Fatty 2: Lard of the Rings.

[Antarion]

Hey TMF, I didn't think this would go in tickling discussion despite it being spurred by the fetish. I think it'll say something about my character more than anything else, so here goes!

Let me start this out with some background. I grew up in a small town with no entertainment locations. We had maybe 2000 people in the town. Due to the lack of things to do, you either did drugs, drank, partied, went real heavy in to sports, or became a traditional games nerd. I didn't really pick. I like to think my parents did for me. Being from a semi-wealthy family, my parents showered me with all the new electronics for me to play with. I took to these heavily, spending almost all my free-time inside until I was in high school. I had a good group of friends, the other nerd gamers, and I joined speech and drama.

Pardon the lack of a thesis statement, but the point of this thread is I'm fat, and want to not be, but there are some major hurdles.

By my freshman year I was 6'0, 300 lbs. Let that sink in for a second. I was fifteen, and you couldn't fit seven of me on an elevator without it having problems. Time went on and it became my junior year. All my life my mom had been in failing health, but it hit it's lowest low here. She started losing her balance and falling, she started losing her memory. My dad had been having trouble finding a pharmacy position so he had to move to south dakota. I was already taking college level classes, so I pressured my parents to let me drop out, get my GED, and go to college a year early. I spent about six months in south dakota with no gym, no reason to go anywhere, and just eating and drinking everything gave to me. My weight skyrocketed and my parents made it nigh impossible to lose weight. My dad kept telling me "What's the point, bud, one coke won't kill you." "I went all the way to the store today to get my buddy his favorite snack, nobody else likes it. I know you're on a diet bud, but just this time?" "C'mon, bud. You're young, you don't have to worry about stuff like this!" I left home with a suitcase, my computer, and my mind set that I'm going to lose weight in college.

This is the part that I'm extremely ashamed of and I have no idea how to fix it.

I am a living, breathing, walking, american stereotype. The foreign exchange students stop me to ask for a picture of me with them so they can send it back to their friends saying "Look, I found an american!" I'm 6'2, 350 lbs. Now, everything that I've said prior should be enough to want to improve for myself, right? That's not why I want to lose weight. I hate fat people and everything that being fat says about your character. I hate how being fat symbolizes lack of self control and discipline. I hate the people that say "Some people were just born fat." I hate myself, and everyone like me. A large reason why I want to lose weight is so that I can go to these tickling gatherings without being embarrassed of myself because in my current state, I'd walk in, lurk, and walk out defeated because I don't have the confidence to approach anyone, and don't have the physique to get approached.

But as you've probably noticed, I have a nasty temper. And that's what fuels my futile attempts to lose weight. I get angry, I start working out, I realize how much it sucks having to diet, how sore I am after lifting, how futile the attempt is, and I quit. I'm trying to take a more level-headed angle with this now, and I need your help. I don't remember who it was when i last posted something like this. He talked about having a blog where he lost a bunch of weight, he was a cool guy, and I don't think I ever thanked you for the help you gave me before, being in college however has given me a bucketload more excuses I don't know how to deal with.

1)I am a prospective pharmacist/biochem major. I am taking 20 credits and most of my time is gone to studying and going to classes.

2)Due to having so many classes, I can't get a job to provide my own food, so I have to eat at the cafeteria.

3)Our cafeteria is an all you can eat buffet, I don't know how to count calories from something like that as I have no clue what the count of each food is.

4)My classes are MWF 10:30-3:00 every day, and after three the weight room is taken by the different sports teams.

5)I have no car to go anywhere off campus, so I'm stuck to the school's assets.

I think that's everything, I just can't figure out a gameplan. Can you guys give me a hand?

 

[Antarion]

Tuesdays and thursdays I've got class at 8:30-10:30, 12:30-3

 

[Bothersome]

Back when I was into the idea of losing weight, I just went the simplest route I could think of. Every night I'd leave at around 9 PM ish, and I'd walk around town for about an hour and a half. Sometimes I'd do this two or three times a night.

After three months I'd lost nearly 40 pounds, and it was also a great way to clear my head and just get perspective on things. Sure, it's not exactly the fastest way to lose weight, but it was simple and effective. Also, I was often very bored, and this was fairly time consuming.

 

[Antarion]

Thanks man, I'm not sure if that'll work, but I'll try it!

 

[Franky]

I'll second the "go out for a walk" either your campus is big enough that you can get a decent walk around it once or twice or you may have a park or walking trail near the campus. It doesn't have to be for more than an hour, but you should try to do more than an hour as frequently as possible. And start with walking, if there is an outdoor trail with joggers, try not to look at them with envy, but with "eventually I want to enjoy jogging too." That mindset helped when I initially went for walks at a nearby park years ago for stress relief. My intent was not to eventually jog, but watching the other people practicing for their marathons or simply for leisure activities and eventually I wanted to jog for my own enjoyment. Plus, I really liked the scenery there.

Also, try to focus your intent on "fun" more so, because if you are not making progress as fast as you want or if all your workouts are not fun for you you will get dissuaded rather quickly. And take baby steps for the first two weeks depending on your level of fitness. Once your body has gotten a little use to "working-out" you can increase the intensity with less avoidable pain or injury.

And if you can try to go for these walks in the morning before you eat breakfast especially when you try to mix it up with short bursts of faster paced walking. By doing this since you are a larger guy it should help bridge the gap between walking and jogging.

As for food and drinks. If you haven't started to do this already then you should make the switch over or it will really suck if you make it to a more intense work-out session. Try to switch over to drinking mostly water. Soda and juice is ok once in a while. As for food I'm going to recommend that you slowly replace your sides with veggies. Important* If you are not use to eating veggies on a regular basis you may upset your digestive track! And this applies both ways healthy diet -> unhealthy diet and vise versa. You may have better luck if you start with a small salad with lunch or dinner, but try to go easy on the dressing.

And with portion control, you mentioned it is all you can eat buffet. I'm guessing you can go back as many times as you want. So, start off with small portions cause you can always go back for seconds. Basically try to make sure that each portion is either smaller than your fist or half the size or smaller than your fist (especially if it is a pasta type side). And over time try to use veggies to fill-up on at meal times. There are times when you may feel hungry so try drinking water or unsweetened tea, but it takes time to "adjust" you body so that isn't always crying for food when you don't actually need it.

And you could check your library to see if they have a book about couch potato to marathon runner. I haven't read it myself, but a friend of mine really liked it. He lost weight when he picked up running/jogging as a hobby.

And the reason why I mentioned doing your work-out before breakfast is because there were a few studies that indicate working out at that time helps with weight loss, but as long as you get up and move and stick with it is more important than the time of day.

And... GOOD LUCK!!! It can be stressful in the beginning, but eventually I hope that you get some enjoyment out of your work-out time. Just remember you may not see anything "noticeable" that first month, but you have to give it time before it will become noticeable.

 

[Antarion]

Thanks bro. I appreciate it!

 

[chicago]

Reddit has a lot of great information about eating healthy, healthy substitutions for shitty options you're used to, things to keep you motivated, etc.

Figuring out how many calories is in something just takes practice / experience / doing it. If you have a smartphone - MyFitnessPal is a really great app that helps you keep track of what you are eating / what you are burning.

It literally just takes some research / studying before you can start learning what to eat, what not to eat, and how much.

Drinking anything that isn't black coffee, water, or diet something with little to zero calories is just stupid when you could reserve those calories for food. That was something I learned real quick when trying to stick to a 1200 calorie diet.

And I imagine, since you go to university, that there is at least one gym you've got access to. See if there's any programs / classes there that will help introduce you to the equipment or help you figure out how to reach your goal.

The shit's not impossible and you're young. Getting in shape will never be easier for you than it is right now.

 

[Strider]

This is a subject I happen to have a degree of familiarity with. I was overweight most of my life; the heaviest I ever got was 270, but I generally fluctuated in a range of 220-240. Five years ago, I got myself down to the low 180s and I've stayed in the 180-185 range ever since.

There's really no trick to it (with one exception which I'll get to in a minute) you just have to eat less than your caloric maintenance level on a daily basis. Basically, there's a set level of calories per day that you have to eat to maintain your current weight, if you eat below that level, you'll start losing weight (here's a blog that will actually calculate yours for you; it was a major help to me when I was going through my weight loss). If you eat below that, you'll lose weight.

You mentioned that your school cafeteria is a buffet with no calories posted; my general advice on that is just use common sense. If they've got grilled chicken, take that. Basically, look for stuff that you know is low-cal, and then take one plate. When I was going through my weight loss, my schedule didn't have much variation; I got up and did a protein shake before going to the gym, lunch was typically a turkey sandwich on wheat, and dinner was chicken, shrimp, or fish, with brown rice and spinach. Needless to say, this isn't the greatest tasting stuff on the planet; but I was able to condition myself to view food as fuel and nothing else (once you start dropping weight, the process begins reinforcing itself). I'd also throw in a piece of fruit and maybe some sort of canned protein (I'm not wild about tuna, but I like canned salmon) at various points in the day.

On exercising, my advice at the moment would just be to walk a lot. To be totally honest, at the weight you're at, trying to run or do serious cardio would be really tough and could even end up fucking with your knees. Once you've gotten under 300, then you should revisit that.

As for the exception, there's always the chance you've got a medical condition that's exacerbating this. I get that some heavy folks fall back on having a thyroid condition or what have you; and while I agree that in and of itself, it's not the only reason somebody's heavy, it definitely makes the weight loss process harder. If you get health care via your university, you may want to get some basic blood work done to see if anything shows up along these lines, as there's medications to counteract it.

That's basically all I got. All I can say is I get where you're coming from with all of this (including the anger and self-loathing); if you want moral support or just want to vent, drop me a line.

 

[Antarion]

You all are insanely cool, you know that?

The condition you're thinking of is Hyperthyroidism. It's a very rare condition that can be blamed for 10-15lbs of retained weight, not being a fattyfat like I am.

I used to play football, I know how to lift, I just have trouble getting up in the morning to go do it. (I'm about ten times less angry than I was this morning when I posted the thread.) I took a walk around campus like someone here said, thanks bro! And it seems like I'm not working myself like I should be.

That's the problem. I have no idea what "Full" is. I have no clue what excercize is enough excersize. And I always feel like I could've pushed myself harder DURING the workout AFTER the workout. Even if I think I can't during. If that makes sense. I'll go balls-deep into it tomorrow. College is hard, you know? And I'm one of those depression binge eaters. I need to get this sorted out before it's too late.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Franky]

And here is a couple more things I'd like to add.

If you have access to a fridge for personal use and your cafeteria allows you to take food to go. I'm sure they tend to give you only one box, but if you ask for a second box for your salad there's a good chance they will give you it. Just make sure you use it for your salad, veggies, and fruit. Cause if you abuse it then you will loose it and not have it when you need it. And this is really handy if the salad bar has baby carrots, cucumbers, or any kind of "finger food" veggies you like, so you can snack on it later.

And the reason I mentioned the fast paced walking or speed walking is that it is a lower impact activity for your body, but will allow you to raise your heart rate up during your workouts. And you do not need to keep your heart rate up the whole time it is good for it to raise and lower throughout your workout.

Oh, and if you leave a workout feeling good or refresh/relaxed is also a good thing! Remember you were up and about and it helped your relax, because these kind of workouts help you mentally and are a good way to use your muscles in between your higher intensity workouts. And it also helps you reinforce your routine. And when you feel like you could have pushed harder during your walks, tell yourself and follow through that the next walk you will walk a faster pace either for a designated time or a designated distance like a block or until the next lamp post. Try at least once and if you feel like you can handle it and it doesn't hurt do it a couple more times during that walk. And repeat thereafter on future walks.

Don't worry about feeling "full" work towards feeling satisfied or no longer hungry. Or you could train yourself to only eat what you put on your plate and rarely go back for seconds. Also, try to limit the amount of times in between meals that you snack. And try to battle your cravings with low-no calorie drinks. And the next time you get depressed instead of going for food train yourself to go for a walk instead even if it is a leisurely stroll.

 

[Soda Bobinski]

If I May Make A Suggestion ...

I wouldn't go so hardcore w/your workouts & exercises. It sounds like when you do decide to exercise , you're pretty much going all out.

Which then leads to your body feeling way sore.

Which then probably leads to you being overly critical of yourself by not noticing as much 'progress' as you'd like to justify all that hard work you put into your workouts.

Which then leads you to feel absolutely discouraged & then you quit exercising altogether. That is , until you try to give it another go & the cycle just keeps repeating itself.

And as you've most likely already discovered , the whole 'exercise really hard for awhile every now & again' thing hasn't really done all that much for ya.


What I finally found worked best for me was to start off slow w/things. And light. Knowing that losing weight doesn't happen overnight , why go crazy & work out like a madman as if all that excess poundage I carried would vanish the next day?

No.

The best way to ensure weight loss ( along w/watching what & how much one eats ... of course ) is to maintain activity & steady exercise. The best way to accomplish that is to make activity & exercise actually doable. And realistic.

And once you're able to maintain a certain level for awhile , you'll find yourself naturally & gradually increasing the amount & intensity of your workouts.

Over time , you'll begin to notice some positive results. Which will only fuel you & encourage you to go the way you're going & want to work out even more.

And that's the key thing here , I think. Time.


Get cozy w/the fact that it's going to take a significant amount of time to get to where you want to be. You have to be ridiculously patient & understand that it's a process. And then accept it.

I know that sounds super simple & 'duh , no really?' , but it can be easy to forget that sometimes.

Take the fact that you're currently in school as an example. You're there to learn & get a degree & then hopefully get a job/career.

Job/career is your destination.

But as you already know , that doesn't happen overnight. You have to go through the process of learning & achieving that degree to get to where you finally want to be.

And that's how I suggest you approach trying to lose weight.

Going insane w/your workouts initially is akin to trying to get through school in a year's time. It's too monumental & will most likely result in failure.

So ... start off easy. Take it easy.

Maybe do just a tiny bit more & add to what you're doing about every week or so.

It's not so much about how much you're doing or how fast you're doing it. It's about the fact that you're doing something.

Slow & steady wins the race.




And for what it's worth , pretty much every gathering I've been to has been loaded w/folks who are friendly & understanding & accepting. Regardless of age , shape , size , etc.

I've seen people of all kinds of varying physiques 'be approached'. I understand where you're coming from ; but in my experience , I've found that this community is chock full of amazing people who don't spurn others based on their appearances. If that worry is the only thing keeping you from the rewarding experience that is attending a gathering , I'd strongly encourage you to try to move past that & give going to one a shot.

Best of luck to ya , man.