Ask buriedbeds about losing 200 lbs (very, very long)

[buriedbeds]

Sorry my posting's been spotty lately...things are REALLY busy for me right now, but I'll still try to keep up in here as often as I can (as long as there's interest).

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Now that you've reached your goal of XL and a weight of mid-to-low 200's, which is a great achievement considering what you've been through ... why not set the bar even higher?

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Nothing. I never said that I was done. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I said I reached my goal size - which was an impossible dream where I was. I hadn't shopped in a non-plus-sized (i.e. "normal") store since I was 11 years old...think about that. I'm now thinner than I was when I was 11, and I'm probably 8 inches taller.

Do I still want to lose weight? Yes. I am still in weight loss mode. But my goal when I started was XL, because I was a 6x and it seemed like even this was literally impossible, after years of dieting. Again, I tried EVERYTHING - and I'll also tell you that ANYONE you see who's big is the same...you don't get that big without trying EVERY WAY POSSIBLE to lose weight. It just doesn't stick or what you've tried isn't what your body needs - or any other the other million things that can and will sidetrack you. I'm just thankful that I finally had the strength to try one last thing. If it didn't work, I was done. I was pretty much conceding to early death.

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You say that you have a big build--which I don't doubt, considering your weight growing up--but depending on your height, it is a widely accepted medical fact that your ideal weight is a probably good 30-40 pounds lower, and losing that extra weight will be definitively beneficial.

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Again, I don't disagree...I know I'm still probably really fat by the standards of the people on this board. But I'm no longer a freak who sticks out walking down the street and I'm healthy, and, again, that was more than I could have dreamed when I started this.

I do disagree with the term "ideal" in an absolute sense - I don't think that weight/height charts are worth anything. I do agree with it in a relative sense - where YOU are healthy and YOU are strong without being under-weight. And I'm shooting for that. I have no idea what that weight will be, as I have never been it. But I'll keep going until I get there.

This thread was done because I'd set it as a goal of mine when I got to this particular goal, largely because of the many threads I've seen related to weight loss (Bison's OOT weight loss challenge, the thread about being prejudiced against fat people that ElD started in here, all the abuse that Dids has taken (even if he and I never got along all that well)). I wanted to both potentially let people who are in my old boat know that it can be done while maybe humanizing the other side of the fence for people who so bitterly dislike the obese.

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I don't think you'll find a lot of 30 year olds with early stages of diabetes, hypertension, or dangerously high serum levels of cholesterol. Not a lot of 30 year olds ever expect they are already headed down that path.

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How old are you? Being around that age with lots of friends around that age, I totally disagree. This is when a lot of people start having those bad checkups at the doctor's office...my gf went on it because of high cholesterol (which went down, btw), my friend went on it because of high blood pressure (which went down, btw). And as to diabetes - well, there you're just wrong...a lot of people have even stopped using the term "juvenile onset" for type one diabetes because type two is showing up so often in younger and younger populations:

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi.../full/27/4/998
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov2007/niddk-13.htm

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I'm not trying to diminish your accomplishments: they are quite impressive and inspirational. But it kinda seems from your comments in this thread that you feel satisfied with your weight and health and don't have much motivation to slim down further.

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I hope we've cleared that up, then.

Incidentally, everyone should read this book if you're interested in diet, exercise, epidemiology, etc. It's interesting, and it's written by a reputable main-stream writer (for the NY times and Science magazine) for a mainstream publishing house. It's not some marginalized whacko, and it's not a diet book that tells you what to eat. It's about the science of nutrition and the flaws with the science that has forwarded a lot of the present day nutritional beliefs.

-bb.