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Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax
Full disclosure: I mock fat people. A lot.

Not to their/your faces, usually in threads like the fat-shaming one in GBS or with friends. Actually I do make fun of my fat friends to their faces but I've also helped a handful of them go from morbidly obese/overweight to a healthy size. I use fat acceptance movement posts and pictures as motivation to work out even harder. I've been fit all of my life save for gaining a 20-30 pounds after an accident forced me to spend some weeks in a wheelchair and physical rehabilitation. I felt so disgusted with myself and terrible being merely a few pounds overweight that as soon as I got the OK from my physicians I immediately started training as much as I could and lost them as quickly as could. After my accident and reflecting on how I felt like when I was out of shape as well as the obesity pandemic going on in the last couple of years, I've decided to spend the rest of my life to help train people so they are fit, and help people lose weight. I'm gonna be getting a personal trainer certification this autumn, and gonna switch the rest of my studies starting next winter in phys ed. I'm not sure whether I'm going to be a gym teacher, work in a gym or go for physical rehabilitation yet, but I genuinely want to help people get better.

Vyst is a great poster in the fat-shaming thread, and he's lost an incredible 250 pounds in the last few years due to changing his diet and exercising and he's been posting a lot of really interesting (and terrifying for me) stories about what it's like to be morbidly obese. It made me realize that if I want to spend the rest of my life helping others get healthy and fit, I should learn what life is like for the people I plan to help. Specifically I would like to know hear from morbidly obese goons, or former morbidly obese goons. I'm not talking about having 40-50 pounds too many. I'm talking being 70-100lbs, 200lbs, 300lbs overweight. When doing what I consider absolutely normal every day activities becoming daunting tasks. I think that by reading more about how difficult it can be, I can gain some compassion and it's gonna help me help others in the future.

Please share your stories, your struggle, how you got there, why you got there, why you think you're still there. Share anything you think is relevant and that thin/fit people have no idea what your life is like. never realized that so many of you lurked in the fat-shaming thread in GBS, so I wanted to ask as well: How do you feel about the it? Is it a thread you read at all/often? Do you use it as a source of motivation, does it make you feel actual shame? Is it a positive tool for you or anger-inducing or both?


Please, if you want to mock fat people, fat-shame or tell people to exercise more, go to GBS and do it there. I want testimonies and for people to explain what they are going through/went through, I don't want them attacked for sharing their experiences. Thank you. This is A/T so A/T rules apply here.


edit: although it was not originally intended as such, exercise/how to lose weight keeps coming off so I have a quick handy FAQ/resources for those inspired by this thread. Feel free to disregard if you're not interested!

Question: I've heard that 95% of diets fail. I've always been fat and can't possibly be part of those lucky 5% Why should I even bother?
Answer: That statistic is based on a self-reported study from 1957 with 100 participants. Actual studies have shown that the fatter you are and more weight you lose, the likelier you are to keep it off for a decade plus (there has not yet been any study that's more than a decade or two yet, afaik). It's because people who try to lose 15-20 pounds usually do it for vanity reason and resume eating crap after the summer is over, while people who are losing 40+ are usually doing it because they are trying to change their lives. When you stop seeing weight loss as 'This is a temporary thing until I get smaller then I can eat crap again' and instead 'I need to change my relationship to food and exercise so I can live a long and healthier live and not die 14 years earlier on average than I would if I were not obese', then chances of the weight loss sticking go up exponentially

Question: Yeah but how? Paleo, Keto, McDo, so many fad diets I just don't know what to do? Do I really need to eat raw steak and drink 1 liter of honey a week but avoid white bread? How do you lose weight?
Answer: You lose weight by eating less than your body requires. It really is as simple as 'Calories in, Calories out'. If your body requires 2500 calories to maintain its current weight and you eat 3000 a day, you will gain a pound a week. If you eat 2000 a day, you will lose a pound a week. It doesn't matter if your calories come from the freshest kale and chicken you slaughtered yourself or from eating ice cream and po boys. You will lose weight or gain it based on those calories.

Question: So you're saying I can stay in bed all week, eat only ice cream and lose weight just like I would if I busted my rear end in the gym 6 days a week as long as I keep my calories in check?
Answer: Yes. The difference is that the first will make you thin but sick, while the second while make you fit and healthy. So do the mature thing and hit the gym (you can still eat ice cream, just not buckets)

Question: Counting calories seems like a real pain in the rear end though.
Answer: Thanks to the internet, it's never been easier to keep your weight in check. Personally, I recommend you either get an account at Livestrong's My Plate or My Fitness Pal although there are others. Some websites even have barcode scanner so you can just scan things you eat on the go and enter the calories on your phone. It's a process that will take you literally between 2 to 5 minutes a day, and can help you tremendously and insure literally decades more of healthy living.

Question: Anything else I should know?
Answer: You need to be honest. If you start counting calories, don't think 'Oh well it's just one bar of chocolate/piece of cake/apple I don't need to factor it in. You do. Secret Eating is 95% of the reason why you'll hit a plateau and seemingly stopped losing weight. It's not that you have a bad metabolism, it's that you're eating more than you're logging, or doing less physical activity than you do. The key to success is to overstate your calories and to understate your workouts. Not sure if you ate 2 or 3 tablespoon of peanut butter? Enter 3.5 tablespoons. You ran for 30 minutes? Log in 25.

Question: I really do have a lovely metabolism, though
Answer: Maybe you do. However people who have the slowest metabolism have to calculate around three hundred calories less a day than average. 300 calories is about a bar of chocolate and a half a day. Even if you have terrible metabolism staying in shape is extremely easy. If you have a thyroid condition, it might account to between 8 to 10 extra pounds and all of this can be kept in check thanks to medication. As I said earlier, the most important thing is to be honest with yourself. If you are fat, you eat too much. That's all there is to it in the end.


Resources:
Counting Calories Livestrong's My Plate My Fitness Pal
Level up your life through exercise Fitocracy
General diet and nutrition megathread Here
GBS diet, nutrition and shaming megathread Here (no seriously come ask any questions about anything 75% of the posts are about nutrition and fitness on any given day)
Inspirational Ultimate Transformations r/ProgressPics Small Successes thread r/LoseIt

Twee as Fuck fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jul 13, 2014

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vyst
Aug 25, 2009



I guess I'll get started since I've been called out apparently and I have nothing better to do. For some context here's my journey:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3519598&pagenumber=31&perpage=40#post431528527

As for what is like being morbidly obese? It's not fun. But it was never not fun enough to do anything about it until I figured out that I wanted to do it for the right reasons (to be healthy). The daily struggle in public is obvious - having to move sideways to get through doors, having to pay 3x as much for clothing at specialty stores because you can't shop at Target/Dept. Stores, eating in private because you're so ashamed/afraid of people judging you while you eat, being passed over on jobs because you might be qualified but you're an enormous health risk. In private things don't get much better, you essentially live like a hermit either because you're too tired or apathetic to go out. I spent most of my days playing MMO's or on somethingawful. It had been years since I felt anything emotionally- I used so much bad food to just self-medicate that I was emotionally numb to the world around me. This of course came off like I was nonchalant and "cool" but I was just numb. Not to mention there's the physical issues in private that are even more disgusting.

Things that become a physical struggle:
Trying to manipulate your fat to pee or wipe your rear end
Trying to manipulate your fat to wash yourself in the shower
Masturbating is near impossible (sex? hahahaha yea right)
Just moving in general becomes a daily struggle because you're tired all the time
You feel too tired to just do anything.

Every time I ate another 15 dollars worth of McDonalds for dinner I would think to myself "I wonder if this is the one that will kill me", but it wouldn't stop me from consuming it. Think for a second how much McDonalds 15 bucks gets you and that was one meal for me.

Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax

vyst posted:

Every time I ate another 15 dollars worth of McDonalds for dinner I would think to myself "I wonder if this is the one that will kill me", but it wouldn't stop me from consuming it.

See it's things like that that blow my mind. You sound like you were absolutely miserable, you knew you were killing yourself but you were still going through the motions three times a day. I mean you can literally change the words 'of McDonalds for dinner' with 'heroin' and you sound like you're describing the painful trials of junkies who stopped having fun a long time ago and just can't stop themselves from shooting up.

Is that a common thing. Do people who get so big that they reach 400-500 just living happy lives and still really enjoying their foods, or is it all just a defeatist 'my life sucks and pretty much the only temporary pleasure I get is from food, so I might as well keep eating until I die'? Can others chime in?

JibbaJabberwocky
Aug 14, 2010

There's a current fight in the medical/health community regarding whether or not food should count as a drug and whether a person can be addicted to food. I honestly think some people become addicted to food in the same way they become addicted to nicotine or heroin, though perhaps to a less intense degree. Food does give you a release of endorphins that boost your mood and so many people turn to food as their only method of feeling good.

Research has shown that people only really taste the first few bites of food before it drastically loses its flavor so the pleasure one derives from it is something other than taste alone. I highly suspect, though I don't have any actual experience with this, that it's the latter Twee.

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



Twee as gently caress posted:

See it's things like that that blow my mind. You sound like you were absolutely miserable, you knew you were killing yourself but you were still going through the motions three times a day. I mean you can literally change the words 'of McDonalds for dinner' with 'heroin' and you sound like you're describing the painful trials of junkies who stopped having fun a long time ago and just can't stop themselves from shooting up.

Is that a common thing. Do people who get so big that they reach 400-500 just living happy lives and still really enjoying their foods, or is it all just a defeatist 'my life sucks and pretty much the only temporary pleasure I get is from food, so I might as well keep eating until I die'? Can others chime in?

It's a mix of defeatism and comfort. Food was a substitute for real feelings- filling in gaps for anger, loneliness, fear, you name it. Food will never let you down so it was easy to retreat to it and the foods I chose were readily accessible and quick.

Food is absolutely an addiction. I went to see a therapist when I started to lose weight because I wanted to get my mind right as well as my body because to be that size I must be hosed up in the head. He went into detail about how food can create the same chemical imbalance in your body that a heroin addict would experience, only worse since you crave more and more food as time goes on. Not that it's an excuse, but in hind sight it made a lot of sense to me but of course saying you have a food addiction is like saying you're addicted to sex - people sort of just quirk an eyebrow at you.

Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax

vyst posted:

It's a mix of defeatism and comfort. Food was a substitute for real feelings- filling in gaps for anger, loneliness, fear, you name it. Food will never let you down so it was easy to retreat to it and the foods I chose were readily accessible and quick.

Food is absolutely an addiction. I went to see a therapist when I started to lose weight because I wanted to get my mind right as well as my body because to be that size I must be hosed up in the head. He went into detail about how food can create the same chemical imbalance in your body that a heroin addict would experience, only worse since you crave more and more food as time goes on. Not that it's an excuse, but in hind sight it made a lot of sense to me but of course saying you have a food addiction is like saying you're addicted to sex - people sort of just quirk an eyebrow at you.

It would make a lot of sense, since people who become alcoholics or addicted to drugs don't usually become like that because they enjoy doing drugs but because they are trying to flee from some kind of emotional (or more rarely, physical) problem plaguing them, so what you described in that first line is exactly what I'd expect someone who was addicted to those things to say if they were honest about why they do/did what they do/did.

If anyone else is or became morbidly obese and wants to discuss having an unhealthy relationship with food as a moral crutch I'd really appreciate it too

messagemode1
Jun 9, 2006

What made you turn it around?

How did you start to lose weight? What exercises could you do, or was it all diet initially?

What do you think someone could have said to you to make you want to start earlier? What do you think you could say to someone in a similar situation?

Did you encounter chubby chasers? Did anyone tell you they found your obesity attractive? On your way up the scale did you think you were attractive for a while or never?

Questions open to anyone else who wants to share as well, not just vyst who is a trooper for answering and halving himself~

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



What made you turn it around?
-It's hard to really pinpoint this. It's not nearly as complex and thought provoking as you think it might be. This wasn't my first go around with trying to lose weight. I've been trying off and on my whole life but I never really got a strategy to stick long term. Mostly because I'm a coward and I gave up when I plateaued or didn't have the willpower to stay with it. One day I looked myself in the mirror and finally said to myself that I didn't want to die. I was 29 at the time and I knew if I kept on my path I wouldn't make it to 40.

How did you start to lose weight? What exercises could you do, or was it all diet initially?
-I started off with basically just cardio. I did elliptical cardio starting with 15 minutes, and worked my weigh up each week till I could do about 30 minutes without stopping. I'm no stranger to exercise and weight rooms so for my size I was in relatively decent shape all things considered. I knew my way around the weight room so I wanted to get down to a weight where I could do weights comfortably which ended up being around 325 lbs. As for my diet I just stuck to the things I knew worked - high protein, low net carbs (or good carbs with fiber like fruits/vegetables/beans), good fats, low saturated fats, low calorie (early on i kept it around 1700 calories now I'm down to about 1200-1300)

What do you think someone could have said to you to make you want to start earlier? What do you think you could say to someone in a similar situation?
-This is a good question - I don't think there's anything anyone could have done now that I ponder it. I think you have to find the spark yourself, inside of you. Find the reason to lose weight that is a reason you can hold onto in any circumstances. People often want to lose weight to fit into bikinis or to look better to attract the opposite sex and those are definitely cool benefits of losing weight but at the end of the day you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and understand what you are doing is for YOU and nobody else. Because you're the one that has to answer to yourself.

Did you encounter chubby chasers? Did anyone tell you they found your obesity attractive? On your way up the scale did you think you were attractive for a while or never?
-No. At least nobody ever told me they found me attractive which of course was great for my self-esteem but I mean what can you expect. Thin people aren't attractive because they are thin, they are attractive because they are healthy and desirable to be with long term because fat gives off a perception of lazy which is true in most circumstances.


Good questions.

Not Today Satan
Apr 18, 2007

Just out of curiosity, have you noticed any change in how your friends, family, and strangers interact with you now compared to before you began your weight loss?

It's awesome that you came to this realization earlier than later; keep it up!

meataidstheft
Jul 31, 2005

Yous a lady Skwisgaar!
This is my obese confession - I am 5'5" and 255 lbs - so that puts me at somewhere around the 45 BMI mark, which is apparently deathfat.

I was a normal healthy child, but as I grew older I just ballooned into a mockery of the human form. Around 8 or 9 or so, I started to gain weight because somehow I was already depressed, and instead of helping me, my mother gave me food, because that's how she coped with my dad not giving her affection (because she was pretty fat at this point). I got really REALLY heavy in my sophomore year of high school, and that summer I was finally fed up with feeling lovely. I think I lost about 40 pounds, and kept it pretty well off for a good amount of years. The lowest I got was 160 (forgive the stupid pose/expression, but this picture shows my girth pretty well):


Entering the working world really helped me keep the weight off. But around 2006 I decided I wanted to go to college, because hey I was "smart" and wasn't climbing any ladders to a higher pay grade. Since I had untreated anxiety and depression, it was pretty much a nightmare for me. Trying to interact with people was impossible because I have always felt really unworthy of any sort of care, which coincidentally was the major reason I gained weight in the first place. I simply didn't care enough about myself, and neither did anyone else in my life. I didn't have a mom harping OR accepting my weight, I was kind of left to my own devices which is a bad sitch for a depressed kid.

Anywho, I started gaining weight back during that first year of school, and got to about 180 lbs so none of my clothes fit, I was tired all the time. I had a nasty breakup with a guy (who was fat) and emotional stuff happened, which I was not mentally geared for or mature enough to handle. Over the past 8 years, I have put on an additional 90 pounds. My peak was 275 lbs in March 2014. I was hovering around 250-260 in this photo:


Around November of last year, my body launched into a full on revolt. I could not wake up in the morning without throwing up anywhere between a cup 1/2 of bile, just pure bile. I realized I was actually killing myself. I am leaving out a lot of detail for brevity's sake - but I finally got put on the right meds for my mental illness, and it started to be effective around March 2014. So I started actively trying to lose weight again in early May, and I finally have people in my life that I don't want to make them suffer attending my premature funeral because I couldn't stop eating chips.

Feeling lovely has been the only real adverse effect I've felt from being obese. Shame, self-hatred, feeling extreme anxiety whenever another person looked my way. I was always pretty mobile - e.g. sitting cross-legged, being able to squat and get back up with relative ease, touching my toes while standing - but the actual feeling of poisoning my body with literal junk was the absolute worst.

So now I'm keeping track of my intake and exercising regularly (some cardio, mostly weight lifting) and I'm already down about 15 pounds and it feels good. It feels really good eating food that my body can actually use instead of thinking to itself "Ah poo poo what am I supposed to do with this? Eh just store it with the rest of it I guess...". Not to mention there is a history of diabetes on BOTH sides of my family, and my grandfather was a double amputee and died last year as a result of the various complications that come with diabetes. Like how the smallest cut can turn into a festering infection.

I am a cheap rear end in a top hat, and I have finally come to dedicate myself to not spending endless amounts of money on medical procedures when I could just not eat bullshit all day every day.

Being obese (I am class 3 I think?) loving SUCKS. Anybody who claims otherwise is definitely a liar, or in their early 20s and boy they do not know what's coming for them.

Vyst you are indeed an inspiration - and Twee kudos on helping delusional people see the light, it is a very good thing you're doing.


edit: Another really irritating side effect is having piggy fingers. No one can reasonably respect you when you've got goddamned piggy fingers.

meataidstheft fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jul 11, 2014

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



Danger Squee posted:

Just out of curiosity, have you noticed any change in how your friends, family, and strangers interact with you now compared to before you began your weight loss?

It's awesome that you came to this realization earlier than later; keep it up!

People that know me are really excited to the point where it almost makes me uncomfortable (which is a good problem to have). I'm a lot more successful with women now than I was as well, probably from being more confident with myself. I hope my girlfriend doesn't read that.

messagemode1
Jun 9, 2006

Besides the eating is there anything you miss or liked as a death fat?

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



messagemode1 posted:

Besides the eating is there anything you miss or liked as a death fat?

Sometimes I miss not having emotions. Having to feel sad or cry or get angry sometimes can be really overwhelming, especially when i can't salve the pain with McDonalds or Wendy's. The flip side is feeling happy and optimistic makes up for it a lot of the time.

Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax
Thank you for sharing, meataidstheft!

If you don't mind, I have three questions (and feel free to disregard either if you don't feel comfortable answering them):


1) Was there a singular moment where you decided 'That's it, I can't live my life like this anymore', or an accumulation of events in a relatively short period of time, or you just got gradually more fed up?
2) Your obesity seems directly related to the emotional issues you mentioned. Did you seek therapy before you started the weight loss, in conjunction with it, or not that all?
3) In terms of getting back in shape, can you give me a bit more details what you're doing (like, are you tracking calories, just cutting certain foods, etc...)

I was gonna ask what you thought was the absolute worst thing being at your fattest, but it clearly seems to be the fingers!

Crackerman
Jun 23, 2005

Danger Squee posted:

Just out of curiosity, have you noticed any change in how your friends, family, and strangers interact with you now compared to before you began your weight loss?

I went from over 220 lbs to 140 lbs in the last couple of years and I’ve noticed some really oddly mixed reactions. Some (most) people are really pleased and amazed, couldn’t be happier. Some people, though, get really weird about it. I have three people in particular who are constantly harping on about how I’ve lost ‘too much weight’ or worry that I’m ‘ill’, often to other people rather than to my face. I find this really odd and disconcerting. They never expressed concern when I was grotesquely obese.

Sorry to jump in, my story is nowhere near as awesome as vyst’s, but I thought I’d share anyway. I’d been chubby my whole life, especially as a kid, but in my early twenties I PILED it on. A bad break-up made me realise I had to pull myself together and the more weight I lost the more I realised just how lovely I’d felt - tired, breathless, lazy, sweaty, itchy and generally terrible. I started exercising and changed my relationship with food completely. When you’re obese you’re basically feeling pre-sick 90% of the time.

I never realised until I looked back on some old pictures just how fat I really was, and I’m filled with shame and regret every time I see it now, knowing that I walked around looking like that for so long. That shame and embarrassment is what keeps me careful about my diet and my activity level.

For reference, me in December 2010:



Me in 2013:



Every time someone denies how much they secretly eat, lies about how much exercise they do, takes a picture from a deceptive angle to look slimmer, I get infuriated because I did the same loving thing.

edited - took out some unnecessary vitriol.

Crackerman fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jul 12, 2014

Thuryl
Mar 14, 2007

My postillion has been struck by lightning.
I'm not fat, but my dad is. He's 6 feet tall and currently weighs somewhere north of 140 kg, which is as high as his doctor's scales go. (That's 310 pounds, for you Americans.) That gives him a BMI of at least 42.

When he was growing up, his little brother was a very picky eater with a small appetite and would usually only eat about half what was on his plate; my dad would eat whatever his brother didn't, and be told what a good boy he was for eating one and a half already generously-sized meals every dinnertime. His parents were otherwise very stern and cold toward him, so this was pretty much the only thing he ever got praised for. This has definitely carried over into his eating habits as an adult: whenever he's out at a restaurant, for example, he'll always order a lot of sides "to share", and then end up eating most of them on his own because it's just way too much food for anyone else. As far as he's concerned, it's his responsibility to eat whatever's not actively being eaten by someone else. The actual composition of his diet isn't terrible: most days he eats home-cooked meals with lots of vegetables, not just endless meat and carbs -- it's just that he eats way too much of everything.

He did okay as a young adult because he was very active in sports like judo and shotput, where he could burn off at least some of what he was eating and get away with being a bit chunky. Unfortunately, he seriously injured his shoulder and was no longer able to compete in those sports at a serious level, after which he quickly went from "chunky" to "obese" and has pretty much stayed that way ever since.

A little over five years ago, he needed a double hip replacement because all the weight he was carrying had worn down his joints to the point where just standing up and walking was agony. He got an infection after surgery, the treatment of which was complicated by his weight, and spent weeks in hospital with none of us knowing whether he'd live or die. While the hip replacement did significantly improve his quality of life once he recovered, his new cyborg hips are already starting to wear out and he's having trouble walking again, and after how the last surgery went it's unlikely he'll be able to get a third set of hips. He's also on about three or four different heart and blood pressure medications, without which he'd probably have been dead 10 years ago. Oh, and all the weight constantly pressing down on his bladder has made him incontinent, so that's fun too.

He does seem to genuinely enjoy eating for its own sake, but also has an unhealthy emotional relationship with food and almost an obsession with never letting food go to waste -- he really does have a weird sense of duty about it, to the point where he'll insist on continuing to eat even after he's visibly uncomfortable and complaining about how full he is. He's in his 70s now and he's been this way for most of his life, so there's not much chance he's going to change his habits now, but maybe he can at least serve as a cautionary vision of the future to someone reading this.

Lord Windy
Mar 26, 2010

vyst posted:

Food is absolutely an addiction. I went to see a therapist when I started to lose weight because I wanted to get my mind right as well as my body because to be that size I must be hosed up in the head. He went into detail about how food can create the same chemical imbalance in your body that a heroin addict would experience, only worse since you crave more and more food as time goes on. Not that it's an excuse, but in hind sight it made a lot of sense to me but of course saying you have a food addiction is like saying you're addicted to sex - people sort of just quirk an eyebrow at you.

I am a fatty and I think I will try this. Everytime I've tried a diet it seems to go really well to begin with, one went even as far as to get me to almost below 100kg but as soon as life got difficult I would break out the lovely food. When I was last weighed I was about 140kg (it was a hospital, I hope the scales went higher than that) and I'm 190cm which gives me a BMI of 38.

amishbuttermaster
Apr 28, 2009
Here's another Dad story. When my dad was my age (early 30s) he had managed to gain 100+ pounds by being completely sedentary, eating too much and drinking about 6-12 Mountain Dews a day. Along comes his late-30s and he's diagnosed with with diabetes. He manages to lose about 40 pounds but otherwise does nothing about the diabetes. He's 54 now and four years ago his kidneys stopped functioning which meant he had to start doing dialysis. Then two years ago he suffered a minor heart attack and had an angioplasty done. Earlier this year it turns out that at some point a staph infection had taken root around the stint and flooded his body and brain. A nine hour open heart surgery and a month in the hospital mostly cleared that up until they discovered that a cyst (or something similar) had formed between his heart and his lungs which prompted another dangerous surgery.

Guess what easily preventable action could have prevented all of this? Not getting obese in the first place.

meataidstheft
Jul 31, 2005

Yous a lady Skwisgaar!
It was actually the threat of gallbladder surgery that lead me to run fast (lol) in the other direction. My sister had it done (she was also morbidly obese, albeit taller and heavier than me) and now she is sick nearly always. She's lost a TON of weight and has pretty decent stamina now, though. It hurts me to see her live like that as a result of her previous weight problems, and I don't want to put her through the same thing.

Yeah, my obesity is very much conjoined with my mental health problems - nearly my whole life I've felt so awful inside it showed very plainly on the outside. I was diagnosed with severe depression in my late teens - and have been struggling with it for a long time (I'm 29 now). I also have a black box somewhere buried in my brain that I am still too weak to access which helped me along with not caring for myself. Despite my disgusting appearance I attracted attention from the bad kind of men, so I figured the fatter I am, the less I would have to deal with unwanted advances. Being a mental weakling made it hard for me to stick up for myself when stuff like that would happen, which demolished what little self esteem I had.

I've been in and out of therapy, but the only thing that managed to work was my current medication, Cymbalta, which was actually prescribed by my primary care physician rather than a psychologist. I think having my judgement cleared up a bit helped me realize that I don't have to kill myself, slowly or otherwise. So I'm my own coach.

Of course the FIB thread is kind of like an angry drill sergeant that has helped more than I thought it was. 5 years ago I would read a thread like that and feel awful about myself. Now, I still feel awful about my previous decisions, but it made me understand that the only way to stop being ashamed is to well, stop acting shamefully.


Right now, I am tracking every calorie with "Lose It" which is a free app for my ipod touch. It's super convenient and I'm usually falling ~100 calories short every day. Since I'm so large I was able to get a budget of 1750 calories. I've cut out a lot of simple carbohydrates, like white bread and salty snacks. Luckily I love my dark green vegetables and chicken. I still have a ways to go in terms of getting the right foods into my body, but my philosophy is that I will gain momentum as days pass. I have (or had) an awful habit of taking on projects (art, tech) and becoming overwhelmed. I've seen a lot of people recommend the slow and steady approach so I've been trying to follow that. My health problems have also made it impossible to enjoy lovely food. Anything with a lot of grease or saturated fat will actually make me really sick so in a strange way it's sort of a plus. Three days a week I've been taking a 1 mile/30 minute walk after work, which might seem like some weak poo poo but it's already improved my posture and condition of my legs.

I've been wearing 5 lb ankle weights while at work, too. I work in a manufacturing shop and I'm the materials manager so I'm walking around a decent amount, making sure I'm walking faster, and opening lots of heavy boxes of wire and cable, squatting with heavy boxes, etc. When I am sitting, which is about 75% of the day, I just hold my legs out with the weights on them.

At home I do dumbbell curls (5 and 10 lb), squats and random cardio videos from youtube (fitness blender seems to make some good ones).

I think in a month or so I will actually have a routine down, and would like to try running. At this point I am too fat, or I'm not running properly. My fat pockets bounce really hard and if it hurts I know I won't stick with it. I love lifting though, and my sister has a weight bench at her house so I try to get over there once a week to take advantage of it.

I know it sounds childish, but in the past when I used to walk around in my town, I was screamed at a couple times by guys in pickup trucks so I don't feel safe doing that. Those pickup trucks almost always have confederate flags on them, and I don't trust a drunk redneck not to run me over on purpose because I'm not sexy enough for them. (there's that good ole crazy anxiety making up fake scenarios).

There's a really great gym that's literally 5 minutes from my job, so I am hoping to somehow work a membership into my monthly budget.




Haha however, the fingers are definitely not the worst part of obesity. I think it's the physical discomfort and adult acne. I've heard excess fat fucks with your hormones which can lead to breakouts. Since I've been eating better my skin is a lot clearer so it might just be a coincidence.

Crackerman
Jun 23, 2005

meataidstheft posted:

I think it's the physical discomfort and adult acne.

As a guy, looking back, the worst thing for me was constantly standing a certain way or adjusting my shirt (open shirt worn over a t-poo poo, whatever the weather) to hide my massive tits. If no one can see them they’re not there!

meataidstheft
Jul 31, 2005

Yous a lady Skwisgaar!
Oh yeah! That is definitely another one - the constant adjusting my clothes. Pull up the straps, pull down the hem, pulling my pants back up after sitting. I do it so much and I know how terrible it looks to other people.

Squatch Ambassador
Nov 12, 2008

What? Never seen a shaved Squatch before?
Sorry, this ended up longer and a bit more E/N than I intended.

I don't know if I was ever technically morbidly obese, but at my heaviest recorded weight (147.5 kg, ~325lb) I had a BMI of 39.6 and IMO that's close enough. My height is 193cm, or about 6'4", to help put that in perspective.

How did I get there?
My biggest problems were depression and nobody confronting me or making me confront my weight and dietary issues.
I also have a legitimate disability that I used as an excuse much more than I should have. I have Dyspraxia; which makes physical activity difficult since I have issues learning and executing proper form, tire more quickly, and am likely to injure myself. I also never paid much attention to calories in vs calories burned, or to the nutritional value of food until I was already obese. And I didn't really care until a couple years later.

I was always somewhat overweight as a kid, but not obese. My diet wasn't great, but I did a lot of swimming. Despite my Dyspraxia I was actually quite good at swimming. Well, by "quite good" I mean "wasn't the worst in the competitive league I joined". Then one day at practice I injured my neck; but it didn't seem to be much more than a sprain at the time, so the coach/instructor/whatever suggested taking me to this chiropractor he knew. My parents, not knowing that Chiropractic is bullshit, took his advice and by the next day my neck hurt so bad I couldn't get out of bed. After 6 months of physio my neck had healed enough for me to start getting back into swimming, but I was at the age where competitiveness was actually starting to mean something, and I didn't want to get back into it knowing I'd have no hope of being great. I know that's horrible reasoning, but I was 13. I also had a tougher time dealing with my Sensory Processing Disorder(part of my Dyspraxia) during puberty, which led to me being sedentary in quiet, secluded spaces. I still ate as much, if not more, than before. That's when I really started putting on weight.

By the end of high school I was almost certainly obese, although I don't know how much I weighed. I didn't start getting into morbidly obese territory until I started college in 2011. During my second year I started having chronic insomnia, and I attempted to self-medicate with benzos. All that accomplished was getting me addicted to benzos, which led to me dropping out of college, becoming depressed, and working 2 part time night-shift jobs. I kicked the benzo habit a few months later, but the depression must have stayed. I never felt like cooking and most of my diet consisted of fast food I'd pick up on the way to/from my job as a bouncer, or junk food from the gas station I worked the graveyard shift at. I didn't realize I had depression since I didn't feel depressed per se, I just kinda stopped feeling much of anything. I knew I was gaining weight, but I just didn't care anymore.

To make things worse for my already depressed self, a series of terrible events happened for the rest of 2012:
- One of the other bouncers at the strip club was stabbed.
- A couple months later the same guy got shot. Seriously. He survived, and even went back to working there, but I quit after hearing he had been shot.
- Developed gout. I had a mild case of it the year before, but this time the pain was debilitating and I couldn't walk.
- A few months after that the gas station was robbed by a crack-head with a fire-axe while my co-worker was working the graveyard shift alone. The police caught who they thought was the guy, but didn't have enough evidence to prove it was him.
- A few weeks later the guy robs the store again, this time with a sledgehammer, and this time with me working alone on the graveyard shift. This time they caught him trying to cash-in the scratch tickets he took along with the money.

It wasn't until I saw myself on the security camera footage that it hit me just how fat I was. I knew I had been gaining weight, but I never felt so disgusted and ashamed of my weight until seeing myself like that.

Now (little over a year since I started working out)
I'm 102kg (~225lbs) with a BMI of 27.4. I feel much better, and working out has improved my coordination more than I had thought possible. I had resigned myself to be a clumsy, mostly stationary oaf, but now I'm spending plenty of time outdoors and even fixed up my bicycle and took it for a ride yesterday. That thing had been sitting in a shed for years now.

What problems did I have because of obesity?
I was sick a lot. While I was obese I would miss entire weeks of school, and occasionally work, from a cold or flu that would turn into an infection. I used to think I just had a naturally weak immune system, but since I started working out and eating right I haven't been sick once.

I developed gout, high blood pressure, and at my heaviest I was pre-diabetic. All 3 of these went way when I lost weight.

I was uncomfortably warm almost all the time, anything above 19c was uncomfortable. I was told by my doctor that heat sensitivity can be part of Dyspraxia, but I've been perfectly fine in warm temperatures since losing weight.

Having a coordination disorder in addition to being obese made moving around extra difficult. My apartment became a horrid mess since I never had the energy to clean behind or under things. Tripping all the time went from a mild annoyance to an actual hazard since I had so much more mass, and I was always hurting my ankles and hips tripping over small objects/my own feet/nothing at all.

I had to either order some of my clothes online, or drive 2 hours to another city since my city didn't have a "Big & Tall" shop at the time.

Most Embarrassing Fat Moments
Once, during Math, the back legs of the desk/chair combo thing I was sitting in gave out and the chair portion slowly fell to the floor. The teacher stared at me in disbelief the whole time I was sliding down, and everyone laughed hysterically; me included. Afterwords I was to embarrassed to change desks and just sat at an angle like that for the rest of class. Luckily it was during the last week of my grade 12 year. I couldn't image going through all of grade 12 with that hanging over my head.

When I was working at the gas station I had long hair and a goatee. Someone commented that I looked like Chum-Lee from Pawn Stars.


---

What made you turn it around?
2012 was a terrible year for me, and early in 2013 a friend gave me a bunch of weed to try and cheer me up. After a week of smoking weed every day I started to come out of my depression, and all at once I came to a realization of how hosed up that year had been. Most importantly I realized how hosed up it was how little I had cared about my life being so hosed up. I bought a vaporizer so that I could more discretely consume weed*, made a plan to get healthy, and moved in to my Grandparents basement so that I could save up and finish college.


How did you start to lose weight? What exercises could you do, or was it all diet initially?
I read through the General Diet & Exercise thread in YYLS. It was mainly diet initially, but after a couple months I started this workout I could do at home with some dumbbells and a weight bench. I started very slowly and got a friend to help with my form so I didn't hurt myself. I used Wii Fit U for some cardio while it was too cold to go oustide.

What do you think someone could have said to you to make you want to start earlier? What do you think you could say to someone in a similar situation?
If someone had flat-out asked me to start earlier I probably would have. None of my family or friends confronted me about my weight or even discussed it around me, for fear of making me feel worse I suppose. They spoke often about being happy with who I am, but never about changing or fixing who I am. If they had actually explained what I was doing to myself, which I must have already known on some level, I think I would have been able to confront it sooner.

Did you encounter chubby chasers? Did anyone tell you they found your obesity attractive? On your way up the scale did you think you were attractive for a while or never?
No. I tried not to think about how attractive I might be.

---

*Before someone gets on my case about self-medicating depression with weed I'd like to point out I've started getting actual help for that. A couple weeks ago my depression came back hard when I tried to quit weed while job searching. I went to a doctor this time and he gave me an SNRI, Pristiq, and the fact that I wrote and posted this means it must be starting to work. I've also scheduled an appointment with a therapist.

Squatch Ambassador fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Jul 12, 2014

messagemode1
Jun 9, 2006

Is the fat shame thread shameful or cathartic for you?

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



messagemode1 posted:

Is the fat shame thread shameful or cathartic for you?

A lot of both. Painful memories of a life that I used to live and friendly reminders of the life I want to live.

Goobish
May 31, 2011

Hi I'm fat. It wasn't always this way. I actually grew up very thin, and was able to stay thin until I became pregnant at 18. I put on something ridiculous like 60-70 pounds. It's been a struggle ever since. I'm 5'8 and the heaviest I became was 223. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that is right at the "morbidly obese" mark. But it was fat enough for me to start having major issues because of the fat.

I used to be extremely flexible, and that is entirely gone. The fatigue is crushing. I also have mental health issues, so I'm sure some of the fatigue is from that, but holy poo poo at its worst I would feel like I had a manatee strapped to my back. I had trouble even lifting my legs up. I became winded doing simple every day things. So I pretty much stopped doing every day things. I only had just enough energy to take care of my child, and even then I had so much guilt because I knew I was basically a lovely parent. I have this fear of going outside because I don't want people to see me like this. I'm not sure if this is because I used to be skinny, or if maybe a lot of fatties feel this way. I've spent so many days inside because I just don't want to face people and their judgement. I know in reality no one cares and are to focused on themselves to care, but I still have days where I feel too fat and depressed to go anywhere.

loving christ- I, too, started to notice it was harder to masturbate. There was too much blubber in the way and it made it pretty uncomfortable. So I gave up masturbating for months until I finally lost some weight.

I'm being treated for my mental illness and I see a therapist. The depression never seems to go away, though, even with all the different doctors, therapists, and medications. I finally mentioned depression to my family doctor, and I guess he's trying a different approach. One I've never tried before so I'm hopeful maybe it will work. (He's also my dad's doctor so he knows the extremely bad family history of obesity firsthand).

His theory is that if we tackle the chronic fatigue and fattiness maybe the depression will also lift. Sounds a little far fetched, since I can remember being depressed while skinny, but whatever I'll try anything at this point. So He put me on this drug, Phentermine, and also has me on this loving crazy low calorie diet. It's an insane diet, and I have to wonder if he is insane. But all I eat is a high fiber cereal with skim milk in the morning, with a piece of fruit. Then for lunch it's a slim fast with a piece of fruit or veggie. Then for dinner it's a slim fast with a piece of fruit and veggie. I mean this can't be more than 800 calories a day? Maybe? I'll have to find a calorie calculator or something since fruits and veggies don't normally come with a label.

So I'm supposed to eat like this for 5 weeks then he's upping my diet to 1400 calories a day. I JUST started this poo poo yesterday. It is loving hard but I'm doing it. I had already lost 12 pounds just half-assedly trying. So hopefully going full force I'll get some major results. I am not loving giving up. All I have to think about is poking oozy chest holes for motivation (see below).


messagemode1 posted:

What made you turn it around?

I am now watching my dad die from congestive heart failure and diabetes. Simply too many cheeseburgers, tobacco, and no exercise. I had to change his bandages after open heart surgery. The cut on his chest wasn't healing correctly thanks to diabetes. The cut was healing in a way that was creating "pockets," so they had to re-cut him open to try and get it to heal right. When changing his bandages I would have to take a long rear end q-tip and stick it into the holes in his chest, to see how deep it was, and then pack it and bandage him up. It was loving terrifying, gross, depressing, and let me really see where this lovely lifestyle leads you. I am taking care of him the best I can. I feel like I can never do enough for him, but watching him die in this miserable (and completely preventable) way has definitely motivated me to start changing my lifestyle. I can't force him to change his, which is frustrating, but honestly I only just recently started getting enough motivation to make changes to myself.

My dad also gets gross poo poo happening to his feet all the time. I'm guessing that's diabetes related. They've had to carve out chunks of his big toe a couple times now, and he almost lost his foot. He loves to show me his grotesque wounds both before and after getting treated. These images of oozy holes in his chest and infected balloon toes haunt me, but also motivate me to not go down that road.

messagemode1 posted:

How did you start to lose weight? What exercises could you do, or was it all diet initially?

I don't know why but the diet part of it seems easier to me than the exercise. Plus my fear of going outside makes my options limited. I do have an exercise ball, some small weights, a stationary bike, and a professional stripper pole. I've been begging my boyfriend to put up the pole for me. (I'm dumb when it comes to putting poo poo together.) Pole dancing, by far, is the funnest way to lose tons of weight. I imagine I wont be able to bust any moves on it for awhile, being a fatty and all, but even slowly dancing around the pole gives you a drat good workout. It focuses on flexibility, cardio, and strength all in one shot. And who isn't amused by a fatty trying to pole dance? My goal is to be able to tear poo poo up on that pole again.

messagemode1 posted:

What do you think someone could have said to you to make you want to start earlier? What do you think you could say to someone in a similar situation?

I have no idea. Looking at the stark reality of the consequences is the only thing that helped me. I guess, "hey man you wanna die a loving brutal death that's entirely preventable?" But even that probably doesn't work. I've had family members mention my weight gain and all it did to me was make me crawl into a hole of shame and disgust. Maybe showing people open heart surgery and diabetes wounds?

messagemode1 posted:

Did you encounter chubby chasers? Did anyone tell you they found your obesity attractive? On your way up the scale did you think you were attractive for a while or never?

Yes. I personally think it's hosed up. I HATE the way my body looks. Nothing attractive whatsoever. Yet I still get flirtatious dudes (usually older I've noticed), and my boyfriend is definitely a chubby chaser. He voices his concern about me becoming skinny. Not even too skinny, just skinny. And I basically tell him tough poo poo. If I become skinny(ish) again I'll actually think I'm attractive. And I truly loving miss thinking I'm attractive.


messagemode1 posted:

Is the fat shame thread shameful or cathartic for you?

At first I felt shameful. But I found myself agreeing with a lot of the posters. I hate this stupid fat acceptance poo poo. I have no loving idea how someone like me (and bigger!) can look in a mirror and honestly feel content with what they see. It's also a huge motivation. The past couple days I read the fat shame thread and this thread to help ignore hunger pangs. It works!

Has anyone else been on Phentermine? I'm really curious if anyone else has had experience with this drug. I'm not sure if it's really doing anything. I suppose I have a bit more energy. And my hunger probably isn't as bad as it would be without the drug.

Crackerman
Jun 23, 2005

messagemode1 posted:

Is the fat shame thread shameful or cathartic for you?

Cathartic and fascinating. It’s astonishing to look at the level of denial and bitterness a lot of ‘fat acceptance’ types display, often masked with a sort of false empowerment and confidence, and realise I was exactly like that for a long time. It also serves as a constant reminder to never go back, which is something I’m honestly scared of.

Liar
Dec 14, 2003

Smarts > Wisdom
I've been obese basically since I hit puberty. I'm now roughly 320. My family genetics are fairly odd, with it being a rougly 50/50 split between skinny people and fat people. And I mean it just like that; there's no real middle ground in my family. You're either a beanpole or fat. Despite being fat though I'm insanely energetic. I run up and down ladders like a monkey at work. I'll spend an entire day kayaking, hiking, or playing some basketball. I honestly love walking. Oh, and I can do a full goddamn split. It blows people's goddamn minds!

Aside from possibly genetics, my obesity stems from two real issues. The first being that sitting in front of my computer is my whole life. I've never been good at meeting people and making friends, so I have no reason to leave my house. So day after day I'll just sit here, wishing I had an excuse to leave.

My other big issue is that I'm hungry ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. No matter how much I eat it feels like I'll starve to death. I'll eat a whole pizza as a snack. I feel embarrassed when I go to the buffet because I eat until I feel like I'm going to throw up. It's honestly like my stomach has no sense of when its had enough beyond me being in pain from over eating. The desire to eat is overwhelming. I imagine it's what a drug addict feels like. The second I realize I'm hungry I can't think of anything else.

I actually was on track towards a healthier lifestyle. I'd gone down to 270, was hitting the gym five days a week, and was eating only 1600 calories a day of homemade food (no soda, or prepared, or fast food). Leaving for work out of state disrupted this, and since then for the life of me I can't motivate again. It really, really depresses me because it was honestly the best I've felt in so long.

Also I loving hate fat people who can't dress themselves. Whenever I see some obese bastard/bitch walking around in clothes that leave their gut hanging out, or the clothes are too tight, it loving makes me insane. I hate those people so much, and because of them I'll often dress in layers and in baggy clothes because I'm so fearful of looking like them.

Liar fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 12, 2014

Fatkraken
Jun 23, 2005

Fun-time is over.

Liar posted:

My other big issue is that I'm hungry ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. No matter how much I eat it feels like I'll starve to death. I'll eat a whole pizza as a snack. I feel embarrassed when I go to the buffet because I eat until I feel like I'm going to throw up. It's honestly like my stomach has no sense of when its had enough beyond me being in pain from over eating. The desire to eat is overwhelming. I imagine it's what a drug addict feels like. The second I realize I'm hungry I can't think of anything else.

Have you spoken to a doctor? there are actual genetic conditions that can cause this kind of uncontrollable appetite, Prada-Willi syndrome is the best known one but there are probably others.

messagemode1
Jun 9, 2006

The fact that he(?) can stop himself from eating for any length of time means it's not prader-willi but who knows about others, but yeah go seek professional help!

TapTheForwardAssist
Apr 9, 2007

Pretty Little Lyres

vyst posted:

Not that it's an excuse, but in hind sight it made a lot of sense to me but of course saying you have a food addiction is like saying you're addicted to sex - people sort of just quirk an eyebrow at you.

Given that "addiction" is a pretty loaded word (not unlike "racist"), in the same way I think it can be useful to describe the situation rather than label it and get a kneejerk reaction.

As an example, I had a friend who I'm sure would balk to call herself an "alcoholic" or "sex addict", but would willingly admit "I was using alcohol and sex to avoid dealing with my real problems and protect me from the feelings I couldn't deal with."


While people might be skeptical of the term "food addiction", if you phrase it instead in a similar way, briefly describing how eating was more than just eating but became an unhealthy emotional/mental behavior, I think that would be more relatable to more people.

Gindack
Jan 30, 2010
Hey an AT thread where I can actually answer questions...greeeeaaat.

I am currently 380 and 5'10 and haver been overweight since I have been 14. Main reason I got this way, still am here is just due to laziness and complacency. Just recently I have realized how truly unhappy I am with myself and now I am trying to change it but I fear it is just too late unless I do something drastic (surgery or hiring a personal chef).

I hate cooking and the clean up so trying to make healthy stuff is very hard for me to get off my lazy rear end and do it. The amount of money I spend eating out is insane (avg 500 month easy) and I usually eat fast food which is terrible.

I have been trying recently to go to the gym and eat better once a day (Chipotle instead of Mcds) but even that is difficult for me to do as I am so set in my ways. The gym is the hardest part because even low impact exercise like the elliptical machine hurts, the only thing that doesn't is swimming.

The biggest reason I want to change now is because I realize I am going to die soon, my friends joke I am going through a midlife crisis because I am trying new activities (violin, scuba diving ect) but they are probably right. At this rate I my parents are going to have to bury me before I bury them.

Let's get to the embarrassing stuff/poo poo I deal with every day shall we!

I have bigger tits than half the female coworkers.
I can't scratch my back (have to find a doorframe or pole like a bear.)
I can't fit in a booth in a restaurant.
I have broken a bathtub by stepping into it in the wrong place.
I am afraid I am going to roll over and kill my dog while I am sleeping.
I have broken 4 computer chairs.
If I sleep on my stomach my weight forces bile up at night.
If I sleep on my back I choke because my neck is so thick.
I always get asked to eat the last of anything.
Had to replace the shocks in my truck at 45k miles.

Shoshie
Nov 22, 2007
I'm a recovered fatty now for some years, but my experience may be a bit different from others.

I wasn't fat as a kid, but when I was nine, my mom died. A combination of receiving tons of food from community members, bringing us sweets at Christmas and meals during the day, along with my father dealing with the stress by eating, that I, as well as the rest of of family, fattened right up. That, along with my absolute hatred of gym class and sports. I didn't like being yelled at and made fun of. The gym teachers at my school, save for one, also put emphasis on the competition aspect, and to someone like me, who was shy and didn't want to compete, it was a waste of time. The thing is, I would have gladly done some other exercise, walked the track or jumped rope, lift weights, etc., but that wasn't an option.

When I was seventeen, my sister, then twenty-three, was diagnosed with some kind of diabetes. I wasn't really clear on the details. She had moved to Washington, while I was still in Wisconsin, and I heard it from my father. It was then that I looked in the mirror and realized that I was 5'6 and ~190 pounds.

I started off with the best of intentions: lose weight, get healthy. I didn't want to get diabetes like my sister. I started exercising, looking at calorie counts, and cooking my family's dinners. It worked very well, and I lost a lot of weight. But then I started obsessing with how I looked. I wanted to be thin and hot for college. And I didn't address the mental issues I had around food.

Cut to three years later: I was 96 pounds at 5'7. I don't know how many calories I ate in a day, but not much. A small bowl of either Cheerios or Kix for breakfast, an apple and sometimes a fat free yogurt for lunch, and lettuce and an egg white for dinner. And cans and cans of diet soda, which gave me the "energy" to do 1.5 hours of cardio and some weight lifting (completely wasted) five times a week. It was about this time that things got really bad. I started to really want food, and I had tried binging and purging before, but I always felt that the food didn't come out all the way. So I started to eat and spit, which is exactly what it sounds like. You put things in your mouth and then spit them back out. It's disgusting. There were other habits too, like the desire to chew things that weren't food; I think its called pyka?(sp) (for me, it was artificial sweetener packets. I know it's disgusting, and I'm scared going to get cancer). But I also got addicted to eating and spitting, like an obese person does to just eating food. Actually, I'd probably have been obese if I hadn't spit things back out.

Much like an obese person, I hid my shame. Rarely going out because I may be forced to eat. I much rather be in the comfort of my home, eating and spitting. I started stealing things because I was annoyed I had to pay for food I would just spit out anyway. This cost me my boyfriend at the time, and looking back, that's what I regret the most. If I had just gotten the help I needed, I think we'd probably still be together. He was a really great guy. But that's another story.

Basically, long story short I took another long look in the mirror. My hair was falling out, I had zero energy, zero social life because I couldn't go anywhere because I was afraid to eat. I as incredibly lonely, telling people that I had no time to do anything because I had to concentrate on "my studies," when actually I could barely do anything academic because it was hard to think. I was dropping things, probably because it affected my nerves? I'm not sure.

I was lucky in that I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, one of the two states that has the Emily Clinic, an eating disorder clinic. I checked myself in, and met other skinnies and fatties alike. I plumped up a little for a bit, but now am a perfectly healthy weight, eating healthy foods and exercising regularly. I still get nervous when I eat out, though. Hopefully that'll disappear one day.

I know this isn't the "morbidly obese" story that you were looking for, Twee, but you said that you were looking for help as a gym teacher. Most kids like me, especially fatties, are going to be resistant to exercising and losing weight, simply because when someone does tell you to, even if they have the best intentions, to me, anyway, it felt like they were making fun of me. That along with the PE teachers constant emphasis on competition, and being the best, versus being the best YOU that you can be, and being thin versus being fit, it really turned me off and may have possibly been some of the reason for my psychosis. Perhaps I'm just too sensitive.

tl;dr: I was fat, became anorexic, had a terrible time, but then checked into a clinic so now I'm okay

Shoshie fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 13, 2014

Tinestram
Jan 13, 2006

Excalibur? More like "Needle"

Grimey Drawer
Thanks for making this thread, Twee!

For those of you who feel hungry all the time, there are things you can do to mitigate hunger:

- drink water with meals. Drink water without meals. Just drink more water, it will help with your hunger (even if only temporarily).
- protein and fiber are great for creating feelings of fullness and satiety. There's some disagreement on the role of carbs, but I've personally found that some carbs help with hunger, but too many carbs (and especially sugars) without enough protein and/or fiber to go with them will only make you feel hungrier. Sounds odd, but that's been my experience.
- eat lots of low-calorie foods with your meals, that means your green leafy poo poo mom always told you you should eat. Some of that poo poo is really tasty, and the stuff that isn't tasty on its own can be made tasty without adding a bunch of calories. Spices are awesome.

Those things will help with your hunger, but as long as you carry a calorie deficit, it's guaranteed that you will be hungry sometimes. You need to get used to it. It will get easier over time. You can do it. Just hang in there.

Shnooks
Mar 24, 2007

I'M BEING BORN D:
If you're having trouble switching to drinking water, what I did was either make my own iced tea (unsweetened) with any fruity tea, or I added fruit to my water, so like a slice of lemon and some raspberries. Oh, also I bought a water bottle. Eventually I got too lazy to put the fruit in or to make the tea and I just starting drinking straight water.

Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax
Thank you so much for all of the stories so far, I've got some questions with individuals posts that I'll post soon, but I wanted people to answer another question if they don't mind (and I've updated the OP to reflect that) because I didn't realize how many of you lurked it without posting so I'll ask everyone:



How do you feel about the fat-shaming thread in GBS? Do you read it at all/frequently? Is it a motivation or source of shame or motivation through shame?

Liar
Dec 14, 2003

Smarts > Wisdom

Twee as gently caress posted:

How do you feel about the fat-shaming thread in GBS? Do you read it at all/frequently? Is it a motivation or source of shame or motivation through shame?

I wasn't aware of its existence. To be honest I feel ashamed of my fatness well enough on my own, and my inability to jump back into a healthy routine.

hookerbot 5000
Dec 21, 2009

Twee as gently caress posted:


How do you feel about the fat-shaming thread in GBS? Do you read it at all/frequently? Is it a motivation or source of shame or motivation through shame?

I'm not obese but could feel myself getting that way with the way that I eat and lack of exercise. Reading the thread in GBS didn't really make any impression on me except to think that a lot of people are complete dicks.

Reading this thread has had a much bigger impact and I've started taking steps to reverse my weight gain.

meataidstheft
Jul 31, 2005

Yous a lady Skwisgaar!

Twee as gently caress posted:

How do you feel about the fat-shaming thread in GBS? Do you read it at all/frequently? Is it a motivation or source of shame or motivation through shame?

I know I've answered this question, but truthfully, it's helped me a lot more than it's hurt me.

Of course, it is really disheartening to know people want you to DIE because you let your depression and lovely habits get the best of you. But the reality is I know none of those people would actually come up to me in real life and say anything to my face, and the internet is hyperbole.

Most of the really angry posters are, in my opinion, just incredibly frustrated because there are so many people who get fat, blame it on society (either for making junk food so readily available or creating 'unrealistic beauty standards'), and refuse to accept the basic scientific fact that their calorie intake is too large for their lifestyle.

Because to be honest, the fat activists they post are so very, very insufferable. I actively hate those activists because now doctors and the rest of society regard me as one of them because I am fat - being guilty by association.

Kinda going off the point - I think the fat thread is really over the top a lot of the times but it reinforces the need for change in my mind when everyone else in my whole life has done the "Oh, you're not FAT, you're beautiful" Uh how about we compliment other aspects of my personality so I'll have enough self esteem to work on my body? Could help.

30 Goddamned Dicks
Sep 8, 2010

I will leave you to flounder in your cesspool of primeval soup, you sad, lonely, little cowards.
Fun Shoe
Twee, thank you for making this thread. Hearing stories from others makes me feel like my own experience wasn't unusual and that I am not a failure for having gone through it.

My story if you care to read all these words words words:
Bear with me, this is still hard to talk about/ think about so I might get a little rambly at times.

Up until late fall 2012, I had (unknowingly) lived with an eating disorder pretty much my entire life. My oldest brother, whom I idolized when I was a small child, left to go live in Florida when I was 5 or so. I have no memory of my parents sitting down and explaining to me that it's fine that he left, it's not because of me, we can still call him and send letters etc etc- maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I don't blame them at all for anything that happened in my life as a result of that, I'm just providing backstory.

Anyway, I grew up in an old farmhouse on 100 acres in the middle of nowhere in the deep south. There weren't other kids around to play with, really, and I didn't have any siblings close in age so I grew up basically an only child. That, combined with my brother leaving, cultivated a deep loneliness for me that I tried to fill with food (again, keep in mind that I had no idea this is what was happening until therapy and intense self reflection in Fall-Winter 2012). I can remember several times when I was a kid where I just pigged out with no concept of moderation- bowls and bowls of ice cream, eating like 8 homemade biscuits with jam because I had been left alone with them, drinking an entire 12 pack of Coke over the course of a day (again, because no one was there to see me). I am the youngest of 5 children and my mom's only daughter so I think my parents were just extremely permissive with me and didn't really see my eating as being a problem because I wasn't fat. At 18 years old I was 5'11" and 170lbs, which is right in the "normal" range for BMI.

2001-2009 were college years and after. I gained about... 15-20lbs a year during this time. I got married, made amazing friends, had myself a great time being young and foolhardy. Except my eating disorder was ALWAYS. THERE. I hated my body. Hated it. Really wanted to do "something" about it, but felt powerless to do so because every time I would try to make a change and eat better the cravings for food got so bad by about day 3 that I would always binge and go right back to using food to comfort myself. I have been on SA since 2007 and made a few attempts to start going to the gym, spurred on by YLLS (Watch and Weigh back then) but they never "stuck"

June 2009 my husband and I went on a hike and I was so. goddamned. miserable. I had to stop every 20 feet to catch my breath walking up a small hill- it was hell!

This is a picture from the top of that hike. This is the picture that made me decide to buckle down and start doing Starting Strength. June 2009, 275lb:


My husband started lifting with me, which pushed me through the first month when I wanted to give up and quit. Lifting was fun! Finally something I could do with my body where being big was a bonus! I was going to the gym for the first time! Hooray!

Except that the prevailing mindset in powerlifting is pretty much "Lift Big Eat Big". Fan-loving-tastic mantra for a woman who cannot loving control herself around food. I had made a log in YLLS and was getting called out more and more for not losing weight (the original reason I started the log). Cue me having a screaming shitfit and asking Alfalfa for a ban.

Spring 2010-June 2012: I keep lifting. I keep getting stronger (yay!). I keep getting fatter (boo!). My eating disorder is slowly taking over my life- I am miserable in my body. As I get fatter simple tasks get harder and harder- I get winded bending over to tie my shoes. I can't wear any shoes but sneakers or else my feet hurt. Walking around for more than about 30 min means my back starts to hurt and I get tired and need to sit down. My husband and I moved to DC in October 2009 and every time we'd go to a museum or walk around the city it started to suuuuuuck after about an hour because it was too drat hard to lug all that weight around. Walking up and down the stairs in my townhouse (1 flight of stairs) would make me winded and tired.

I was still extremely stuck in my ED. I was getting hellah strong powerlifting and was getting accolades for being so strong- the first time in my life I'd ever been good at a sport! Clearly I needed to eat more to get even stronger! Cake and ice cream and candy every day is normal, I'm a powerlifter!

April 2012 I competed in a powerlifting meet in VA and set three state records (in squat, deadlift, and meet total). I put up a 180lb bench, 320lb squat, and 353lb deadlift. At a BW of 295lb.

Ok so that's my moany and complainy backstory, here's where poo poo starts to change:

May 2012 I go to a Starting Strength Seminar and meet Mark Rippetoe. He pulls me aside and says "You're really strong, and you'd be even stronger if you lost weight." I'd had various people show concern for my weight before but this guy was someone I really looked up to and I think it was the catalyst for something in my brain going "yeah, you know what, I should lose weight!"

I contracted with one of the coaches at the seminar to give me a nutrition program. It was a low carb high protein plan, with one meal a week being a "carb-up", basically a meal where I could eat as much of whatever I wanted to replenish my carb stores for the next week's lifting. Now, if you have been following along up until this point you can probably guess what happened. I didn't lose ANY weight in the three months I followed his plan, in fact I gained 10lbs and hit my highest weight of 305lb. The coach was mystified and stopped talking to me when I didn't make any progress on his plan. I was in a loving spiral of anxiety and depression and hating my body and being painfully aware every moment of every day how loving fat I was.

These pics were around my highest weight (summer 2012):



In Aug 2012 I went to visit my parents back in NC as my dad was having health troubles. My general anxiety had reached a critical point where I was spending pretty much all day every day locked in a state of demi-panic and while I was visiting my parents I realized that I just could. not. live. like. this. So I made an appointment with a therapist for the following week.

Aug 2012 I started going to therapy for my general anxiety. Doing so unearthed a whooooole lotta feelings (in a good way) and brought my food issues and the causes for those issues to light- and suddenly I understood so much about my life that didn't make any sense before. Why I couldn't control myself around food. Why I ate and ate and ate even if I wasn't hungry. Why I felt so lonely all the time even if I was surrounded by friends and family. Suddenly I understood that being fat wasn't my fault but AT THE SAME TIME was entirely my fault. And I accepted it was my fault. And I started to change my life. I hadn't been strength training very seriously since my meet in April 2012 but I decided I was going to take time away from training for max strength and dedicate my time to getting over my ED and losing weight, knowing that my strength would go down but being OK with it.

The fat thread makes fun of "intuitive eating" a lot, and honestly it is pretty dumb when fat people in denial do it, but intuitive eating was where I started. I began having no concept of what food I wanted to eat, no idea how to listen to my body telling me what I wanted to eat, no idea how to stop eating when I was full, and absolutely full of guilt for eating pretty much any food other than celery and water. I went through a period where no food was off limits and I promised myself I wouldn't feel guilty no matter what I ate. For the first week or so yeah, I ate a bunch of unhealthy crap but soon I started really paying attention to what I ate and realized gee, when I eat a bunch of sugary carby poo poo I feel like poo poo! When I eat veggies and meat in moderation I feel great! OMG novel concept!

Sept 2012-Feb 2014 I recovered from my eating disorder (officially it was diagnosed along the lines of "Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with Binge Eating Tendencies" or whatever). I ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full, choosing healthier and healthier foods as time went on- I didn't have an eating plan, I didn't count calories, as in the past feeling "restricted" in any way made me binge like fuckin crazy.

Here's my progress from Sept 2012- Jan 2014 (I posted these pics in the Ultimate Transformations thread from last year) 300lb-ish to 250lb:



Feb 2014 I felt like I was ready to start counting calories, as I felt recovered enough that I could handle doing so without bingeing in response to feeling restricted. That went over very well and I made further progress down to 240lb. I got really tired of not feeling like I was doing anything of note in the gym and got a strength coach in May- currently I'm still at 240lb-ish, my measurements are still going down, and my strength is returning. Here's some recent pics, sorry none like the underwear comparison pic from above but I hope they get the point across:



Also one of the hardest things about writing this entire post is that I do not see that much of a difference from my before and after pictures. I feel like all y'all are going to jump on me and tell me I don't look that different and I'm just in denial about how I look, because I have the hardest drat time processing the changes that have happened to my body and in my head I don't feel like I've changed that much.

I am so thankful for Vyst and meataidstheft: thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for sharing what you went through/are going through. Recovery can feel very lonely at times because NO ONE I know has any idea what it's like- I wish there was a support group for people losing weight as a result of getting their brains straightened out. I feel like I can't talk to anyone about losing weight because everyone's like "Oh good for you! Losing weight is so great! OMG Skinny 4 Summer!!!" and it's like Jesus H Christ y'all bitches have no loving idea what I've gone through or what I'm going through.

TLDR: Used to be fat with an ED. Now have treated the ED and am not so fat. Continuing to get less fat and more strong.

What's it like being fat?
I was painfully aware of my body every second of every day. If I was out in public, I was overcome with feeling like everyone was staring at me and judging me. I was uncomfortable existing in public. Sitting in the chairs on the patio of Chipotle was uncomfortable (physically). If I was at the mall and had to sit down to rest from walking around I felt ashamed for having to rest. Being at home by myself I felt how uncomfortable my body was just sitting in my desk chair because the arms cut into my hips. Walking up and down the stairs in my house left me winded. And of course there was always food in the kitchen, food that I wanted to eat, food that I snuck to myself at various times of the day, food that I served myself too much of on a frequent basis.

What do you think someone could have said to you to make you want to start earlier? What do you think you could say to someone in a similar situation?
Not a drat thing. I was so far in denial I was having to fight crocodiles on a daily basis. I don't think there's anything to say to someone who was in a similar situation that would definitely get them to confront their problems, but I AM a total advocate for "You seem really unhappy- have you thought about going to therapy?" Dealing with the underlying feelings that were powering my fatness made me turn my life around, and there is absolutely nothing else I could have done that would have had the same result.

How do you feel about the fat-shaming thread in GBS? Do you read it at all/frequently? Is it a motivation or source of shame or motivation through shame?
Love it. If I had continued on the path I was on in 2012 I would have been a prime candidate for the thread in 5 years time.

How is life different now?
I can walk up and down the stairs in my house as many times as I want to/need to and don't get tired or winded.
I can take hikes outside, up and down hills, climbing over rocks, going for miles and miles and only feel pleasantly tired at the end of the day.
I can walk up a hill in one go without having to stop and rest, and my heart rate and breathing return to normal very quickly after I'm done.
I jump out of bed in the morning on about 7 hours of sleep and don't immediately feel the need to eat breakfast (I used to have to eat breakfast pretty much immediately after getting up or I'd get extremely cranky and feel like poo poo).
I can shop at pretty much any store in the mall and find clothes that fit (holy poo poo you guys I can buy jeans at The Gap in their regularly sized line!)
My feet/legs don't get tired at all from normal waking around during the day.
I can wear high heels without my feet feeling like they're going to fall off within five minutes.
I no longer have big hanging globs of back fat hanging out from under my bra strap.
I feel confident and happy with myself, and feel a desire to continue improving my strength, my appearance, and my life.
I feel hope for my future and am no longer worried that I'll eat myself to death or develop health problems from being fat.
I can be around food without feeling the compulsion to eat it, and can eat sweet/dessert food in moderation.
I no longer feel a desire for sweet/dessert food- I still eat it sometimes but only in small amounts.
I know myself well enough now that I can recognize when I start to eat mindlessly and check myself before it turns into a full blown binge.
I want to eat "healthy" food 95% of the time (meaning veg and meat and whole grains)- as opposed to wanting to eat big bowls of comfort food (fatty, salty, starchy, heavy foods)
I can see pictures of myself without wanting to cry.
I can cross my legs when I sit like a proper lady :)
I will deal with the feelings that typing this reply brought up by watching funny movies, extra cuddling with my husband, and giving myself extra space and love instead of eating until I can't feel them anymore.

30 Goddamned Dicks fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Jul 13, 2014

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Twee as Fuck
Nov 13, 2012

by Lowtax

Goobish posted:

Hi I'm fat. It wasn't always this way. I actually grew up very thin, and was able to stay thin until I became pregnant at 18. I put on something ridiculous like 60-70 pounds. It's been a struggle ever since. I'm 5'8 and the heaviest I became was 223. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that is right at the "morbidly obese" mark. But it was fat enough for me to start having major issues because of the fat.

I used to be extremely flexible, and that is entirely gone. The fatigue is crushing. I also have mental health issues, so I'm sure some of the fatigue is from that, but holy poo poo at its worst I would feel like I had a manatee strapped to my back. I had trouble even lifting my legs up. I became winded doing simple every day things. So I pretty much stopped doing every day things. I only had just enough energy to take care of my child, and even then I had so much guilt because I knew I was basically a lovely parent. I have this fear of going outside because I don't want people to see me like this. I'm not sure if this is because I used to be skinny, or if maybe a lot of fatties feel this way. I've spent so many days inside because I just don't want to face people and their judgement. I know in reality no one cares and are to focused on themselves to care, but I still have days where I feel too fat and depressed to go anywhere.

loving christ- I, too, started to notice it was harder to masturbate. There was too much blubber in the way and it made it pretty uncomfortable. So I gave up masturbating for months until I finally lost some weight.

How old are you now, if you don't mind me asking? Also, were you just thin and lazy, or thin and fit?

Because if you were the latter, it's honestly people like you who blow my mind. Like, I can wrap my head around a fat child of fat parents who was always fat but knew otherwise, but it's those people who were thin and fit who let themselves get to morbid obesity that I just can't understand. As I said earlier, after a bad accident I gained some weight, not too bad like maybe 30 pounds but I felt so terrible, sluggish and disgusted with myself that I couldn't imagine myself ever staying like that, even less get fatter.

I imagine that for you, it was a vicious cycle of gaining all that extra weight during pregnancy with the crazy hormones and what not (because 60-70 extra pounds is most definitely not the average) and then post-partum depression and then just never really getting out of that funk? It's not exactly the same thing as letting yourself go, obviously, but since you know what it's like to be thinner and healthier, did you not think 'I can't stand this I need to lose it as fast as possible' or anything like that?

quote:

His theory is that if we tackle the chronic fatigue and fattiness maybe the depression will also lift. Sounds a little far fetched

Actually it's not far-fetched at all. It's scientifically proven that 5 x 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week provoke the release of endocannabinoid which not only help stabilize mood but also boost feelings of happiness. Both the extra endocannabinoid and boost of self-esteem will get from not being overweight anymore will get you out of your depression for sure (unless it's an actual chemical imbalance in your brain, but that's clearly not what your doctor think is the problem with you

So I'm supposed to eat like this for 5 weeks then he's upping my diet to 1400 calories a day. I JUST started this poo poo yesterday. It is loving hard but I'm doing it. I had already lost 12 pounds just half-assedly trying. So hopefully going full force I'll get some major results. I am not loving giving up. All I have to think about is poking oozy chest holes for motivation (see below).

quote:

Yes. I personally think it's hosed up. I HATE the way my body looks. Nothing attractive whatsoever. Yet I still get flirtatious dudes (usually older I've noticed), and my boyfriend is definitely a chubby chaser. He voices his concern about me becoming skinny. Not even too skinny, just skinny. And I basically tell him tough poo poo. If I become skinny(ish) again I'll actually think I'm attractive. And I truly loving miss thinking I'm attractive.

If you lose weight and your boyfriend tries to get you to pack it on again, he's probably not just a chaser but downright feeder and I would suggest you reconsider your relationship with him. As you said with the story of your father dying and how it impacted him, having a loved one trying to fatten you up is no different than having a relatively actively trying to get an alcoholic on the wagon to start drinking again.

You're on the path back to help, which is important not only for you but your child(ren), as children with overweight parents have a staggering 80% chance of becoming overweight themselves.

quote:

At first I felt shameful. But I found myself agreeing with a lot of the posters. I hate this stupid fat acceptance poo poo. I have no loving idea how someone like me (and bigger!) can look in a mirror and honestly feel content with what they see. It's also a huge motivation. The past couple days I read the fat shame thread and this thread to help ignore hunger pangs. It works!

Yeah there is vitriol for sure, but a lot of us also try to write positive and constructive posts and genuinely help people who come in the thread saying 'I'm fat I want to stop how do I do that?'

Good luck with everything! Hopefully in a few months to a year's time, you'll be posting your picture in the Ultimate Transformation thread in YLLS. I highly suggest you read it, read the previous one, subscribe to both threads and also visit places like r/progresspics. The fat-shaming thread is good motivation for sure, but it's also really important to see what so many people do and how its attainable for everyone and how great it's like to turn your life around

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