[BillyG]

Originally Posted by kaplods

I love to think I am exceptional, who doesn't? But, truthfully, I think I am not. I will gain every ounce back, the moment I stop caring. But that's true about so many things in life. You work on what you care about, and if you choose to, you can care about yourself, though you may need help in doing so (by that I mean, getting treatment for depression).

I would have never gotten my masters' degree if I'd stopped caring about my studies. I'm bright, and I never had to study "too hard," but I did have to put some effort in, or I wouldn't have accomplished it. Many of my peers worked far, far harder to get the same degree. And that's true of weight loss too, it may require different amounts of effort, but the degree of probability doesn't necessarily reflect the degree of possibility.

The percentage of people with a masters' degree, is probably nearly as low as the successful weight loss statistics, and the percentage of people with a doctorate even fewer (possibly more dismal than the weight loss statistics). Does that mean that no one should attempt higher education, because it's impossible? Well, it's obviously not impossible, because there are people in our lives (maybe even ourselves) who have done it.

So, I consider myself working on my "doctorate" in weight loss studies, and I am my own doctoral thesis. I am confident that I can do it, but there is always the risk of "dropping out." If I lose commitment, hope, dedication, or interest; I will regain the weight.

Hopelessness isn't always a choice. It can reflect clinical depression. Clinical depression makes EVERYTHING (sometimes getting out of bed) seem impossible. I have been depressed to the point of wondering whether it was "worth it" to get up to go to the bathroom (that's about as low as a person can get, I thought - but the fact is some people sink even lower than that and decide that it actually isn't worth getting up for).

Billy, with the attitudes and beliefs you've expressed, you most likely are clinically, and severely depressed. Anyone who feels they have NO dignity, is clinically depressed. Please seak counseling and medication.

In some ways, medication may make it seem worse before it gets better. You've got to be prepared for that. Sometimes it's like "waking up," and seeing where you've gotten. It can be traumatic and ugly. But very soon, it gets much better. Medication often gives you the energy and confidence to start working in your own best interest. To feel worthy AND capable of changing your life.

My husband and I just went through this with a close friend of his. The guy wasn't overweight, but he had sunk into a deep depression and had become completely uninterested in his family - to the point that he lost them. His fiance left with their child and the children from her previous marriage (who he had become attached to enough to want to adopt).

Only after they left, did it become clear to his friends, how low he had sunk. They persuaded him to see a doctor, and sure enough he was diagnosed with clinical depression and given medication and he saw a counselor once - because he was intending to move back to Wisconsin to live with family, decided not to start counseling until he got established here. Even just the medication has made a tremendous difference for him. He was able to get the house in order and sell it and return to Wisconsin. The fiance may be a lost cause, as she is seeing someone else, but he's having regular contact with the kids and is rebuilding his life. He got his old job back (the one he had before they moved to Missouri) and is talking about the future again.

I see you in that same dark place, in which your life has collapsed into a small, dark cave den. Many people when they are depressed, do not get "sad." I know I surely didn't think I was. My life had just become very small. I was even able to make that "den" fairly comfortable, so I convinced myself that I liked it fine that way. The only thing that would have made it perfect was pain relief, and the ability to sleep comfortably. If a doctor had prescribed Vicodin instead of lexapro (an antidepressent that was supposed to help me sleep at night) I might still be in that dark, small den.

So, seek treatment for the depression (whether you realize it or not, I think you're clearly there) and when you start to feel that you have the ability to get control of your life, you will start to get the clarity you seek.

Believe me you are exceptional. You are part of the 2% with the decency and social responsibility to change your behaviors.

I am not depressed at all. I have no symptoms whatsoever of clinical depression. They give out anti-depressants like candy. Realistically speaking only a tiny percentage of people suffer from real depression. I think my outlook and and neuro chemistry would be better is I got some exercise and got off the Vicodin but there is no pay off. I could get fit enough to work and be a wage slave but why should I when all my needs are being met with no effort on my part??

Your friend really had clinical depression I honestly don't have depression. I enjoy TV, talking on the phone, eating, net surfing, reading, chess, writing. My life is quite joyful actually. I have not complaints.

Let's look at this logically. We all have to die sometime. Most people have terrible lives. They starve or get disease, live in a terrible country. Look how horribly women in the Middle East are treated. They treat them like cattle and kill them and rape them just because they can. If there is a god running this whole mess I want to get the better of him. We are a society of consumers. That is our birth right. What else is there really?

[Iconised Ghost]

...how does being over weight get back at god?

[BillyG]

Originally Posted by brandnewme

Something that you and only you can decide is worth the fight. What's in it for you is your life. You choose how you live it and how you die it.

You don't want to lose weight? Great.. you're choosing a path that will certainly lead you to death far sooner than you could otherwise expect to live. You're also causing your family members more pain and anguish because they have to watch you die a slow, miserable death rather than live life to your fullest potential.

Wait.. you said you didn't care about death, so let's move on to the next part. You don't want to give up eating? Hey guess what.. you really don't have to. It all goes back to choices. Do you choose a meal that is filling, healthy, and delicious? Or do you choose a meal that is bland at best, and a heart attack waiting to happen in most cases? Fast food and packaged foods tend to taste like greasy cardboard. Even when I was regularly eating out, I couldn't say I truly enjoyed it - it was simply easier.

You say you'll never attract the kind of woman you'd be attracted to. Fair enough, but it's 99% in your attitude rather than anything else. Not a criticism, merely an observation.You have high expectations for your 'mate' but have rather low and discouraging expectations for yourself. Life is, once again, about the choices you make. You choose to not expect much for yourself, so potential 'mates' won't expect much either.

For every excuse you can come up with, each and every one of us here can come up with a solution or probably ten. Except, that's really not going to help you because it has to be your choice.

You want reasons to lose weight? I can give you many. But for reasons why you should lose weight.. well, I can't help you with that. Best of luck.

I can't argue with most of what you say other than the misery of my death (DRUGS will make that easy) and the taste of junk food. Junk food RULES!

Everything else you say I agree with 100%. You are obese right? It looks like you may have been obese for quite some time right? Please don't take this wrong but what has taken you so long to get on the band wagon and why do you think you will stick with it?

I an a glutton therefore I don't like to do anything that I don't want to do like cooking. I suppose if Pizza, ice cream, chips and dip were not tasty enough I would be forced to cook like Paula Deen or Emeril and that other exquisite fat *** Malto Mario. All three of them will die prematurely but they are happy as **** fattening America and adding to our food centrism. Paula Deen alone is responsible for more artery goo and Lipitor sales than anyone. Gormandizing is a national sport. It's a win win situation. The food companies are making a fortune and the doctors are making an even bigger fortune. Gluttony is making a lot of people very rich.

[BillyG]

Originally Posted by Iconised Ghost

...how does being over weight get back at god?

Most humans who have lived and died had had horrible lives. Look at the suffering, disease, plagues and starvation. It is still going on. Look at Africa. God, if he exists seem to take delight in the torture of humans and other living things. After reading the Bible and looking at reality that is how I see it. Sucking up all the pleasure I can now before god tortures me in **** for all eternity is my way of flipping him the bird. If I am going to miss heaven, I don't want to miss it by an inch. I want to miss it my a mile.

[Iconised Ghost]

Originally Posted by BillyG

Most humans who have lived and died had had horrible lives. Look at the suffering, disease, plagues and starvation. It is still going on. Look at Africa. God, if he exists seem to take delight in the torture of humans and other living things. After reading the Bible and looking at reality that is how I see it. Sucking up all the pleasure I can now before god tortures me in **** for all eternity is my way of flipping him the bird. If I am going to miss heaven, I don't want to miss it by an inch. I want to miss it my a mile.

God still wins

Technically, you could say that you are making you suffer more. Because you suffer in **** for eternity PLUS you suffer for longer before you die. So you're not really sucking up the maximum amount of pleasure possible

[GradPhase]

Originally Posted by BillyG

Most people have terrible lives. They starve or get disease, live in a terrible country. Look how horribly women in the Middle East are treated. They treat them like cattle and kill them and rape them just because they can. If there is a god running this whole mess I want to get the better of him. We are a society of consumers. That is our birth right. What else is there really?

I'll be honest. I don't like most of what you have to say. And I don't know what it is exactly you're trying to get out of the kind, generous women (and men) on this board - but it seems as if all you're here for is to argue your own importance because you have nothing better to do with your time. If that's what gets you off, so be it - but you've gotten answers, you've denied them all, and yet you've failed to search for your own - so as far as I'm concerned you're wasting people's time and kindness. I'm sure you're absolutely fine with that, but I'm not.

For the most part, when it comes to this thread I've been biting my tongue. You've tossed around ridiculous "statistics", you've boasted about wasting money that should rightfully not be yours to waste - at the expense of almost everyone on this board (sans the international community) and you've unabashedly taken advantage of the people and resources around you - and frankly I, and most others think you're out of line for doing it.

Now, as you can see from my stats - I don't have much personal advice when it comes to obesity or even being clinically over weight - but I am the only person in my immediate family who has managed to stay under 300 lbs for the majority of their lives - and I've been on the other side of having to take care of them, and watching them waste away. Even still. I've kept to myself. Because it wasn't my fight to fight.

But this makes me angry and I find your ignorance offensive. MOST people do not have "terrible" lives. MOST people do not have awful diseases or "live in a terrible country". As a Caucasian teen American girl, I've lived in a third world country. I've lived without running water. I've been veiled for more than three years of my life, and spent a very long time in the middle-east and traveling through the more deprived parts of Africa - and I can tell you "sir" as a matter of fact - every SINGLE PERSON that I encountered in my travels (which I'm making damn sure I can continue on by avoiding joining my family in the morbidly obese club) is overwhelmingly optimistic and grateful for life despite the news reports. Their sense of culture, and belonging, and the desire for life, and sense of *being* alone is insurmountably more valuable than what you're experiencing right now. They are the strongest, most admirable people I could ever ask to be in the presence of because - unlike you, they handle their hardships and KEEP GOING. They don't stop because they don't have that luxury, and they as a whole are the better person for it. And if you ask the poorest of people over there - despite their children dying from aids, or the fact that they lost their entire families to land mines or bombings - they love life. In their struggle to overcoming what keeps them down, they find reasons to seek and discover the joys and love of life. Not even you, sir, as self righteous and important as you think you are - have any right to assume or deny them of that pride and accomplishment in some sort of late night rant making false judgments about how surely, of course, they're all miserable unhappy people.


That's all I've got to say.


Edited to add - Sorry Jay if you feel any of this is out of line. Feel free, of course, to edit as you wish. Not meaning to offend, just defend.

[kaplods]

Billy, even if you lost the weight, you could still sponge off society. I've seen plenty of people do it. You're not on disability for being fat, and neither am I, nor my husband. Sure obesity played a role in our illnesses, but losing weight isn't going to automatically put us back in the workforce either.

You don't get disability for being fat. I've been over 300 lbs more often than not since college graduation in 1984 (I dieted to 255 for a friends wedding and regained it all after the wedding). I worked, I nearly always worked the equivalent of two full time jobs (I worked full time with lots of overtime for all but the first semester of graduate school). I worked at nearly 400 lbs, and there were people fatter and older than me working too. One guy in my department had to weigh 600 lbs, and was on oxygen for emphysema and he made it to work every day, for the five years I was with the company, and he's probably still there unless he's died.

And if you don't want to make changes, no one can make you. You've asked what's in it for you, but you already know that, you're not stupid. A bigger life, and if you don't want a bigger life or just don't think one is within your grasp, then you won't get one.

There's quite a bit of evidence that the 98% statistics are skewed, and that skewing is fairly well understood. Success rates are probably much higher, because the 98% who fail are those in hospital and funded research programs. By the time someone is considering one of those programs, and is willing to be part of a research study, they've tried and failed hundreds of times on their own. The success rate of people who never get to that point, isn't one that is easy to determine, because those successful people aren't easy to count, because they never volunteer for those weight loss studies.

If I succeed at this, who is going to know? In fact, I already have 50 lbs of success, where do I sign up to have the statistics "count me?" They're not going to.

So how much of an exception am I really? I don't know. But the thing is, if you've only given a couple "feeble attempts," you don't know if you're the exception either. You don't even know how much you would have to change your life, because I can tell you it does not have to be a complete overhaul. A few small changes can make a remarkable difference even without a whole lot of weight loss (your gluttony and freeloading would not have to be jeopardized).

Even a feeble attempt can be successful if it's consistent. You could probably get some weight off and see some health improvements by making a few changes you'd barely notice. But you're not interested.

The world sucks, yada yada. Most of the world's "suckiness," is due to our sins - our inability to take care of ourselves and each other. Maybe famine, illness and all the other evils of this world would be resolved by now, if we put our resources into resolving those issues rather than paying and valuing professional athletes and celebrities over doctors and aid providers. If the world sucks, it's our fault, not God's. Besides God doesn't exist, remember - that still leaves the blame with us as a group (humanity) and us as individuals (yep, that's you too) to blame.

And oddly enough, the people with the least, do seem the most grateful for it. They appreciate what they have to work for, and that may be the best reason to become self-sufficient again. Because like most people, you don't value what you haven't had to work for. It all seems like crap, because you are getting it "free," which only proves nothing is free. If you don't give back, then your life is pointless and yo more than anyone knows it.

But human beings don't want to live pointless, meaningful lives. We want to matter to somebody. Who do you matter to? And do they matter so little to you, that you're willing to cause them pain watching your decent. You obviously care enough for your family to "pretend" to be trying to change, or maybe you're just wanting to "get them off your back." If so, I can tell you they won't be fooled for long, so you might start considering a back up plan.

[JayEll]

At this point I believe that BillyG's questions have received ample response, and so I'm going to close this thread.

As with anyone on internet boards, we have no idea what BillyG is really like. He could be a normal-weight person of either sex with time on their hands, who is getting a big thrill out seeing what answers people give. Or, he could be an obese person just as he says, without any motivation to change. I doubt that posters on 3FC can provide him with motivation, given his later posts.

I will say that BillyG has given us an opportunity to see where we all stand on the issue of why one would try to lose weight.

Jay