Originally Posted by Lisa N

As for your question as to how people get 100+ pounds over their healthy weights (I won't say "ideal" because healthy weights are as individual as people are), I think will find as many different answers as there are people in that classification. Many of them got there by following what they believed was good advice from their doctors: eat low fat, high carb. Some got to those alarming weights by taking prescription drugs for other medical problems which case weight gain as a side-effect. Still others arrived in the land of obesity through overeating and underexercising for a host of reasons, both physical and emotional; the more overweight you get, the less active you tend to be, so it becomes a vicious cycle. Many others will tell you that they honestly don't know (and they really don't) and that everything that they have tried has only resulted in their gaining still more weight.

Most people who are overweight aren't that way because they WANT to be, but rather because they can't find any solution that works and if you don't think people are looking for a solution, take a hard look at all the diets and diet products on the market. They wouldn't be there if people weren't buying them and people wouldn't be buying them if they weren't trying to lose weight.

It's time that we stopped thinking of and treating those who are overweight as if they have some sort of moral shortcoming and that their obesity is somehow all their fault and theirs alone and started realizing that at the heart of it is often a medical condition that has long gone unrecognized and treated poorly, if at all. The overweight are not morally deficient or gluttons; most of them have a disease called insulin resistance. Well-meaning doctors have told the overweight for decades "eat less and you'll lose weight" or "cut back on the fat and you'll lose weight" and then blamed the poor patient who faithfully followed that advice for getting fatter, made them feel it was "their fault" for not "being serious about losing weight" and sent them home to hang their heads in shame and frustration when it should have been the doctor hanging his (or her) head in shame for failing to recognize and treat the real problem. I have PCOS and was told by an internist that my only problem was what he termed "overactive hand to mouth syndrome" when, in fact, I was consuming 1,200 calories a day on a regular basis. He never did any tests. He just looked at my fat body and assumed that I was gluttonous.

It's hard to understand or even comprehend the prejudice and emotional abuse that the obese suffer at the hands of the ignorant and often even at the hands of those who love them if you've never been there yourself, but please understand that underneath that layer of fat is often a hurting person who has some very raw emotions about the subject and don't be surprised when you see those emotions coming out when you ask them how they got that way. It's comparable to asking a terminal cancer patient what they did to give themselves cancer.