I've gained entirely too much weight....

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....and I didn't even notice that I was gaining until yesterday. Here is what happened.

I had a pap smear yesterday morning and of course they weighed me. 141. 141!! ! One hundred and forty freaking one pounds!! !! That is up from 120 something last December! My clothes have been a little tight but I've put that down to period puffiness, all month long, every month, and I didn't think anything about it. Well my best friend came by, lets just call her Alice. Well Alice came by for lunch. She's working at the grocery store up the road and she has an hour for lunch so she comes here. Alice is the one who was on the meth real bad for so long, remember? She quit the meth a few months back and is living with her mother now. She's my age. So anyway, she gets here and we go to Wendy's drive through cause she's hungry. It is lunch time after all. She's buying and so we each get baconaters and large fries and large cokes. I've already eaten a pepper and onion sandwich but a Wendy's sounds good so I get one.

We come back to my house and spread our food out and start eating. Baconaters are big. We are eating them like we were starving. Between bites I say "I went to the doctor today. I weight 141. Can you believe that?" She said "I weigh 142". Now, we hadn't looked at each other very carefully while hanging out, since I quit smoking cigarettes and she quit crystal meth. We didn't notice this. But we sure did right that second. We saw the flabby upper arms, the bakery full of muffin tops that were around each of our waists because we were both crammed into jeans that were three sizes to small, we noticed the start of the double chin that we both have. We did not stop eating though.

"We are porkers!" I said. "Oh my God I know! I didn't notice!" she said. "It's all about the food now ain't it?" I asked and she said "That's all we got now!" We pointed out the fat on each other. We talked about the denial we were both in because of this extra weight. We finished our burgers then went in the kitchen and got some cake and came back and talked about what to do about it.

It was obvious why we both gained. I quit cigarettes so I eat a lot more instead of smoking and she quit crystal meth so she has an appetite now and plus her mother cooks a lot and it's only polite that she eats. We both briefly considered starting our old habits back but smoking is too expensive which is one main reason I quit and she really doesn't want to screw up her life anymore than it already is by getting back on the dope, so that was out. Then we considered taking up each others old habit instead but she already smokes and I don't really want to screw my life up with crystal meth, plus that would be more expensive than smoking.

We talked about diets. I even Googled them. Neither of us has ever had a weight problem and neither of us has ever been on a diet. We were both usually fluctuating between 4 and 6, depending on the time of the month. We wore each others clothes. I recently bought a new pair of pants and they were 10's but I told myself that they were just cut small. I didn't think I was a 10. So, back to the diets. None of them sounded interesting. They all involved self denial. Neither of us likes the idea of not eating what we want when we want it because that has never happened to either of us. But it's going to have to. Eventually. We decided to do something though. At least some sort of a gesture. We switched to diet drinks.

We also decided to try and not notice the fat on the other person. And maybe to go buy all new pants because it's kind of hard to breath in the ones we have.

I don't know what I'm going to do. It's not a huge problem and I'm not really fat fat or anything and neither is she but if we both let this go and keep on like we are and don't do something about it now, we will get fat and it will be a lot harder to lose all that weight than it will be to lose this little bit. And learn to ::shudder:: eat healthy and to exercise.

I've been out of work for over a year now. Yeah, I gained about 20/25 pounds because I'm sort of sedentary. A good thing, though, is I don't have a car so I have to walk everywhere - to my appointments, the movie theatre, Staples, restaurants, etc. I average around 4 miles with each walk (there and back) so I'm not complaining. I figure once I go back to work I'll be hopping up and down the halls so, hopefully, I'll lose the weight. I'm a foodie these days, though so it'll definitely be hard.

As per articles on the topic, obesity is socially contagious.. hang out with fat lazy people & guess what you become?

Not that either of you can be very fat at 141/142lbs, but still, if your habits become eating baconaters and cake.. well, you're going to gain unhealthy weight.

So don't take up a horribly restrictive crash diet. Choose one that's balanced and healthy that you can stick to. I quite liked the simple mix of diet in Bill Phillips' Body for Life program, plenty of protein, healthy carbs, veggies, and eat whatever you want one day/week.

Or do like so many others do & take up exercise and then eat whatever you want w/o gaining weight. It's not as healthy as doing exercise and eating properly, but it's better than no exercise at all.

Over the past year I've taken up doing a lot more exercise and have never been healthier/fitter for it. I went for a run last night for quite a few hours.. somewhere around 35kms in total - more than twice as far as I've ever run before. I'm currently at 6'2" 193.5lbs & ~13%bf (but was as low as 9.5% a couple months ago) w/ a goal of 200lbs @ 10%bf or lower and working on it. I never used to be a runner (and am still not a great one, yet, as my runner friend can go way faster and farther than I can!) or do any of the other workouts I've been doing.. but just decided I wanted to be in shape for life, work, and neurological function and just set out to do more and more and more since doing the Tough Mudder in Whistler last Summer. It doesn't have to be an obsession or nearly as much as I'm putting myself through, but start small and just keep working hard at whatever you do (walking, running, sport of some kind, whatever.) and you'll get better at whatever you're doing while getting into better health. You'll think clearer and feel better, too, and chances are you won't crave junk food either as you won't want to ruin the value of the hard work you just did by eating garbage.

Yeah, I'm in decent shape & getting better now.. but I'm still not in what I'd call "good shape," and I've been in MUCH worse shape at 242lbs w/ a 38" waist in the past. Just goes to show that a change in habits & some hard work changes everything vs. accepting your current reality as permanent.

Well, I've always eaten baconaters and cake and actually I've always eaten as much as I want, when I want. My metabolism is pretty high and I was only overweight once and that was right before I had the thyroid surgery which fixed my metabolism right back the way it always was. I've actually never wanted something to eat really bad and not ate it because it would make me fat. I've not ate something because I didn't want to ruin my appetite or because I was saving it for something or because I had been sick but never that. And I'm unsure if I can do it.

Last summer I walked a lot but one of the main places I walked was to the store for cigarettes. I've quit smoking now and so the only place I walk is the tanning bed (across the street from the store) and to my mothers. I should walk more but I just don't want to and I won't unless I have a reason to walk somewhere.

I started the year off doing exercises. Working out every day, walking too. That lasted about a month and a half. I just get tired of doing it. I don't know what I'm going to do but I've got to do something.

I've already done my grocery shopping for this month but next month I'm not buying snacks. No cookies or chips, etc. We will always have sweets around here because my oldest daughter is going to school to be a pastry chef and she's always cooking us stuff she learned in class.

See, heres the weird thing. I've always ate junk food and ate whatever I wanted in as large a portion as I wanted and rarely exercised and I stayed the right weight and such. Now that I quit smoking I'm eating junk food all the time. I mean all the time. I'll take a new package of cookies, climb in the bed with my book and lay there reading and eat the entire thing. Or a bag of chips. It's the eating constantly that gets me. I can't chew gum because of some tooth problems that I can't afford to get fixed yet and I can't really eat a lot of lifesavers for the same reason. I truly miss smoking and the only reason I quit was because I couldn't afford it. I was so sick of fiending for a cigarette or scraping up change to get some that I just gave it up all together. It's because of the eating to replace the smoking that I'm doing this. I need to stop that but I just don't know if I will. I know I can, I just don't know if I will.

I was talking to my mother about this today and she told me that she quit smoking once and she gained a bunch. I remember it happening but not all that well. She would snack all day at work, eat a big lunch at work, and on the way home she would stop at Krystal and get 6 or 7 Krystals and some fries and eat them on the way home, then cook and eat supper, then about 830 she would go out and get a Burger King or whatever she wanted and eat that. She also was constantly eating cheese puffs. She sat on the couch and read and ate cheese puffs. She kept several cans of them in her desk at work and had sent her secretary out to get some before. What finally happened was she went to buy new clothes. She wore a 6 when she quit smoking. She had had several sizes in her closet, just like very lady I know does, and she had finally outgrown them all. She went to Pizits and was looking in the 6's. She had a saleslady helping her and the lady finally asked if these were for her. She said yes, she was going to try them on. The lady told her "Hon, no. Try over here" and took her over to the 16's. My mother didn't believe it. She told her she knows she's gained a little weight but nowhere near that much. The lady told her "try this on" and handed her something in a 16 and my mother tried it on, it fit. She bought maybe 3 things to get her through a few weeks and then on the way home she stopped and got her a carton of cigarettes. She lost the weight back. That was when she switched from menthols to regular.

Not that this is neccessarily healthy, but... Ever think of taking up drinking lots of coffee/energy drinks? The reason why is basically, nicotine is a stimulant, along with your friend's meth. So, coffee is pretty cheap, especially home brewed, could drink it forever all day, and it cuts your appetite and raises metabolism because it's a stimulant. It's a bandaid, but if you want a bandaid, there you go. I know me personally, I don't smoke, but I've tried cigarettes and like them. One guy told me when I brought up smoking "any time you feel like you wanna smoke, go have a Red Bull instead." And I find this pretty true. So, yeah...

Anyway, as far as exercising goes, I think I suggested this in regards to your daughter, find a sport you like and train for it. ANY sport. Seriously, no matter how far out crazy it is, as long as you can (even barely) afford it (ie, long track speed skating would be bad as there's like 3 long track rinks in USA.) Make participating in it regular, and train for it. All your exercise instead of just being pointless (besides for the vanity of looking good for a husband you apparently don't like) will have a point, improving your sport performance. It also relaxes you a bit, as it's not exercise because of body image issues, it's for sport. Like some days I'll burn 1k+ cals from exercising, because I enjoy doing it, as it's a sport and not "exercise."

Diet, I don't know. For me personally, I have to count calories just for consistency-sake, as I'll have like 1500 one day out of disorganizedness, and 5000 the next, and it doesn't really work well for weight loss and performance doing that. So it's not "omg calories" but they do count. I'd say a big thing is don't snack. People will see me eat giant plates of food and think I'm some glutton, and then they'll eat a tiny plate of food, go home and eat half a bag of Doritos or something.

Yep, nicotine, meth, caffeine.. all stimulants that are appetite suppressants so you don't eat as much and don't notice feeling hungry.

A little extra caffeine is healthier than either of the other two.. but it's not a bad thing to be hungry and eat at all, if you exercise and then eat healthy foods.

Caffeine + water + exercise + healthy foods will be better to keep you in slimmer shape than smoking or tweaking.

About the caffeine, coffee contains fewer calories than Red Bull-style energy drinks. Tea could be an option, many teas contain antioxidants as well. You might spend some time to get a general feeling of the building blocks of food; carbohydrates, fibers, proteines, fats etc. My dad works in the food industry and since I was young we would look at the packaging to see what was in the food. I think this is an important thing for children to learn, what they eat will determine a large part of their future health.

Another thing is meal sizes. I read that even in the same brand of fast food meal sizes in the US are larger than over here (Netherlands). Another bad example from an American in France: http://www.ninjapirate.com/article/paris
Some of the skinniest people I know eat very slowly, that might help. It takes a while for the brain to register how much food went down.

*converts to kilos*

How tall are you? That doesn't really seem at all fat for the average height.

Check your Body Mass Indexes. If you are in the healthy range... accept yourselves and eat/exercise healthily.

Body mass index sucks. It doesn't take into account bodyfat, muscle, or bone structure. For me for example, I have large legs genetically, and a decentish amount of muscle. People said I looked like 160-170 when I was 195. I'm not crazily big boned, but even that's a real thing, too. Some people have, say, 5.5" or 6" wrists, and some have 8" wrists. The 8" wrist man has actual larger bones. So you can be within BMI and still have a lot of bodyfat if you're smaller framed, and then be totally out of BMI almost regardless of fat. For me, I'm like 13-15% at 182lbs and 5'9. It's gonna be hard even hitting 25 for me. But I'm within a medically healthy bodyfat range for a guy.

Whether OOM wants to accept herself or whatever is up to her. Most people I know her age just say screw it and don't care much about how fat they are. Or the "WTF I'm fat!" alarm goes off a lot sooner when they're obese instead of just sorta overweight.

BMI is moronic - even those who came up with it stated that it isn't suitable for the purpose it is now being put to. My 'fighting weight' if you like, is around 195lbs, or 14 stone in UK terms - I'm about 5' 10.5", so that would make me overweight because it takes no account of your frame or muscle bulk. Currently I'm down to around 235lbs from 290 in October so I've a fair way still to go - I'm on the 'Slimming World' diet with my wife and have lost a fair bit, is anyone else on a diet here? There doesn't seem to be a 'reformed fatties' thread on here at the moment.