I am that whale. I’m overweight. I gross myself out when I look at my body in a mirror. I hate stepping on a scale.
I’m the guy who has to have a special office chair because regular chairs will break under my load.
The last time I flew, I was stuffed into economy, near the back of the plane. I didn’t complain. I just took my seat.
Getting into the seat was a struggle. My hips barely fit. The belt was a tight fit, but it did fit.
I felt sorry for the young lady who was forced to sit next to me. I believe there was a pleasant conversation, but I am large enough that even that “normal” sized person was forced to actually touch the stranger beside her.
Regardless, I was disgusted.
I gained wait after that flight during the panic. With exercise and a change in diet, I did start to come down in weight.
But I seem to have gained most of it back. According to my lady, I look and feel healthier, in that my size has reduced. But it doesn’t help the mental angst that I have from being fat.
When I read Miguel’s post about the woman demanding airlines be “more inclusive of plus size travel”, it hurt.
So I walked away. I know that he was not addressing me. Nevertheless, as more than one person has said, friendly fire isn’t.
So how do I differentiate myself from that person?
Simple, that article is about an entitled near human that wants special snowflake treatment. She isn’t interested in getting health. She isn’t interested in losing weight.
It hurts to walk. I left my right ACL at Bear Mountain, NY more than 30 years ago. It hurts if I have to walk any distance. I tried the treadmill for about a year, I had to stop because the doctor gave me a choice, keep walking/running on the treadmill, or we can schedule your knee replacement.
So I got an exercise bike.
I get on that bike 5 days a week. Sick or not, tired or not. My goal is 45 minutes per ride. I was up to 30 minutes when the old bike broke. I’m back up to 20–25 minutes and working towards getting healthier.
I’m out in the shop doing things. 4+ hours in the shop standing is a type of exercise. When I come in the door, my ass is dragging. There are three steps from the garage to the family room. I use my arms for extra stability because my legs wobble.
There are another two steps into the kitchen. It is a struggle to get up those steps.
Today, I was so tired when I came in for dinner that I forgot to take off my apron. I went back to the garage to put it away. I didn’t ask the kid to do it. And yes, those steps were just as painful and just as hard the second time.
So when I read about entitled fat people, I need to remember that my goal is to get health. I will continue to work on it.
Good job making exercise a regular habit
Keep plugging away at something that works cardio with minimal pain to build endurance, I’ve had family members reach the point where they’re too big/weak to exercise, it isn’t a recipe for longevity
I look at exercise and diet tweaking as a way to reallocate resources. Either spend itime doing what it takes to stay out of the doctor’s office and put money in Big Pharma or not. I chose not.
Dr. Ken berry on YouTube really helped me with diet and losing weight
Are you able to fold the tray table down in front of you so that you can set your drink down, or did the passenger next to you have to share their table because yours was blocked from folding down by your belly and you had nowhere to set your Coke-Cola? If so, we’re not talking about you….
Yes, I was able to fold the tray down.
For losing weight, exercise is important, but diet is critical.
You cannot gain weight without calories.
You cannot maintain weight without calories.
Exactly!
An hour of strenuous exercise can burn 500 calories.
A few handfuls of mixed nuts is 500 calories. There is no way to exercise enough to lose weight without cutting caloric intake. There are just not enough hours in the day to burn off excess calories. First step has to be cutting out the calorie dense food, especially the snacks.
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I used to power down three to five handfuls of mixed nuts before dinner. That translated into 300-500 calories in addition to my regular caloric intake. When I cut that out, I lost close to 20 pounds, without making any other changes. And, with the weight loss, exercise (burning calories) got much easier.
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Cutting out the calorie dense food is crucial.
Yup. I’ve read that even excessive exercise will simply increase your body’s appetite.
Not that it shouldn’t be done, but it’s not the exercise that loses the weight. It’s the overall active lifestyle and endorphins that the exercise bring to your body.
Not sitting around bored – less boredom snacking.
Endorphin rush from the exercise – less need to seek same from food, sugar, etc.
More lean muscle mass – better glucose control.
But you still can’t out exercise a bad diet.
I have changed my diet, and I am continuing to work on diet. I’ve worked on reducing portion size. I’ve been eating “healthy” for a number of years. It is cheating and portion size that are my biggest downfalls.
look up Dr Stephan Grundy. my good friend went from 330 to 190 in a year following Dr Grundys program. no insessant exercise. its not for everyone but it worked for him
Discover the magic of semaglutide (aka Ozempic) and other GLP-1 antagonists such as terzepatide.(aka Mounjaro). I have been overweight/obese all my life except when I was in the Army, and have fought the battle with losing and gaining weight for decades. I’ve lost 30 lbs with minimum effort using semaglutide. I was prediabetic, and my A1c dropped from 6.1 to 5.5. My lipid profile is great. My joint pain and exercise tolerance have greatly improved. I have a good friend who’s lost 98 lbs over the period of a year and a half. His wife has lost 80. While maintaining great health.
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My friend, who about 70 years old, was a severe type II diabetic requiring multiple insulin shots per day. He had such severe joint pain he was on an opioid chronic pain program. He could barely walk without respiratory distress. Over the past year, he has stopped taking insulin and his A1c is down to 5.8. He *spontaneously* stopped taking opioids. About six months ago he called me and said “Hey, listen to this. Yesterday, the bottom drawer in my kitchen cabinet broke and I got down on the ground and fixed it.”
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“So?”
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“You don’t understand. For the first time in 15 years, I got up back on my feet on my own.”
Note that I’m not giving direct medical advice. These drugs are not tolerated by everybody, and you need to see your own primary care doc to see if it’s right for you. A lot of people are disappoiinted by their degree of weight loss. Losing 20 lbs is a lot more common than losing 100 lbs. It depends a little on where you start out. But my primary care physician says he is seeing magic. Note also that not *everybody* loses a whole lot of weight. You always get to a point where you have to choose to lose and modify your habits accordingly. But only a little.
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The big problem is that there is black letter law that says the Medicare cannot be used for weight loss drugs, so if you are on medicare, it’s really only available to you if you are diabetic. The retail cost is between $1200 and $1300 per month. It turns out that for semaglutide, the patent is on the *delivery system* not the drug itself. My medical providers contracts with a compounder that sells the drug and a syringe for about $100/month.
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Terzepatide works better for weight loss than semaglutide because it affects two receptors instead of one, but as far as I know it’s not available in a generic form at all. However, with patience semaglutide works for most people.
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The other nice thing about these drugs is that the most recent literature suggests that even if you don’t lose weight, it significantly decreases the risk of cardiac death,, and it’s true for both diabetics and nondiabetics. It is also associated with significant improvement in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NASH) and in congestive heart failure.
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Tirzepatide is available as a compounded generic. Costs more, but is available.
I saw my doctor a week ago. We agreed on Terzepatide. We are waiting for the insurance pre-approval before we start.
I’ve lost 90 lbs so far. I went from 275 to 184. The big thing is to lose enough through diet to add intensity to exercise. It wasn’t all that hard (and I used Miquel as an example to start the process. If he could do it, so could I).
Look up serving sizes, and limit your high glycemic carbs to 4 servings a day – 1/2 cup rice, small baked potato, 1 slice of bread. No snacking or snack foods. No alcohol.
When this started, I asked my doctor about the juice diet. He said all those diets are the same. They are simply a mechanism to pay attention to what you are eating. He told me that a guy my size eating 1500 calories a day will lose 5 lbs a month, easy. So I got a tracking app. He wasn’t wrong. When you start recording what you eat, you’ll be shocked how many calories it is, and how expensive (in calories) some foods are, especially snack foods.
And I don’t starve myself, either. It’s not tough. I have eggs and sausage for breakfast, some sort of salad for lunch (like chik-fil-a grilled chicken), and a normal dinner, light on the starches. I take a one-a day men’s 50+ vitamin. That’s about it.
The big thing after that first 20-30 lbs is to get some sort of exercise, every day. I walk the dogs a few miles every day. Then, when I got to where I wouldn’t be a circus act, I started biking. Then, jogging.
You have to want to do it, though.
I started out with slim4life. The only part of the plan that was worth anything was the sheets to track what you eat, and the eating plans. Other than that it was a bullshit scam to sell you supplements you don’t need that’ll fight your guts, and superprocessed weird unnatural snacks that are expensive. Besides, you need to control snacking urges, not fake them out by eating dumb snacks.
You can do it.
You’re trying, you are aware that work is needed and progress is slow. You’re not asking the world to conform to your desires (and perhaps delusions,) Awa. That makes all the difference.
I’m trying to restart weight loss. Spring is never a great time due to Day Job complications, but I hope to combine diet (no snacks available) and exercise to start getting back down where I should be, from “rotund” to “pear.”
And, that is 100% the difference. Right there.
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Instead of demanding the world change for you, you recognize that you are at an unhealthy weight, and you are taking steps to change that. Instead of telling the airlines they must reduce passenger capacity, you strive to make your seatmates as comfortable as you can.
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I have no problem whatsoever with obese people, right up until they make their weight my problem. You are not doing that, and for that I am proud of you. Added bonus, you are trying to lose weight, and I want to support that.
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As to losing weight. Exercise is good, restricting calories is better.
It takes significantly more time to burn off calories than to ingest them. A vigorous workout can burn 500 calories an hour. Five handfuls of mixed nuts is more than 500 calories, and that can be consumed in seconds. And, because high caloric density foods are not filling, you are more likely to consume unhealthy portions of them.
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Speaking from personal experience here. I used to eat three to five handfuls of mixed nuts (the Costco ones. Those damned things are like crack) then sit down and eat a full meal. At about 100 calories per handful, I was adding 500 calories to my evening meal. When I simply refused to purchase the nuts, I lost about 20 pounds over three months. No other changes to my diet/exercise routine.
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Take a serious look at what you eat, and replace the high calorie stuff with lower calorie stuff. Baked instead of fried. Use one less pat of butter on your toast. Thin sliced bread for sandwiches instead of the jalapeno cheddar rolls. Skip the cheese for one to three meal a week (a slice of cheese is 80-100 calories). If you can shave off 100 calories a day from your diet, that is a pound (approximately) a month that you no longer have to exercise off.
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Another note… work is not a substitute for exercise. Work is something you strive to do as efficiently as you can, whereas, exercise is deliberately doing something in the most inefficient manner possible. Instead of using a ramp to move a heavy weight uphill (working) you choose to lift is directly up (exercise.) Seek to do some exercise every day as well, not “work.” If you burn 100 calories a day more than normal, that is one less pound of fat that will be stored (approx) every month.
I agree. Work is not a substitute for exercise. My exercise is the exercise bike. The “working in the shop” is not “exercise” but it isn’t sitting on my ass.
Yup. As a fellow fat dude, I can assure you that nobody hates me like I hate me. Like you, I am working on it (again.) Best of luck!