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Omerta

Calling all Big people.

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So let me preface this with a few things. 

1.) I honestly and truly mean no offense. 

2.) I have never been more than 15% body fat and and am currently around 12, so I don't understand a great deal.

3.) This is something that has become a hot button topic around our house and I feel as though I'm the one who is the dick (go figure, right?) That said I don't mean to be, and I want to know more.

 

My family has a few big people which I never really paid attention to. I've just always known them for them and their weight has never really registered. I mean I knew, and I noticed it, but outside of that I never thought about it. Most of use are between 8 and 20% body fat, and always have been.

Growing up I was always taught, "Food is fuel not fun." To me steak and asparagus or cauliflower is the shit. Easily my favorite and it is not terrible for you. My household eats pretty clean, and so does most of my family....exceeeept my brother. This is a recent thing, he has gotten obese and is becoming more and more depressed about it. 

I have talked to him recently and it has struck me how bad it has gotten. Normally, my talks are more facts centered such as if your over 15% you're broaching that area of unhealthy and all the related diseases are going to take their toll left unchecked. Or everyday activities become harder on your body, why would you do that. Or the age ol' "It's as simple as a caloric deficit to lose it, and a balanced diet and exercise to maintain." 

Then my son made friends with a kid whose a chunk, but is a cool kid. He spends a lot of time at our house. Well his parents came by as they have a couple times, and they are Biiiiiiiiig people. We are talking like 3 hundy big. Great, honest, hard working, salt of the earth people. We had a barbecue and some drinks. Now I'm not an Uber heavy drinker so I was having a few beers, and it was getting late. So we sent the boys to the home theatre and they watched some shit. 

Me and my wife and this couple are out there talking and Jan makes a comment about my wife being able to shop anywhere for lingerie and clothes, and so on. Then it devolves into this reverse fat shaming shit where they're talking about how easy my wife and I got it. And it's all in jest, nothing personal, but then shit got weird. 

He divulged he is a food addict, which I didn't really know what it was. I thought we all were food addicts since we needed it. That said, he knows his shit. He knows what to eat, when, how, recipes, I mean this dude knows his stuff. And we started talking about diet and it baffled him how easy it comes for me. I told him it was just a lifetime thing. I don't miss what I've never had.

From the sounds he can't not eat shit food. He has alarms on his phone reminding him and things like that. Even with reminders he can't do it. I asked him why and shit got super weird. I mean this guy talks about food like people talk about sex. Talking about how the flavors meld and how food looks on the bread, or the steam off of it and just weird shit. 

He has like a legitimate relationship with food. He knows how to eat but doesn't have the discipline for it. Has anyone had this problem? Did you beat it? If so, how? If not, does it matter to you?

Edited by Omerta

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For people like that it comes down to mentality. People can do whatever they want if they trully WANT it. People want to progress in a job and work hard and grind? People want to save up and grab a 1k iPhone they been saving for??

 

It's the same with eating right and also working out. For me alot of people fall into the I like the idea of something but dont really want it THAT bad. For me I love food. I can eat all day everyday. I know gluttony would be the 1 of the 7 sins I'd probably fall under.

 

However I adapted the mentality of reward vs excessive. Eat and workout well enough during a week and then having 2, 3 maybe 4 bad meals for reward. Don't completely cold turkey a habit but adjust accordingly. I got tired of feeling slow and out of shape that it pushed me to force change the habit of eating bad excessively. Some people need coaching and others can figure it out themselves 

 

I would ask you on a scale of 1 to 10 how impulsive is he with other habits? Spending,  drinking, etc. Normally theres. A habitual relationship in between someones choices that make it harder to break vs making the change. For me my gym life effects into everything else. When I workout like scheduled, I do better in work. I'm motivated in other areas of my life. I'm more aggressive in taking down goals beyond the one habit of weakness. 

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I concur with Mikey, except that some people need a push. It might behoove him to get a professional to give him a strict set up to follow and give him that push he needs to take off.

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Maybe just try to start writing down a bunch of those things he loves and figuring out which of them could apply to a diet and build a similar love/lust for looking better? 

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Oh no, I’m not this man’s guru. I mean I wouldn’t mind getting a few more jogs in a week or what have you. He didn’t ask for help, and I have no intention of interjecting unsolicited help. 
 

i was just wondering more about the psychology of overeating, and why people know better but can’t do better. Is it really as simple as they don’t want it? Is it laziness? I just dont understand it.

Edited by Omerta

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Given that ngata has me blocked and won't actually read this, I'd like to start by saying that Colin Kaepernick is braver than literally any US soldier other than Chelsea Manning. 

 

Anywhom this is going to be a doozy that meanders a lot since I have lots of thoughts. 

 

As someone who was obese, then dropped down to be fairly in shape, then has gone back to somewhat overweight, and is now working to drop back (250LBs to 150 to 200 and now in the low 190s): Food is fuel is the smart way to think about it, but it's not a truly realistic path to expect someone to follow. Food is a major part of every society on earth. Our brains are literally hard wired to prefer high caloric foods as a way to cope with the fact that back in the olden days your next meal was never guaranteed so you had to eat what you could while you had the chance. 

 

But nowadays not only is food available, but it's abundant. And basically every social event is centered around food. You go to a party and there might be a veggie tray, but there will also be chips with dip, mozzarella sticks, and other unhealthy stuff. It's hard to stay around there for a long time and just avoid it because you know it tastes good. And you can trick yourself by saying "eating this shit won't really make a difference." Because that one time it doesn't. But you talk yourself into every single time just being an exception and before you know it you've gained 100 pounds. And that doesn't even get into drinking. You eat a great diet and have a few drinks a day and your diet is worthless.

 

Not to mention food is an incredibly easy pleasure to have in a life often devoid of it. So many people have to wake up early, go to work, work for 8 hours, go home, and get a little time before having to go to sleep and that's their day. So they're presented with the opportunity to either take the time to cook a nice chicken breast with a vegetable (a process that will take a half hour minimum) or they can grab a Big Mac with fries, something that we are biologically wired to enjoy more than the healthier meal, and it's just a 5 minute trip on the way home. And not even that much more expensive than making the chicken (and before you get back to steak, most people can't afford to have steak every night for dinner).

 

The other big issue with food to me vs other bad habits is that you can't just stop. A few years ago I had a bad breakup and i turned to eating and liquor for comfort (again, it's an easy pleasure). Basically every night I was eating a pizza or burgers or whatnot and getting drunk. Then one day I just woke up with an absurd hangover and it just snapped to me that I was going down a bad path. So I stopped drinking for awhile. I knew that I had to so I stopped buying alcohol, so there was no alcohol around me, so I didn't get drunk. Food is tougher because you can't just stop eating. This could just be me, but moderation is harder than completely abstaining. 

 

And I haven't mentioned exercise in this because in my experience exercise is pretty much worthless when it comes to maintaining weight. When I really decided to start losing weight I started going to the gym a lot. Even as I gained a lot of it back, I still was going to the gym. The gym is good as a mental habit to keep at it (plus the other benefits exercise provides) but one slice of pizza undoes an entire workout from a caloric perspective. 

 

As far as body positivity goes, I do think it is good to an extent. Fat people are treated like shit by society in a way that isn't ok. All the research indicates that being shitty to fat people doesn't help them lose weight. In fact, it often drives them to eat more since they feel shitty about being called fat, and like I've said, food is a quick, easy pleasure. People shouldn't feel subhuman because of their weight, and if they really decide the enjoyment they get out of food outweighs the negative side effects from their weight, that's their choice. People who tell themselves that they're dicks to fat people for their sake are just looking for an excuse to bully people they deem inferior to themselves. 

 

Where I do have problems with the body positivity movement is that my guess is that it's something of a lie people tell themselves. With probably a few rare exceptions, I would bet most body positive people would rather be thin if it was possible without having to change their lifestyle. The people who spread misinformation about dieting piss me off. There's that famous study that showed 98% of diets fail, and while thats true, it's because people don't stick to them. People like to use that to say that some are naturally fat or thin, but that's just untrue. If you diet and don't let yourself fall back into bad habits, you'll never gain weight. People are also horrible about estimating the calories they consume, which is why they think they can't lose weight (which feeds the mindset of "I'll never be thin so might as well eat more).

 

Now with that all being written, if someone truly has an eating disorder, they probably aren't going to get through that without actual psychological help. Ngata's cousin needs to see a real therapist to help him get to the bottom of his disorder. Binge eating disorder is hard to diagnose since it's so similar to the typical western lifestyle, but it is different. But even if he gets past the disorder, it's still a massive difficulty to lose the weight and keep it off.

Edited by blotsfan

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I don't normally get in between you two, but Ngata, blots post is worth reading.

I would add what has helped me immensely- I have dropped about 25 pounds in the last two months- is meal prepping. It takes discipline, for sure, but like blots said its really easy to just grab fast food when you're tired from working, rather than taking the time to make a healthy dinner.

So you take one of your days that you're off and you make meals for the week. And yeah, they're nothing fancy, but when I know I have some chicken and beans already waiting at home, its way easier to resist going to grab that burger and fries.

And then when we do go out, I try to go to Subway and actually get something moderately healthy instead of greasy fast food.

It's easy and cheap to get food that will help you stay fat.

Edited by Thanatos

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