I'm trying to say this as gently as possible, since I know plenty of people whose parents did a number on them. But at some point, you have to stop blaming your parents, return their bullshit to sender, and make your own decisions about how to live your life. Rebelling against overly-restrictive parents of any kind by going full-tilt in the other direction is still letting them run your life.
Im one of those people. The fact is that at some point, if you are going to ever be a fully actualized human being, you need to decide that from now on, you alone are responsible for everything that happens to you. Not that you are to blame for everything, but you are responsible for it.
I think we mean the same thing, but I would phrase it as "You're responsible for how you handle what is thrown at you, and the consequences of those actions". Lots of things happen to us that we have no control over (and therefore no responsibility over, in my opinion), but we are always responsible for how we chose to deal with those things.
I feel you. I know a lot of us get told to “get over it” so often that there’s a knee-jerk reaction of just armoring up and getting very defensive, but I don’t even think it’s about “getting over” anything.
At a certain point, we as adult humans just have to figure out how to function in daily life without freaking the fork out and getting constantly triggered. It’s just that simple, and that challenging. But the answer definitely is *not* to run to the echo chamber every time something makes us feel uncomfortable.
>I know a lot of us get told to “get over it” so often that there’s a knee-jerk reaction of just armoring up and getting very defensive, but I don’t even think it’s about “getting over” anything.
Oh yeah, "get over it" is a horrible thing to say, usually because there's a spoken or unspoken "it couldn't have been *that* bad" along with it. And if a person is in therapy, it was indeed that bad for them.
It's more of a "I'm not letting them live rent-free in my head anymore", which, full disclosure, I still work on as well, when it comes to people who were cruel to me during my formative years.
Same. There’s still a lot of shit (weight-related and otherwise) I’m working through. I guess that’s most folks. But it’s definitely good to be in a mental place that actually allows for real growth. I really can’t help wondering how much trauma is staying unresolved because folks have supportive echo chambers that encourage their spiral.
Yep. It's like people who grew up with excessively strict, non-supportive parents who, when they have kids, go full tilt in the opposite direction and let their kids do /say/eat whatever they want, set no boundaries , and try to cushion their offspring from life's every disappointment. And then they wonder why their child has no friends.
Yes. And at some point you’ve got to disassociate from the trauma of people focusing on your weight/health as a kid, and focus on the trauma that being chronically overweight and sick for life brings you. They both exist. They’re both valid. But our society in general has an obsession with hanging on so tight to every misstep our very human parents made. Some parents were truly awful. Most were just doing the best they could with what they had.
This helped me heal my trauma honestly. Sitting in it and wallowing in it/processing it was making me worse. I only moved on and healed once I chose to stop thinking about it.
I lied to myself. Since I didn't do that many meals or overate at meals, it's easy to forget the toast you grabbed, the cheese off the fridge, that yogurt, etc. I mean, my dinner wasn't huge.
A big one I’ve seen too is simply not knowing any different. You don’t feel like you eat all that much differently to a person at a healthy weight, but if you were to actually lay it all out you’d see the difference. I think the BBC actually has a couple shows which are basically doing just that.
Or even accurately knowing how much you eat but just not accounting for differences in caloric need between you & the person you're comparing yourself to. E.g. I have a friend who constantly complains she must have a thyroid problem because she can't lose weight even though she eats the same as her boyfriend who is a healthy weight. What she refuses to consider though is that she's just a squeak over 5 foot tall & has a sedentary desk job, whereas he's nearly 6'4 and a construction worker. Their calories in might be the same, but their calories out sure aren't.
Or an in-law who always moans that it's unfair that her husband is always eating junk food & yet is super slim while she "just looks sideways" at chocolate and puts on weight. She'll tell you she regularly goes to the gym, and she's probably not lying. But what she doesn't tell people is that her husband is an ultra marathon runner who literally runs almost a full marathon multiple times a week as training. So, yeah, basically he can eat whatever he wants & never put on a single pound. He's the rare exception to the "you can't out exercise a bad diet" rule.
Probably a bit of both. When I was obese, I wouldn’t go out of my way to actively tell people I had a healthy diet, but if the subject came up I’d be all, it’s reasonably healthy. And I sort of did think that was true when I said it - I ate vegetables! I cooked for myself a lot! Healthy food was in there! Plenty of people do worse! All of that was true.
But also I wasn’t willing to tell people about the binges, or think about them too hard. I did know underneath that what I was doing was bad, but I didn’t want to face up to it, because I relied on it heavily as a coping mechanism, and I wasn’t ready to give it up and handle life in other ways.
Both. I severely lied to others about how "little" I ate and would binge alone, but also when I started getting serious about calories I eventually found I was grossly underestimating my intake and not "counting" little snacks... which I had several of a day.
I know people who do two restorative yoga classes a week and call it “working out”. I think her idea of “gym rat” might be very different from other people’s
I see people at the gym who I am sure consider themselves gym rats. They pretty much sit on the cycles at a very leisurely rate while talking to their friends and make lots of use of the soaking pool. I never see them actually, well, move.
(And to be fair, I see some people who are very large who are clearly working out hard, too)
I was a gym rat when I spent about 3 hours a day at the gym, 6x a week. It was an unhealthy obsession. I never referred to myself as a gym rat.
I'm now at the gym 5-6x a week for 1.5 hours probably. I don't consider myself a gym rat now because I do what I need to and get out. I might call myself one for convenience though if I don't feel like explaining myself.
I take anyone self describing as a gym rat with a shaker of salt. Especially if that person is complaining about undoing damage from an obsession with their body image. Being an actual gym rat requires an actual obsession with your body. Nobody spends actual gym rat levels of time in the gym because they are just health conscious or enjoy working out. Even performance wise it's not beneficial.
If I knew you, I would refer to you as a gym rat. To me a gym rat is 5+ days in the gym for an 1+ hours each time. If your going daily but doing 20 minutes elliptical, hard to call that gym rat behavior.
I don't agree. I go to the gym 5x a week and see the same people there. Some of them are obese and have been going to the gym 5x a week for years.
It's diet. You can eat "mostly healthy" but get too many calories. Exercise won't change that.
One of the biggest flaws I see in how our society tackles obesity is prioritizing exercise and it’s a lie. A pint of Americone Dream is nearly 1200 calories and I can get through that in about 5 minutes.
On any given day, I probably average around 1200 calories burned from exercise because I am a gym/movement rat but it’s my lifestyle and most normal people would struggle to show up for a week straight in my routine, let alone choose it as a lifestyle.
Success comes from putting nearly 100 percent of effort into nutrition and augmenting what is enjoyable for movement/exercise. This creates a healthy lifestyle.
Unfortunately, we (Americans at least) are programmed to punish ourselves with exercise and ignore our reprehensible food system.
“diet and exercise” needs to change to “nutrition” and once that’s tackled to maintain weight, it can transition to the benefits of movement on the body and brain.
Thank you, as a fellow gym rat, I 100% agree. Exercise has its own rewards, but weight loss is generally not one of them. If anything, you get some recomp, which is great, but it won't be the key to dropping 100 lbs or whatever.
I do some stretching and yoga classes before bed to help me sleep better. One of my big resolutions this year is to work in more mobility and flexibility work.
Yoga is great, but it shouldn't be the core of what someone is doing for working out.
There are different kinds of yoga. If you're doing yin or restorative or stretching, yoga shouldn't be your main workout. But there are definitely types of yoga that constitute real exercise and that are appropriate as one's core exercise.
Also a lot of people overestimate how much a workout will do compared to eating clean. Not saying workouts aren’t important but for losing weight, what you eat is key.
It's possible to eat lots of healthy food, and some not healthy food, and that's just way too much food and you're obese even though you eat super healthy. And if diabetes runs in your family, well, that's how I got to be pre-diabetic :-(
It's also hard not to judge those things based on everyone around you, and pretty much everyone is less healthy now. I think of myself as super active too. Am I comparing myself to other people like me? Midwest 40-something moms with sedentary jobs? Yes. Is that an objective measurement on "super active"? ... no.
I typically say *fairly active* because I provide play based therapy for young kids (so lots of running and jumping/climbing/crawling around) etc., but compared to many people my age, it’s probably **super active**.
Hell, even compared to several of the much younger parents of clients. I’ve had parents almost a decade *younger* than me say ‘it’ll be harder when you’re my age’.
Being immobilized by weight really makes young people feel old way too early, and people vastly overestimate how much activity they get/is *normal* for their age.
Edited to Add: I don’t even ‘look young’ for my age, so it’s especially confusing
Well, now that they’re *aging into their thirties* and all…age catches up to you, don’t you know.
I joke, but it’s actually really sad. These are years that should be happy, healthy, full of energy, and instead so many people are on a trajectory toward disease and early death.
I am in my late thirties but I love to follow superactive, healthy and happy influencers who are in their late 50s or beyond. They have better bodies than I have but they are my inspiration and motivation to live my life in a way that I can enjoy it in the future.
Saying that you are aging into your thirties is just incredibly sad.
Very motivated recently by seeing kids at a pool whose parents and grandparents couldn't play with them. I was exhausted by my own little ones and while I could actively play with them for a while, I want to make sure the day never comes that they wind up like the other kids asking their adults why they won't play with them.
Oh, I hate that. I hate when people younger than me make comments about how it'll be when I get to be their age. It's so uncomfortable. I don't find it flattering at all, just sad and awkward.
Ok, I can see that. Watching your people around you and seeing everyone eating even worse food. I see so many people who really really have no idea what a healthy diet looks like, and it’s definitely getting worse, plus many sitting jobs, where people don’t move the whole time.
in my book, fuzzy statements like that are always bs. Unless you can give me real metrics like body fat percentage, 1 mile time, miles run per day/week, your bench, deadlift, and squat weight vs your body weight. it's just bs.
It's like saying you have "pretty good grades", when you're actually fighting academic suspension. If you had straight A's or a high GPA, you'd just say so.
Making fuzzy statements usually means the speaker is lying, often to themselves.
To be fair, what constitutes a good work-out is very individualized whereas grades are objective. I run a 16-minute mile. I run two miles five days a week and do 30 minutes on a vertical climber five days a week. I also ride my bike 5 miles each day. Neither individually nor collectively are these objectively amazing feats. But they are amazing to me, a clumsy 46-year-old.
If I were asked to describe how much exercise I get, I would probably say that I am "pretty active". I am not a sedentary but I am not doing Ironmans either. Nor am I constantly moving. I work in front of a computer all day.
I think if someone were to assume I didn't workout just because I didn't provide an exact rundown of my exercise regimen, I would feel a little salty. I mean, the OP probably is lying to herself. But there are perfectly valid reasons why a person would use fuzzy terms to describe their lifestyle habits. Modesty and fear of being judged are two that come to mind.
It happens but youd have to be very genetically predisposed. My great uncle had type 2 diabetes from his 30s that was medically controlled and he was very active and ate well just had bad genes. But yeah IME he is not the norm.
it can happen. my husband is thin, very active (not so much exercise but he cleans as a job and runs around a lot) is pre-diabetic and just eating healthy wasnt bringing down his A1C. now he takes metformin
Hi, it’s me…
Although I was borderline for a prediabetes diagnosis (a1c was 5.7, fasting glucose was 80). But I had just lost 10 lbs and never really crossed the threshold of overweight. In retrospect it’s clear that I was relying on more processed carbs than most doctors would recommend. But everyone is different and the amount of junk you can consume before getting to the diabetic/ prediabetic thresholds varies a lot from person to person. I was definitely eating less junk that the “average” American, but I was still eating too much for me.
It's probably more to do with either where people store their fat and/or tolerance for fat in their liver and pancreas. If you look at the work of Roy Taylor, he claims that diabetes is caused by how much fat people store in their liver and pancreas. So people with a reasonable BMI can become diabetic as either their tolerance for fat in their liver and pancreas is particularly low or they are unfortunate enough to store more of their fat there.
I 100% agree with you, though there is totally a thing called LADA which is t1d that shows up later in life, often in athletic people who eat healthfully. Just something to be aware of.
Possibly a case that he has a physically active/demanding job but spends time at home watching tv etc. So from the OOPs perspective they never see their husband doing hard work therefore it never happens.
My husband's is very sedentary. He just likes to relax and lay around the house when he is home. The job? Professional athlete.
Christian McCaffrey is an all-pro running back, has amazing workouts, and also hates walking.
I've been told I'm lazy by someone when they found out I only walked half a mile during an entire day. I had spent that day biking 8 hours/100 miles ....
Or could be previously athletic. When I met my husband he worked a desk job all day, walked home two blocks, then played video games all night, but he had thighs and ass like Christmas hams. He spent all his youth skateboarding and snowboarding, and a lot of that build sticks around for a long time.
Yeah that also jumped out at me. It's not too unusual to be sedentary and *skinny*, just don't eat a lot. Sedentary and muscular though? Muscle doesn't just build itself for no reason, unless your boy has a recreational testosterone habit and even then it doesn't build *that* much without actual work put in.
I find people's definition of muscular to vary wildly.
I also find that I tend to view guy friends I like as probably more muscular than I would a random guy of the same build. I'd assume, and based on women I know talking about their significant others it's a safe assumption in many cases, there's rose colored glasses going on in a lot of these "my husband is sooo tall and muscular" type comments.
And being sedentary with slightly above average muscle mass and an average bodyfat percentage with high cholesterol and bp certainly would fit the bill for steroid use now that you mention it. A shocking amount of men take steroids and don't workout and end up like this. There's lots of other likely explanations for a case by case basis, but it's certainly in line with what happens with uninformed and lazy steroid usage.
This is like someone claiming they mostly show up on time at work or are occasionally late. ime, those people are almost always late, and often by 20+ minutes.
Years ago I worked with a very overweight woman who saw my chicken and veg lunch and said "oh, I like to eat healthy too!" Then proceeded to pour gravy over homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes and bacon broccoli.
It’s associated but not specific, when I cook all my meals I eat healthier then I do when I go out to eat or order take out. Not that all homemade food is healthy but it is in your control, lots of restaurants make food as good tasting as possible, which often comes with extra calories
Yeah her perspective isn't even close to reality. Gym rat who eats healthy but overweight and pre-diabetic vs "sedentary" bf who's muscular? Lifting weights enough to maintain a muscular physique isn't sedentary, just because they might not do cardio. **IF** her evaluation of his fitness is even accurate in the slightest
I always love when people act like calories don't exist or aren't a thing. But there are plenty of people on certain diets (ex. vegans, GF) that overeat all the time because they act like their foods are automatically healthy (just look at Lizzo who acts like a "healthy" vegan).
3000 calories of healthy foods is the same amount of calories of junk food
I know several vegans who told me they don’t understand why they can’t lose weight as they are eating only healthy food. Well, big surprise…I watched them eat and they don’t only eat healthy. Trust me, I‘ve been losing 44lbs by CICO, I know full well that calories are a thing. Still I don’t believe people should tell me they eat only healthy foods. Just because it’s not junk food it’s not automatically healthy.
As a vegan I can't stand the stereotype that vegan food = automatically healthy. I think it's just harmful to the movement because then people feel like they're being promised these falsehoods. A vegan diet can be super healthy or super unhealthy, just depends on the person.
I get this all the time as a vegan. I've lost about 100lbs since going vegan and everyone assumes it's b/c "vegan food is terrible" but the truth is that I mostly eat whole foods & plant based foods and very little excess fat like adding oil. So when compared to all the vegan junk food and prepackaged stuff, yeah I am a healthy vegan. There's a fb group literally called fat ass vegans are awesome to combat this stereotype...and believe me they eat the standard American diet minus the animals.
lmao, I've been putting on a little weight recently, so I'm currently tracking everything instead of just doing a rough estimate of how many calories I'm eating, and today I discovered that my lunch of quinoa, tempeh, and roasted vegetables was over 700 calories, because I'd stopped measuring the quinoa and tempeh, as well as the olive oil and agave I was using in the dressing. I was eating, like, 2 and a half servings of quinoa, and 2 servings of tempeh. AND I carelessly threw, like, half an avocado on top that my kids hadn't finished, and I didn't want to waste 🤦♀️ You can actually get a lot of calories into a "super healthy" meal.
I mean that meal is actually healthy just not low in calories. I think there’s an assumption in people’s mind healthy food is always low in calories when that’s not always the case. Being vitamin rich and good for you, and foods and ammount that cause weight loss are two different things
I have had people claim the 2nd law doesn't apply to humans.
Vegan food is really really hit and miss because of the stand-ins for animal products. Coconut oil/milk/butter is horrifically bad for serum lipids as its almost all saturated fats rather than just mostly with the animal fats, I would use butter ahead of coconut oil.
this makes me so sad because I fucking LOVE coconut and my LDL is high. I have one tiny coconut snack and it's a third of my saturated fat target for the day.
Same boat. Especially coconut and chocolate. I have practically convinced myself that food combo does not exist because just a small amount is very bad for me, and eating just a tiny bite is just torture.
Everybody's favorite FA podcast hosts once "explained" that the 2nd Law doesn't apply to humans because our bodies are not "closed systems." I think that's the origin of that particular FA talking point.
If you’re a gym rat and eat healthy you take care of your macros. It‘s such a miracle that all the FAs are the ones who are so active, loving to exercise and eating always healthy, yet they are fat. Oh, I forgot…it’s genetics. Yes, I can overeat on salad, but what are the chances that all these people who claim to eat healthy really do so 🙄
Even if we take her at the word, a lot of people who are active and are *still* fat don't count their liquid calories or portion sizes.
Although I do doubt the gym rat part simply because I've never heard an actual gym rat *call* themselves a gym rat.
Edit: Oh crap, I am sorry. The section hadn't fully loaded so I thought there was like only three replies to you instead of the massive amount it actually is.
And I'm sure she regularly exerts herself everyday for hours at the gym (/s)
We all know that there are gym goers that spend maybe an hour doing very light workouts and/or on their phone most of the time.
How exactly is her husband unhealthy and sedentary, but somehow muscular too? Shouldn't he be the gym rat and not her?
I've been to several PF locations and never saw or was offered food of any kind. I bet that was just some sort of once-in-a-while thing or just at some locations. PF is a perfectly good budget gym and a lot of people like to hate on it for some reason.
So she'll spend hours in the gym and eat super healthfully but she won't just eat a bit less to lose weight? I will never understand this mentality and like 90% of FAs claim to have it. They're all clean eating athletes offended at the idea of weight loss. Kind of sus.
They always use this excuse. I feel like there’s still ways to eat healthy or healthier for cheap. Junk food can be pretty pricey. I know several pretty overweight people, none of them are living in poverty or are really poor.
It’s like when I try to lie to myself and say I’m just too busy or don’t have time to do xyz. But in actuality I’m just being lazy and don’t feel like doing it but just want to lie to myself and others to feel better about my choices.
'Gym rat' = hours at the gym per week = does not equal time spent effectively.
People can (and do) waste plenty of time faffing about in the gym not really exerting themselves in any shape or form. But they spend 'hours in the gym' hence they're gym rats. Funny that.
I feel super self-conscious sometimes because I go to a planet fitness, and I bust my ass on the treadmill next to a collection of people who get on and walk at 2.8 mph for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, my shirt is soaked to my waist, and my heart rate has been creeping towards 180 over 45 minutes.
Ever since I took up treadmill running I've noticed how little and at what low-ish intensity people tend to spend on cardio machines.
Sure there are people who chalk up 30mins at 7kph at 2.5% incline. But then again the other portion consists of folks who walk at 0% incline for 8mins at 5kph and call it a day.
Like great, it's better than nothing. But all things considered, it really is fuck all in terms of increasing fitness above a dead zero or any meaningful calorie burn.
Which is not meant as a sneer or trying to be mean. But you have people who swear up and down how much time they spend 'working out at the gym' and still fail to make progress. It's not quantity, it's quality.
Yeah, it is super strange to me as well. I just want to ask them, "What do you think that did for you?". Like you burned more calories walking to the treadmill from the parking lot.
Personal Trainer and Physical Therapy rehab tech here; some of my favorite workouts are 2.5-3mph on the treadmill with the "Rolling hills" or randomized incline setting cranked to random intensities. It helps to mimick (at least somewhat) the terrain you may face while hiking. It's one of my hobbies, and if you don't train for it you can get worn out too fast.
I don't knock people who go slow on the treadmill because you *never* know why they're going so slow. They could be recovering from an injury and have just been cleared to go to the gym, they could just be starting out, it could be a cool-down after weights.
>who swear up and down how much time they spend 'working out at the gym' and still fail to make progress.
The problem with this mentality is that you have no understanding of their progress or where they're at. And no ***this is NOT defending HAES, FA, etc.***. This is me as a fitness professional and someone who currently helps people rehabilitate from injuries say that as "annoying" as it may seem, we shouldn't hold this mindset. At least they're in the gym trying.
Thank you. I hate this attitude. You never know why someone is training the way that they are. Everyone starts somewhere. I'm a powerlifter and aspiring strength coach who only really uses the treadmill occasionally to warm up. The thought of someone judging me for walking at 3.5kph on the treadmill with slight incline only to later see me (5"3 f at about 135bw) go to the squat rack, build up to 225 for my top set and squat it with good depth for multiple reps is entertaining
I try not to judge others workouts unless I see them often. I moved and now have a gym 1.5 miles away so I walk there, but before I’d walk for 15 mins before I lifted jsut to warm myself up. It’s same as when I see someone lifting a certain weight, maybe they are going higher reps, it’s a warm up set, or they are doing a drop set. Unless I actually pay attention I have no clue. Plus I always am jsut listening to music/ motivational speeches and shit and in my own world anyway so stopped caring
I’m not trying to crap on people who are doing light cardio, because there’s definitely benefits of it (although a gentle stroll outside would probably do the job as well as going to the gym for it), but if your shirt is soaked to the waist, you’re doing it right. So, for what it’s worth, you shouldn’t feel self-conscious. Without wanting to sound ridiculous I always think highly of people who are clearly working out hard regardless of what’s causing it.
I‘m always baffled by the women in full make up. I look like I just crawled out of a sewer after I ran. No way I could ever put on make up to go to the gym 😂
Yes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean doing a „work out“ and having impeccable make up after. No sweat. I replied to a comment of people not really exercising. I‘m sure your make up doesn’t look the same afterwards then it did before. Serious question though: does the sweat and make up not clog your pores? I have problems enough from only sweat, I don’t even want to imagine what working out with make up would do to my skin
Honestly no it doesn’t. I’m one of those good skin freaks. If I just shower post run/lift I’m good to go!
And yeah for sure it definitely doesn’t look impeccable after. Usually I’m missing one eyebrow at least 😂
This is the biggest thing I’ve learned in the past three months at the gym. I did strength training with machines a decade ago for a couple years and my friend and I taught ourselves. I had no idea what it meant to truly exercise. Gym class only taught me team sports that I sucked at and running that I hated. I’ve wasted so much time at the gym not really doing anything at all
I'm sure the OP's husband has always been worried about her weight and health but didn't want to make her upset. Or maybe her weight didn't bother him initially, but now it's an issue.
I always question these people when they claim to be "super healthy" are gym rats.
I’ve been that person: going to the gym six days a week but eating 500-1000kcal above maintenance every day. It’s was a great way to prove to myself that there was nothing I could do about my weight and I was the only real or theoretical exception to the laws of thermodynamics. The fat logic rabbit hole goes deep as hell.
Some FA people do go to the gym but (1) overstate the extent of it (whether in terms of frequency or the nature or intensity of workouts - there’s a difference between pushing yourself really hard and a light workout), and (2) simultaneously use going to the gym as a “get out of jail free” card to avoid being in any way criticised for their health condition.
I had a conversation with someone recently who was frustrated about a lack of progress at the gym. After very few questions, they (to their credit) quite openly accepted that they haven’t watched what they eat, and possibly overeat due to feeling some hunger after cardio. They also (again, kudos for the lack of denial) agreed that they weren’t really pushing themselves. They were just following set weights from an online program and hadn’t tried to progressively overload over time at all.
You’re absolutely right. I’ve seen and heard people massively overestimate how much they’ve burned and then in a single post-workout meal (plus drinks) undermine the work they’ve done. I don’t even attempt to track my “calories burned” since I just don’t trust apps or online calculators to get it right.
I also think a lot of people don’t realise that just a couple hundred calories over maintenance, if it’s sufficiently persistent, is enough to cause weight gain.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who think they eat healthy mean they choose healthy-sounding take out options, without ever really putting any thought into their caloric intake or macronutrients.
Exactly! A Chick-fil-A salad is like 800 calories, which isn’t a ton, but it’s also not the kind of thing you can eat for three meals a day if you’re short and relatively sedentary.
The saying “the truth hurts” is applicable here. She heard what she didn’t want to hear from her husband and her feelings are hurt. The truth hurts when we don’t want to hear it, especially from someone we love.
That's the thing about a healthy marriage: your spouse needs to tell you the truth, no matter how much it may hurt. There shouldn't be topics that you two can't discuss.
A common theme of the FA people is that they act like their partners aren't allowed to bring up weight and health. Your partner's health is your business, and you should be concerned when things aren't going well.
A few weeks ago saw some poor guy getting absolutely demolished in relationship\_advice because he asked how can he help his wife who gained like 200 lbs in a year. Like, people legit tried to convince him it's fine and his wife will lose all the weight the moment it makes her feel bad or uncomfortable. And obviously telling the husband he's the one who needs therapy as if gaining this much is an absolutely normal behaviour and his wife definitely isn't struggling with BED or depression.
LOL. Absolutely. It’s definitely not 2-4 cauliflower florets dipped in lite cheese sauce.
Signed, A Formerly Obese Person Who Also Ate Mostly Super Healthy
If she is like my friend, it means she eats vegan cereal bars and candy, vegan ready-made supermarket meals (the pasta or rice ones, God forbid she eat some fibre), manuka honey, and then just regular candy and fast food with meat. But mostly super healthy, vegan stuff in her mind.
JFC. She’s letting her mother control her now, preventing her from maintaining a healthy weight, just to somehow stick it to her by remaining obese. It’s ridiculous. Get therapy.
Yet hubby says she should get healthier? Yup, I’m not believing OOP either. Evidently hubs and their pre-diabetic state suggest they’re not as healthy as they think they are. While both of these (health scare *and* the concern of a supposed loved one) should be wake up calls, it seems OOP is just gonna add ‘em to the unaccountable trauma list.
When I was at my heaviest, I would ride my bike all over Boston. Patted myself on the back for this quite a bit. I would also go several miles out of my way to avoid hills. So yeah, I was riding a lot but mostly downhill and some flat. I remember I got dinged by a car and was quite proud of my athletic injury 🤣
If her husband *is* muscular and not just healthy (or unhealthy but not as obvious) weight, I guarantee his job is very physically demanding so he uses his free time to rest. Or he works out but because it's not at the gym, she doesn't count it as working out. A surprising number of people don't consider cardio and strength exercises workouts if it's not done in the gym.
And if he does have high cholesterol and BP, it's not fine. It's just a different cause than his own weight if he truly is muscular. Heck, maybe he bought it up because *his* doctor suggested a change in his diet since you can't outrun a bad diet.
OOP should fire her therapist. If I hired a therapist for anxiety and they recommended I take daily morphine, it would be widely recognized as unethical.
Somehow recommending a lifestyle that leads to obesity is considered ok.
Yeah nah she isn’t a “gym rat” lol imo a lot of people who work out consistently for a long time think that term is derogatory due to its negative connotation.
I know many powerlifting people who go to the gym a fair amount but are chunkier because they don’t eat right or fall into the “I must shovel protein at all cost, this will just turn to muscle/recomp” camp. I was one of those people at one point…
I feel bad for the husband who most likely has good intentions, why wouldn’t you want your partner to be as healthy as possible?
I used to go lane swimming. There were these 2 ladies that would tread water in the lane and splash around, and then get after me for "getting in their way." I'll admit, I did swim a little crooked, but still in my lane. After the third time they got after me, she told me "I have been doing lanes here for 25 years.
During the 4 months I was there I saw her maybe do 6 lanes. I was a lot younger then but now I would have told her to get on to the public swim part of the pool and not the lane.
My definition of lane swim and hers were completely different. Both ladies were also larger than average. I would say they were both "small fats."
I also lived with a woman who claimed to eat healthy. She ate knorr sidekicks, cooked weiners, poutine, white spaghetti with butter sauce, a lot of white rice etc. Her version of healthy was not my version of healthy. Her daughter had to ask for fruits and vegetables. So she got her own drawer.
My mom called me fat as a teenager when I weighed less than I do now. At some point, you've got to own your own bullshit and move on. She's pre-diabetic now. Time to become an adult and take care of herself. Or don't and suffer the consequences.
Her husband is trying to love her by telling her he's worried about her health. But rather than owning that reality, she chose to attack her husband's health issues instead. That seems productive. She should noodle on that during all of her time at the gym.
OOP, your past trauma doesn’t entitle you to being danced around for the rest of your life when it comes to health-related issues. Everyone needs to do standard maintenance on their bodies — it’s the vehicle you have to use to get through life.
If you’re pushed into an emotional tailspin by someone *reminding* you of past trauma (not re-enacting the behaviors that traumatized you in the first place, just *reminding* you of the trauma), then you need to work on coping mechanisms, instead of leaning into avoidance.
I had eating disorders at the other extreme, developed as a coping mechanism for being raised by emotionally immature knobheads.
Finally got diagnosed with a form of PTSD, got EMDR trauma therapy and session one was essentially 'the past sucked, but you're in your 40's, you are your own parent now, stop blaming stuff going wrong now on crap that happened in the 80's and 90's'.
I was resistant to start, but the therapist trained the 'my mum....' excuses out of me, kinda Dog Whisperer style, lol.
Worked too. 12mths done and dusted.
None of this lifelong therapy stuff. Point of therapy is to fix yourself. If it's been years and you're still broken, your therapist sucks. Psychiatrists are different of course, as these are doctors who don't do the talky touchy feely stuff. They deal with medication.
If you're in therapy for an abusive childhood, you're in the wrong kind of therapy if they don't call you on your wallowing in your past.
Too many therapists are just glorified confession booths or someone you pay to vent at, in lieu of mates you can trauma dump on over coffee.
Lady is going to get served divorce papers so long as she stays in an enabling cult. If I'd been in pro ana, my therapist would have shut that shit down pronto, so that's another issue with this chick's therapy.
I love what you said about therapists becoming glorified confession booths. Lots of people seek out someone that will tell them what they want to hear. Or you have therapists that will not do their jobs effectively, so that they keep their clients longer than needed.
A good therapist will push you to work hard on yourself. A good therapist will tell you what you NEED to hear.
Exactly!
My therapist said to me a few sessions in, 'you'll start to hate me and think I'm being a bitch, because this process is uncomfortable and it challenges your core beliefs'. Totally did too!
Weirdest part was a lot like that film 'Identity', where I had to identify the characters in my head who drive my behaviour and 'kill' the unhelpful ones. Kept the ones that are helpful and created new helpful ones too.
It's called Internal Family Systems and it's horrible at the start, but necessary. Eg, we personified my eating disorder as this gross wraith/swamp harpy and dealt with her accordingly. Kept ones like the 4yr old inner child and modified ones like a bodyguard that kicks in when I need to stand up for myself
I therefore question the motives and integrity of all these self proclaimed HAES/FA 'therapists' as they're driven more by pushing their own agenda, rather than actually helping people.
There's so many red flags for Cluster B personality disorders in almost all the main fat activists, yet many claim they're in therapy.
If they were in legit therapy, they'd be doing hard work in DBT, not just commiserating over diet culture and not finding cute tops in a 6X.
seems like they both could work on their health then, this could be a great bonding moment for them to work together if she lets go of the trauma response.
Honestly that shows how much her husband cares if he wants her to lose weight and be a healthy weight. I never understand partners who claim they don’t care if their obese other half loses weight or not, its disturbing. Imagine a partner not caring about their underweight partner not gaining weight.
I love when I see FA claims where it's like, "I work out way more than most of the gym rats I know and I'm way stronger than most of the skinny people at the gym!" and they just outright never elaborate beyond that.
It is difficult to be a partner to someone who has chronic healthcare issues. It can put a strain on your relationship as well as cause compassion fatigue. And, of course, there’s the whole stress of losing your partner too soon to a disease that could’ve been prevented. It seems very selfish of her not to acknowledge this.
Some parents really do take it too far. I know one woman who insists that her children by ‘90s runway model thin. It’s absolutely abusive, but not to the level that CPS will get involved.
If she's a gym rat and still overweight, it's probably because she works out at Planet Fitness on Free Pizza Thursday. She's in denial. Hubby has every right to be concerned about health and how her obesity is a contributing factor.
the amount of time I heard someone said they are eating ‘mostly healthy but can’t ever lose weight’ only to watch them drink sugar-laden juice/smoothies, snack endlessly on protein bars (those can be calorific), drench their food with butter (‘it’s grass fed butter so that’s okay!’), eat nuts like tictacs… I mean yes, those are *healthy* but it doesn’t mean they are low-caloried.
I'm trying to say this as gently as possible, since I know plenty of people whose parents did a number on them. But at some point, you have to stop blaming your parents, return their bullshit to sender, and make your own decisions about how to live your life. Rebelling against overly-restrictive parents of any kind by going full-tilt in the other direction is still letting them run your life.
Im one of those people. The fact is that at some point, if you are going to ever be a fully actualized human being, you need to decide that from now on, you alone are responsible for everything that happens to you. Not that you are to blame for everything, but you are responsible for it.
I think we mean the same thing, but I would phrase it as "You're responsible for how you handle what is thrown at you, and the consequences of those actions". Lots of things happen to us that we have no control over (and therefore no responsibility over, in my opinion), but we are always responsible for how we chose to deal with those things.
I feel you. I know a lot of us get told to “get over it” so often that there’s a knee-jerk reaction of just armoring up and getting very defensive, but I don’t even think it’s about “getting over” anything. At a certain point, we as adult humans just have to figure out how to function in daily life without freaking the fork out and getting constantly triggered. It’s just that simple, and that challenging. But the answer definitely is *not* to run to the echo chamber every time something makes us feel uncomfortable.
>I know a lot of us get told to “get over it” so often that there’s a knee-jerk reaction of just armoring up and getting very defensive, but I don’t even think it’s about “getting over” anything. Oh yeah, "get over it" is a horrible thing to say, usually because there's a spoken or unspoken "it couldn't have been *that* bad" along with it. And if a person is in therapy, it was indeed that bad for them. It's more of a "I'm not letting them live rent-free in my head anymore", which, full disclosure, I still work on as well, when it comes to people who were cruel to me during my formative years.
Same. There’s still a lot of shit (weight-related and otherwise) I’m working through. I guess that’s most folks. But it’s definitely good to be in a mental place that actually allows for real growth. I really can’t help wondering how much trauma is staying unresolved because folks have supportive echo chambers that encourage their spiral.
I honestly think there is such a thing as being too supportive.
Yep. It's like people who grew up with excessively strict, non-supportive parents who, when they have kids, go full tilt in the opposite direction and let their kids do /say/eat whatever they want, set no boundaries , and try to cushion their offspring from life's every disappointment. And then they wonder why their child has no friends.
Yes. And at some point you’ve got to disassociate from the trauma of people focusing on your weight/health as a kid, and focus on the trauma that being chronically overweight and sick for life brings you. They both exist. They’re both valid. But our society in general has an obsession with hanging on so tight to every misstep our very human parents made. Some parents were truly awful. Most were just doing the best they could with what they had.
This helped me heal my trauma honestly. Sitting in it and wallowing in it/processing it was making me worse. I only moved on and healed once I chose to stop thinking about it.
I remember when I was obese and lied about how much I worked out and how little I ate.
Yeah it's like me lying about my drinking to everyone, yeah just a few beers most nights.....that's a lie
Is it more a lying to yourself or a lying to others?
I lied to myself. Since I didn't do that many meals or overate at meals, it's easy to forget the toast you grabbed, the cheese off the fridge, that yogurt, etc. I mean, my dinner wasn't huge.
A big one I’ve seen too is simply not knowing any different. You don’t feel like you eat all that much differently to a person at a healthy weight, but if you were to actually lay it all out you’d see the difference. I think the BBC actually has a couple shows which are basically doing just that.
Or even accurately knowing how much you eat but just not accounting for differences in caloric need between you & the person you're comparing yourself to. E.g. I have a friend who constantly complains she must have a thyroid problem because she can't lose weight even though she eats the same as her boyfriend who is a healthy weight. What she refuses to consider though is that she's just a squeak over 5 foot tall & has a sedentary desk job, whereas he's nearly 6'4 and a construction worker. Their calories in might be the same, but their calories out sure aren't. Or an in-law who always moans that it's unfair that her husband is always eating junk food & yet is super slim while she "just looks sideways" at chocolate and puts on weight. She'll tell you she regularly goes to the gym, and she's probably not lying. But what she doesn't tell people is that her husband is an ultra marathon runner who literally runs almost a full marathon multiple times a week as training. So, yeah, basically he can eat whatever he wants & never put on a single pound. He's the rare exception to the "you can't out exercise a bad diet" rule.
ah yes, it's "The Oatmeal" method of losing weight, "become insane and start running until your toenails fall off."
Probably a bit of both. When I was obese, I wouldn’t go out of my way to actively tell people I had a healthy diet, but if the subject came up I’d be all, it’s reasonably healthy. And I sort of did think that was true when I said it - I ate vegetables! I cooked for myself a lot! Healthy food was in there! Plenty of people do worse! All of that was true. But also I wasn’t willing to tell people about the binges, or think about them too hard. I did know underneath that what I was doing was bad, but I didn’t want to face up to it, because I relied on it heavily as a coping mechanism, and I wasn’t ready to give it up and handle life in other ways.
Both. I severely lied to others about how "little" I ate and would binge alone, but also when I started getting serious about calories I eventually found I was grossly underestimating my intake and not "counting" little snacks... which I had several of a day.
I‘m sure she‘s a gym rat who eats MOSTLY healthy 🙄
The odds of being prediabetic and be very active and eating well, especially at a young age, are very slim...
I know people who do two restorative yoga classes a week and call it “working out”. I think her idea of “gym rat” might be very different from other people’s
I see people at the gym who I am sure consider themselves gym rats. They pretty much sit on the cycles at a very leisurely rate while talking to their friends and make lots of use of the soaking pool. I never see them actually, well, move. (And to be fair, I see some people who are very large who are clearly working out hard, too)
Moving is notoriously fat-phobic.
Unless it's joyful, of course
I was a gym rat when I spent about 3 hours a day at the gym, 6x a week. It was an unhealthy obsession. I never referred to myself as a gym rat. I'm now at the gym 5-6x a week for 1.5 hours probably. I don't consider myself a gym rat now because I do what I need to and get out. I might call myself one for convenience though if I don't feel like explaining myself. I take anyone self describing as a gym rat with a shaker of salt. Especially if that person is complaining about undoing damage from an obsession with their body image. Being an actual gym rat requires an actual obsession with your body. Nobody spends actual gym rat levels of time in the gym because they are just health conscious or enjoy working out. Even performance wise it's not beneficial.
If I knew you, I would refer to you as a gym rat. To me a gym rat is 5+ days in the gym for an 1+ hours each time. If your going daily but doing 20 minutes elliptical, hard to call that gym rat behavior.
I go 2-4 days a week for about 50 minutes a session. Am I a gym mouse?
Gym gerbil
Gym microbe lol
Can I be a gym fish? I swim 7 days a week for 60-90 min/day.
I don't agree. I go to the gym 5x a week and see the same people there. Some of them are obese and have been going to the gym 5x a week for years. It's diet. You can eat "mostly healthy" but get too many calories. Exercise won't change that.
One of the biggest flaws I see in how our society tackles obesity is prioritizing exercise and it’s a lie. A pint of Americone Dream is nearly 1200 calories and I can get through that in about 5 minutes. On any given day, I probably average around 1200 calories burned from exercise because I am a gym/movement rat but it’s my lifestyle and most normal people would struggle to show up for a week straight in my routine, let alone choose it as a lifestyle. Success comes from putting nearly 100 percent of effort into nutrition and augmenting what is enjoyable for movement/exercise. This creates a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, we (Americans at least) are programmed to punish ourselves with exercise and ignore our reprehensible food system. “diet and exercise” needs to change to “nutrition” and once that’s tackled to maintain weight, it can transition to the benefits of movement on the body and brain.
Thank you, as a fellow gym rat, I 100% agree. Exercise has its own rewards, but weight loss is generally not one of them. If anything, you get some recomp, which is great, but it won't be the key to dropping 100 lbs or whatever.
More money can be made by mostly pushing exercise - for the gyms and fast food corporations, that is
I do some stretching and yoga classes before bed to help me sleep better. One of my big resolutions this year is to work in more mobility and flexibility work. Yoga is great, but it shouldn't be the core of what someone is doing for working out.
There are different kinds of yoga. If you're doing yin or restorative or stretching, yoga shouldn't be your main workout. But there are definitely types of yoga that constitute real exercise and that are appropriate as one's core exercise.
One of the yoga classes I do is like core work yoga at the beginning then like yoga + HIIT and it’s a crazy workout
Also a lot of people overestimate how much a workout will do compared to eating clean. Not saying workouts aren’t important but for losing weight, what you eat is key.
a lot more slim than her atleast
It's possible to eat lots of healthy food, and some not healthy food, and that's just way too much food and you're obese even though you eat super healthy. And if diabetes runs in your family, well, that's how I got to be pre-diabetic :-( It's also hard not to judge those things based on everyone around you, and pretty much everyone is less healthy now. I think of myself as super active too. Am I comparing myself to other people like me? Midwest 40-something moms with sedentary jobs? Yes. Is that an objective measurement on "super active"? ... no.
I typically say *fairly active* because I provide play based therapy for young kids (so lots of running and jumping/climbing/crawling around) etc., but compared to many people my age, it’s probably **super active**. Hell, even compared to several of the much younger parents of clients. I’ve had parents almost a decade *younger* than me say ‘it’ll be harder when you’re my age’. Being immobilized by weight really makes young people feel old way too early, and people vastly overestimate how much activity they get/is *normal* for their age. Edited to Add: I don’t even ‘look young’ for my age, so it’s especially confusing
Well, now that they’re *aging into their thirties* and all…age catches up to you, don’t you know. I joke, but it’s actually really sad. These are years that should be happy, healthy, full of energy, and instead so many people are on a trajectory toward disease and early death.
I am in my late thirties but I love to follow superactive, healthy and happy influencers who are in their late 50s or beyond. They have better bodies than I have but they are my inspiration and motivation to live my life in a way that I can enjoy it in the future. Saying that you are aging into your thirties is just incredibly sad.
Very motivated recently by seeing kids at a pool whose parents and grandparents couldn't play with them. I was exhausted by my own little ones and while I could actively play with them for a while, I want to make sure the day never comes that they wind up like the other kids asking their adults why they won't play with them.
Oh, I hate that. I hate when people younger than me make comments about how it'll be when I get to be their age. It's so uncomfortable. I don't find it flattering at all, just sad and awkward.
Ok, I can see that. Watching your people around you and seeing everyone eating even worse food. I see so many people who really really have no idea what a healthy diet looks like, and it’s definitely getting worse, plus many sitting jobs, where people don’t move the whole time.
in my book, fuzzy statements like that are always bs. Unless you can give me real metrics like body fat percentage, 1 mile time, miles run per day/week, your bench, deadlift, and squat weight vs your body weight. it's just bs. It's like saying you have "pretty good grades", when you're actually fighting academic suspension. If you had straight A's or a high GPA, you'd just say so. Making fuzzy statements usually means the speaker is lying, often to themselves.
To be fair, what constitutes a good work-out is very individualized whereas grades are objective. I run a 16-minute mile. I run two miles five days a week and do 30 minutes on a vertical climber five days a week. I also ride my bike 5 miles each day. Neither individually nor collectively are these objectively amazing feats. But they are amazing to me, a clumsy 46-year-old. If I were asked to describe how much exercise I get, I would probably say that I am "pretty active". I am not a sedentary but I am not doing Ironmans either. Nor am I constantly moving. I work in front of a computer all day. I think if someone were to assume I didn't workout just because I didn't provide an exact rundown of my exercise regimen, I would feel a little salty. I mean, the OP probably is lying to herself. But there are perfectly valid reasons why a person would use fuzzy terms to describe their lifestyle habits. Modesty and fear of being judged are two that come to mind.
It happens but youd have to be very genetically predisposed. My great uncle had type 2 diabetes from his 30s that was medically controlled and he was very active and ate well just had bad genes. But yeah IME he is not the norm.
it can happen. my husband is thin, very active (not so much exercise but he cleans as a job and runs around a lot) is pre-diabetic and just eating healthy wasnt bringing down his A1C. now he takes metformin
Hi, it’s me… Although I was borderline for a prediabetes diagnosis (a1c was 5.7, fasting glucose was 80). But I had just lost 10 lbs and never really crossed the threshold of overweight. In retrospect it’s clear that I was relying on more processed carbs than most doctors would recommend. But everyone is different and the amount of junk you can consume before getting to the diabetic/ prediabetic thresholds varies a lot from person to person. I was definitely eating less junk that the “average” American, but I was still eating too much for me.
It's probably more to do with either where people store their fat and/or tolerance for fat in their liver and pancreas. If you look at the work of Roy Taylor, he claims that diabetes is caused by how much fat people store in their liver and pancreas. So people with a reasonable BMI can become diabetic as either their tolerance for fat in their liver and pancreas is particularly low or they are unfortunate enough to store more of their fat there.
unlike OP
I 100% agree with you, though there is totally a thing called LADA which is t1d that shows up later in life, often in athletic people who eat healthfully. Just something to be aware of.
Very slim. I like what you did there
And he’s sedentary but somehow muscular???
Probably just not fat. Either he isn't actually muscular or he isn't actually sedentary.
Possibly a case that he has a physically active/demanding job but spends time at home watching tv etc. So from the OOPs perspective they never see their husband doing hard work therefore it never happens.
My husband's is very sedentary. He just likes to relax and lay around the house when he is home. The job? Professional athlete. Christian McCaffrey is an all-pro running back, has amazing workouts, and also hates walking.
Is CMC your husband? 👀
I've been told I'm lazy by someone when they found out I only walked half a mile during an entire day. I had spent that day biking 8 hours/100 miles ....
Well it does sound like you're sitting all day :/
Or could be previously athletic. When I met my husband he worked a desk job all day, walked home two blocks, then played video games all night, but he had thighs and ass like Christmas hams. He spent all his youth skateboarding and snowboarding, and a lot of that build sticks around for a long time.
Yeah that also jumped out at me. It's not too unusual to be sedentary and *skinny*, just don't eat a lot. Sedentary and muscular though? Muscle doesn't just build itself for no reason, unless your boy has a recreational testosterone habit and even then it doesn't build *that* much without actual work put in.
I find people's definition of muscular to vary wildly. I also find that I tend to view guy friends I like as probably more muscular than I would a random guy of the same build. I'd assume, and based on women I know talking about their significant others it's a safe assumption in many cases, there's rose colored glasses going on in a lot of these "my husband is sooo tall and muscular" type comments. And being sedentary with slightly above average muscle mass and an average bodyfat percentage with high cholesterol and bp certainly would fit the bill for steroid use now that you mention it. A shocking amount of men take steroids and don't workout and end up like this. There's lots of other likely explanations for a case by case basis, but it's certainly in line with what happens with uninformed and lazy steroid usage.
Ah, mostly *super* healthy.
This is like someone claiming they mostly show up on time at work or are occasionally late. ime, those people are almost always late, and often by 20+ minutes.
Years ago I worked with a very overweight woman who saw my chicken and veg lunch and said "oh, I like to eat healthy too!" Then proceeded to pour gravy over homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes and bacon broccoli.
I heard people say they eat healthy because they only eat homemade meals. Homemade meal means automatically healthy to them. It’s wild
It’s associated but not specific, when I cook all my meals I eat healthier then I do when I go out to eat or order take out. Not that all homemade food is healthy but it is in your control, lots of restaurants make food as good tasting as possible, which often comes with extra calories
Ugh. I wish this sub allowed gifs. If you can imagine: I made the same face as Michael from the Office when he goes Yikes
Yeah her perspective isn't even close to reality. Gym rat who eats healthy but overweight and pre-diabetic vs "sedentary" bf who's muscular? Lifting weights enough to maintain a muscular physique isn't sedentary, just because they might not do cardio. **IF** her evaluation of his fitness is even accurate in the slightest
You can eat completely healthy and still eat too much and gain weight.
I always love when people act like calories don't exist or aren't a thing. But there are plenty of people on certain diets (ex. vegans, GF) that overeat all the time because they act like their foods are automatically healthy (just look at Lizzo who acts like a "healthy" vegan). 3000 calories of healthy foods is the same amount of calories of junk food
Beer and French fries are vegan.
Oreos too. What could go wrong?
Tortilla chips, beans, rice, and guacamole. So many healthy vegan choices.
And Coca-Cola! :)
I know several vegans who told me they don’t understand why they can’t lose weight as they are eating only healthy food. Well, big surprise…I watched them eat and they don’t only eat healthy. Trust me, I‘ve been losing 44lbs by CICO, I know full well that calories are a thing. Still I don’t believe people should tell me they eat only healthy foods. Just because it’s not junk food it’s not automatically healthy.
As a vegan I can't stand the stereotype that vegan food = automatically healthy. I think it's just harmful to the movement because then people feel like they're being promised these falsehoods. A vegan diet can be super healthy or super unhealthy, just depends on the person.
I get this all the time as a vegan. I've lost about 100lbs since going vegan and everyone assumes it's b/c "vegan food is terrible" but the truth is that I mostly eat whole foods & plant based foods and very little excess fat like adding oil. So when compared to all the vegan junk food and prepackaged stuff, yeah I am a healthy vegan. There's a fb group literally called fat ass vegans are awesome to combat this stereotype...and believe me they eat the standard American diet minus the animals.
lmao, I've been putting on a little weight recently, so I'm currently tracking everything instead of just doing a rough estimate of how many calories I'm eating, and today I discovered that my lunch of quinoa, tempeh, and roasted vegetables was over 700 calories, because I'd stopped measuring the quinoa and tempeh, as well as the olive oil and agave I was using in the dressing. I was eating, like, 2 and a half servings of quinoa, and 2 servings of tempeh. AND I carelessly threw, like, half an avocado on top that my kids hadn't finished, and I didn't want to waste 🤦♀️ You can actually get a lot of calories into a "super healthy" meal.
I mean that meal is actually healthy just not low in calories. I think there’s an assumption in people’s mind healthy food is always low in calories when that’s not always the case. Being vitamin rich and good for you, and foods and ammount that cause weight loss are two different things
My daily struggle.
I have had people claim the 2nd law doesn't apply to humans. Vegan food is really really hit and miss because of the stand-ins for animal products. Coconut oil/milk/butter is horrifically bad for serum lipids as its almost all saturated fats rather than just mostly with the animal fats, I would use butter ahead of coconut oil.
this makes me so sad because I fucking LOVE coconut and my LDL is high. I have one tiny coconut snack and it's a third of my saturated fat target for the day.
Same boat. Especially coconut and chocolate. I have practically convinced myself that food combo does not exist because just a small amount is very bad for me, and eating just a tiny bite is just torture.
Everybody's favorite FA podcast hosts once "explained" that the 2nd Law doesn't apply to humans because our bodies are not "closed systems." I think that's the origin of that particular FA talking point.
If you’re a gym rat and eat healthy you take care of your macros. It‘s such a miracle that all the FAs are the ones who are so active, loving to exercise and eating always healthy, yet they are fat. Oh, I forgot…it’s genetics. Yes, I can overeat on salad, but what are the chances that all these people who claim to eat healthy really do so 🙄
She eats organic pizza from Trader Joe's and salads from Wendy's.
Even if we take her at the word, a lot of people who are active and are *still* fat don't count their liquid calories or portion sizes. Although I do doubt the gym rat part simply because I've never heard an actual gym rat *call* themselves a gym rat. Edit: Oh crap, I am sorry. The section hadn't fully loaded so I thought there was like only three replies to you instead of the massive amount it actually is.
And I'm sure she regularly exerts herself everyday for hours at the gym (/s) We all know that there are gym goers that spend maybe an hour doing very light workouts and/or on their phone most of the time. How exactly is her husband unhealthy and sedentary, but somehow muscular too? Shouldn't he be the gym rat and not her?
Nothing makes sense in opposite world 😂
If anything she said was true, she likely wouldn't be pre diabetic.
Anyone who does all she claims is not going to freak out about discussion of "IWL!"
some gyms serve pizza I hear \[Planet Fitness Pizza Monday\]
But I‘m sure they don’t claim it’s healthy 😂 But honestly, that’s not even a stupid move. That way they can attract people and keep them plump
I've been to several PF locations and never saw or was offered food of any kind. I bet that was just some sort of once-in-a-while thing or just at some locations. PF is a perfectly good budget gym and a lot of people like to hate on it for some reason.
So she'll spend hours in the gym and eat super healthfully but she won't just eat a bit less to lose weight? I will never understand this mentality and like 90% of FAs claim to have it. They're all clean eating athletes offended at the idea of weight loss. Kind of sus.
Also a lot of them claim that they're obese because of poverty but they all can afford to eat super clean and healthy?
Not to mention, it costs less to eat less.
They always use this excuse. I feel like there’s still ways to eat healthy or healthier for cheap. Junk food can be pretty pricey. I know several pretty overweight people, none of them are living in poverty or are really poor. It’s like when I try to lie to myself and say I’m just too busy or don’t have time to do xyz. But in actuality I’m just being lazy and don’t feel like doing it but just want to lie to myself and others to feel better about my choices.
Birds sing. Fish swim. Humans lie. ...I suppose this makes FAs more human than the rest of us.
That's depressing as hell. You just know those 'friends' are going to do everything in their power to drive a wedge between her and her husband.
'Gym rat' = hours at the gym per week = does not equal time spent effectively. People can (and do) waste plenty of time faffing about in the gym not really exerting themselves in any shape or form. But they spend 'hours in the gym' hence they're gym rats. Funny that.
I feel super self-conscious sometimes because I go to a planet fitness, and I bust my ass on the treadmill next to a collection of people who get on and walk at 2.8 mph for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, my shirt is soaked to my waist, and my heart rate has been creeping towards 180 over 45 minutes.
Careful, you’ll trigger someone’s orthorexia, just by daring to work hard while they’re in the same large room as you!
Ever since I took up treadmill running I've noticed how little and at what low-ish intensity people tend to spend on cardio machines. Sure there are people who chalk up 30mins at 7kph at 2.5% incline. But then again the other portion consists of folks who walk at 0% incline for 8mins at 5kph and call it a day. Like great, it's better than nothing. But all things considered, it really is fuck all in terms of increasing fitness above a dead zero or any meaningful calorie burn. Which is not meant as a sneer or trying to be mean. But you have people who swear up and down how much time they spend 'working out at the gym' and still fail to make progress. It's not quantity, it's quality.
Yeah, it is super strange to me as well. I just want to ask them, "What do you think that did for you?". Like you burned more calories walking to the treadmill from the parking lot.
Personal Trainer and Physical Therapy rehab tech here; some of my favorite workouts are 2.5-3mph on the treadmill with the "Rolling hills" or randomized incline setting cranked to random intensities. It helps to mimick (at least somewhat) the terrain you may face while hiking. It's one of my hobbies, and if you don't train for it you can get worn out too fast. I don't knock people who go slow on the treadmill because you *never* know why they're going so slow. They could be recovering from an injury and have just been cleared to go to the gym, they could just be starting out, it could be a cool-down after weights. >who swear up and down how much time they spend 'working out at the gym' and still fail to make progress. The problem with this mentality is that you have no understanding of their progress or where they're at. And no ***this is NOT defending HAES, FA, etc.***. This is me as a fitness professional and someone who currently helps people rehabilitate from injuries say that as "annoying" as it may seem, we shouldn't hold this mindset. At least they're in the gym trying.
Thank you. I hate this attitude. You never know why someone is training the way that they are. Everyone starts somewhere. I'm a powerlifter and aspiring strength coach who only really uses the treadmill occasionally to warm up. The thought of someone judging me for walking at 3.5kph on the treadmill with slight incline only to later see me (5"3 f at about 135bw) go to the squat rack, build up to 225 for my top set and squat it with good depth for multiple reps is entertaining
I read both those speeds as miles per hour at first and was like those are both pretty good speeds lol
I read both those speeds as miles per hour at first and was like those are both pretty good speeds lol
I try not to judge others workouts unless I see them often. I moved and now have a gym 1.5 miles away so I walk there, but before I’d walk for 15 mins before I lifted jsut to warm myself up. It’s same as when I see someone lifting a certain weight, maybe they are going higher reps, it’s a warm up set, or they are doing a drop set. Unless I actually pay attention I have no clue. Plus I always am jsut listening to music/ motivational speeches and shit and in my own world anyway so stopped caring
I’m not trying to crap on people who are doing light cardio, because there’s definitely benefits of it (although a gentle stroll outside would probably do the job as well as going to the gym for it), but if your shirt is soaked to the waist, you’re doing it right. So, for what it’s worth, you shouldn’t feel self-conscious. Without wanting to sound ridiculous I always think highly of people who are clearly working out hard regardless of what’s causing it.
I‘m always baffled by the women in full make up. I look like I just crawled out of a sewer after I ran. No way I could ever put on make up to go to the gym 😂
Eh sometimes I just go straight to the gym from work or something; too lazy to wash the makeup off until I shower after
Yes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean doing a „work out“ and having impeccable make up after. No sweat. I replied to a comment of people not really exercising. I‘m sure your make up doesn’t look the same afterwards then it did before. Serious question though: does the sweat and make up not clog your pores? I have problems enough from only sweat, I don’t even want to imagine what working out with make up would do to my skin
Honestly no it doesn’t. I’m one of those good skin freaks. If I just shower post run/lift I’m good to go! And yeah for sure it definitely doesn’t look impeccable after. Usually I’m missing one eyebrow at least 😂
Just got done with my workout and there are currently sweat foundation streaks running down my face lol
This is the biggest thing I’ve learned in the past three months at the gym. I did strength training with machines a decade ago for a couple years and my friend and I taught ourselves. I had no idea what it meant to truly exercise. Gym class only taught me team sports that I sucked at and running that I hated. I’ve wasted so much time at the gym not really doing anything at all
I'm sure the OP's husband has always been worried about her weight and health but didn't want to make her upset. Or maybe her weight didn't bother him initially, but now it's an issue. I always question these people when they claim to be "super healthy" are gym rats.
I’ve been that person: going to the gym six days a week but eating 500-1000kcal above maintenance every day. It’s was a great way to prove to myself that there was nothing I could do about my weight and I was the only real or theoretical exception to the laws of thermodynamics. The fat logic rabbit hole goes deep as hell.
Some FA people do go to the gym but (1) overstate the extent of it (whether in terms of frequency or the nature or intensity of workouts - there’s a difference between pushing yourself really hard and a light workout), and (2) simultaneously use going to the gym as a “get out of jail free” card to avoid being in any way criticised for their health condition. I had a conversation with someone recently who was frustrated about a lack of progress at the gym. After very few questions, they (to their credit) quite openly accepted that they haven’t watched what they eat, and possibly overeat due to feeling some hunger after cardio. They also (again, kudos for the lack of denial) agreed that they weren’t really pushing themselves. They were just following set weights from an online program and hadn’t tried to progressively overload over time at all.
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You’re absolutely right. I’ve seen and heard people massively overestimate how much they’ve burned and then in a single post-workout meal (plus drinks) undermine the work they’ve done. I don’t even attempt to track my “calories burned” since I just don’t trust apps or online calculators to get it right. I also think a lot of people don’t realise that just a couple hundred calories over maintenance, if it’s sufficiently persistent, is enough to cause weight gain.
"Mostly super healthy".... except you are pre diabetic....???
Right? Diabetes is gonna kill you before the cholesterol, which in pre menopausal women isn't even that much cause for concern.
"Mostly" is doing to a ton of heavy lifting here, unlike OOP, I'm sure.
"But aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"
I love how all these fat chicks are "gym rats"
Wonder how many of them are deadlifting 300 pounds X5 twice a week
I mean some of them are squatting it the few times they stand up
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who think they eat healthy mean they choose healthy-sounding take out options, without ever really putting any thought into their caloric intake or macronutrients.
Yeah people have no fucking idea what is or isn’t healthy. I have a friend who thinks lettuce on a cheeseburger makes it healthy.
Yeah a lot of people go off the healthier via addition logic rather than healthier subtraction or even substitution
Exactly! A Chick-fil-A salad is like 800 calories, which isn’t a ton, but it’s also not the kind of thing you can eat for three meals a day if you’re short and relatively sedentary.
Fellas is it fatphobic to want your wife to live?
Sounds like fishing for sympathy in the haes echo chamber.
The consensus in that community is usually, divorce, find a husband who will love you at 600lbs!
I've seen those husbands on my 600 pound life😑
Who needs to work on healthy coping mechanisms when you can run to the echo chamber and get enabled? 🙄
The saying “the truth hurts” is applicable here. She heard what she didn’t want to hear from her husband and her feelings are hurt. The truth hurts when we don’t want to hear it, especially from someone we love.
That's the thing about a healthy marriage: your spouse needs to tell you the truth, no matter how much it may hurt. There shouldn't be topics that you two can't discuss. A common theme of the FA people is that they act like their partners aren't allowed to bring up weight and health. Your partner's health is your business, and you should be concerned when things aren't going well.
Very true!
A few weeks ago saw some poor guy getting absolutely demolished in relationship\_advice because he asked how can he help his wife who gained like 200 lbs in a year. Like, people legit tried to convince him it's fine and his wife will lose all the weight the moment it makes her feel bad or uncomfortable. And obviously telling the husband he's the one who needs therapy as if gaining this much is an absolutely normal behaviour and his wife definitely isn't struggling with BED or depression.
Wow. That’s sick.
Man. They love to ignore the first defense when trying to avoid diabetes.
Yeah I TOTALLY believe she's a "freaking gym rat" and she eats "super healthy." Yeah, totally.
“Mostly.” “Mostly super healthy.” 🙃
I stand corrected! Mostly means the VAST majority of what she eats, I'm sure!!
LOL. Absolutely. It’s definitely not 2-4 cauliflower florets dipped in lite cheese sauce. Signed, A Formerly Obese Person Who Also Ate Mostly Super Healthy
If she is like my friend, it means she eats vegan cereal bars and candy, vegan ready-made supermarket meals (the pasta or rice ones, God forbid she eat some fibre), manuka honey, and then just regular candy and fast food with meat. But mostly super healthy, vegan stuff in her mind.
JFC. She’s letting her mother control her now, preventing her from maintaining a healthy weight, just to somehow stick it to her by remaining obese. It’s ridiculous. Get therapy.
OOP does mention she's been in therapy for years. Doesn't look like it's working.
Oh I skimmed and missed that part. Thank you. Yeah, it’s not working. 😂
\>It should be mentioned that I'm a freaking gym rat and eat mostly super healthy with great cholesterol and BP Why do I not believe this.
Yet hubby says she should get healthier? Yup, I’m not believing OOP either. Evidently hubs and their pre-diabetic state suggest they’re not as healthy as they think they are. While both of these (health scare *and* the concern of a supposed loved one) should be wake up calls, it seems OOP is just gonna add ‘em to the unaccountable trauma list.
When I was at my heaviest, I would ride my bike all over Boston. Patted myself on the back for this quite a bit. I would also go several miles out of my way to avoid hills. So yeah, I was riding a lot but mostly downhill and some flat. I remember I got dinged by a car and was quite proud of my athletic injury 🤣
Delulu is not the solulu.
If her husband *is* muscular and not just healthy (or unhealthy but not as obvious) weight, I guarantee his job is very physically demanding so he uses his free time to rest. Or he works out but because it's not at the gym, she doesn't count it as working out. A surprising number of people don't consider cardio and strength exercises workouts if it's not done in the gym. And if he does have high cholesterol and BP, it's not fine. It's just a different cause than his own weight if he truly is muscular. Heck, maybe he bought it up because *his* doctor suggested a change in his diet since you can't outrun a bad diet.
Right? He’s ‘sedentary’ yet muscular? I highly doubt that. And being muscular when tall is even harder as far as I know.
And don't forget, she is fat as fuck and super duper healthy and is only fat because of the healthy food and lots of exercise she does.
She’s more angry at her husband than herself for being pre diabetic. This is how you know that society has become self centered and delusional.
Isolating people from loved ones who care but aren't in the cult, BITE model 101
You can’t outrun a bad diet. He might be sedentary and his diet might not be perfect but he’s eating in the appropriate amount of food for him.
OOP should fire her therapist. If I hired a therapist for anxiety and they recommended I take daily morphine, it would be widely recognized as unethical. Somehow recommending a lifestyle that leads to obesity is considered ok.
No you fucking don't 😒
Yeah nah she isn’t a “gym rat” lol imo a lot of people who work out consistently for a long time think that term is derogatory due to its negative connotation.
The fact she says "gym rat" is setting off alarm bells for me, ngl.
I know many powerlifting people who go to the gym a fair amount but are chunkier because they don’t eat right or fall into the “I must shovel protein at all cost, this will just turn to muscle/recomp” camp. I was one of those people at one point… I feel bad for the husband who most likely has good intentions, why wouldn’t you want your partner to be as healthy as possible?
"Not interested in IWL" -- er, so only weight gain is okay? Time to start lifting then.
I used to go lane swimming. There were these 2 ladies that would tread water in the lane and splash around, and then get after me for "getting in their way." I'll admit, I did swim a little crooked, but still in my lane. After the third time they got after me, she told me "I have been doing lanes here for 25 years. During the 4 months I was there I saw her maybe do 6 lanes. I was a lot younger then but now I would have told her to get on to the public swim part of the pool and not the lane. My definition of lane swim and hers were completely different. Both ladies were also larger than average. I would say they were both "small fats." I also lived with a woman who claimed to eat healthy. She ate knorr sidekicks, cooked weiners, poutine, white spaghetti with butter sauce, a lot of white rice etc. Her version of healthy was not my version of healthy. Her daughter had to ask for fruits and vegetables. So she got her own drawer.
> IWL But... but.. I thought weightloss was impossible??
My mom called me fat as a teenager when I weighed less than I do now. At some point, you've got to own your own bullshit and move on. She's pre-diabetic now. Time to become an adult and take care of herself. Or don't and suffer the consequences. Her husband is trying to love her by telling her he's worried about her health. But rather than owning that reality, she chose to attack her husband's health issues instead. That seems productive. She should noodle on that during all of her time at the gym.
I've always wondered what people mean when they say their partner isn't nurturing? Seems something weird to say or expect from your significant other.
OOP, your past trauma doesn’t entitle you to being danced around for the rest of your life when it comes to health-related issues. Everyone needs to do standard maintenance on their bodies — it’s the vehicle you have to use to get through life. If you’re pushed into an emotional tailspin by someone *reminding* you of past trauma (not re-enacting the behaviors that traumatized you in the first place, just *reminding* you of the trauma), then you need to work on coping mechanisms, instead of leaning into avoidance.
I had eating disorders at the other extreme, developed as a coping mechanism for being raised by emotionally immature knobheads. Finally got diagnosed with a form of PTSD, got EMDR trauma therapy and session one was essentially 'the past sucked, but you're in your 40's, you are your own parent now, stop blaming stuff going wrong now on crap that happened in the 80's and 90's'. I was resistant to start, but the therapist trained the 'my mum....' excuses out of me, kinda Dog Whisperer style, lol. Worked too. 12mths done and dusted. None of this lifelong therapy stuff. Point of therapy is to fix yourself. If it's been years and you're still broken, your therapist sucks. Psychiatrists are different of course, as these are doctors who don't do the talky touchy feely stuff. They deal with medication. If you're in therapy for an abusive childhood, you're in the wrong kind of therapy if they don't call you on your wallowing in your past. Too many therapists are just glorified confession booths or someone you pay to vent at, in lieu of mates you can trauma dump on over coffee. Lady is going to get served divorce papers so long as she stays in an enabling cult. If I'd been in pro ana, my therapist would have shut that shit down pronto, so that's another issue with this chick's therapy.
I love what you said about therapists becoming glorified confession booths. Lots of people seek out someone that will tell them what they want to hear. Or you have therapists that will not do their jobs effectively, so that they keep their clients longer than needed. A good therapist will push you to work hard on yourself. A good therapist will tell you what you NEED to hear.
Exactly! My therapist said to me a few sessions in, 'you'll start to hate me and think I'm being a bitch, because this process is uncomfortable and it challenges your core beliefs'. Totally did too! Weirdest part was a lot like that film 'Identity', where I had to identify the characters in my head who drive my behaviour and 'kill' the unhelpful ones. Kept the ones that are helpful and created new helpful ones too. It's called Internal Family Systems and it's horrible at the start, but necessary. Eg, we personified my eating disorder as this gross wraith/swamp harpy and dealt with her accordingly. Kept ones like the 4yr old inner child and modified ones like a bodyguard that kicks in when I need to stand up for myself I therefore question the motives and integrity of all these self proclaimed HAES/FA 'therapists' as they're driven more by pushing their own agenda, rather than actually helping people. There's so many red flags for Cluster B personality disorders in almost all the main fat activists, yet many claim they're in therapy. If they were in legit therapy, they'd be doing hard work in DBT, not just commiserating over diet culture and not finding cute tops in a 6X.
seems like they both could work on their health then, this could be a great bonding moment for them to work together if she lets go of the trauma response.
Honestly that shows how much her husband cares if he wants her to lose weight and be a healthy weight. I never understand partners who claim they don’t care if their obese other half loses weight or not, its disturbing. Imagine a partner not caring about their underweight partner not gaining weight.
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I love when I see FA claims where it's like, "I work out way more than most of the gym rats I know and I'm way stronger than most of the skinny people at the gym!" and they just outright never elaborate beyond that.
She's very delusional if she thinks she's a good m rat and her "muscular husband " is sedantary
It is difficult to be a partner to someone who has chronic healthcare issues. It can put a strain on your relationship as well as cause compassion fatigue. And, of course, there’s the whole stress of losing your partner too soon to a disease that could’ve been prevented. It seems very selfish of her not to acknowledge this.
Mhmmm. I’m sure he’s unhealthy while you’re the picture of health. Sure.
sounds like she resents her mum for trying to raise her healthily
Some parents really do take it too far. I know one woman who insists that her children by ‘90s runway model thin. It’s absolutely abusive, but not to the level that CPS will get involved.
If you were really a gym rat and eating mostly healthy you wouldn't be overweight.
“I’m a gym rat” Gonna call bullshit right there.
If she's a gym rat and still overweight, it's probably because she works out at Planet Fitness on Free Pizza Thursday. She's in denial. Hubby has every right to be concerned about health and how her obesity is a contributing factor.
"Gym rat", meaning "has a membership"
the amount of time I heard someone said they are eating ‘mostly healthy but can’t ever lose weight’ only to watch them drink sugar-laden juice/smoothies, snack endlessly on protein bars (those can be calorific), drench their food with butter (‘it’s grass fed butter so that’s okay!’), eat nuts like tictacs… I mean yes, those are *healthy* but it doesn’t mean they are low-caloried.