What is your excuse for staying fat? What's the pay off?

For me I used to blame it on my hormones (child birth). The pay off ~ less attention on me.

Interesting questions: My excuses for staying fat?
Ludicrous, but some of them are true: I don't know if I will ever unravel the entire point and the pay-off:

1) My mother, aunt, grandmother, and great-grandmother valued thinness before any other single human quality and I am a rebel

2) I don't want people to be attracted to me; for many people the "fat" are invisible

3) So I can feel sorry for myself

4) Because I allowed myself to get fat when I was too young to understand the reality of the medical complications that can ensue

and like you, Dupont: LESS ATTENTION FOR ME!

I have to admit that when I had my two children I really was not that afflicted: at 9 months pregnant, weighing in at the hospital, I was 151 and 162 pounds respectively. Being pregnant gave me a motivation to eat in a reasonably healthy way. But I was much younger then and recovered from my pregnancies via "starvation" diets. DUH!

Natalie

That is a good question...

I guess I don't have to worry about getting regected or hurt...because nobody wants to get close.

I don't have to feel all the emotions that come up for me...I just numb them or stuff them with food.

I don't have to look at a marriage that I am not sure is working for me.

People just seem to leave me alone.

I don't like these things...and am working very hard to change them...I want to be a strong person. I want to be able to deal with everyday life and not fall apart for every little crisis that arises. That is part of the reason I am here...I want to learn to love myself...and cope.

So I can try every diet around and obsess and spend hours counting calories, carbs whatever ... which just doesn't give me time to think about other things like certain faults of mine that I should be working on, or the fact that I should be doing more for others, or sometimes I'm just so scared to be totally happy because I'm afraid that as soon as you get too happy you'll surely get punished for it.

My obsession over my weight aside I'm a pretty happy person, I guess that somewhere in my guilt filled little mind I don' think I deserve to be so I find ways to make myself miserable. When it wasn't weight it was a really horrible boyfriend!!

I'm learning to accept happiness as a way of life and to forgive myself ... you never know it might even last!!

C.

Why do I feel like...

I'll never be a good enough mother, wife.
I'll never be thin enough.
I'll never be pretty.
I'll never be successful.

Even when I am these things, I don't feel like I deserve to feel happy about it. The pay-off is I don't have to work at any of these things. Sometimes I find life too hard. It's hard work to be a good mother & wife, thin, pretty and successful. I guess I'm just lazy and unmotivated.

I was not always like this though, I used to do the hard work, and then in one moment my life changed. A stillborn child due to a chromosome abnormality. I blame my self for the abnormality, her death, not being a good mother, and wife. Why take care of my body when I can't control what happens to it? I guess I gave up.

Thanks for listening I needed to get that out.

Golly, this is going to take some soul searching.....

Everyone else's answers so far numbed me. I guess I see myself in a lot of them and others made me cry.

In my family, food was the way everyone showed love. I got fed, fed, fed. We were not allowed up from the table until our plates were clean. I became addicted to sugar at a very early age. (I never was clever enough to figure that out.) I was really heavy in fourth grade, got sick, and was actually thin (I only "remember" this by seeing my school pictures) for a while, but always saw myself as heavy. The weight battle began.

I really never knew what to do about it. None of the diets worked (all the low fat, low cal stuff) and I just gave up. Maybe because I too, like the non attention. I don't like making waves or being in the limelight. I have been invisible. I will need to learn to deal with being a person....

Purnois

One of my prominent excuses? Comparing myself to others around me who were bigger - mom, co-workers, friends - and think, "it could be worse. I guess I'm not *that* big." And with that, I'd ditch the whole diet thing and pig out, and abandon exercise. I'd conveniently "forget" that I had never been bigger, and that the only clothes left that fit were those with elastic waistbands, plus some of my boyfriend's things. That's a poor way to think. That's like thinking that if you got a D on a test, you don't need to try any harder since other people got Fs.

So I changed my tune. If you really want something, you can't ask youself whether or not the people around you have it. If you leave others behind in the dust, so be it: that shouldn't stop you from going after what you want. We're talking about your health, after all.

My excuse was that I was in denial. No one ever told me I was fat, so I tried to convinced myself that I wasn't. I could only fool myself for so long. I wasn't blind. I wasn't happy with myself and that's what's most important.

My husband proposed to me when I was at my heaviest. Yet I was so self-conscious at that time. I had no self-esteem and felt awful about myself. I think that's what changed my tune.

I've never had an "excuse" for staying fat.. YET my doctors and family think differently. I blame being fat on being hypo. They say its an excuse. Its so not. Actually depressing and frustrating when nobody believes you.

But if anything, my excuse at times would be the fact that its NOT me, and nobody helps me or believes me. When you've been struggling with the same thing for a couple years, tried everything, followed diets werd for werd, exercised nonstop and don't lose a pound in sufficient amount of time. (like months)..

Theres a PERFECT excuse to give up and say F* it, its not gonna work, it never did.

My excuse? It was EASIER .

Yep, It was easier.
It was easier to be fat to hide away from relationships that were differcult to have and to understand.
It was easier to eat sugar and sweets than go through withdrawal symptoms.
Its easier to repel would-be-rapers, than learn self-defense.
It was easier to blame my weight for inactivity than learn to be more active.

Yep, it was easier.

To lower others expectations of me, fear of success, path of least resistance. I think there are such a combination of factors that I'd be hard pressed to pick the dominant one. All I know is that I don't feel the low self-esteem that I did, and am starting to love & accept myself again.

I was taught as a child that my emotions were not to be expressed, so I used food to stuff down my emotions.....I would eat. And eat and eat. Always carbs, which made me feel better for the moment. One time in my life I would eat ..then purge, and eat again.

Also being fat kept away unwanted attention. I didn't want to get hurt.

That was how I stayed fat, in between all those diets.

I just logged on to prevent myself from going into the lunchroom and eating " bad" things and saw this string. So many of the reasons others have given I have to agree with.
I was invisble . Looking good attracted too much attention and I was extremely shy growing up and still today, feel inept so being overweight was less threatening .
It was easier to do nothing and be unhappy about the weight than to actually do something and have to keep doing it everyday to acheive and retain results.
Fear of failure. If I tried, then everyone would know what a loser I was ( of course I assumed I would fail)
I didn't want anyone to know I cared what I looked like. I was supposed to be better that that. I didn't need make-up and did n't do my hair, etc. I wasn't supposed to care about such "superficial " things.
and so on and so on... a couple of decades of mindset is hard to get rid of... but I'm getting there.

That was my excuse. Diets don't work, so why even try.

;-Deb

I just could not give up beer drinking - that and sugar sweetened ice tea. I am one of the Atkins types that says I don't eat that much but keep gaining weight. That is because I was drinking much of my sugar! Beer started to get to me anyway so I gave it up almost entirely - maybe 5 beers in the last 3.5 months. The hardest thing was to give up the iced tea. I really don't like all artificial sweeteners and make do with a little sucralose here and there. I have been drinking small quantities of red dry wine which has braked my weight loss some. There are several health benefits with one glass of wine a day. On the other hand I am someone who is perfect for the Atkins diet. I have not eaten much candy except for chocolate for the last 26years. I don't like many cakes or pies. I do not have to have iced cream. I can't stand home fries in the morning. I really like french fries but could also give them up easy and was easy to give up all other potatoes. Also found it easy to give up pasta. So the sacrifices for me to do Atkins were much less than others.