Smugly overweight??
Replies
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Boom.You're trying to rationalize why you're overweight
Yup.
Fat is fat, whether you're smug about it or not. Being a great cook doesn't justify your weight problem or make it less bad. Watch the food network. Sure, plenty of them are overweight/obese, but not all. Look at Robert Irvine.0 -
This makes me feel kind of bad. I'm young and a still novice cook, but my weight was gained from processed foods and excess junk when I first entered college. Should I feel inferior to someone overweight from home cooked meals?
My weight was gained during my last pregnancy when I was put on bed rest so I wouldn't lose the baby, so I win. Back to the corner with you now, missy!
This is funny... I gained my weight because when I was a teen, I developed an eating disorder and screwed up my metabolism so badly that by the time I started eating again, I couldn't process calorie counts over 900 or so. I gained a good chunk of it eating spinach salads and playing racquetball 3x a week. I guess I should feel bad too?
You should all feel bad. Everyone should feel bad.
Except for me, who ate half a pizza last night.
(Pssst. No one needs to feel bad, just move on and make changes that work for them.)0 -
I'm a bit of a wine connoisseur, myself. It's been over a decade since I've tasted from a bottle less than $15.
Sure, I get drunk and beat my wife and kids, fight cops when I drink, and have a slew of DWIs - - but the important thing is that because I drink better booze, I'm not as bad as those other drunks.
This comparison brought to you by the letter J and the number 3.
LOL that is a bit of an over the top analogy…but I see what you did there…well played...
THIS made my day0 -
Ok - I'm looking for some "no, you're not crazy" here.
I feel like my fatness is "more ok" that someone who did it with eating out or prepared foods from the grocery store. I realize it's completely stupid...
or is my husband right?
You know the answer. You know he's right.
Sorry. I hate agreeing with husbands....0 -
I think, if you want a real, honest response...
It's actually worse when you're the primary cook than if you were to have had to rely on fast food and stuff because of work and lifestyle. When you are the cook, you have control over what you cook, how much you put on the plate, and how much you put in your mouth. You control how much of the fats and oils get used, the salt, the sugar, all of those things. Five star meal doesn't mean heaping platefuls. Have you ever been to a 5 star restaurant? The portions take up like 1/5 of the plate! Exquisite flavor without overload.
Being a stay at home mom also leaves a person with little excuse, in my eyes. While I know SAH moms are busy with their own tasks, they are often way more active than the typical office worker, and can turn many every day house and kid tasks into aerobic exercise to stay in shape. Even if this activity assumption is not accurate, they are in control of the time.
Eating out becomes a "necessity" in some people's lives, as does having to do quick meals while working at a desk or driving. While this person is still responsible for portions and things, they don't have direct control over the ingredients. This compounded by the necessary sedentary nature of office work, it's a recipe for weight gain, pretty opposite the scenario you have in your life. This is one example of many.
I believe that hearty cooking and healthy weight can go hand in hand. My old housemate grew up in an old-school Italian home where it was always 6 course meals with heavy sauces and pasta, but he's almost too skinny. People with rich tastes are charged with the responsibility of leading rich and full active lives to counter-balance, and happiness seems to be found in the balance.
Most SAH moms I know who have gotten to be overweight and have looked at their own habits critically have come to admit that one of the primary issues that contributed to their weight gain was the propensity for unmeasured snacking and grazing throughout the day, along with "excusing" themselves from exercise because they run after their kids all day.
Fact of the matter is, if you can't take responsibility for the part you've played, no matter what you ate, there's still a long way to go before you'll be in a place to be successful.
Yes!0 -
Shame the OP never came back....0
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Everyone in my family are great cooks including me. I didn't get fat from our fabulous cooking I got fat from over eating it :ohwell:0
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This makes me feel kind of bad. I'm young and a still novice cook, but my weight was gained from processed foods and excess junk when I first entered college. Should I feel inferior to someone overweight from home cooked meals?
My weight was gained during my last pregnancy when I was put on bed rest so I wouldn't lose the baby, so I win. Back to the corner with you now, missy!
This is funny... I gained my weight because when I was a teen, I developed an eating disorder and screwed up my metabolism so badly that by the time I started eating again, I couldn't process calorie counts over 900 or so. I gained a good chunk of it eating spinach salads and playing racquetball 3x a week. I guess I should feel bad too?
You should all feel bad. Everyone should feel bad.
Except for me, who ate half a pizza last night.
(Pssst. No one needs to feel bad, just move on and make changes that work for them.)
Agreed. I should have put an "LOL" on mine because IDGAF if someone thinks their version of weight gain is somehow higher caliber than mine.0 -
I'm a bit of a wine connoisseur, myself. It's been over a decade since I've tasted from a bottle less than $15.
Sure, I get drunk and beat my wife and kids, fight cops when I drink, and have a slew of DWIs - - but the important thing is that because I drink better booze, I'm not as bad as those other drunks.
This comparison brought to you by the letter J and the number 3.
Truth.0 -
If you were overeating truly good food I could kind of see your point but overeating food loaded with butter etc. that's made at home is unlikely to be better for you than restaurant food loaded with butter etc.0
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I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that, while fat is fat, high-calorie, fatty meals from scratch are healthier than comparable processed meals.
Also, I really, really love to cook, too. I'm great it. However, being a great cook doesn't mean you have to serve high-calorie meals. Why not put those skills to use in a more healthful way? Grab some vegan cookbooks. Try your hand at ethnic foods. I'd suggest Indian or Asian, since these seem to be lowest in fatty, unhealthy ingredients. Trust me, making delicious, healthy meals that are nice to look at is not easy. This way, you could still show off your talents, but without all the unhealthy ingredients. Save the homemade breads and fatty sauces for special occasions.0 -
Yeah... fat is fat. Doesn't matter where it comes from, just sounds like you're trying to justify how you got overweight by comparing it to someone else who doesn't eat as well as you at home, but is still overweight. Might want to get off your soapbox.0
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no such thing as better fat. i too cook things from scratch. i don't want my kids filled with preservatives and chemicals. so when i decided to lose weight, i realized that i was actually being a better mom by teaching my children healthy eating. don't get me wrong, we still use plenty of fats - i prefer butter to margarine, etc. but we've scaled back the sugar and flour. whole grain bread is still ok for the kids - i don't eat it anymore. baking is out - except the occasional fruit crisp with oats.
as for time, i work outside the home 60+ hours a week and I still find time to cook healthy meals, count calories and go to the gym 4 x a week. it's not easy, but if i can do it, a stay-at-home mom should be able to eek out a little time.0 -
I am also a SAHM, and like you, I pride myself on my culinary abilities and love to show them off. I cook and bake from scratch, and completely identify with using plenty of butter, eggs, etc... BUT- I also log my food. I actually find it easier to accurately log my intake when I'm eating things I've prepared, because I know exactly what went in. The recipe calculator here is probably my best friend on this site- sure, it takes a bit of time, but once you have the recipe, it's there. At first, it felt like it took me a long time to make recipes, but now I'm adept enough to enter everything in while said dish is cooking, or after dinner is done and everything is cleaned up. The biggest difficulty I had was figuring out the proper selections for ingredients- unfortunately, there's a lot of inaccurate entries on here. However, being as precise as possible (including raw when searching for produce helps get the accurate entry) helps cut down on searching for the proper ingredient.
Given your culinary prowess, you should give yourself the challenge of making phenomenal, from-scratch meals that are also healthy. It can be done.0 -
I'm not going to weigh in on if your excess weight got there by better means or not.
The simple conclusion is if you continue to eat the foods that you do, in the quantities that you do, with the level of activity that you have, you will remain overweight, and likely continue to gain a bit of weight over time.
If you're happy with that, continue on. If you're not, something's gotta give.
I don't think you likely have to change WHAT you eat (unless you want to). But I think you really should know how much you're eating. If you build a recipe as you make supper (add butter to the bowl? Add it to the recipe on MFP), after time most of what you make will be in the database for you, and logging becomes that much quicker. Want a second slice of that thing you just made? Sure. But at least know that it'll cost you xxx calories.
If you're interested in losing weight, you're best to get on knowing how many calories you're consuming.0 -
Agree with what peoples have already said. It doesn't take that much time to log your recipes and weigh your ingredients. The majority of fruits, veggies and proteins are in the database, it doesn't take very long to weigh something before using it. That's just an excuse.
Fat is fat, doesn't matter how you got here as long as you're willing to do the work and make the changes to get it off. Cooking with lots of butter, eggs, flour etc is totally fine. Just log it and log realistic portions of your recipes to fit in your calories and macros each day.0 -
5 pages of responses and not a single one of them from the OP after the initial post? Or did I miss it?
I cook, I LOVE to cook..I bake and I'm good enough at it to do it as a side job on occaision. I got fat because I didn't follow portion control and didn't know how to say no. It has nothing to do with the type of food I was making. To say it's because you are such a good cook you can't push your own plate away is rationalization.
It's cool though..almost all of us here have been there..or we wouldn't be here..You're in the denial phase...You'll snap out of it soon enough. :flowerforyou:0 -
Seems like a waste of time for everyone to comment...OP hasn't even came back on...
Why ask then???0 -
Anytime I've caught myself smugly justifying why I'm not like everyone else who needs to lose weight, I've realized that I am making excuses for myself, and not holding myself accountable for the decisions I (and I alone) make in my eating. Once I realized I was doing this, was when I finally started to make progress with weight loss.0
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Seems like a waste of time for everyone to comment...OP hasn't even came back on...
Why ask then???
Perhaps OP has read all five pages of comments and is too embarrassed to reply? That's my hope, because there is a lot of great advice.0 -
There's nothing wrong with being smug because you can make kickass food. Just don't use pride in cooking well as an excuse for why your weight is "okay." Cooking is a wonderful hobby, but does not justify eating as a hobby.0
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perfectly saidThere's nothing wrong with being smug because you can make kickass food. Just don't use pride in cooking well as an excuse for why your weight is "okay." Cooking is a wonderful hobby, but does not justify eating as a hobby.0 -
Being such a good cook should mean that you should be able to figure out ways to make the things you love healthier, and still taste great, and you should be able to make smaller portions too, so that there isn't so much to eat if you don't have any will power.0
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Some of our favorite meals, that we continue to make regularly, came from when I did Whole30, which forbids dairy, sugars/sweeteners, grains and legumes. Just about everything was super healthy and much of it was quite delicious. For the record.
You can eat things filled with eggs, potatoes, butter, cream - if you eat smaller portions, if you expand your other meals to include less of those things or you opt to increase your caloric burn in some way.
I'm not smugly overweight like you - I pop through McDonald's a few times a week lately, instead of making my own food from scratch, but I recorded another 2 lb loss today. So if we're competing (which we aren't) - who wins this round? I'm currently down 13% of my total body weight, even though some of my food is crap. You are up 30 lbs because you don't want to change anything. Maybe just reflect on that for a moment. Determine your priorities, adjust accordingly.0 -
Personally It does not matter to me how I got fat, whether from homemade food or restaurant food. Point is, I ate too much of it, all of it. Fat is fat, no matter where it came from.
I am worth the time it takes me to log everything I eat. At this point in my life it is what I have to do to keep up with my new lifestyle.
I realize it may take you a little extra time to log everything when you cook as you do for a family, but it is up to you to decide whether it is worth it or not.
Good luck in your journey.
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A great cook can cook healthy meals too without losing favor. And it sounded like you are making more food than necessary for your family size? I would hope you would want to model good portion control to your children too before weight becomes an issue for them as well. Just a thought.
As for count the calories...yes it will take more time but after you get some of your favorite recipes logged in and counted on calories it will be easier the next month (I assume some of your favorites you make at least on a monthly basis).0 -
One of the lame, pamsy reasons I put off starting "a new healthy lifestyle" is because I'm a cook. I'm a damn good cook. I love delicious food. I love chef-driven restaurants. I cook nearly every meal my family (of three!) eats. I make my own bread every weekend (which is weird, since I actually don't eat it, but my husband and son do).
If it wasn't clear: I love food.
And that love made me fat. Really, really fat. Because I ate WAY TOO MUCH of that good food. I also felt that my love of food meant that I could eat out all the time, and enjoy beer and wine whenever I wanted, and eat as much of my delicious baked goods as I could without exploding. Because I had made it, and therefore it was better for me than munchkins from dunkin donuts.
But - SPOILER ALERT - that was bull****.
I started logging calories. I took the 10 minutes a day to input my recipes into MyFitnessPal, changing the exact quantity of the item as I cooked to adjust it to my choices in food preparation. I decreased my portion size and started eating like a healthy person instead of an obese person.
So, same food, but more mindfully prepared and more mindfully eaten.
Like magic, I weigh 133 pounds less and we still cook and eat amazing food. I still make elaborate 6-layer cakes for birthdays. But when the birthday's done, it gets wrapped up and put in the freezer for an occasional indulgent treat instead of a non-stop cake-eating extravaganza.
It's possible to be a kitchen goddess and a healthy weight. You're simply choosing not to.0 -
AND because I make so much from scratch, it's a huge pain to count calories because only a few things come with "reliable" labels as we go through tons of produce and protein.
I also have to call this out as being bull****.
The majority of my cooking is also with produce and protein and other things without labels. But the MFP database, girl? It has those things in it too. My carrots don't need a label; the USDA did the work for us. And though my straight-from-the-farmer grassfed beef doesn't have a label, I can do just fine finding a comparable entry in the database.
This is an excuse. You want it or you don't. If you don't, that's fine, but just know that it's sure as hell possible to make this work.0 -
I was searching malnourished and Obesity & came to this discussion. I think it's idiotic to call obese people malnourished. Malnourished refers to people in third world countries who are starving and don't get enough to eat. I think of malnourished in a negative way, who on earth started saying obese people are malnourished? Dumbest thing I have ever heard of.0
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As a good cook, you shouldn't struggle to lighten up the recipes you love. I cook all our meals at home from scratch, and once I got into the mind-set haven't found it too difficult to lighten up my favourite recipes. Simple things like not using as much olive oil, one cal spray instead of butter, not as much cheese or reduced fat cheese. When bread crumbing things using panko with reduced fat natural yoghurt to stick it rather than egg.0
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