Please don't be offended...

As has already been stated in some of the responses....its psychological more than physical. Both play a huge part but for me its the emotional eating that gets me. I ate and still do for comfort, for love, because I'm mad, hurt, pissed off..you get the idea. Its been this way my whole life. When I got my lap band I knew it was just a tool...when the tool was gone I was terrified because I knew I wouldn't be throwing up anymore which meant the calories I was eating would actually make it to fat. Ironically, to mark the anniversary of getting the band I got a tattoo of a rose vine around my wrist which signified the "journey". Each rose represented a wow moment in the weight loss, each thorn the pain and the encircling of my wrist the fact that its a never ending journey. Two weeks later the band was taken out and I almost died. Now as I look at the tat I recognize the journey is far from over. I started writing in my journal again. I'm learning the emotional triggers that send me running to the fridge. I didn't "allow" myself to get morbidly obese....I allowed my mind and body to get out of sync and I fell out of love with myself.

I sincerely hope this somehow helps you and doesn't totally confuse you. As a nursing student, you will be working with larger folks. It is my hope you will have a better understanding of what makes us tick and that we are more than just hopeless eating machines..there's a reason for the weight.

The human body is amazing - I suggest you watch some amazing human body shows on the Science Channel. First we have gone through millions of years of evolution. And with that our brain does not like starving, but prefers to hoard extra calories so that we may survive during periods of drought and famine - that used to be much more prevalent. It is in our DNA. Now in this day and age for many people in the Western world, extra calories are very plentiful. For some people it is easy to avoid these extra calories, but as we can see with the obesity epidemic this is not the case for most. Then tack on the depression that typically ensues when someone does get obese, and you have a viscous cycle. Furthermore, when a person does gain extra weight and then loose that weight, the body adapts and becomes very efficient. That person will have to eat less calories and exercise more than someone who never gained the extra weight. Plus the brain will push that person (through a release of a hormone) to eat more, the cravings can become very intense requiring a great deal of willpower to overcome. Those who loose weight and are able to keep it off, typically become somewhat obsessed with watching what they eat. It is one thing to loose weight, but completely another to keep it off. FYI: Food releases more happy hormones than kissing, which is why we seek comfort in food.

For me it was a combo of starving and doing fad diets with my mom because my grandmother thought I was getting fat (wore a size 6/8 in middle school). I also grew up with an alcoholic, so there would be times that we didn't have any food and we'd have binges when grocery day finally came after going without for however long.

Here is the how obesity is a illness just like alcoholism! It is not a new topic at all the bible talks about it as a deadly sin, gluttony! But see our world ignores the issues of this and it has been accepted! So if you or anyone suffers from being a sinner should understand! We all have our problems see gluttony is one that is worn on the outside!

random bible item of the day
Did you know that the 7 deadly sins are not listed anywhere in the bible as such? They're not in the bible at all as we think of them. Fascinating isn't it?
/random bible item of the day. Now back to "why we're overweight".

Speaking from someone who weighs over 300lbs I just didn't wake up one day and put the weight on and as a nurse you should know well that there are also medical factors to come into play. I was always quite active until a few years ago and I didn't necessarily want to 'let' myself get to that size neither desire for it to happen.

So here are below are my reasons.

1. I have asthma and 25% of the year I am on steroids which increases weight

2. Three years ago I had a car accident and couldn't move neither do any exercise for 8 months as I was waiting on back surgery, on worse days I have morphine injections for the pain. Because of the accident I had depression and anxiety attacks and to an extent I comfort ate due to my condition

3. I also have pcos

4. Recently been diagnosed with diabetes which is why I am here to lose weight and to get my life back.

There are a number of reasons, medical or otherwise why a person gets to my size or over.

I can give you some thoguhts about how i became obese (270+lbs at my heaviest)

1) As a child, i never had the opputunity to eat healthy, I was alone most of the time as my mother was a workaholic/alchohlic and only ever had easy to make unhealthy fast food style dinners, microwavables and basically nutritionless trash

2) I never really had any friends in my formulative years, so all the day to day social activities i would have been doing as a youngun to burn the calories just never happened, so the weight slowly crawled up without me paying much attention

3)I don't /look/ big. This is probably my main cause. In my profile picture i weigh nearly 280 pounds, yet just looking at me it was hard to tell, i guess i always expected people of my weight to have big faces, massive arms, chubby hands, you know? I always tell people how much i weigh and they never, ever beleve me until i show them my tum

4) I just didn't care, depression and being lonely just made me not give a *kitten* about my appearance, once i knew i was clinically overweight i made no effort to curb it because i just didn't have the motivation (still struggle with that) and with no relationship prospects (Or friendships for that matter) on the horizon, it was hard to feel the need to shape up (Most people i know get fit for the chance of scoring with chicks, shallow i know but its a big motivator) if that makes sense xD

5) Addiction to crappy foods, aversion to healthy food. Something i still suffer with. I HATE vegetables with a passion, and most healthy foods taste like pure scum to me. I'm just so used to salty greasy sugary food that nothing else feels right to me

6) It absolutely kills me to excersise, even slow jogging does my legs in almost immediately, being sufficiently active at a level enough to make an impact can put me out all day xD


As a side note 7) Probably should mention that social anxiety tends to have me staying inside alot, that probably contributed alot
well thats some of my reasons, most of it probably sounds like rambling since i do that alot.

If you go by the "overeating" and "calories in calories out" idea, then for you to gain 140 lbs over 11 years only meant eating an extra 120 calories a day over what you're burning. That would be, just eating an apple every single day. So we can say overeating makes us gain weight, but does it really?

"Not caring about how I looked. You gain slowly, 10-15 lbs per year. Over the span of years of overeating, you look up and you've gained a lot of weight. I gained 140 lbs over a 11 year span."


This was more or less it for me, too. I have never been thin, but was fairly fit for my height when younger. When I married, 16 years ago, I was 5'10 and weighed 170ish. Over the next decade, I put on 100 lbs. I started working a sedentary (8+ hours at a desk) full time job and didn't make time for exercise. I am an avid cook, so I would cook big meals and not even consider portion control (I would make a 9x12 casserole--enough to feed a family of 8!--and we would polish it off it two meals!). My hubs loves sweets so we started eating big bowls of ice cream and cookies and other desserts each night before bed.

I, too, gained slowly....2-3 pounds a month adds up to 20 pounds a year, then 100 in 4-5 years. Because it goes on slow, you don't "notice" and, while you know you are having to buy another bigger size of pants, you stop caring. You're tired. You're older. You're married. You make excuses. Like another poster, my height also allowed me to gain weight and "carry it well' so I didn't look as heavy as I was. At least that's what I told myself.

I also know I emotionally eat. When I am depressed or tired, my body craves "comfort foods"--meat and potatoes and biscuits covered in mounds of gravy, warm and gooey desserts, etc. I also mindlessly snack out of boredom. I now try to keep limited snacks in the house and make those healthy. I have to ask myself sometimes if I am really hungry or just letting my mind rule my stomach.

My wake-up call was a bad physical. High blood pressure, high blood sugar. I didn't want to become a 40-something on five different meds controlling things that should/could be controlled with proper fitness. But, honestly, living a healthy lifestyle is not easy, for many reasons, and I can understand how so many people just "settle" with being heavy because I did it for years.

It was easy. I told the world to go to hell, but leave me some snacks on its way out the door.

Now I still tell the world go to hell, I just stopped eating the snacks.

I. Love. You.

This is a genuine question I am asking because I am very interested in obesity and morbid obesity, specifically WHY and HOW. I am also a nursing student, and I understand that factors X, Y, and Z play into obesity. But here is my question, and I would really appreciate honest answers from people who truly understand:

How does a person "let" himself or herself become so heavy? How and why does a person put on 300, 400, 500 pounds? I just do not understand and would really like to "get it" so in the future, as a nurse, I can better help those struggling with this issue.

Thank you

-Nicole

Not caring about how I looked. You gain slowly, 10-15 lbs per year. Over the span of years of overeating, you look up and you've gained a lot of weight. I gained 140 lbs over a 11 year span.

If you go by the "overeating" and "calories in calories out" idea, then for you to gain 140 lbs over 11 years only meant eating an extra 120 calories a day over what you're burning. That would be, just eating an apple every single day. So we can say overeating makes us gain weight, but does it really?