline overweight, but never actually overweight.

Then, when I was 16, I was told I needed to consume more protein and iron due to declining health. No one, not even the doctor, discussed my options. So, instead of being smart and making an educated decision by researching my options, I just started consuming meat...which netted me nearly a hundred pound gain in less than a year. Yeah. THAT was my fault.

Between the ages of 17 and 18, I was in a horrific car crash that did permanet and severe damage to my left knee and left me in multiple surgeries and unable to walk for 6-8 months. That netted me nearly 40 pounds gained due to a very active lifestyle to a very sedatary one. I decreased my consumed calories from insanely high to 1400 to make up the change in activity levels, but to no avail. That gain was not my fault.

When I was 25, I had reached a whooping 270+. I made a decision to lose weight and had managed to get down to 250-something before discovering I was pregnant. My doctor put me on bed rest for my entire pregnancy. I watched my calories/carbs and everything insanely close...but because of the bed rest, and pregnancy, I gained every last pound back plus some. That was not my fault, at least, I don't claim it, because I seriously tried.

After the kiddo was born, I put weight loss on the back burner. I had more important things to worry about. I ballooned up to 283. THAT was my fault.

I started going to the gym...I cut my calories down to 1400...I was doing everything right according to everything I had read, my doctor, and the trainers at the gym. I went up to 293/294. That was not my fault.

So...finally, I found something that worked. Gods, I swear. A battle of over a decade and I finally found something.

But my gain was both my fault and the fault of outside factors. Probably more me, but both none the less. My loss though...that is all me.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:42 AM   #10  
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I'd say a big whopping YES that my obesity was my own fault and to be honest, I didn't really give a care. I had some life issues and I felt better having plenty to eat and then plenty of drinks. Obviously eating was the easier part to do as I could do it all day long, the drinks had to wait for the appropriate time (after work, on the weekend, etc.). I never drank to excess in alcohol but the calories were a killer I soon found out!

I knew I was getting bigger, I knew eating a diet of Chinese food takeout, pizza takeout, anything takeout was not healthy for me. But seriously, I didn't care. Looking back that really scares me, how much I really didn't give a flying leap. I was literally killing myself with food.

I have read a lot of books in the last few months about what the food industry does to make food more enticing with chemicals, etc. and it makes me sick. But I can't blame THEM for my weightgain. Like someone said above, I wasn't forcefed anything. I freely ran to the store and filled up my carriage with the junk and stuffed it down my throat as much as I could.

I hope to never ever live like that again. But if I do, it's my choice again to go back and it will be my own fault. So sad the years I wasted on food.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:56 AM   #11  
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I suppose I can only speak for myself:

My obesity was 100% my doing.

I ate in excess, and I was sedentary. It wasn't my genetics. It wasn't some disease. It wasn't my metabolism. It wasn't an injury. Sure it's take a lot of hard work to get all that weight off, but there was NOTHING standing in my way except ME! Unless you count excuses and laziness as "not my fault", but I don't think either of those qualify as such.
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Old 04-17-2013, 11:10 AM   #12  
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Well let's see... in the end, my obesity is my fault. It didn't necessarily start off that way. My family has always eaten extremely unhealthy (sorry mom and dad) and those eating habits were the norm for me all my life. I blew up as a kid, and continued to eat eat eat even when I was old enough to make up my own mind and know better.

Another interesting thing, is because I was always stuffed full, even as a child, I thought that when I lacked that stuffed full feeling, I was hungry. I did not discover this for myself until about 2 years ago. That there is a feeling between hungry, and stuffed. So anyways, I have had opportunity after opportunity to change it, and I never did. So it is my fault. I think in the end I can blame a lot of contributing factors, but the truth is that it is my fault for not taking action until now.
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Old 04-17-2013, 02:05 PM   #13  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mimsyborogoves View Post
As for me, definitely yes, the majority of it was my fault. Nobody held me down in a chair and shoveled food in my face to make me gain all the weight I did when I was a child. I know I had bad eating habits. I could easily polish off a whole anything that was junky and tasted good, and I would.
You do realize, though, that there are a lot of kids out there who wouldn't do that if you promised them a day at disneyland in exchange? My kids are skinny little guys who want to run around every chance they get. It's hard to be in the house with them bc they are just running. And they don't want to stop and eat. They eat like birds. When I was a child I ate like you're talking about. I don't blame myself for that any more than I blame myself for starting smoking when I was 10. Where were the freaking adults? How could it be that my mother didn't know I was smoking in my bedroom (she didn't smoke) and didn't do anything about it? Does it really make any sense to say it was my "fault"? Same with the overeating, imo.

I don't think it makes any sense to assign blame at all, whether it's to the fat person or the parents or the doctors or the stupid food pyramid inventor. I personally do not think I am to blame and I don't think any fat person is to blame, any more than say, someone who has MS is to blame for their MS.

And the only reason this matters one iota is that without the blame/fault component, it doesn't make any sense to think it is okay to discriminate against and be prejudiced against fat people. As long as it is our fault, it is okay to yell dehumanizing crap out your car window to fat women walking down the street and to charge fat people more for their health insurance and to treat your partner badly because they are fat.
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Old 04-17-2013, 02:33 PM   #14  
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Yup I agree !! I am fat cause of me and only me !

I would love to put the blame on genetics "hey I got it from my family" but if you think about evolution in general, everything that isn't used by the body eventually ends up useless and gets kicked out.

So if I am fat, and if everyone in my family is fat that just means that no one in family ever ran a day in their life

Sad but true ! blame yourself.. get thin and you will make sure your kids are thin n so on n so on n on n on......
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Old 04-17-2013, 02:36 PM   #15  
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We're all a product of our environments, our genes, what happens to us through chance encounters. We're also responsible for the choices we make. It's a paradox -- one statement doesn't negate the other. Failing to recognize either truth leaves an incomplete picture, though.

For weight loss to be a sustainable life change, I think we all have to gain an understanding of how our personal histories interplay with our weight (everyone's problems look a little different, so the solutions look a little different) -- and also become accountable for the choices we make.

It's not either/or. It's both. That's what makes it so complex.
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