Why are YOU Fat?

fiveholts714 · 12-09-2005, 09:59 PM

I eat out of boredom and nerves. A lot due to nerves.

imalene · 12-10-2005, 08:46 AM

So many reasons - all self inflicted.

In my family - Food is love. Love is food.

I LOVE to eat!

Contributing factor - as a kid I didn't have much to do except eat. I was SUPER PAINFULLY SHY - and when I didn't have friends - I always had food.

I gained 40 lbs in the summer between 5th and 6th grade (already 140 in 5th - started 6th at 180) - buying sweets (secretly after choir practice) and laying in bed reading comics and eating!

Then Mom put me (and my sisters) in TOPS with her and all of that dieting really made me even more fat and I developed absolutely horrible habits from that experience. If you gained you would sit in the "Pig Pen" and sing (to the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean): "I am the Pig of my tops club, I am the cheater this week, I am the pig of my tops club - I've cheated and now I must squeak, oink, oink, oink, oink, ..." and it ended with: "I won't cheat till I'm slender again". Then you would have to put a sign in your front yard that said "I am the pig of my tops club". It was given to the biggest gainer. - I LOVED those women - in those days no one knew any better and they did what they could and it really was fun - but it was the start of horrible things for me. We would starve two days before the meeting then eat a million calories when we got home from the meeting. I would take laxatives and water pills the day before - etc. etc. Diet pills too were the norm off and on for many years.

Later in my life I became bulimic - laxatives were my choice of weight control. Got over that when I married at the age of 27 and couldn't hide the mad dashes to the bathroom from my new husband - he thought I was really ill and insisted that I see a doctor - so end of that.

Had a few years of success with WW - probably 10 total years of "normal" weight in my 50 years of life. Oh yea - I had 2 years of success with Phen Fen too - but we all know how that ended.

Besides TOPs and WW - I did Jenny Craig, Personal Physician, Phentermine alone, Phen-Fen, Atkins, South Beach, Starvation, Water Diet, Diet Center, Nutri Systems, Slim Fast, Spa Petite, Curves 5 Week Plan, Overeaters Annonymous, and more that I can't even remember any more.

The last 10 years - all bad. Up, up, up - sad, sad, sad.

I'm 49 y.o. and have made a decision that I will not face age 50 in July with the same probs that I've had all my life. Life is too precious for that - a gift that should not be wasted!

LB Surgery by Dr. Kuri (Mex) if all goes as planned - in January.

Love to all who post here - what would we do without the encouragement and support of those who understand only too well?

Patti

Dawn NH · 12-21-2005, 09:19 PM

I am fat for many reasons....many I have known for a long time.

I had an abusive childhood and learned in my teen years that boys don't like fat girls.....well that was not completely true.

I have many different illnesses/addictions in my family. There is a lot of alcoholism, depression and anxiety. I was lucky enough to get the anxiety and some of the health issues such as high cholesterol (from age 14) good blood pressure, but asthma that was not diagnosed until I was in college. I HATE to exersize!!!!!!!!!!

My father was always a very big man who treated me poorly because I am a girl. So I can remember him doing many things that revolved around food, such as buying food for him and my brother but my mother and I could not touch it, or buying food for himself. It was not uncommon growing up to go out shopping and buy the big 1lb candy bars for each person, two for my brother and more for my father.

In high school I did Nutra Systems and got down, yes down, to 190 which is the smallest I can remember being. I was smaller at one point, but as I said above things were not good for me as a teen. Even when I was smaller, I was always bigger than everyone else. It was the "big bones" on both sides of the family.

So here I am at age 32, happily married for 10 years and at 291 being my highest weight this summer, I am the smallest in my family. The only people smaller are active alcoholics. (My grandmother starts every morning and ends every day with a beer. She does not drink anything else)

After some therapy with very skilled therapists and a very supportive family I can answer the question honestly....................................

So why am I fat, for many reasons.....a choice made as a young teenager without understanding that I could not take the weight off as easily as putting it on; family genetics (I took Redux until it was pulled off the market at which time...age 23.....my DR told me that I would be fat until there was a cure such as was found so I needed to deal with it) Now many may think that is harsh but what it did do is help me to be comforable in my own skin all these years. I started to go to the beach and wear comfortable cloths and if someone did not like it they did not have to look. I for the record could never go out in a bikini : )

I am hoping that my band will be the last tool that I need to be healthy. I do not care about size or number on the scale (though under 200 would be nice) as long as I am healthy and active again!!!!!

Jachut · 12-22-2005, 12:40 AM

Its taken actually getting my band for me to be able to really address this issue and I'm blessed that it's really very simple. I eat too much (or I ate too much).

I've realised since being banded 2 weeks ago that never ever in my life have I had this feeling of satiety between meals. It's incredible to me to feel full like I just ate, yet not be bloated like you are after eating an enormous meal. I never realised just how bottomless I was!

I dont have emotional eating issues. Like most people I tend to pick from boredom but I am now so optimistic that this band will work brilliantly for me because I now know, really my only issue was lack of satiety (if not actually hunger a lot of the time). I've just lost interest in food apart from when I'm hungry now.

Now it's very early days and no doubt a few weeks and a bit more healing and I might be feeling a bit picky again!

**Jack** · 12-22-2005, 08:20 AM

re: "feeling of satiety"

B I N G O !!!!!

Kbel · 12-25-2005, 09:09 PM

I am fat because:
- I hate my body with a frightening intensity and food is the method of destruction that I choose. I don’t smoke or do drugs or drink to dull the pain so food is the weapon of choice.
- I thought being bigger would be a cloak of invisibility that would help to protect me from the heartbreak and unhappiness of my thinner self.
- Food is my best friend and my worst enemy.
- I have become what I feared the most – as can happen. A tall teenager with puppy-fat self-consciously dieted herself into a big, self-destructive middle aged woman.

Twenty-three years is a long time to hate myself and I am so tired of it.
I have discovered that the band is a tool and is not the answer…

beautifultina · 12-29-2005, 05:20 PM

wow. It took me almost two hours to read this thread. No, I am not a slow reader but, I did want to take everything in. I can relate to so many of you. There are a lot of things you all said that have stuck with me. I would like to share a few with you.
"I pretty much dislike myself and don't think I am worth the time and energy it takes to eat right and exercise."
"I feel like everyone is looking at me and judging me by my weight."
"I hate my body with a frightening intensity and food is the method of destruction that I chose. I don't smoke or do drugs or drink to dull the pain so food is the weapon of choice."
"I don't love myself as I am. I could blame my weight on instances of sexual abuse."
"Being fat helps me to be invisible."
"My weight is linked to my happiness/quality of life."
"Over eating is the socially accepted vice."
"I am fat because I can't fill up something inside."
"I posess a desire to use food as something other than what it was meant for."
"...parents/ grandparents feeling embarassment and disappointment in me and my lack of control over food."
"They eat and eat and don't taste anything."
"I was raised in a home with an abusive, alcoholic (step , in my case) father who made life resemble walking on egg shells."
"...became extremely passive/aggresive due to daily spankings, incest..."
"I have come to realize that because of the abuse in my childhood, I have been looking for love in all the wrong places, because my daddy didn't want me."
"I want to understand what self-esteem truely means."
"...realizing the difference from feeling hungry and realizing that i am just thirsty."
(paraphrased) Do I eat to try to create a warm loving feeling that I felt I never had?
"I will be healthy and strong and safe in my real body that has been hiding for years because of fear and not having enough faith in myself or in God to walk through the hard times."
I am not quoting all these things to make it easier to explain away my being overweight; I chose them because I can so closely relate to them all. They all struck a chord in my heart and my mind when I read them.
For me, my weight gain is attributed to a combination of all the following: a crummy childhood, an abusive relationship with my step father, lack of self confidence due to others in my family constantly nagging me to lose weight(my grand parents tried to bribe me to loose weight. They offered to pay me for each pound I lost. I was motivated until the check never came to reward me). My weight allowed me that safe zone so that men would find me unattractive and leave me alone.
My family is for the most part small framed, despite the fact that I have German/ Dutch/Klammoth Indian in me( all known for thier HUSKY statures). My father is 6'4" and wieghs about 150 soaking wet. My mother is 4'11" and sometimes yo yoed with her weight. The clothes in her closet range frm size 4 to size 16. (What i wouldn't give to wear a 16 right now). My extened family are all small. I ,too was diagnosed with PCOS after gaining 80 pounds in a year.
What it all comes down to is I made bad choices and now I have to do whatever it takes to correct them as best I can. I appreciate all the support I receive here. I look forward to the new year with much anticipation and enthusiam.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY BANDSTER FRIENDS and to those awaiting their BANDS.

ava · 12-30-2005, 11:08 AM

Wow. I'm not alone. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your stories.

nanahanna · 12-30-2005, 09:11 PM

I was thin, painfully thin as a child and adolescent but more normal as a teen and until I was 41 years old. My dad came down with lung cancer. He, my mom, my sister and I were all smokers. When he was in the hospital getting chemotherapy we would go to the "family" room and smoke. Then 3 months before he died I decided I didn't want to die like that so I quit. That was 20 years ago this past November. I substituted food for cigarettes and that started the weight problems. I have struggled with it for 20 years, but now it is an addiction. I eat whether I am hungry or not. I eat just because I can. I eat late into the night. But, I would rather be fat than die with lung cancer. My mom died 4 years ago this Valentine's Day with emphysema, my sister (only sibling) died 10 months after my mother with lung cancer. Now ...if I don't get this weight off me I will die with diabetes, heart disease, hypertension or some other related disease! I have also had a dysfunctional marriage until the last few years when things have gotten some better, but I think that has been part of my problem....like Jack...that is the only part of my life that I could control...if you can call getting obese is control. I had wonderful childhood with wonderful parents...no obesity in anyone else in my family...I'm the lone duck (the one who waddles).

Sharon

ms_efflorescent · 12-31-2005, 02:17 PM

I am fat because a mixture of some of the already listed things, most specifically a mentally ill family, large portions, numbing to much constant thinking and anxiety but I feel the biggest reason that I am fat is that I dieted myself to fatness.

I first started dieting when I was 14 and in no way fat but wanted to conform and be more normal and my eatign was the only thing in my life that I had any control over. It has been one big revolving circel since then; diet until I am starving, eat too much to make up for it, hate myself, diet and starve myself, eat too much to make up for it, hate myself...

All that dieting wreaked havoc on my metabolism and my general health. I used to have a lot of energy, now I have none.

Three weeks banded, 21.5 pounds gone since beginning the pre-surgery diet and and I am already beginning to feel better.

Serena

fiveholts714 · 12-31-2005, 10:31 PM

Because I don't know how to eat normally.

DiDi · 01-03-2006, 12:26 AM

I agree: "feeling of satiety". I can eat & eat till I am literally sick before I feel full. I hope this stops when I get banded.
With me it is kind of wierd, I was exceptionally tall & skinny all through childhood up to about age 30 (well OK I'm still tall!). Was on doctor prescribed diet & protein drinks to gain weight. My knees used to be the thickest part of my legs. LOL they sure did me up good. Now up to BMI of 39, I think. Maybe I just got used to eating huge portions & no one taught me how to stop once I quit being skinny.
But I'm ready to learn NOW!!!!

aneffie53 · 01-05-2006, 12:54 AM

Beautifultina -- boy did this ring true for me too, distrubingly so!!!

"My weight allowed me that safe zone so that men would find me unattractive and leave me alone."

newgirl · 01-05-2006, 10:32 AM

I struggled with fat all my life. wt. on, wt off. I ate because I loved to eat. Flavors, textures, smells, chocolate! Moods didn't seem to have a lot to do with it though I have had low grade depression much of my life. I'm sure antidepressants didn't help, since they tend to stimulate the appetite. Now that I'm banded, (one week and 1 day), my biggest concern is getting all the liquids in. Food or eating is not an issue so far. I'm feeling better day by day. I definitely think I have done the right thing. I am looking forward to exercize. Now that I've lost 25 pounds I think it will be easier.

newgirl · 01-05-2006, 10:36 AM

:) I struggled with fat all my life. wt. on, wt off. :Bunny I ate because I loved to eat. Flavors, textures, smells, chocolate! Moods didn't seem to have a lot to do with it though I have had low grade depression much of my life.:phanvan I'm sure antidepressants didn't help, since they tend to stimulate the appetite. :cry Now that I'm banded, (one week and 1 day), my biggest concern is getting all the liquids in. :paranoid Food or eating is not an issue so far. I'm feeling better day by day. I definitely think I have done the right thing. I am looking forward to exercize. Now that I've lost 25 pounds I think it will be easier.

Why are YOU Fat?

me

Tops, the Pig Pen and more...

Why so big?

Why am I fat?