In the past, my self-esteem increased the bigger I got. Eat every 3-4 hours, lift weights, work on muscle.....caused weight gain. I felt better than my 'scrawny' sisters....much stronger and more powerful.

Of course now, I overshot the mark and gained too much. Small women still seem too frail for me and it's definitely not something I aspire to. Working in a male-dominated industry, maybe I felt like I was on more of a level playing field if I was bigger....more eye to eye....and definitely more 'equal'. But, now I feel way too heavy and rather dumpy. ...sigh...

Just writing this is helping me see the mental constructs that are holding me back from losing the weight and getting fit. Need to find my sweet spot.

Sorry that I'm late to the party, but reading this thread reminded me of a story that you might find entertaining. I believe it actually was Chris Shugart who at one time posted a link to some blog entry at a website for fat acceptance called KateHarding.com which claimed that diets and exercise "don't work" and therefore the entire fitness industry is a scam. Talk about fucking denial.

I was so infuriated after reading it and the comments that followed that I produced the following post, which naturally was filtered out, lest these horribly self-denying women be faced with reality for even a second. The following is what I wrote (knowing full well it would never see the light of day, but at least one person would be forced to read it):

"I see, so let me get this straight: grossly overeating and exceeding the number of calories you burn in a day causes you to gain fat, but undereating and exercising to burn off more calories than you take in does not lead to fat loss. Is that what you fat sows are getting at? I guess thermodynamics is broken and the world doesn't work.

Here's what's actually broken: the part of your brain that allows you to experience the guilt that you SHOULD feel for being so weak and pathetic as to be unable to stop shoveling ice cream into your bloated pieholes and unable to spend five hours per WEEK in the gym improving yourselves. That's 3% of your life, 4.5% of your waking life that you refuse to sacrifice, all while spending ten times that blogging on some website about how men should accept your grotesque obesity despite all evolutionary instincts to the contrary.

Keep lying to yourselves, however, that your morbid obesity is 'natural.' You live in a world where plopping your fat ass from the computer chair to the car to the drive-thru window to the couch to watch TV is actually a lifestyle that allows you to continue to exist. In the real world in which we evolved, you'd have been killed and devoured by a predator years before your nauseating fatbodies would have been able to reach the mind-boggling proportions that they have reached. But by all means, continue to blame society for not accepting your weakness and excuse-making. The fatter and more stomach-turning people like you look, the better people who actually give enough of a shit about themselves to get into shape will look in comparison."

To MarvelGirl, you REALLY do need to post more often (no sarcasm). I get to work with the Elite Distance runners up here in Mammoth Lakes, ca and Deena Castor just gave birth to a baby girl and Deena makes supermodels look obese, seriously ! So keep the posts coming..please.

to ChrisPowers: could not agree with you more brother. I catch shit because even though I am NOT an elite athlete I do train as such, staying on top of my rest/recovery, training, food intake and breathing/thought processes. The stupid SHIT that people try to convince themselves about is mind boggling. Just remember you two to "never underestimate the power of human stupidity". LiftStrong and keep killing it...

this thread made me lol. I'm glad there are people like me out there willing to say what needs to be said even though you know people are not going to like it.

they see it as a self esteem thing. i see it as a public health problem. If they really had high self esteem they would do something about it. Work hard. In fact the hard work and accomplishment should only reaise their self esteem higher. I think hiding behind the "big is beautiful" arguement is taking the easy way out.

There are so many psychological/philosophiocal issues with this topic its hard to know where to begin!

I completely agree with the fact that this is health concern over and above anything else; The abuse of your body in any form is negative on so many levels to your physical as well as mental health.

In regards to the self esteem issue and people who are severly overweight and have good self esteem...This is subjective. Whether someone claims and makes it clear that they are happy with their body image and whether they truly are is debatable. We all use defense mechanisms to protect our self esteem and our self identity, such as denial, repression of unwanted thoughts, displacing your feelings onto someone/thing else. So perhaps these people are using defense mechanisms to protect themselves from the unconscious awareness that they are truly dont have high self esteem, because confronting the truth is "detrimental".
But then there are some that could truly have high self esteem... This is developed from an endless number of experiences throughout life which have helped to shape your own concept/theory of what it means to have good self esteem. So to be proud of who you are=high self esteem, and if there hasen't been people or situations/exexperiences throughput your life that have made you believe otherwise, then you will stick with it.

The topic of happiness has come up a lot in this thread, and that too can be pulled into all different directions. What each person feels that contributes to their happiness is very individualistic and also subject to experiences in our life. For the women who are with men that have a fetishism for extremely overweight/obese women... Perhaps for them a large contributer to their happiness is to be with someone that "loves them for who they are". So because they are already large and their partner "loves/appreciates" them for "who they are" then this just feeds into their definition of what it takes to make them happy.
Whereas with a lot of us here, we just can't imagine being happy being so overweight and unhealthy. To be healthy, to be fit, to be strong, to be awesome, is what constitutes our definition of happiness, so in cases like this it makes it for us almost impossible to see how women could possible live like this.

Looking at this in the light of what people define as improving their self esteem and what makes them happy is what creates these habits, these lifestyles. Its their experiences which have lead them to be where they are. Even if it is terribly not right, this can perhaps help to explain why people engage in this destructive behaviour.

The confrontation that they are wrong in their pattern of thought is so difficult for people to deal with, because it basically makes them feel as if they are unauthentic, completely destroys their self perception of who they truly are, as opposed to who they "think" they are, it is much less threatning to continue living they way they do.

These people need to be faced with the truth, to be exposed to that which scares them the most, to deal with their fears before they can begin to truly undo these badly formed habits.