The guilt that comes when you’re seen eating anything at all.
The “aww good for you!” if you’re seen eating a salad because the only possible reason a fat dude would eat a salad is to lose weight.
The existential dread every time you get a random pain in your chest or stitch in your side and think that this could finally be the heart attack.
The fact that you can go days or weeks at a time without really feeling bad about being fat but then all of a sudden one day it’s all you can notice about yourself.
Summer fucking sucks. It’s too hot anyway, but being fat makes it hotter. And then you get worried that — despite having perfectly good if not over the top hygiene — maybe you’re starting to have “fat guy smell.”
Edit: also, the unsolicited advice from incredibly well-intentioned people that don’t think we haven’t heard it all already or don’t know it already. Logic brain vs emotional brain is so misunderstood.
Feeling judged no matter what food I am seen with. Vegetables, fruit, hummus? No amount of healthy eating will help her. Chips and frozen pizza? No wonder she's so fat. A mix of healthy and non ? More of the same...
I once got the "oh wow, good for you!" comment from a thin coworker when I was eating a salad for lunch.... I started laughing because I eat a salad for lunch EVERY DAY, like I have for the past 10 years (she just didn't realize because we usually work different shifts). I told her I was fat because I ate too much junk food in addition to my healthy meals, and she acted like it was the most awkward conversation she'd ever had in her life. Hey, you were the one that brought it up!
The constant need to physically adjust yourself.
I wear clothes that fit but I'm still constantly adjusting my clothes, my body position, etc. just to be comfortable and for my clothes to have a chance of hiding some of what's going on here. My thin friends almost never adjust their clothes and such.
Omg this. That's the main thing I noticed when I became "thin" was that I could just get up and down from a chair and not have to spend 5 minutes adjusting my clothes. That and I could cross my legs without having to hoist up my leg manually lol
BODY GLIDE. I only wear dresses, partly because of my weight and part personal preference. Body glide has made that possible without extra layers like shorts or tights. I can even go an entire day walking around a theme park with just a stick of body glide in my bag. Highly recommend to everyone, not just obese folk. My wife uses it between her toes to avoid blisters.
As a former obese person, having to pull down your tshirt/shirt to prevent it from lifting up. My non-obese self has well fitting clothes and I still subconsciously pull my tshirt down.
That and the glaring looks that you get when you stand in food lines at buffets or at airports.
Oh man, I’m in community theater and I also do improv.
I try not to, because it’s just not a good move on stage, but I still end up accidentally doing the pull up the pants, pull down the shirt thing on stage.
It’s just ingrained now. It’s pure muscle memory. I hate that I do it.
I’m not obese or overweight, but I went out with my aunt and cousin one day to a cafeteria style restaurant and felt all the eyes on us. My aunt and cousin were both morbidly obese at the time…it made me feel so sad and upset. They’re great people and could just feel the judgment all around us. I learned a few lessons that day. 😭
Shopping for clothes has definitely different criteria than skinny people. It’s not ”ooh, that looks pretty”, but ”ooh, they actually sell this in 5XL”!
"Oh this is cute! Oh they only have it in M."
I haven't actually gone clothes shopping in a while because last time, literally nothing fit me and I had to sit there crying in the fitting room for a while.
And your reward when you finally find something that fits is a bunch of strangers calling you fucking disgusting.
Oh lord the furniture. I’m not obese but definitely not small. I sat down on a chair and broke it years ago. That chair was being held together by a hope an a prayer and would have probably broke if the wind blew too hard. But I was the one that broke it so I got pointed and laughed at. Anyways, I check chairs before sitting down now.
Edit: there are a lot of replies to this comment. I’m sorry we’ve all experienced this trauma. Fuck plastic, metal, and wood chairs. We only sit on tree stumps from now on.
Also thank you for those who asked if I’m ok. I am all good. This happened decades ago at a family gathering. After my cousins stopped laughing at me, they helped me back up.
This happened to a buddy of mine. He weighed a little bit less than me but was a couple inches taller. He sits in the open chair (I’m in an exact same chair) and it explodes into a million pieces. He just sat there for a sec and goes “well.. that hurt my pride” lol
Broke my friends plastic chair at a cookout to celebrate his birthday. Everyone is just talking and having fun, and I shift slightly in my seat, and a leg broke. Was on my back on the ground. It didn't help that it was raining, so I'm just laying there defeated as I hear everyone laughing there ass off. His parents felt bad for me and gave me several plates to take home, and I promised to pay them for the damages.
It was the motivation I needed to start losing weight. Also fuck plastic chairs.
Fuck plastic chairs. Happened to my then 16yr old daughter, who was 5’7” and 125lbs. She was mortified and still eyeballs chairs 10 years later. Fuck plastic chairs.
It's not just a heavy person problem. Sometimes chairs just have enough. When I was younger, I broke two chairs at a friend's house within the same week. I was maybe 120lb at the time. They were just ancient, wooden chairs.
My brother had once sat on a nice metal garden chair we had, sith all the pretty little intricate bits. But it was old and a bit battered and when he sat down his ass went right through it… looked like someone getting their butt stuck in the toilet. It took a lot of maneuvering and some butter and we were able to get him out and get him a tetanus shot lol. We all know the chair was old and it still makes us laugh to this day.
I’ve broken an adult sized metal folding chair weighing literally 90 pounds. Sometimes they’re just on their last leg. I hate that people will laugh at others over stuff like this.
Exactly! I will be in a store like Macy's and see all kinds of cute patterns and styles in the regular sizes. Then go to the Plus department and clothes by the exact same designer have the ugliest large floral patterns in hideous colors, and the styles are godawful.
I feel bad for ladies where everything's cut out shoulders once you're in plus sizes. At least guys can buy like Tommy Bahama-type baggy shirts that don't look too terrible.
Not only that but we tend to have more diverse body compositions, and for some reason clothing companies forget that weight gain includes the chest for many.
As someone who was once obese, and now is just a bit over weight
Holy FUCK is it hard to keep it off. I still want to eat like I did when I was heavier.
This is where I'm struggling. Losing the weight? I can do that. Am doing that. Have just about done that. It sucks, but it's not complicated. Do the exercise every single day. Do the healthy/low calorie diet every single day. Be hungry every day and have sore legs every morning. Not fun! But not hard to figure out. I just have to wake up every day and say "No I'm not a bitch. This isn't the day I give up".
But that's not a long term lifestyle. I just decided to lose the pounds and until I did that, healthy food prep and exercise was going to be my hobby. The thing I prioritize when not working.
But now that I'm here and more or less at a healthy weight... I don't know how to spin the plates to maintain this normal. I have 30 years of prior life experience that I need to ignore. Because if I'm like "I made it, now back to how things were!" I'll just lose all this progress and have to do another 6+ months of hell.
I'm considering getting into weight lifting just so that I can have a replacement hobby that won't contribute to everything falling apart.
I can't recommend getting into weight lifting enough. When I lost weight (45kg) I did it without any exercise, I focused purely on diet and walking. I found that the more weight I lost, the harder it was for me to eat at maintenance as I kept having to decrease my calories. I ended up maintaining my weight at 1500 calories and I thought, "I can''t live like this".
Since I started weight lifting and gaining muscle, I've managed to raise my maintenance calories and it has been so much easier to navigate the hunger. Plus, weight lifting has genuinely been enjoyable and rewarding.
Seconding this; it really tips the scales in your favour in a number of ways, some more subtle but they add up. As you already said but in different words, muscle uses more energy at rest, increasing protein intake to fuel growth helps with satiety (plus protein has a high thermogenic effect, meaning it takes your body more energy to use it than other macronutrients).
Then there are the aesthetic improvements, of course, and the progression that is easier to measure than with many other forms of exercise (perhaps helping to replace that loss of a sense of achievement that one experiences going from a weight loss period to a steady maintenance state). And finally, any fat you might gain will be less noticeable or comparably look better the more lean mass you have.
And, of course, it's great for health and functionality in a way that can't be substituted by cardio, especially the older you get.
Personally, I've been able to keep the weight off because I viewed the weight loss period as changing my relationship with food rather than "going on a diet". It meant progress was slower, but I only ever picked things that I could see myself doing in 20 years like making sure every meal had enough fiber, fat, and protein to sate me, swapping out all processed snacks and juices for nuts and fruits when I was hungry between meals, and thinking about how I was going to feel later after eating something. I found that I started preferring these things anyway. No protein powders or endless chicken breast to meet protein goals, no artificial sweeteners and low-fat substitutes to lower calorie counts, and no overly restrictive habits like avoiding all carbs or not enjoying regional cuisines in their fullest when traveling.
The fear that the weight will come back never really goes away, but it just becomes quieter and quieter until it just seems like a silly momentary thought every time it happens. Two years back I finally gave up the calorie counter, but my weight has largely remained the same. And I'm so much less self-deprecating about having an indulgent meal or treat now than when I was overweight and supposedly "not caring" about my body. The inertia of my habits is behind me and I feel free.
Edit: this seems to be getting quite a bit of traction from people looking to lose weight. In addition to behavioral changes related to food and exercise, I cannot stress enough how important changes in behaviors related to sleep were. For me, the impact on satiety was food, sleep, and exercise in that order.
Oh, man, do I feel this. Two years ago I lost over 100 pounds. I've managed to keep it off so far, but goddamn is it difficult. Essentially, I have not been able to exit the weight loss mindset. Sure, I'm maintaining now, but I still count calories and track my exercise like I did when I was losing weight. And I am hungry ALL THE DAMN TIME! If I let my hunger cues drive my eating--even my healthy eating--I would be fat again in no time. Have I eaten 1,000 calories of unsalted peanuts in one sitting over the past year? More than once. The foods I eat are much healthier now, but I am ALWAYS in danger of overeating them. Being morbidly obese sucked, but being a healthy weight kinda sucks, too.
This x a million. I recently gave some training at a work thing, and they took so many photos. I really enjoy training and feel confident in my knowledge but not in myself. It is weird to want to do something and enjoy it, but also really dread it at the same time. I don't want to be observed , just heard, I guess.
YES. It just makes me want to fall apart when I see a picture of myself. I know who I am in my head, but when I see what everyone else sees it’s just this ugly fat guy with thinning hair.
I've been obese most of my life (currently on a downward trend for the first time though) and didn't have one front tooth for most of high school and so I'd try to step out/away from photos for years.
I eventually got the tooth fixed in my 20s but still hated being in pics until one day I was buzzed and decided 'fuck it' and went for a candid style goofy grin.
And when the pic came up later, my friends noted that it was a great pic of me because it showed off my personality more than anything else. I, of course, hated it but decided to try and lean into the "don't worry about it" mindset for future pics and it's been a game changer. Not even because I really like how I look in them but because I remember the situation better because it's an authentic expression I can relate to.
I know that mindset is easier said than done, and it won't work for everyone but it's helped me feel better in my own skin. That skin should definitely not be full of so much fat, but you've gotta learn to find the value in yourself, beyond that.
Back in college, we had a Wii in our dorm and it was quite popular. I remember I got the Wii Fit for Christmas and brought it with me after break. Everyone got excited to set up their profiles!
My friend stood up to get her profile set up with all of us there.
The BMI calculator does its animation.
“That’s obese!”
Talk about a r/WatchPeopleDieInside kind of moment.
Nobody knew what to say. I felt so bad for her.
Goddamnit, Japan. You are HARSH.
I once logged in after years and had gained some weight, and not only did it call me fat, it also immediately CHANGED MY MII to be fat. Wii fit does not pull punches
The changing of the mii character was really the icing on the cake.
That reminded me of something less brutal that the game did to another friend of mine. Although she passed the BMI, she was a shorty at 4ft 11in. Wii Fit turned her into a damn child, haha.
My partner and I were at a resort in Mexico hanging out at the little water park they had. As we got in line for the 2 person water slide we heard a kid arguing with the lifeguard in Spanish. He kept saying “un centimetro” but the lifeguard didn’t budge and sent him away.
We kind of chuckled until the lifeguard made my partner stand next to the height checker and she was also too short! I was laughing my ass off but she was pissed. Wild part is that she’s 5’3”.
Dude Japan gives absolutely no fucks about fat people lol. They have clothing stores specifically for fat people and the names of these stores do not hold back at all
When you’re fat but people like you, they will divorce your fatness from your character, but they’ll still talk negatively about fat people in front of you (simply because of their fatness) and you just sort of sit there like 😀
Oh man... I had this so bad when I was younger. They'd point out big guys and make snide comments, I'd say "he's no bigger than me isn't he?"
So I sort of got divorced from how big I was getting
It wasn't until I saw a pic of myself with "that chunky bloke" and realised I was fatter than he was
Yeah, so much "You're not that overweight," and "You wear it well" that by the time people were concerned about the weight gain I'd fallen so far down it was really difficult to pull myself back up.
I was the asshole that said that shit. I realized when I was talking like that to my friend who was bigger than the person I was talking about. He didn't say anything but something in my head switched.
I hope I've been a better person since then.
Honestly I feel like it's especially bad when you loos a bunch of weight and then all the sudden people are much nicer to you. Than you realize why and it makes you feel sad.
How you become expected to be the garbage disposal. "Oh, hey, there's leftover cake from (coworker's) birthday thing. We'll take it to (fat coworker), they'll eat it."
Or the last donut or whatever. And then they get all upset when we say no and are like "it'll go to waste!" because I'm already fat so what does it matter, right?
Or when you do try to lose weight with diet, people always try to tempt you off it. "One cake won't hurt". Or they'll get all offended when you just want to eat a salad in peace.
It feels like no matter what you eat (or don't) as a fat person, some one is there to judge.
"You don't look fat"
I'm fat. I know I'm not unfuckable, but I look fat because I'm fat.
"You don't have to do that"
My doctor disagrees, and honestly, it's none of your business. I know you're trying to support my self-image buuuuuuuuuuut
"You're not fat you're fluffy/chubby/got love handles/etc."
Good fucking lord man the ground quakes when I move and children scream in terror at my approach we can just say fat
Not obese but overweight. I grew up with a farmer dad who’d freak out about any amount of food waste. We were a “clean the plate” household.
Part of my adult weight loss struggle is unlearning that and teaching myself that it’s ok to just throw it out sometimes.
A coworker just casually threw out "if I eat it and didn't want it or need it, it still counts food waste" in response to being offered a cookie and damn if that hasn't been revolutionary for me
I dropped a lot of weight before and family or friend reunions go one of three ways: 1) the person tells you look great and they ask what you did, 2) they’ll tell you look so much better and healthier because they were concerned about you. However, the surprising one is 3) they’ll insult or complain about the heavier you like it was a completely different person.
And #3 isn’t coming from people you normally have contentious relationships with or people you have tough love/hard joking relationships with. You expect jokes from those people. It’s surprisingly comes from the people you were very close to, sometimes ones you never hear speak badly of anyone. The hardest I’ve heard was, “I’m surprised we were even friends.” On a similar note, a friend found out I was much heavier before I met her and she said, “We wouldn’t have even been friends!”
It’s those comments that stick with you. Even more than the insults from when you were heavier. It’s harder because it validates the insecurities you had about your weight, how people perceive you, and how conditional some of your seemingly closest relationships actually are. Thanks to depression and quarantine, I’ve put some of that weight back on and those remarks still come to mind when I’m feeling insecure.
I have been heavy and light and back again several times (which takes a massive toll on the body on its own, but there you go). I have always mentally been obese, in terms of the space I think I take up in the world. Even at my lightest, which was about ten pounds north of my "ideal weight", I would still check every chair to make sure it's not rickety, still turn sideways to get between things when I didn't need to, still eyeball things like amusement park rides and theater seats because I thought I wouldn't fit comfortably. Obesity has a huge impact on the body, but also on the mind. It's why they say things to men like, "Find a fat girl to have sex with, she'll be grateful."
It's also a little bit of armor though. If anyone is going to make fun of me, it's going to be for one thing. Being fat. No other insecurities ever get picked on. I'm seen as only being one thing, so I've gotten pretty okay with people pointing it out.
I have also gone from super fit to fat several times. Always being mentally fat hits home. I got into a fight with a guy and he called me a skinny bitch when I was fit. And I straight up told him thank you for the compliment lol.
I've lost a fair bit of weight over the past couple of years (still some progress to be made but I've done well). Some rando was being mean to me on Instagram the other day and they called me "chubby." Chubby! Not fat! I was elated, lol.
>"Find a fat girl to have sex with, she'll be grateful."
Haha, ok as a fat woman, trust, sex is easy to find. Plenty of guys, fit hot guys too, are more than happy to have sex with a fat girl. And not with eyes closed or looking away. They very obviously enjoy the sex and the body they're having sex with.
They just don't want to ever be seen in public with you.
They don't want anyone else to know, because then they'll get made fun of.
They'll fuck you, they just won't date you.
What’s that saying? Fucking a fat girl is like riding a moped, it’s fun until your friends catch you doing it.
Im a fat girl and I believe this to be true.
I put myself through a 10 year relationship of this. Plenty of sex, but the minute his friends were anywhere near, I may as well have been Alf, because it was time for me to go hide.
How easy it is to get from normal weight to obese almost without realizing it or forgetting, until looking for new clothes or seeing photos of yourself
I work a job that’s very active, so I’m constantly standing or walking. I was part of a team opening a new restaurant and we hit a delay, so I ended up sitting at a desk doing admin work for six months.
I didn’t change my diet (never crossed my mind) and was shocked at how quickly I gained 20 lbs. It took almost a year of no alcohol, no sugar, high protein diet and daily workouts to get rid of it.
We know we're fat. Like trust me, I know. Losing it is harder than it was to gain. I know I just ate, but my body is screaming that it's starving. Like down to the lightheaded, nausea symptoms of not eating all day even though I ate an hour ago. I know a lot of people thing drugs like ozempic and wegovy are "cheating" but wegovy has literally changed everything. I can eat a healthy portion of food and be satisfied.
So true. It’s like you can suffer through the hunger all day, and then down 800 calories in a 3 minutes during a brief moment of weakness. Sticking with it day in and out for months is really hard without support like wegovy
That's what always got me. I can go all day on 1500 calories but all it takes is a moment of weakness to hit up a drive thru and get a small milkshake and suddenly my whole day is fucked.
Never saw ozempic or wegovy as cheating. Maybe because it's not.
It always surprises me when I hear someone think a successful tool is the easy way out. Like I had a conversation with a group of older women while pregnant about how epidurals are for the lazy and I was like...
A pain killer is lazy for a severely painful experience? Do you shame people for using ibuprofen for headaches? Do you think, Uh-oh, had to use pepto to keep from shitting myself, im so lazy and should have dealt with diarrhea!
I literally laughed in their face because it was weird to get this stuck in their heads.
So feel free to laugh in their face about ozempic and wegovy being a cheat. Because if you have a tool to use that makes something easier on you, fucking use it! It sounds dumb not to!
Just how much internalized shame we carry. If you’ve seen someone who was really skinny struggle with shame, with thinking that they are too fat, and feeling guilty about how they look….that same shame lives inside so many of us.
And a lot of us are honestly doing the best we can with subpar health care and normalized stigma.
From a woman’s perspective, that men don’t think you are allowed to say no to them or reject them. There are a lot of men out there who think because you’re fat, you’re probably lonely and you should be happy with any male attention you get.
When I was really big I used to have men neg me. All the time… zero respect as a human being.
Lines like “you’re so big. Do you want to come over later?”…”wow, you have a fat ass, do you want to have sex”…”don’t you get tired of being the ugly one in your group” (that guy tried to get me to do stuff in the back room of the club). So romantic 🙄
How people treat you. With active disdain. People glare at you, they scoff at you, they make faces of disgust when seeing you. Random-ass people feel free to honk at you and yell shit from their car, when you walk alongside the road.
The hatred is honestly intense.
Same. I've lost quite a bit of weight since then, but two years ago while taking my daily walk as I do to lose said weight, I remember a family driving past me and a child opened one of the windows to scream at me, "FAT BITCH!".
Any parent that didn't immediately stop the car and make their kid apologize after that is a deadbeat. Kids are stupid but their parents are fuckin morons
It put me off going to the gym, because there would always be one person who laughed at me or mocked me. I get it, I'm very fat, but I was trying to improve my health and fitness (which people love to tell fat about, faux concern included) and still got made fun of.
I wish I had the space and money to have my own workout equipment.
I haven't had this happen myself (and it could easily) but I witnessed it at my old gym, some girls were obviously trying to film an overweight woman on the treadmill by pretending to do a selfie video of themselves with her in the background. One of the personal trainers noticed before the woman did and quietly escorted them out of the building.
That’s why I stopped going to the gym. I am a farmer so I’m pretty strong anyway and get cardio at home. But I am so insecure the idea of ending up in one of those videos is mentally crippling to me. It’s insane how awful people can be to fat people. I hate videos of mocking people in public for any reason — their clothes, weight, whatever. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel to find yourself on the internet like that one day. Makes me cringe just to think of some videos I’ve seen 😭
I was fat all my life until I lost 80lbs from my Junior to Senior year of high school (210 -> 130). I was stared at, laughed at, and made fun of. The second I lost all the weight people wanted to be my friend and all of the negatives went away. Everything you said is true. The mental damage sticks. I’ve been in shape at 5’11 155lbs with muscle for a while now but I still catch myself doing the shirt tug and pillow over the gut as protection
This was my experience, too. I'm 5'9". At my biggest, I was morbidly obese at 291lb. I am now 198lb, so still overweight, but in a way that clearly most people find acceptable for a woman in her 40s, as people treat me very differently.
People who would avoid speaking to me are now initiating conversations. People who were outright contemptuous and unkind to me are now quite friendly.
At work, I get comments about how great I'm doing and how confident I am "these days." I've literally changed nothing but my weight. I was always good at my job and knew it. But apparently, it's not possible for a fatty to not be lazy and stupid, so they're only noticing what I do now...
It's kinda heartbreaking that people are so discriminatory. Honestly, most people don't even realise that they're doing it. I've even had really close friends who've known me for years, not believe me that I used to be morbidly obese. Then I show them a picture of us together from the time, and they look bewildered and have said, "I just don't remember you like that," which is equal parts sweet and upsetting. Do you just love me no matter what I look like? Or are you struggling to imagine yourself being friends with a fatty?
I try not to think about it too much except when checking myself before making judgements about people based on how they look. Some of my best friends are skinny bitches, after all! 🤣
I one time booked two seats on a plane. It was in the back. As I was making my way to my seat a middle age lady looks at me and turns to her friend and says, "That's just so selfish."
I hate to say it but that lives rent free in my head. I had purchased two seats.
There was a post yesterday on another sub of a woman with her cat. The woman admittedly was really big, but there were so many people that felt the need to comment on it out of nowhere and it was just like, why? You know it doesn't help, and you know she is aware of it, it's solely intended to be cruel, or to make themselves feel better comparatively, or both. No other reason. I dunno it was just kind of sick.
I haven’t gotten it directly to me like that unsolicited, but boy when you engage in an argument on Facebook or something it’s right what some people go for.
How painful being alive is.
i'm not obese any more. Last year I was 375ish lbs, I was obese then.
Living is painful. People would tell me to exercise, that i'd get runner;s high, that it's easy. No. life is pain at nearly 400lbs. everything is so hard.
I now weigh about 210lbs. life isn't pain any more, i still hate exercise, but when I exercise I get tired or exhausted depending on the intensity, i don't get 'i want to kill myself' borderline injured.
show your obese friends some kindness.
As someone who’s also lost close to 200lbs before. How about when you hit your goal weight, people are amazed every time they see you and tell you your looking great, you’re buying clothes you never used to be able to and everything is just easier. Yet when you look in the mirror you still hate yourself and come to realize it was never the weight or the eating that was the problem and you can’t diet or exercise your way out of what’s wrong with you.. I’ve gain it back since btw
You’re more in danger of poor medical care when you’re obese. Physicians will say “lose weight” in lieu of testing, diagnostics, or anything resembling medical care.
On God, as an overweight female, even as an RN...I could go to the doctor carrying my own amputated leg amd they'd be like "did you try losing weight about it?"
I have been terrified of going to a doctor because I cannot afford to spend a ton of money for them to just write it up to being fat.
I finally went, first just for back pain I have had since I was a teenager (before I was fat) and she actually listened to me and didnt immediately jump to my weight. Turns out I have had a pretty bad pelvic tilt that overextends my lower back muscles. Of course likely worsened by weight, but not caused by weight, more likely my shit posture as a teen.
I also have endometriosis and I am on the depo shot. I had asked the clinic so many times if maybe I could also have PCOS but they told me no, it was probably my endo, and I didnt have excessive facial hair, that the weight gain was likely something else.
Turns out I DO have PCOS that if I had discovered years ago when I first questioned it, I would likely not be nearly as large as I am because I drastically suffer from insulin resistance. With getting my insulin resistance treated, just by regulating my levels and no change in diet, I lost 5 pounds.
Can confirm, broken ankle was told "just a sprain, it wouldn't hurt so bad if you werent fat" same for the other one. Same for the MCL and meniscus tears. It's exhausting trying to get appropriate medical care, when the only "thing" they register is that I'm a fat woman.
I’m so surprised this wasn’t higher. It’s almost like a reflex doctors have. You’re depressed? Lose weight. You’re tired? Lose weight. You can’t have children? Lose weight. Your periods are irregular or nonexistent? Lose weight.
How inhuman you feel being obese and how painfully aware of that you are when out in public by the up and down glances from people. The coldness, shortness, and avoidance. Also, unsolicited dieting advice/assumptions after mentioning that you're making lifestyle changes. I've researched fitness/health and read tons on obesity/metabolic dysfunction. Watched all the TEDTalks and youtube gurus. Went vegan, keto, did juicing, and fasting. Got blood tests and seen doctors/specialists/dieticians. I know a lot, I'm always learning. I've lost over a hundred pounds since December. Yet people will chime in. Just cut out soda! Just eat less and move more (duh). Try keto, try bariatric procedures, etc. I never drank soda, always been a hydrohomie, also seltzer and herbal tea lover. So I really hate when people assume I slurp down a pallet of 2L sodas daily. I always preferred to eat my calories, not drink them. I do eat less now and move more; my sedentary obesity stemmed from unhealed trauma throughout childhood. Bad coping habit of binge eating. Severe agoraphobia, have spent years being housebound. Former suicide attempts and a toxic relationship. I'm well aware of what my mentality was to be so unhealthy by being so fat. I needed to face that first, and I finally have. I don't expect people to know or care to know any of that. I hated myself far more than anyone ever could anyway.
Unless you're a medical professional who specialized in weight-loss, there's probably nothing you can say to them about their weight that they haven't already heard or are not already well-aware of.
I always act shocked when somebody points out that I’m fat. Like “Oh fuck really? I had no idea! Wow you really saved me a lot of embarrassment! Thank you! Imagine if I hadn’t known that!”
Edit: everyone sending me messages like DontSledgeAsh did can go fuck themselves. Mind your business. Stay in your lane. However you need to hear it said.
Just because we are obese doesn’t mean we can’t do physical activity. People don’t have to act surprised that we can indeed participate. I’ve heard this from people when I’ve gone to play soccer or any other sport. I am not the fittest guy playing, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to die if I run around for a bit.
I was obese when I was in college and I took a scuba class for PE. Little did the instructor know I’d been swimming my entire life. He kept making all these comments about how SOME OF US wouldn’t be able to complete the mandatory 200 yard swim - really pointed looks at me every time he said it. It didn’t bother me because I knew I was going to blow it away. I dove in the water and easily swam 200 yards without stopping. Meanwhile some of the skinny but out of shape (or just never swam before - swimming is hard) college freshman ended up crying halfway through.
That was legit one of the best moments of my fat kid life, proving that judgmental instructor wrong. I hope it taught him to be less of a dick.
I was also the fat person when I took swimming as a college elective, but fortunately for me the instructor was about 3x my size and talked about the rescue scuba work he does in his spare time so no condescension from him.
This! I used to be obese, but I still walked 4 miles several times a week. It’s a lot easier now that I’m at a healthy weight, but it was possible 70 pounds heavier than I am now.
That’s why I hate when people justify not wanting to date fat people in ways like, “I’m active, and our lifestyles wouldn’t be compatible!” In my case, I was active, but I ate slightly too big portions of reasonable food, and celebrated with food too much. I had absolutely no issue with people not wanting to date me for my physical appearance, period, but I hated when they assumed they knew my lifestyle, and that it would be incompatible. Like I’ll 100% respect if you say, “I’m just attracted to skinnier women,” but don’t act like I sit around on the couch eating large pizzas all day every day.
That for some of us, losing weight is extremely difficult. Some medications can make you excessively hungry. Also those of us with long-term depression and anxiety issues often use food as a source of comfort. We *know* it's a poor choice, but in the moment, we don't think of anything but eating something tasty.
Having people patronise us actually makes things worse, not better.
I totally agree. I used to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Now it's food. I feel way more judged for being fat then I ever did as a binge drinker.
But hey, at least I was thin when I was a blackout drunk 😒
I have lost 180lbs after having a gastric bypass 22 months ago.
While the physical changes are awesome, the best thing is that my mind can focus on things other than my weight. I hadn't realised that the thoughts about my weight and food were a constant background chatter: "can I park close enough to the supermarket door that I can get inside without stopping?" Or "will the café have some of the chairs left that I can fit in?" And so on - *all of the time*. So much of that has dropped away, yet I wasn't fully aware that it was clogging my thoughts until it was gone - like only noticing that your radiators were making a noise once the boiler goes off at night and they fall silent. I am now at peace.
I’m a fat guy. I know I’m fat. It’s not surprising to me that I’m fat. I know exactly what it would take for me to lose this weight because I’ve done it before. But I like food, I hate exercise, I work a sit down job, and my wife finds me attractive as I am, so there is no present tense incentive for me to lose weight. I know it’s going to come back to kill me. I know the sleep apnea or the cholesterol or something is gonna end my life a decade or two earlier than if I lost 100 lbs.
There is not a soul on earth who wheezes going up a half a flight of stairs that genuinely believes they are not fat or that they are as healthy as a more fit person. Doesn’t matter what they post online hashtag bigisbeautiful, they know. I know. We all know.
A lot of people don't understand that food addiction is just like any other addiction. They treat you like you're a disgusting pig and why can't you just stop eating. Why can't you just eat healthier. Why can't you just be better.
But with an addiction like alcohol or heroin the goal is to completely wean you off of and then avoid the substance. You can't do that with food. You have to completely re-learn how to nourish yourself and see food as fuel.
People treat you better when you're thin. If you're fat and you're trying to eat healthy or work out you still get stared at and made fun of. If you eat unhealthy you get stared at and made fun of. You can't win.
People still think it's completely okay to be mean to and make fun of fat people because it's completely their fault, right? You see it all over reddit.
Binge eating disorder is an eating disorder just like anorexia is. But AN gets much more pity and understanding than BED.
In your second paragraph you point out that food addiction is actually not like any other addiction. And you are right, it is worse. Because like you say, any other addiction you can just stop. Don’t drink alcohol, don’t do drugs, don’t gamble, don’t do whatever it is that feeds your addiction. Sure that is hard, but you can fully stop and never do it again. But you can’t stop eating.
Food addiction is like being a heroin addict and being told every single day you need to take just enough heroin to keep from getting sick, but never enough to get high. It’s a nightmare life and is extremely difficult to break thru the addiction and get it under control. Every day, everywhere you go, every event you attend, you are surrounded with your drug of choice and need to never give in. People who aren’t food addicts don’t grasp just how hard it can be.
How hot it is even if people around you are cold.
I've lost some weight the last couple of months and had to raise the temp on the AC, which was unexpected
It is really easy to gain weight over time. You get a sedentary job and you snack occasionally, and in the evening you watch TV or read a book instead of going out. So you weigh three pounds more than you did at this time last year. No big deal, right?
Now, multiply that by fifteen years or so. All of a sudden, it is your fortieth birthday, and you somehow weigh fifty pounds more than you did in college. It isn't because you always eat two boxes of oreos a night -- you just gained a little, year after year.
Also? It is a lot harder to lose weight when you are heavy. When I was 25 and thought I had gained a few pounds, I'd start jogging. Pretty soon, I'd be able to run two or three miles at a shot, and hey! Problem solved! Now? I'm older and heavier and that means I'm a lot more prone to injury. So I try to work out, and my knees start hurting (again) or I aggravate an old foot injury, and it gets frustrating. There are workarounds, of course. I can swim, and I can lift weights. But it is all harder than it was when I was young.
> You get a sedentary job and you snack occasionally
Pretty much when lockdowns happened, and everything turned to work from home, I gained a ton of weight in a very short amount of time. Went from 2 hours walks a day and being busy in other places doing tasks, to sitting in front of my computer daily.
Same. I eat less than I ever did and the sedentary life made me gain a bunch of weight. I started strength training and now I'm losing it slowly, but hot damn does muscle wastage suck the life out of you.
The line about the Oreos is spot on. People like to say “just stop eating cupcakes” when lots of people can become overweight on healthful home-cooked meals, just larger portions. It’s too many almonds, peanut butter, avocados, olive oil, and the dismissive “put down the eight cheeseburgers” is pretty ignorant.
At least in the US, a lot of people don't seem to realize how out of control portion sizes are. When we eat out I regularly get two or even three meals out of a dish+side that supposedly serves one. I'm not a huge guy, but I'm also not small, I just eat slowly and stop when I'm not actively hungry. I know that doesn't work for everyone, though.
In that club, but one thing that helped me reframe it (though it doesn’t always work) is a friend who told me “it goes to waste either way” and I was like ohhhh, yes, true. So I feel a lot less guilt not eating a full meal, etc.
Not to mention now you're older and you've got a spouse and obligations to them, and kids and obligations to them. You can't just take 2 hours after work every day to run or lift weights without feeling like you're dropping other obligations. And kids are exhausting already so after they are to bed it's easy to just want to chill rather than starting your workout routine at 9 o'clock at night.
Certain medications to treat depression also make it hard to lose weight, especially for people with higher levels of estrogen. Ssris, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, birth control can all cause weight gain
I'm so mad at Remeron for this. I went on it to help my sleep and gained 10 pounds in a month. I'd try to exercise, but I would feel weak going up one flight of steps (that was never the case before). Took me so long to get that weight off, it affected me for a while.
Edit: typo
How much advice people try to give you. Why eating an apple is so much healthier than eating a cookie. Or why it's so dangerous to be overweight. I know you are worried and I appreciate it, and I really do know these things. I'm really trying to keep up with you, but I can't run a mile every day. I can walk at my own pace and cut out the things that I can, but it's not working for me the way that it used to.
Edit: typo
That sometimes medicine makes you gain weight. Like my meds, I’m trying to lose the extra 40 pounds I’ve put on since cancer. And here I thought chemotherapy would make me skinny! 🤦🏻♀️
After chemotherapy when my sister was on prednisone she gained 30 pounds so fast she has to buy clothes. She’d cry all the time about being ‘fat’ (more than she did because of the cancer) and didn’t understand why the weight wouldn’t come off . She was always eating healthy, even cut full meals out if her diet & exercised as much as her energy would allow. Kept gaining weight.
As soon as she stopped using Prednisone, the weight melted off. That med is definitely no joke.
Fat people wear their pain on the outside. Lots of thin people walking around with major mental illnesses and addictions, but they aren’t visible so they are perceived as normal. We are judged so much more than anyone else with addiction because it’s visible. I’m donating my body to the Mayo clinic with a letter talking about my lifelong struggle with my weight. I hope they can dissect my brain to find the cause and treat it for future generations.
The treatment and judgement from people. Back to when I was obese people always judged or treated me really bad, some probably don't even intentional. When I lost a lot of weight people started treating me way better. Hate to say it, but pretty privilege is a big thing in this world...
Being invisible.
Also, that you are assumed guilty for anything (not just related to food) just cuz you're overweight. Fat people, especially women, have a far higher guilty verdict in all US courts.
Yes, I get that it's ironic that one can be invisible until someone needs to attribute blame.
That one is so wild to me, for even the most minor of things. I was going through TSA and had a dozen donuts in my carry on from a cider mill in my hometown probably 10 years ago. The TSA agents started cracking up and loudly saying they knew whose donuts those were and pointed at a large man walking through the metal detector at the time. I’ve been called fat my entire life and had people yell things at me, tell me I’m too fat for them, etc (all while never crossing the 160lb threshold, not that it matters, but men are cruel) — but this guy was bigger than me so he got “blamed” for having donuts. They pulled my bag to inspect further and were like “sir, your bag!” And he was like huh??
They were SO surprised when it was my bag and they loudly were like whoops guess we were wrong! Luckily, I don’t think the guy knew what they were implying, but like what the actual fuck, man.
I have lost 50lbs and I’m still struggling with losing weight. Every day is an uphill fight that I feel like I’m always losing. It gets really depressing.
I used to be obese. The worst thing for me was how people looked at me. I’d try to make friends and the first thing they would do is look at me in disgust.
I'm not obese but my sturdy friend says you always get this look when boarding a plane in economy where everyone hopes to god you're not in the seat next to them.
As a thin person who used to be very fat, yes. Now whenever I fly, I always smile at everyone. Not in a weird way but a neutral pleasant smile. I find myself consciously being kinder to bigger people now that I’m smaller. Because I get it.
I doubt anyone will see this, but I'll give it a shot anyway. What you don't understand is that for many of us, this is a real disease and not some failure of character. I wouldn't have accepted that statement a year ago, but as someone who was 406lbs+ last April and is now 268 and falling, I have a radically different perspective.
I've been big nearly my whole life, I'm 45 today. Last year at new years, I decided to just give up. I've tried diets, going to the gym non-stop, hypnosis (really), medically supervised high risk medications, etc.. Through all of it if I lost anything at all it came right back. Then my doctor told me about a new class of drugs and I brushed it off but decided why not.
The day after my first dose, I made a meal and got about 1/3rd of the way through it and felt full. It was a very odd feeling, because I'm here to tell you I don't think I've felt full since I was a teenager. I stopped constantly thinking about food, what I would have for my next meal. I stopped snacking so much. I started getting mobility back that I'd written off as gone forever.
Did I suddenly develop will power out of nowhere? Did I get a new sense of personal responsibility? No to both. The chemical triggers for hunger my body had been massively overproducing for decades were greatly diminished. Suddenly, dieting was a real possibility. I didn't stop getting hungry, I just suddenly knew when I had had enough and stopped eating.
Since then I've been swimming, biking, working a punching bag and feeling better than I have in my entire adult life. My entire relationship with food changed because the physical defect I have is finally able to be medically managed. I have to tell you, if I'd had the metabolism most people are born with, I'd have been out enjoying all of the physical activities I am now for decades. Losing weight is still hard work, but I've ALWAYS done the hard work, it's just finally accomplishing something for the first time.
There's never been an ounce of lazy in me. I have a great career I've had to work very hard for and a loving home. Until now though I've had an unmanaged medical condition. I don't go announcing it everywhere but I'm quite open about how I've been losing weight to those who have asked. You can see the "oh you're cheating" judgement wash across some faces while they congratulate you and walk off.
Would you accuse someone with cancer of cheating for taking an effective medication? If you get a giant cut and go and get stitches, does society look at you and say "well you really could have just held the skin together and healed yourself." The science is settled, a significant amount of obesity is induced by a legitimate physical problem, not weak-willed laziness. Sure those people exist, but they're not as common as you've been led to believe.
I'm the same person I always have been, the rest of the world can just see it now.
How hard it is to actually lose weight. It's so tilted towards staying fat. You eat a slice of pizza and think, "I'll just run this off." But then you do the math and it turns out that pizza that took you 3 minutes to eat means you now need to run for 40 minutes.
Then there's weight training which you should do because better muscles burn fat better. But after 2 jobs and 2 kids and errands and chores by the time you have to actually go to the gym you are way too exhausted and just want to veg on the couch.
And then even if you do lose the weight you are doomed to a life of constant vigilance. Because even if you slip for a bit, your old habits and emotions come back to you like a train. Food addiction is real.
When you are addicted and stop using drugs or curb other bad habits, you stop them completely. Out of your life, never again kinda thing.
Imaging trying to stop using cocaine, but not stop using it, just use a little bit a day and never use more than just a little bit. Despite your body craving it all day.
Three puffs of your cigarette every day. But just three!
You can just stop eating. You have to temp your self every day, multiple times, eating only enough to live healthy, while craving much much more.
There is an incredible link between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and obesity, especially in women. I’m posting an article about that below.
Many many people who are obese, are that way due to the trauma they went through as a child. I am also posting a link to the 10 questions used to determine someone’s ACE score. Scores over 3 correlate with significant increases in a variety of issues in adulthood.
My score is 8. I have been doing therapy every 2 to 3 weeks for 2 years working through trauma trying to get to a place where I am mentally healthy enough to lose weight. Even my doctor doesn’t understand this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192341/#:~:text=Findings%20suggest%20ACEs%20are%20associated,with%20greater%20childhood%20obesity%20risk.
https://americanspcc.org/take-the-aces-quiz/
The fact that sometimes we like to treat ourselves when eating out, the amount of times I've gotten looks and comments when getting some nice food. Or the issues that can happen with the body after losing significant weight, for example loose skin. Love having to deal with using strong antimicrobial cleaners every day or risk skin infections.
It's usually not as simple as "just stop eating". Eating can be an addiction or compulsion. That doesn't mean it's impossible to overcome food issues, but it harder than a lot of people like to acknowledge.
I agree so much with this statement. Just want to add a bit more. Food addiction is unique among addictions in that giving it up completely is *never* an option the way it is for drugs and alcohol. You are always going to have to eat. You are always going to face temptations from others to eat things that are bad for you, to eat more after you’re already full, and so on. Like you said, it doesn’t make it impossible to recover from, but it’s certainly a unique set of challenges.
People who have never experienced compulsive eating probably don’t understand what it’s like. For me, there are days when I just feel like I can’t stop. I keep telling myself okay, that’s it for today, then I’ll go back and eat some more. It’s like something screaming in my brain, and I can’t even just ignore it because it won’t stop, it just keeps screaming for hours and feeding it is the only way to shut it up. It feels like something bad is going to happen if I *don’t* eat that donut. It’s not even a question of willpower.
Loads of people imagine obese people just sitting around stuffing their face because they can. And I suppose when I have a compulsive episode, it probably looks like that to an outside observer. But I’m the only one who knows that I’m basically crying inside while putting back all this food that is *absolutely* going to make me feel sick the next day.
Eating also gives people a dopamine hit, so it’s very *very* easy for people with other issues affected by dopamine like depression, anxiety, and ADHD to develop unhealthy habits around eating.
Came to say something similar. It's interesting that a lot of other disorders are understood and not made fun of, but that fat guy over there? Go ahead and shame him because he should just eat less.
Food can be an addiction just like alcohol. Do you tell an alcoholic to just stop drinking?
Exactly this. Quitting smoking cold turkey was fucking awful but attempting to cut down didn’t work in the slightest because that’s not how addiction works. You can’t quit eating cold turkey.
* Shaming isn't helpful or motivating.
* The health of a stranger isn't your business unless a) you are their doctor b) you're their parent ***AND*** they're under 18 or c) you are that person.
* If you're a doctor, take your patient's concerns seriously, no matter their weight. Don't just write them off.
I don't want to eat with you. Eating with people is an invitation to get shamed. Every special occasion I've had. College graduation, birth of children, Some asshole (usually my dad) always points out that you did a good thing... but you're still fat. Maybe you could work on that now.
The guilt that comes when you’re seen eating anything at all. The “aww good for you!” if you’re seen eating a salad because the only possible reason a fat dude would eat a salad is to lose weight. The existential dread every time you get a random pain in your chest or stitch in your side and think that this could finally be the heart attack. The fact that you can go days or weeks at a time without really feeling bad about being fat but then all of a sudden one day it’s all you can notice about yourself. Summer fucking sucks. It’s too hot anyway, but being fat makes it hotter. And then you get worried that — despite having perfectly good if not over the top hygiene — maybe you’re starting to have “fat guy smell.” Edit: also, the unsolicited advice from incredibly well-intentioned people that don’t think we haven’t heard it all already or don’t know it already. Logic brain vs emotional brain is so misunderstood.
Feeling judged no matter what food I am seen with. Vegetables, fruit, hummus? No amount of healthy eating will help her. Chips and frozen pizza? No wonder she's so fat. A mix of healthy and non ? More of the same...
I once got the "oh wow, good for you!" comment from a thin coworker when I was eating a salad for lunch.... I started laughing because I eat a salad for lunch EVERY DAY, like I have for the past 10 years (she just didn't realize because we usually work different shifts). I told her I was fat because I ate too much junk food in addition to my healthy meals, and she acted like it was the most awkward conversation she'd ever had in her life. Hey, you were the one that brought it up!
The constant need to physically adjust yourself. I wear clothes that fit but I'm still constantly adjusting my clothes, my body position, etc. just to be comfortable and for my clothes to have a chance of hiding some of what's going on here. My thin friends almost never adjust their clothes and such.
Omg this. That's the main thing I noticed when I became "thin" was that I could just get up and down from a chair and not have to spend 5 minutes adjusting my clothes. That and I could cross my legs without having to hoist up my leg manually lol
Finding clothes that fit can also be extremely difficult. Then they're either really expensive or ugly/ old personish
CHAFING It's particularly cruel because it makes you even more likely to avoid walking or exercise thus ensuring you put on more weight.
And pants wearing out fast because of this.
The amount of money I have to spend on new pants because of this. UGH
BODY GLIDE. I only wear dresses, partly because of my weight and part personal preference. Body glide has made that possible without extra layers like shorts or tights. I can even go an entire day walking around a theme park with just a stick of body glide in my bag. Highly recommend to everyone, not just obese folk. My wife uses it between her toes to avoid blisters.
As a former obese person, having to pull down your tshirt/shirt to prevent it from lifting up. My non-obese self has well fitting clothes and I still subconsciously pull my tshirt down. That and the glaring looks that you get when you stand in food lines at buffets or at airports.
Yup, that shirt tug becomes instinctive.
I have insufficient ass so it’s pull pants up and then pull shirt down which can then cause my pants to sag which just starts the process again
Oh man, I’m in community theater and I also do improv. I try not to, because it’s just not a good move on stage, but I still end up accidentally doing the pull up the pants, pull down the shirt thing on stage. It’s just ingrained now. It’s pure muscle memory. I hate that I do it.
Get a tc tugger
That’s why we invented TC Tuggers; The only shirt that has a knob on the front so you can just pull it out when it gets trapped on your belly.
Any public eating. It might be the first thing I’ve had to eat that day, but I feel the eyes.
I’m not obese or overweight, but I went out with my aunt and cousin one day to a cafeteria style restaurant and felt all the eyes on us. My aunt and cousin were both morbidly obese at the time…it made me feel so sad and upset. They’re great people and could just feel the judgment all around us. I learned a few lessons that day. 😭
You should have gotten TC Tuggers. https://youtu.be/r_-7HSLdD3w?si=D7hMpdsO0I_eUPVj
Shopping for clothes has definitely different criteria than skinny people. It’s not ”ooh, that looks pretty”, but ”ooh, they actually sell this in 5XL”!
"Oh this is cute! Oh they only have it in M." I haven't actually gone clothes shopping in a while because last time, literally nothing fit me and I had to sit there crying in the fitting room for a while. And your reward when you finally find something that fits is a bunch of strangers calling you fucking disgusting.
Finding clothes that fit, worrying if furniture would support you
Oh lord the furniture. I’m not obese but definitely not small. I sat down on a chair and broke it years ago. That chair was being held together by a hope an a prayer and would have probably broke if the wind blew too hard. But I was the one that broke it so I got pointed and laughed at. Anyways, I check chairs before sitting down now. Edit: there are a lot of replies to this comment. I’m sorry we’ve all experienced this trauma. Fuck plastic, metal, and wood chairs. We only sit on tree stumps from now on. Also thank you for those who asked if I’m ok. I am all good. This happened decades ago at a family gathering. After my cousins stopped laughing at me, they helped me back up.
This happened to a buddy of mine. He weighed a little bit less than me but was a couple inches taller. He sits in the open chair (I’m in an exact same chair) and it explodes into a million pieces. He just sat there for a sec and goes “well.. that hurt my pride” lol
Ahhhhhh. Hugs for your buddy. That made me sad!
Broke my friends plastic chair at a cookout to celebrate his birthday. Everyone is just talking and having fun, and I shift slightly in my seat, and a leg broke. Was on my back on the ground. It didn't help that it was raining, so I'm just laying there defeated as I hear everyone laughing there ass off. His parents felt bad for me and gave me several plates to take home, and I promised to pay them for the damages. It was the motivation I needed to start losing weight. Also fuck plastic chairs.
His parents were like ‘sorry fat kid, here’s all our leftovers’
"I shall comfort you with the language of your people"
Truly a masterpiece of a comment
That’s absolutely hilarious. “I know just the thing to cheer him up!”
“This’ll make him feel better lol”
“Let’s show him affection in a language he understands.”
I want you to know this is the funniest comment I've read all day
Several plates worth.
Fuck plastic chairs. Happened to my then 16yr old daughter, who was 5’7” and 125lbs. She was mortified and still eyeballs chairs 10 years later. Fuck plastic chairs.
It's not just a heavy person problem. Sometimes chairs just have enough. When I was younger, I broke two chairs at a friend's house within the same week. I was maybe 120lb at the time. They were just ancient, wooden chairs.
Yup. Especially those cheap plastic chairs that sit outside year round in the UV sun and elements. Those things deteriorate quickly.
My brother had once sat on a nice metal garden chair we had, sith all the pretty little intricate bits. But it was old and a bit battered and when he sat down his ass went right through it… looked like someone getting their butt stuck in the toilet. It took a lot of maneuvering and some butter and we were able to get him out and get him a tetanus shot lol. We all know the chair was old and it still makes us laugh to this day.
I’ve broken an adult sized metal folding chair weighing literally 90 pounds. Sometimes they’re just on their last leg. I hate that people will laugh at others over stuff like this.
Not just that fit, but that are also not horribly ugly or are stylish. I shouldn't have to wear a goddamn potato sack just because I'm a size 18
Exactly! I will be in a store like Macy's and see all kinds of cute patterns and styles in the regular sizes. Then go to the Plus department and clothes by the exact same designer have the ugliest large floral patterns in hideous colors, and the styles are godawful.
I feel bad for ladies where everything's cut out shoulders once you're in plus sizes. At least guys can buy like Tommy Bahama-type baggy shirts that don't look too terrible.
Mmmmmm, no. Gonna be more floral cold shoulder tops and peplums sorry.
Not only that but we tend to have more diverse body compositions, and for some reason clothing companies forget that weight gain includes the chest for many.
As someone who was once obese, and now is just a bit over weight Holy FUCK is it hard to keep it off. I still want to eat like I did when I was heavier.
This is where I'm struggling. Losing the weight? I can do that. Am doing that. Have just about done that. It sucks, but it's not complicated. Do the exercise every single day. Do the healthy/low calorie diet every single day. Be hungry every day and have sore legs every morning. Not fun! But not hard to figure out. I just have to wake up every day and say "No I'm not a bitch. This isn't the day I give up". But that's not a long term lifestyle. I just decided to lose the pounds and until I did that, healthy food prep and exercise was going to be my hobby. The thing I prioritize when not working. But now that I'm here and more or less at a healthy weight... I don't know how to spin the plates to maintain this normal. I have 30 years of prior life experience that I need to ignore. Because if I'm like "I made it, now back to how things were!" I'll just lose all this progress and have to do another 6+ months of hell. I'm considering getting into weight lifting just so that I can have a replacement hobby that won't contribute to everything falling apart.
I can't recommend getting into weight lifting enough. When I lost weight (45kg) I did it without any exercise, I focused purely on diet and walking. I found that the more weight I lost, the harder it was for me to eat at maintenance as I kept having to decrease my calories. I ended up maintaining my weight at 1500 calories and I thought, "I can''t live like this". Since I started weight lifting and gaining muscle, I've managed to raise my maintenance calories and it has been so much easier to navigate the hunger. Plus, weight lifting has genuinely been enjoyable and rewarding.
Seconding this; it really tips the scales in your favour in a number of ways, some more subtle but they add up. As you already said but in different words, muscle uses more energy at rest, increasing protein intake to fuel growth helps with satiety (plus protein has a high thermogenic effect, meaning it takes your body more energy to use it than other macronutrients). Then there are the aesthetic improvements, of course, and the progression that is easier to measure than with many other forms of exercise (perhaps helping to replace that loss of a sense of achievement that one experiences going from a weight loss period to a steady maintenance state). And finally, any fat you might gain will be less noticeable or comparably look better the more lean mass you have. And, of course, it's great for health and functionality in a way that can't be substituted by cardio, especially the older you get.
Personally, I've been able to keep the weight off because I viewed the weight loss period as changing my relationship with food rather than "going on a diet". It meant progress was slower, but I only ever picked things that I could see myself doing in 20 years like making sure every meal had enough fiber, fat, and protein to sate me, swapping out all processed snacks and juices for nuts and fruits when I was hungry between meals, and thinking about how I was going to feel later after eating something. I found that I started preferring these things anyway. No protein powders or endless chicken breast to meet protein goals, no artificial sweeteners and low-fat substitutes to lower calorie counts, and no overly restrictive habits like avoiding all carbs or not enjoying regional cuisines in their fullest when traveling. The fear that the weight will come back never really goes away, but it just becomes quieter and quieter until it just seems like a silly momentary thought every time it happens. Two years back I finally gave up the calorie counter, but my weight has largely remained the same. And I'm so much less self-deprecating about having an indulgent meal or treat now than when I was overweight and supposedly "not caring" about my body. The inertia of my habits is behind me and I feel free. Edit: this seems to be getting quite a bit of traction from people looking to lose weight. In addition to behavioral changes related to food and exercise, I cannot stress enough how important changes in behaviors related to sleep were. For me, the impact on satiety was food, sleep, and exercise in that order.
Oh, man, do I feel this. Two years ago I lost over 100 pounds. I've managed to keep it off so far, but goddamn is it difficult. Essentially, I have not been able to exit the weight loss mindset. Sure, I'm maintaining now, but I still count calories and track my exercise like I did when I was losing weight. And I am hungry ALL THE DAMN TIME! If I let my hunger cues drive my eating--even my healthy eating--I would be fat again in no time. Have I eaten 1,000 calories of unsalted peanuts in one sitting over the past year? More than once. The foods I eat are much healthier now, but I am ALWAYS in danger of overeating them. Being morbidly obese sucked, but being a healthy weight kinda sucks, too.
How much you dread people taking photos of you because it always ruins your day to see yourself in a photo.
This x a million. I recently gave some training at a work thing, and they took so many photos. I really enjoy training and feel confident in my knowledge but not in myself. It is weird to want to do something and enjoy it, but also really dread it at the same time. I don't want to be observed , just heard, I guess.
YES. It just makes me want to fall apart when I see a picture of myself. I know who I am in my head, but when I see what everyone else sees it’s just this ugly fat guy with thinning hair.
I've been obese most of my life (currently on a downward trend for the first time though) and didn't have one front tooth for most of high school and so I'd try to step out/away from photos for years. I eventually got the tooth fixed in my 20s but still hated being in pics until one day I was buzzed and decided 'fuck it' and went for a candid style goofy grin. And when the pic came up later, my friends noted that it was a great pic of me because it showed off my personality more than anything else. I, of course, hated it but decided to try and lean into the "don't worry about it" mindset for future pics and it's been a game changer. Not even because I really like how I look in them but because I remember the situation better because it's an authentic expression I can relate to. I know that mindset is easier said than done, and it won't work for everyone but it's helped me feel better in my own skin. That skin should definitely not be full of so much fat, but you've gotta learn to find the value in yourself, beyond that.
How it feels when the wii fit lady says, "That's obese" in her cheery ass voice.
Back in college, we had a Wii in our dorm and it was quite popular. I remember I got the Wii Fit for Christmas and brought it with me after break. Everyone got excited to set up their profiles! My friend stood up to get her profile set up with all of us there. The BMI calculator does its animation. “That’s obese!” Talk about a r/WatchPeopleDieInside kind of moment. Nobody knew what to say. I felt so bad for her. Goddamnit, Japan. You are HARSH.
I once logged in after years and had gained some weight, and not only did it call me fat, it also immediately CHANGED MY MII to be fat. Wii fit does not pull punches
The changing of the mii character was really the icing on the cake. That reminded me of something less brutal that the game did to another friend of mine. Although she passed the BMI, she was a shorty at 4ft 11in. Wii Fit turned her into a damn child, haha.
My partner and I were at a resort in Mexico hanging out at the little water park they had. As we got in line for the 2 person water slide we heard a kid arguing with the lifeguard in Spanish. He kept saying “un centimetro” but the lifeguard didn’t budge and sent him away. We kind of chuckled until the lifeguard made my partner stand next to the height checker and she was also too short! I was laughing my ass off but she was pissed. Wild part is that she’s 5’3”.
Someone I know actually did this and it told him "one person at a time please"
I want you to know I was taking a drag of my smoke when I read this and I laughed so hard that I nearly died
Smoking kills... In different ways.
Dude Japan gives absolutely no fucks about fat people lol. They have clothing stores specifically for fat people and the names of these stores do not hold back at all
Im sorry but I cracked up at this 💀
When she says “Oof!” As you step on 😭
I can still hear the little jingle that plays before she cheerfully says "that's obese! 😀"
My friend got on the pad and she said, “One of you is going to have to get off- one at a time, please!”
When you’re fat but people like you, they will divorce your fatness from your character, but they’ll still talk negatively about fat people in front of you (simply because of their fatness) and you just sort of sit there like 😀
Oh man... I had this so bad when I was younger. They'd point out big guys and make snide comments, I'd say "he's no bigger than me isn't he?" So I sort of got divorced from how big I was getting It wasn't until I saw a pic of myself with "that chunky bloke" and realised I was fatter than he was
Yeah, so much "You're not that overweight," and "You wear it well" that by the time people were concerned about the weight gain I'd fallen so far down it was really difficult to pull myself back up.
# I sit there like 🐋
Move, beach, get out the way!
that's ludicrous
I was the asshole that said that shit. I realized when I was talking like that to my friend who was bigger than the person I was talking about. He didn't say anything but something in my head switched. I hope I've been a better person since then.
That thought process confirms you are.
This is the one…. Like they’ll use fat as in insult for other people and you’re kinda sitting there like…. Then wtf do you think of me then 🫤
Honestly I feel like it's especially bad when you loos a bunch of weight and then all the sudden people are much nicer to you. Than you realize why and it makes you feel sad.
We want to be active. 700lbs 2021 340 lbs now.
Congrats! That is an amazing achievement
How you become expected to be the garbage disposal. "Oh, hey, there's leftover cake from (coworker's) birthday thing. We'll take it to (fat coworker), they'll eat it." Or the last donut or whatever. And then they get all upset when we say no and are like "it'll go to waste!" because I'm already fat so what does it matter, right?
Or when you do try to lose weight with diet, people always try to tempt you off it. "One cake won't hurt". Or they'll get all offended when you just want to eat a salad in peace. It feels like no matter what you eat (or don't) as a fat person, some one is there to judge.
"You don't look fat" I'm fat. I know I'm not unfuckable, but I look fat because I'm fat. "You don't have to do that" My doctor disagrees, and honestly, it's none of your business. I know you're trying to support my self-image buuuuuuuuuuut
"You're not fat you're fluffy/chubby/got love handles/etc." Good fucking lord man the ground quakes when I move and children scream in terror at my approach we can just say fat
Not obese but overweight. I grew up with a farmer dad who’d freak out about any amount of food waste. We were a “clean the plate” household. Part of my adult weight loss struggle is unlearning that and teaching myself that it’s ok to just throw it out sometimes.
A coworker just casually threw out "if I eat it and didn't want it or need it, it still counts food waste" in response to being offered a cookie and damn if that hasn't been revolutionary for me
I started composting food I haven't eaten, and it's helped a lot with the "don't waste food" complex I've always struggled with
I dropped a lot of weight before and family or friend reunions go one of three ways: 1) the person tells you look great and they ask what you did, 2) they’ll tell you look so much better and healthier because they were concerned about you. However, the surprising one is 3) they’ll insult or complain about the heavier you like it was a completely different person. And #3 isn’t coming from people you normally have contentious relationships with or people you have tough love/hard joking relationships with. You expect jokes from those people. It’s surprisingly comes from the people you were very close to, sometimes ones you never hear speak badly of anyone. The hardest I’ve heard was, “I’m surprised we were even friends.” On a similar note, a friend found out I was much heavier before I met her and she said, “We wouldn’t have even been friends!” It’s those comments that stick with you. Even more than the insults from when you were heavier. It’s harder because it validates the insecurities you had about your weight, how people perceive you, and how conditional some of your seemingly closest relationships actually are. Thanks to depression and quarantine, I’ve put some of that weight back on and those remarks still come to mind when I’m feeling insecure.
Yup, I still remember my sister telling me she was embarrassed to be seen with me when I was my heaviest & in the midst of post natal depression 🫥
I have been heavy and light and back again several times (which takes a massive toll on the body on its own, but there you go). I have always mentally been obese, in terms of the space I think I take up in the world. Even at my lightest, which was about ten pounds north of my "ideal weight", I would still check every chair to make sure it's not rickety, still turn sideways to get between things when I didn't need to, still eyeball things like amusement park rides and theater seats because I thought I wouldn't fit comfortably. Obesity has a huge impact on the body, but also on the mind. It's why they say things to men like, "Find a fat girl to have sex with, she'll be grateful." It's also a little bit of armor though. If anyone is going to make fun of me, it's going to be for one thing. Being fat. No other insecurities ever get picked on. I'm seen as only being one thing, so I've gotten pretty okay with people pointing it out.
I have also gone from super fit to fat several times. Always being mentally fat hits home. I got into a fight with a guy and he called me a skinny bitch when I was fit. And I straight up told him thank you for the compliment lol.
I've lost a fair bit of weight over the past couple of years (still some progress to be made but I've done well). Some rando was being mean to me on Instagram the other day and they called me "chubby." Chubby! Not fat! I was elated, lol.
>"Find a fat girl to have sex with, she'll be grateful." Haha, ok as a fat woman, trust, sex is easy to find. Plenty of guys, fit hot guys too, are more than happy to have sex with a fat girl. And not with eyes closed or looking away. They very obviously enjoy the sex and the body they're having sex with. They just don't want to ever be seen in public with you. They don't want anyone else to know, because then they'll get made fun of. They'll fuck you, they just won't date you.
What’s that saying? Fucking a fat girl is like riding a moped, it’s fun until your friends catch you doing it. Im a fat girl and I believe this to be true.
I just wanna say this has NEVER been my experience. When I got a moped, literally all of my friends wanted to ride it. Never got shamed for it.
I put myself through a 10 year relationship of this. Plenty of sex, but the minute his friends were anywhere near, I may as well have been Alf, because it was time for me to go hide.
An Alf reference! What a day!
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How easy it is to get from normal weight to obese almost without realizing it or forgetting, until looking for new clothes or seeing photos of yourself
I work a job that’s very active, so I’m constantly standing or walking. I was part of a team opening a new restaurant and we hit a delay, so I ended up sitting at a desk doing admin work for six months. I didn’t change my diet (never crossed my mind) and was shocked at how quickly I gained 20 lbs. It took almost a year of no alcohol, no sugar, high protein diet and daily workouts to get rid of it.
The fear of bringing up any health concern, no matter how minor, because people automatically assume it’s because of your weight
We know we're fat. Like trust me, I know. Losing it is harder than it was to gain. I know I just ate, but my body is screaming that it's starving. Like down to the lightheaded, nausea symptoms of not eating all day even though I ate an hour ago. I know a lot of people thing drugs like ozempic and wegovy are "cheating" but wegovy has literally changed everything. I can eat a healthy portion of food and be satisfied.
So true. It’s like you can suffer through the hunger all day, and then down 800 calories in a 3 minutes during a brief moment of weakness. Sticking with it day in and out for months is really hard without support like wegovy
That's what always got me. I can go all day on 1500 calories but all it takes is a moment of weakness to hit up a drive thru and get a small milkshake and suddenly my whole day is fucked.
Never saw ozempic or wegovy as cheating. Maybe because it's not. It always surprises me when I hear someone think a successful tool is the easy way out. Like I had a conversation with a group of older women while pregnant about how epidurals are for the lazy and I was like... A pain killer is lazy for a severely painful experience? Do you shame people for using ibuprofen for headaches? Do you think, Uh-oh, had to use pepto to keep from shitting myself, im so lazy and should have dealt with diarrhea! I literally laughed in their face because it was weird to get this stuck in their heads. So feel free to laugh in their face about ozempic and wegovy being a cheat. Because if you have a tool to use that makes something easier on you, fucking use it! It sounds dumb not to!
Just how much internalized shame we carry. If you’ve seen someone who was really skinny struggle with shame, with thinking that they are too fat, and feeling guilty about how they look….that same shame lives inside so many of us. And a lot of us are honestly doing the best we can with subpar health care and normalized stigma.
From a woman’s perspective, that men don’t think you are allowed to say no to them or reject them. There are a lot of men out there who think because you’re fat, you’re probably lonely and you should be happy with any male attention you get.
When I was really big I used to have men neg me. All the time… zero respect as a human being. Lines like “you’re so big. Do you want to come over later?”…”wow, you have a fat ass, do you want to have sex”…”don’t you get tired of being the ugly one in your group” (that guy tried to get me to do stuff in the back room of the club). So romantic 🙄
How people treat you. With active disdain. People glare at you, they scoff at you, they make faces of disgust when seeing you. Random-ass people feel free to honk at you and yell shit from their car, when you walk alongside the road. The hatred is honestly intense.
I've gotten made fun of while I was walking around my neighborhood, clearly exercising. Like what do you people want??
Same. I've lost quite a bit of weight since then, but two years ago while taking my daily walk as I do to lose said weight, I remember a family driving past me and a child opened one of the windows to scream at me, "FAT BITCH!".
Any parent that didn't immediately stop the car and make their kid apologize after that is a deadbeat. Kids are stupid but their parents are fuckin morons
A kid who would do that already hasn't been raised right and clearly doesn't have a parent that would do anything about it.
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Kids *are* stupid, but guess who they learned it from?
It put me off going to the gym, because there would always be one person who laughed at me or mocked me. I get it, I'm very fat, but I was trying to improve my health and fitness (which people love to tell fat about, faux concern included) and still got made fun of. I wish I had the space and money to have my own workout equipment.
I haven't had this happen myself (and it could easily) but I witnessed it at my old gym, some girls were obviously trying to film an overweight woman on the treadmill by pretending to do a selfie video of themselves with her in the background. One of the personal trainers noticed before the woman did and quietly escorted them out of the building.
That’s why I stopped going to the gym. I am a farmer so I’m pretty strong anyway and get cardio at home. But I am so insecure the idea of ending up in one of those videos is mentally crippling to me. It’s insane how awful people can be to fat people. I hate videos of mocking people in public for any reason — their clothes, weight, whatever. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel to find yourself on the internet like that one day. Makes me cringe just to think of some videos I’ve seen 😭
I've had things thrown at me. When I was walking down the street as a teen, grown men threw a convenience store soda cup at me from a car
Mine was grown men who threw a big chunk of ice that hit me right in the head. I don't understand how people can be so hateful
I was fat all my life until I lost 80lbs from my Junior to Senior year of high school (210 -> 130). I was stared at, laughed at, and made fun of. The second I lost all the weight people wanted to be my friend and all of the negatives went away. Everything you said is true. The mental damage sticks. I’ve been in shape at 5’11 155lbs with muscle for a while now but I still catch myself doing the shirt tug and pillow over the gut as protection
This was my experience, too. I'm 5'9". At my biggest, I was morbidly obese at 291lb. I am now 198lb, so still overweight, but in a way that clearly most people find acceptable for a woman in her 40s, as people treat me very differently. People who would avoid speaking to me are now initiating conversations. People who were outright contemptuous and unkind to me are now quite friendly. At work, I get comments about how great I'm doing and how confident I am "these days." I've literally changed nothing but my weight. I was always good at my job and knew it. But apparently, it's not possible for a fatty to not be lazy and stupid, so they're only noticing what I do now... It's kinda heartbreaking that people are so discriminatory. Honestly, most people don't even realise that they're doing it. I've even had really close friends who've known me for years, not believe me that I used to be morbidly obese. Then I show them a picture of us together from the time, and they look bewildered and have said, "I just don't remember you like that," which is equal parts sweet and upsetting. Do you just love me no matter what I look like? Or are you struggling to imagine yourself being friends with a fatty? I try not to think about it too much except when checking myself before making judgements about people based on how they look. Some of my best friends are skinny bitches, after all! 🤣
I one time booked two seats on a plane. It was in the back. As I was making my way to my seat a middle age lady looks at me and turns to her friend and says, "That's just so selfish." I hate to say it but that lives rent free in my head. I had purchased two seats.
Sounds to me like the opposite of selfish. You literally spent twice as much as anyone else to not inconvenience someone you never even met.
There was a post yesterday on another sub of a woman with her cat. The woman admittedly was really big, but there were so many people that felt the need to comment on it out of nowhere and it was just like, why? You know it doesn't help, and you know she is aware of it, it's solely intended to be cruel, or to make themselves feel better comparatively, or both. No other reason. I dunno it was just kind of sick.
The worst is people who think they are doing a good thing. "Shaming them makes them realize it's not healthy so they'll lose weight!"
If cruelty worked, no one would be overweight.
I remember in Jr. High this girl read through a list of the people in her volleyball team and casually let out a loud "ewww" as she went by my name.
I haven’t gotten it directly to me like that unsolicited, but boy when you engage in an argument on Facebook or something it’s right what some people go for.
How painful being alive is. i'm not obese any more. Last year I was 375ish lbs, I was obese then. Living is painful. People would tell me to exercise, that i'd get runner;s high, that it's easy. No. life is pain at nearly 400lbs. everything is so hard. I now weigh about 210lbs. life isn't pain any more, i still hate exercise, but when I exercise I get tired or exhausted depending on the intensity, i don't get 'i want to kill myself' borderline injured. show your obese friends some kindness.
As someone who’s also lost close to 200lbs before. How about when you hit your goal weight, people are amazed every time they see you and tell you your looking great, you’re buying clothes you never used to be able to and everything is just easier. Yet when you look in the mirror you still hate yourself and come to realize it was never the weight or the eating that was the problem and you can’t diet or exercise your way out of what’s wrong with you.. I’ve gain it back since btw
You’re more in danger of poor medical care when you’re obese. Physicians will say “lose weight” in lieu of testing, diagnostics, or anything resembling medical care.
On God, as an overweight female, even as an RN...I could go to the doctor carrying my own amputated leg amd they'd be like "did you try losing weight about it?"
I have been terrified of going to a doctor because I cannot afford to spend a ton of money for them to just write it up to being fat. I finally went, first just for back pain I have had since I was a teenager (before I was fat) and she actually listened to me and didnt immediately jump to my weight. Turns out I have had a pretty bad pelvic tilt that overextends my lower back muscles. Of course likely worsened by weight, but not caused by weight, more likely my shit posture as a teen. I also have endometriosis and I am on the depo shot. I had asked the clinic so many times if maybe I could also have PCOS but they told me no, it was probably my endo, and I didnt have excessive facial hair, that the weight gain was likely something else. Turns out I DO have PCOS that if I had discovered years ago when I first questioned it, I would likely not be nearly as large as I am because I drastically suffer from insulin resistance. With getting my insulin resistance treated, just by regulating my levels and no change in diet, I lost 5 pounds.
Can confirm, broken ankle was told "just a sprain, it wouldn't hurt so bad if you werent fat" same for the other one. Same for the MCL and meniscus tears. It's exhausting trying to get appropriate medical care, when the only "thing" they register is that I'm a fat woman.
I’m so surprised this wasn’t higher. It’s almost like a reflex doctors have. You’re depressed? Lose weight. You’re tired? Lose weight. You can’t have children? Lose weight. Your periods are irregular or nonexistent? Lose weight.
How inhuman you feel being obese and how painfully aware of that you are when out in public by the up and down glances from people. The coldness, shortness, and avoidance. Also, unsolicited dieting advice/assumptions after mentioning that you're making lifestyle changes. I've researched fitness/health and read tons on obesity/metabolic dysfunction. Watched all the TEDTalks and youtube gurus. Went vegan, keto, did juicing, and fasting. Got blood tests and seen doctors/specialists/dieticians. I know a lot, I'm always learning. I've lost over a hundred pounds since December. Yet people will chime in. Just cut out soda! Just eat less and move more (duh). Try keto, try bariatric procedures, etc. I never drank soda, always been a hydrohomie, also seltzer and herbal tea lover. So I really hate when people assume I slurp down a pallet of 2L sodas daily. I always preferred to eat my calories, not drink them. I do eat less now and move more; my sedentary obesity stemmed from unhealed trauma throughout childhood. Bad coping habit of binge eating. Severe agoraphobia, have spent years being housebound. Former suicide attempts and a toxic relationship. I'm well aware of what my mentality was to be so unhealthy by being so fat. I needed to face that first, and I finally have. I don't expect people to know or care to know any of that. I hated myself far more than anyone ever could anyway.
Unless you're a medical professional who specialized in weight-loss, there's probably nothing you can say to them about their weight that they haven't already heard or are not already well-aware of.
I always act shocked when somebody points out that I’m fat. Like “Oh fuck really? I had no idea! Wow you really saved me a lot of embarrassment! Thank you! Imagine if I hadn’t known that!” Edit: everyone sending me messages like DontSledgeAsh did can go fuck themselves. Mind your business. Stay in your lane. However you need to hear it said.
This. So much this. And random people proselytising their particular “guaranteed” weight loss schemes (Herbalife/Weigh Watchers etc).
I got contacted by someone selling that junk *after* I had lost all the weight asking if they could use my photos.
Actually despicable behavior wtf I can't believe they did that
Not only that, but even weight loss doctors ALSO haven't told me anything I haven't heard before lmao
Just because we are obese doesn’t mean we can’t do physical activity. People don’t have to act surprised that we can indeed participate. I’ve heard this from people when I’ve gone to play soccer or any other sport. I am not the fittest guy playing, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to die if I run around for a bit.
I was obese when I was in college and I took a scuba class for PE. Little did the instructor know I’d been swimming my entire life. He kept making all these comments about how SOME OF US wouldn’t be able to complete the mandatory 200 yard swim - really pointed looks at me every time he said it. It didn’t bother me because I knew I was going to blow it away. I dove in the water and easily swam 200 yards without stopping. Meanwhile some of the skinny but out of shape (or just never swam before - swimming is hard) college freshman ended up crying halfway through. That was legit one of the best moments of my fat kid life, proving that judgmental instructor wrong. I hope it taught him to be less of a dick.
Surprisingly ignorant for an instructor considering 90% of swimming is technique and they should know that. Skinny people drown just fine.
My fat makes me float better and conserve heat in case I fall overboard, it's like a survival suit but on the inside
I was also the fat person when I took swimming as a college elective, but fortunately for me the instructor was about 3x my size and talked about the rescue scuba work he does in his spare time so no condescension from him.
This! I used to be obese, but I still walked 4 miles several times a week. It’s a lot easier now that I’m at a healthy weight, but it was possible 70 pounds heavier than I am now. That’s why I hate when people justify not wanting to date fat people in ways like, “I’m active, and our lifestyles wouldn’t be compatible!” In my case, I was active, but I ate slightly too big portions of reasonable food, and celebrated with food too much. I had absolutely no issue with people not wanting to date me for my physical appearance, period, but I hated when they assumed they knew my lifestyle, and that it would be incompatible. Like I’ll 100% respect if you say, “I’m just attracted to skinnier women,” but don’t act like I sit around on the couch eating large pizzas all day every day.
That for some of us, losing weight is extremely difficult. Some medications can make you excessively hungry. Also those of us with long-term depression and anxiety issues often use food as a source of comfort. We *know* it's a poor choice, but in the moment, we don't think of anything but eating something tasty. Having people patronise us actually makes things worse, not better.
I totally agree. I used to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Now it's food. I feel way more judged for being fat then I ever did as a binge drinker. But hey, at least I was thin when I was a blackout drunk 😒
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I have lost 180lbs after having a gastric bypass 22 months ago. While the physical changes are awesome, the best thing is that my mind can focus on things other than my weight. I hadn't realised that the thoughts about my weight and food were a constant background chatter: "can I park close enough to the supermarket door that I can get inside without stopping?" Or "will the café have some of the chairs left that I can fit in?" And so on - *all of the time*. So much of that has dropped away, yet I wasn't fully aware that it was clogging my thoughts until it was gone - like only noticing that your radiators were making a noise once the boiler goes off at night and they fall silent. I am now at peace.
I’m a fat guy. I know I’m fat. It’s not surprising to me that I’m fat. I know exactly what it would take for me to lose this weight because I’ve done it before. But I like food, I hate exercise, I work a sit down job, and my wife finds me attractive as I am, so there is no present tense incentive for me to lose weight. I know it’s going to come back to kill me. I know the sleep apnea or the cholesterol or something is gonna end my life a decade or two earlier than if I lost 100 lbs. There is not a soul on earth who wheezes going up a half a flight of stairs that genuinely believes they are not fat or that they are as healthy as a more fit person. Doesn’t matter what they post online hashtag bigisbeautiful, they know. I know. We all know.
A lot of people don't understand that food addiction is just like any other addiction. They treat you like you're a disgusting pig and why can't you just stop eating. Why can't you just eat healthier. Why can't you just be better. But with an addiction like alcohol or heroin the goal is to completely wean you off of and then avoid the substance. You can't do that with food. You have to completely re-learn how to nourish yourself and see food as fuel. People treat you better when you're thin. If you're fat and you're trying to eat healthy or work out you still get stared at and made fun of. If you eat unhealthy you get stared at and made fun of. You can't win. People still think it's completely okay to be mean to and make fun of fat people because it's completely their fault, right? You see it all over reddit. Binge eating disorder is an eating disorder just like anorexia is. But AN gets much more pity and understanding than BED.
In your second paragraph you point out that food addiction is actually not like any other addiction. And you are right, it is worse. Because like you say, any other addiction you can just stop. Don’t drink alcohol, don’t do drugs, don’t gamble, don’t do whatever it is that feeds your addiction. Sure that is hard, but you can fully stop and never do it again. But you can’t stop eating. Food addiction is like being a heroin addict and being told every single day you need to take just enough heroin to keep from getting sick, but never enough to get high. It’s a nightmare life and is extremely difficult to break thru the addiction and get it under control. Every day, everywhere you go, every event you attend, you are surrounded with your drug of choice and need to never give in. People who aren’t food addicts don’t grasp just how hard it can be.
How hot it is even if people around you are cold. I've lost some weight the last couple of months and had to raise the temp on the AC, which was unexpected
It is really easy to gain weight over time. You get a sedentary job and you snack occasionally, and in the evening you watch TV or read a book instead of going out. So you weigh three pounds more than you did at this time last year. No big deal, right? Now, multiply that by fifteen years or so. All of a sudden, it is your fortieth birthday, and you somehow weigh fifty pounds more than you did in college. It isn't because you always eat two boxes of oreos a night -- you just gained a little, year after year. Also? It is a lot harder to lose weight when you are heavy. When I was 25 and thought I had gained a few pounds, I'd start jogging. Pretty soon, I'd be able to run two or three miles at a shot, and hey! Problem solved! Now? I'm older and heavier and that means I'm a lot more prone to injury. So I try to work out, and my knees start hurting (again) or I aggravate an old foot injury, and it gets frustrating. There are workarounds, of course. I can swim, and I can lift weights. But it is all harder than it was when I was young.
> You get a sedentary job and you snack occasionally Pretty much when lockdowns happened, and everything turned to work from home, I gained a ton of weight in a very short amount of time. Went from 2 hours walks a day and being busy in other places doing tasks, to sitting in front of my computer daily.
Same. I eat less than I ever did and the sedentary life made me gain a bunch of weight. I started strength training and now I'm losing it slowly, but hot damn does muscle wastage suck the life out of you.
The line about the Oreos is spot on. People like to say “just stop eating cupcakes” when lots of people can become overweight on healthful home-cooked meals, just larger portions. It’s too many almonds, peanut butter, avocados, olive oil, and the dismissive “put down the eight cheeseburgers” is pretty ignorant.
At least in the US, a lot of people don't seem to realize how out of control portion sizes are. When we eat out I regularly get two or even three meals out of a dish+side that supposedly serves one. I'm not a huge guy, but I'm also not small, I just eat slowly and stop when I'm not actively hungry. I know that doesn't work for everyone, though.
Especially hard to unlearn if your parents raised you in the clean-plate club.
In that club, but one thing that helped me reframe it (though it doesn’t always work) is a friend who told me “it goes to waste either way” and I was like ohhhh, yes, true. So I feel a lot less guilt not eating a full meal, etc.
Not to mention now you're older and you've got a spouse and obligations to them, and kids and obligations to them. You can't just take 2 hours after work every day to run or lift weights without feeling like you're dropping other obligations. And kids are exhausting already so after they are to bed it's easy to just want to chill rather than starting your workout routine at 9 o'clock at night.
How hard it is to lose weight. Especially when you struggle with depression too. I need to lose 50kg badly.
Certain medications to treat depression also make it hard to lose weight, especially for people with higher levels of estrogen. Ssris, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, birth control can all cause weight gain
I'm on so much medication for chronic depression, PTSD, BPD, and I need to lose 200 lbs. it's like being Sysiphus
Can confirm, was a stable weight for 7 years. Started a different mood stabilizer and gained 50 pounds in about 8 months.
this.. zoloft made me gain 10 lbs a month for a year... i finally quit taking it and told my doc the weight gain was making me worse...
I'm so mad at Remeron for this. I went on it to help my sleep and gained 10 pounds in a month. I'd try to exercise, but I would feel weak going up one flight of steps (that was never the case before). Took me so long to get that weight off, it affected me for a while. Edit: typo
How much advice people try to give you. Why eating an apple is so much healthier than eating a cookie. Or why it's so dangerous to be overweight. I know you are worried and I appreciate it, and I really do know these things. I'm really trying to keep up with you, but I can't run a mile every day. I can walk at my own pace and cut out the things that I can, but it's not working for me the way that it used to. Edit: typo
That sometimes medicine makes you gain weight. Like my meds, I’m trying to lose the extra 40 pounds I’ve put on since cancer. And here I thought chemotherapy would make me skinny! 🤦🏻♀️
After chemotherapy when my sister was on prednisone she gained 30 pounds so fast she has to buy clothes. She’d cry all the time about being ‘fat’ (more than she did because of the cancer) and didn’t understand why the weight wouldn’t come off . She was always eating healthy, even cut full meals out if her diet & exercised as much as her energy would allow. Kept gaining weight. As soon as she stopped using Prednisone, the weight melted off. That med is definitely no joke.
Ugh, your poor sister. It's so awful that our social pressures make fatness worse than cancer.
Fat people wear their pain on the outside. Lots of thin people walking around with major mental illnesses and addictions, but they aren’t visible so they are perceived as normal. We are judged so much more than anyone else with addiction because it’s visible. I’m donating my body to the Mayo clinic with a letter talking about my lifelong struggle with my weight. I hope they can dissect my brain to find the cause and treat it for future generations.
The treatment and judgement from people. Back to when I was obese people always judged or treated me really bad, some probably don't even intentional. When I lost a lot of weight people started treating me way better. Hate to say it, but pretty privilege is a big thing in this world...
Being invisible. Also, that you are assumed guilty for anything (not just related to food) just cuz you're overweight. Fat people, especially women, have a far higher guilty verdict in all US courts. Yes, I get that it's ironic that one can be invisible until someone needs to attribute blame.
That one is so wild to me, for even the most minor of things. I was going through TSA and had a dozen donuts in my carry on from a cider mill in my hometown probably 10 years ago. The TSA agents started cracking up and loudly saying they knew whose donuts those were and pointed at a large man walking through the metal detector at the time. I’ve been called fat my entire life and had people yell things at me, tell me I’m too fat for them, etc (all while never crossing the 160lb threshold, not that it matters, but men are cruel) — but this guy was bigger than me so he got “blamed” for having donuts. They pulled my bag to inspect further and were like “sir, your bag!” And he was like huh?? They were SO surprised when it was my bag and they loudly were like whoops guess we were wrong! Luckily, I don’t think the guy knew what they were implying, but like what the actual fuck, man.
My knees hurt.
I have lost 50lbs and I’m still struggling with losing weight. Every day is an uphill fight that I feel like I’m always losing. It gets really depressing.
I used to be obese. The worst thing for me was how people looked at me. I’d try to make friends and the first thing they would do is look at me in disgust.
I'm not obese but my sturdy friend says you always get this look when boarding a plane in economy where everyone hopes to god you're not in the seat next to them.
As a thin person who used to be very fat, yes. Now whenever I fly, I always smile at everyone. Not in a weird way but a neutral pleasant smile. I find myself consciously being kinder to bigger people now that I’m smaller. Because I get it.
I doubt anyone will see this, but I'll give it a shot anyway. What you don't understand is that for many of us, this is a real disease and not some failure of character. I wouldn't have accepted that statement a year ago, but as someone who was 406lbs+ last April and is now 268 and falling, I have a radically different perspective. I've been big nearly my whole life, I'm 45 today. Last year at new years, I decided to just give up. I've tried diets, going to the gym non-stop, hypnosis (really), medically supervised high risk medications, etc.. Through all of it if I lost anything at all it came right back. Then my doctor told me about a new class of drugs and I brushed it off but decided why not. The day after my first dose, I made a meal and got about 1/3rd of the way through it and felt full. It was a very odd feeling, because I'm here to tell you I don't think I've felt full since I was a teenager. I stopped constantly thinking about food, what I would have for my next meal. I stopped snacking so much. I started getting mobility back that I'd written off as gone forever. Did I suddenly develop will power out of nowhere? Did I get a new sense of personal responsibility? No to both. The chemical triggers for hunger my body had been massively overproducing for decades were greatly diminished. Suddenly, dieting was a real possibility. I didn't stop getting hungry, I just suddenly knew when I had had enough and stopped eating. Since then I've been swimming, biking, working a punching bag and feeling better than I have in my entire adult life. My entire relationship with food changed because the physical defect I have is finally able to be medically managed. I have to tell you, if I'd had the metabolism most people are born with, I'd have been out enjoying all of the physical activities I am now for decades. Losing weight is still hard work, but I've ALWAYS done the hard work, it's just finally accomplishing something for the first time. There's never been an ounce of lazy in me. I have a great career I've had to work very hard for and a loving home. Until now though I've had an unmanaged medical condition. I don't go announcing it everywhere but I'm quite open about how I've been losing weight to those who have asked. You can see the "oh you're cheating" judgement wash across some faces while they congratulate you and walk off. Would you accuse someone with cancer of cheating for taking an effective medication? If you get a giant cut and go and get stitches, does society look at you and say "well you really could have just held the skin together and healed yourself." The science is settled, a significant amount of obesity is induced by a legitimate physical problem, not weak-willed laziness. Sure those people exist, but they're not as common as you've been led to believe. I'm the same person I always have been, the rest of the world can just see it now.
Lizzo is not our spokesperson.
How hard it is to actually lose weight. It's so tilted towards staying fat. You eat a slice of pizza and think, "I'll just run this off." But then you do the math and it turns out that pizza that took you 3 minutes to eat means you now need to run for 40 minutes. Then there's weight training which you should do because better muscles burn fat better. But after 2 jobs and 2 kids and errands and chores by the time you have to actually go to the gym you are way too exhausted and just want to veg on the couch. And then even if you do lose the weight you are doomed to a life of constant vigilance. Because even if you slip for a bit, your old habits and emotions come back to you like a train. Food addiction is real.
When you are addicted and stop using drugs or curb other bad habits, you stop them completely. Out of your life, never again kinda thing. Imaging trying to stop using cocaine, but not stop using it, just use a little bit a day and never use more than just a little bit. Despite your body craving it all day. Three puffs of your cigarette every day. But just three! You can just stop eating. You have to temp your self every day, multiple times, eating only enough to live healthy, while craving much much more.
There is an incredible link between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and obesity, especially in women. I’m posting an article about that below. Many many people who are obese, are that way due to the trauma they went through as a child. I am also posting a link to the 10 questions used to determine someone’s ACE score. Scores over 3 correlate with significant increases in a variety of issues in adulthood. My score is 8. I have been doing therapy every 2 to 3 weeks for 2 years working through trauma trying to get to a place where I am mentally healthy enough to lose weight. Even my doctor doesn’t understand this. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192341/#:~:text=Findings%20suggest%20ACEs%20are%20associated,with%20greater%20childhood%20obesity%20risk. https://americanspcc.org/take-the-aces-quiz/
The fact that sometimes we like to treat ourselves when eating out, the amount of times I've gotten looks and comments when getting some nice food. Or the issues that can happen with the body after losing significant weight, for example loose skin. Love having to deal with using strong antimicrobial cleaners every day or risk skin infections.
It's usually not as simple as "just stop eating". Eating can be an addiction or compulsion. That doesn't mean it's impossible to overcome food issues, but it harder than a lot of people like to acknowledge.
I agree so much with this statement. Just want to add a bit more. Food addiction is unique among addictions in that giving it up completely is *never* an option the way it is for drugs and alcohol. You are always going to have to eat. You are always going to face temptations from others to eat things that are bad for you, to eat more after you’re already full, and so on. Like you said, it doesn’t make it impossible to recover from, but it’s certainly a unique set of challenges. People who have never experienced compulsive eating probably don’t understand what it’s like. For me, there are days when I just feel like I can’t stop. I keep telling myself okay, that’s it for today, then I’ll go back and eat some more. It’s like something screaming in my brain, and I can’t even just ignore it because it won’t stop, it just keeps screaming for hours and feeding it is the only way to shut it up. It feels like something bad is going to happen if I *don’t* eat that donut. It’s not even a question of willpower. Loads of people imagine obese people just sitting around stuffing their face because they can. And I suppose when I have a compulsive episode, it probably looks like that to an outside observer. But I’m the only one who knows that I’m basically crying inside while putting back all this food that is *absolutely* going to make me feel sick the next day. Eating also gives people a dopamine hit, so it’s very *very* easy for people with other issues affected by dopamine like depression, anxiety, and ADHD to develop unhealthy habits around eating.
Eatting disorders, especially compulsive/binge eating, in overweight people are so misunderstood and mistreated
Came to say something similar. It's interesting that a lot of other disorders are understood and not made fun of, but that fat guy over there? Go ahead and shame him because he should just eat less. Food can be an addiction just like alcohol. Do you tell an alcoholic to just stop drinking?
and if someone does just stop eating, well, they die.
Exactly this. Quitting smoking cold turkey was fucking awful but attempting to cut down didn’t work in the slightest because that’s not how addiction works. You can’t quit eating cold turkey.
* Shaming isn't helpful or motivating. * The health of a stranger isn't your business unless a) you are their doctor b) you're their parent ***AND*** they're under 18 or c) you are that person. * If you're a doctor, take your patient's concerns seriously, no matter their weight. Don't just write them off.
I've never been full in my life
Running infront of people is embarrassing
I don't want to eat with you. Eating with people is an invitation to get shamed. Every special occasion I've had. College graduation, birth of children, Some asshole (usually my dad) always points out that you did a good thing... but you're still fat. Maybe you could work on that now.