What makes a fat person? Why do people get fat? There are a number of reasons and it is most often a combination of reasons rather that just one thing. It is not always that they are lazy and stupid like a lot of people like to think. If you have never been fat, more than chubby, you just don’t know what it is like. You don’t know how it feels to be fat physically or emotionally. You don’t know how it feels to get fat or how difficult it is to lose weight. Period. It makes me mad when people think that being fat is just a fat person’s inability to eat right and exercise. No! There is a lot more than that going on. If it was just a matter of exercising or being active and eating less or eating better then a whole lot of fat people would be thin and a whole lot of skinny people would be fat. How many of you know a skinny person who doesn’t exercise and can down two Big Macs in one sitting? A skinny person who can and does eat everything they want (overeating) and stays skinny? I have known quite a few. My point is that a lot of factors go into the size of a person.
Common Fat Stereotypes
A list of common stereotypes of obese people. I have heard them all and felt it and dealt with it too.
This is one of the things I need to explore in order to conquer my weight problem. I wasn’t always fat. I was a pretty skinny kid and really active. I guess I started putting on weight after puberty – around middle school. I remember kids in school started teasing me about my weight then. It is a cliché to write but kids are cruel. I wasn’t really fat then, just a little chubby. I let the teasing get me down. I became less active. I don’t know why but I can guess it has something to do with depression. I have always struggled with depression and I remember some ‘blue’ times that started around fifth grade and got increasingly worse through high school. I think I would have always struggled with depression, even if I had not put on weight but something else triggered the depression and the teasing made the depression worse, which started a vicious cycle of being depressed, turning to food for comfort – the fatter I got the more depressed I was, the less active I was and the more I isolated myself.
Picture of me when I was in middle school.
This sucks thinking about it. I pushed it down into the depths of my subconscious. I wish I hadn’t let people affect me like that. Plus there is something else. The thing that triggered my depression, I believe. I sometimes think that my getting fat was because of puberty and hormone changes and stuff. I don’t know much about it but I am sure it played a role. The more I think about that time in my life I think the trigger was actually the fact that I was sexually molested by a neighbor and family friend. UGH! I hate writing that. Somewhat of a bombshell or no? It seems so made up, so hackneyed. But it is true. I have not seen a lot of research about the correlation between eating disorders or obesity and molestation but if I had to guess I would think there is one. Most every thing I have ever seen about anorexia nervosa (most of it on TV, I admit), the sufferer has been molested. It is a control issue. I think it can go both ways – not eating and overeating. Either way they are ‘controlling’ their size. I need to find out more about overeating to see if I am on the right track. It seems there has been a lot of research and publicity about anorexia and not as much about overeating. Certainly both can be dangerous but I suppose anorexia is the more dangerous of the two, and perhaps a quicker way run into health problems.
I love this pic of me when I was young and thin, before depression.
I just googled 'eating disorders and molestation' and came up with quite a bit of stuff. Not sure how reliable the sources are; I'll have to find out more about this issue.
Well those are some of the issues that get at why I am the way I am. I hope I do not come across as trying to make excuses – just trying to get to the heart of the matter so I can move on.
I'm sorry to hear that you had to deal with such a tough situation. I don't think you're making excuses.
ReplyDeleteI think it's extremely brave of you to admit that and tell everyone on here that you were molested. Personally, I do think that could be a factor, not just because it has to be directly related, but to how you see yourself. If you became depressed after this and you started to see yourself differently, that changes a lot. When people are depressed it is extremely difficult to stay active and look at life positively. Then if you start to gain weight because you're depressed and don't feel like doing anything, you get even more depressed and it just keeps rolling to the point where you feel terrible with yourself, but you don't want to do anything to change it. But like with me, I'm not super huge, but I used to be big when I was little. I gain weight pretty easily, but I work out daily. Yes, at time I wish I could be one of those people who can eat anything they want to and not exercise at all, but a lot of time they become very unhealthy when they get older because they've never had to worry about any problems gaining weight. So, I'm a tad thankful that I have to exercise and not eat horrible all the time to stay thin. It's making me healthier and feel better about myself. I know that it is difficult to lose weight, but if you put your mind to it and decide that you truly want to work at losing weight, you can make it work. It will be difficult and you won't see results right away, but you have to keep that in mind and try not to get discouraged. I hope things work out for you, and stay positive!
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