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Comment by palish | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand why fat people are so... well, upset at being fat.

What I mean is, I would personally be OK with myself if I were 285lbs.

Ok, this comment isn't really coming across very well. What I'm saying is, at worst, being fat would only shave ~20 years off my life expectancy. Since I don't want to live until I'm 70 anyway, I'd personally be happy with a ~50 year total life expectancy.

I don't care what other people think of me.

I don't need to run, ever.

If I'm hungry, I eat. Thus I enjoy life.

So I just don't understand why fat people have this desire to be skinny. Does it really just come down to... well, wanting people to think of you as attractive? (Caring what other people think of you.)

I'm asking an honest question here, so I hope people won't skewer me for it. But since it's an interesting question, I'll eat the inevitable karma loss.

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As a former obese fellow (BMI 34, now BMI 26) there are a few things:

- Self image issues. You tell yourself you don't care, but come the fuck on, of course you do.

- It's not comfortable, at all. When you are lounging on the couch you can literally hear yourself wheezing each breath in. Not in the "ohgodimgonnadie" wheezing, but it's far from comfortable.

- It holds you back from doing things you normally would want to do. I wanted to walk around the city and explore more, but it meant being severely out of breath constantly and sweating profusely. Neither are pleasant.

I'm still a tad heavier than I'd like to be, but I feel a million times better than I did at my heaviest.

Hey Palish,

I'm 46 and I'm in pretty good shape. Second baby on the way. There is more to life than computers and I really really really urge you to review this comment annually to see how you feel about it. 50 will hit you a lot faster than you think it will.

To a child that's 5 a year seems like an eternity, 50 year old people are old and 10 times older than you. In your teenage years you can see the end of the new year from newyears eve, 50 year old people are still old but they don't seem nearly as old as when you were 5. By the time you're 40 you can touch the end of the new year from newyears eve, and you find that it is hard to tell the healthy 50 year olds from the unhealthy 35 year olds. 50 is an age that is only 25% away from the time you've already spent.

When you become 46, 50 is literally just around the corner.

Approximately twice annually I have to wear black for a day to say farewell to someone that lived with your attitude. Believe me when I say that they would have happily re-wound to the time when they made the same bad decisions that you are making today in order to tack another 20 or 40 years on to their lives. I know an awful lot of people and those that live healthy seem by far happier than those that are barely able to carry their bodies around.

Typically they seem to have fewer psychological issues and they spend much less time in hospitals and with doctors or $ on medication.

If I die at 50 that would be a pretty big disappointment. There is so much that I still want to do and see, on top of that I hope to be around for a long time for my children.

Think this over please. Eating when hungry when it increases your weight just leads to being hungry earlier.

That's a runaway system and eventually something will have to give (in order of probability: diabetes, hear trouble, kidney trouble, liver trouble). The obese 30 somethings have a similar quality of life to the healthy 70+ people that I know, and sometimes their quality of life is worse. Much worse.

I've been reading your comments on HN for a long long time now and I've never found one where I disagreed so strongly with what you wrote, and I really hope that it is not just the gap between our ages speaking here but something where my perspective on life from my current vantage point can help you in avoiding what could very well be the mistake of your life.

1) You might be happy with 50 years, but most people want to live longer.

2) Quality of life is worse when you're overweight. Some things that are easy for most people are hard for you; some things that are hard for most people are impossible for you.

3) There's a social stigma.

4) I agree that enjoying a shorter life is better than not enjoying a longer life, but it's not completely black and white. If eating whatever you felt like took a year off your life and didn't affect you physically, I'm sure many people would consider that trade-off worthwhile. But if it's 10-20 years off your life, it starts sounding more like a fool's bargain. Also, if you really eat whatever you want, you probably won't be feeling great physically day to day (food comas, occasionally nauseous, less energetic, etc).

I mostly eat what I want, but I'm not fat. Everyone who knows me will tell you that I really enjoy eating, and I generally do give into it regularly!

However, that's in part because I trained myself to want what's good for me. I used to like sweet stuff, until I realised (back when I was a teenager) that there was a direct correlation between me walking into McDonald's and having a soft drink, and having some new spots on my face 6-12 hours later. At that point, I basically taught myself not to like overly sweet stuff. That teaching has lasted ever since - I rarely eat desserts and that sort of stuff - even though I no longer get spots.

You can train yourself to like healthy foods - salads, freshly cooked good meat, vegetables, etc. It's hard to get obese eating healthily. I've never heard of an obese person who eats healthy food all day long. Generally they eat pizza, crisps, chips, chinese take-aways, and all sorts of other nasty processed foods.

I can only guess but you definitely are not in your 30's yet. I held the same exact sentiments in my 20's. Then I got to my 30s and I realized I haven't done all that I wanted to do. I can slowly see time slipping away and 50 is not too far.

I am afraid 50 isn't enough, time wastes too fast.

PS: I once made this snarky comment at my office water cooler If someone guaranteed I will drop dead at 50 without any health issues, I would take it any day over living with pills and dieting...and then a man in his 50s with a pace maker walked by to fill water. I felt incredibly stupid to generalize life for every one else.

For me it's about enjoying life, I really like the outdoors, I really like being able to walk up the stairs at wreck beach with out panting.

To me being fat is fundamentally an issue of body chemistry and being fat to me says that chemistry is out of wack. Too much cortisol, insulin levels spiking out of control, your body putting trigylcerides in your blood because it can't put the sugar anywhere else.

My opinion on obesity in north america is that it's largely the product of metabolic syndrome rather than 'wanting to eat too much'. Don't get me wrong I love eating, especially meat, but ask yourself this, what if you could eat what you "wanted", eat great tasting food (foie gras, etc, etc), AND not be fat?

What if your being fat was a product of how much fructose you consumed and the amount of stress in your life?

Is setting your alarm clock worth putting on an extra 20 lbs?

Is having an asshole boss worth 15?

Is drinking soda worth an extra 10?

Is having a nagging wife worth 30?

If you're really enjoying the fructose and the stress keep on going, it's absolutely no skin off my back.

just want to say hi to a fellow HN reader from Vancouver.

Hey!

Come down to VHS, lots of hackers from Vancouver! http://vancouver.hackspace.ca/wp/

Tomorrow is costume night! (making, not wearing)

It's uncomfortable. You get chronic back pain. Your joints age faster. As you “grow”, clothing options shrink. People assume you’re lazy. Flying becomes uncomfortable.

Don't ever assume you'll never need to run. Running is a natural reaction to discovering the building you’re in is on fire, for example.

As you get seriously fit, your clothing options are somewhat constrained as well.

Ask any squatter about buying jeans ... at your own risk.

It's a shame that's being downvoted ... I heard multiple people (who do proper weight training) complain about the fact their jeans or trousers get worn fast because their hips are well-developed and sort of brush against each other when they walk.

I bought a suit recently - the coat (jacket) fit perfectly, but they had to take like 10 cm off the waist of the pants, so I had to come back in 4 hours ... tells you a bit about what they expect an average person to be.

I did not see that comment as "that's why you should not get fit".

I'm actually getting to the point where my jackets no longer fit. My training is for strength, not mass, but you're still going to get a certain amount of hypertrophy.

Unfortunately I seem to have developed this habit just as fashion trends are toward ever skinnier designs -- jeans, shirts, slacks, etc. I haven't quite gone to full bespoke clothing, but I'm considering it.

Casual wear -- shorts and t-shirt -- still works well.

The other tendency I've noticed is that my body temperature is running warmer. I'll see people bundled in coats and scarves while I'm in shorts/t.

And no, I'm definitely not arguing against getting fit.

the bit about body temperature is really interesting. I'm also much warmer on average when I regularly hit the gym. I thought it was just me.

Look up EPOC: excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

You're elevating your metabolism for up to 38 hours post-exercise (though the major effect is within the first 10 hours).

Adding muscle mass also increases metabolic activity, though it's a fairly small effect absent exercise and post-exercise responses, about 6-12 cal/lb/day, not the 50 cal that was being publicised for some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_post-exercise_oxygen_con... http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epocarticle.html

that makes a lot of sense and reminds me all of that stuff I've read about HIIT

Buy your next suit in Italy where they fully expect you to be thin but somewhat muscular.

Yeah, I ran into that in my youth (not from lifting, but cycling combined with allegedly overly broad shoulders for my then-size).

That's OK because the more ripped you are, the less clothes you need to wear =)

As much as I find myself disliking wearing clothes as I get older, I'm not particularly exhibitionistic either. So I prefer wearing at least putatively conventional clothing.

Still, a fair point.

I'm fifty, and there's so much more I want to do, so many things I want to see, and so many things I want to build.

I love life - and I live pretty much every day. There are loads of things I have to do, but every day I take some time to do some stuff I want, and it's great.

Do you really not care if you die at fifty? When you're 45, will you still say the same? What about when you're 49?

Would you be content to be told you have a year to live? Have you done everything you want to do?

Sorry Colin. I didn't at all mean to imply that 50 is any kind of... "end", or some such.

I deeply respect the judgement, wisdom, and mental strength that comes to a person only by experiencing four dozen years. The person who mentored me in my first professional programming capacity was almost 50, and I learned so very much from him.

That said, it is a unique personal decision: I have decided (when I was 21) that I personally only "plan" on living until 50. It seems the safest course. Maybe it's playing it safe. I have more thoughts, but I don't wish to accidentally offend anyone; they're merely my own.

"If I'm hungry, I eat. Thus I enjoy life."

Self-indulgence can be pretty short sighted. If you want something, do you always buy it? Do you ever save money? Do you ever clean your house? Have you ever learned something that was hard/not-enjoyable because you knew eventually you'd more satisfied?

Your body is convincing you that you need to eat because historically, humans were well-served over-eating when given the opportunity. Now, if you self-indulge, you'll get fat. You'll feel less healthy. You'll die earlier. Many people will look down on you. You'll leave behind a widow, children, and friends who wished you'd lived longer. You'll annoy people on planes. If you're ever single, you'll likely stay that way for longer periods of time. You'll have a harder time getting jobs. You'll eventually pay more in health insurance.

And, sure-- vanity, too. It's funny that someone who's racked up ~6000 karma on a site like HN is actually positioning himself as somehow above vanity.

I also eat when I'm hungry, which happens to be at meal time, I eat as much as I want, and get no fat. It's not that I'm lucky, I got fat when I was eating shit in Algeria, but I leave in China now, eat white rice twice a day, no dessert, no bread, no potatoes, some meat including fat, many soups, a lot of different spices, no industrialy prepared food. It is not by choice, it is just what we eat in China.

I don't really understand why fat people are so... well, upset at being fat.

I'm not sure I can help you any with this question. I used to be 245 and I'm female. If the OP is male/taller than me, that may be comparable. Like the OP, I worked on getting my life back and that had the unintended consequence of also leading to significant weight loss. (I had zero goal to "lose weight" and was fine with how I looked.) I can't tell you how much weight I have lost because I haven't weighed myself in over 5 years.

I kind of think that excess weight is not The Problem per se but perhaps a proxy? I mean, I got myself healthier and that's why I lost weight. I think a lot of very heavy people don't know how to live right and that's a) the real reason they are miserable and b) also, coincidentally, the cause of their excess weight. Maybe they don't know how to clearly distinguish the two things and perhaps think "all would be right with the world if only I could lose the weight" when it might be more accurate to say it runs the other direction (ie if all were right in their world, they would probably also lose the weight).

I actually have mixed feelings about losing the weight. I like my body more because it no longer tortures me (I stopped having chronic pain about 2.5 weeks ago) but I'm not entirely comfortable with total strangers taking so much notice of me these days.

Cut your hair short and dye it in a dark shade of red. Thats what most attractive women do when they need a break from male attention. Works 99.9% of the time. The remainder has found the perfect look.

The majority of this attention is from women who would like to be like me, not men who would like to get with me. Total strangers stop me in the grocery store and ask how I lost so much weight and things like that. I'm not comfortable divulging my diagnosis under such circumstances and there typically isn't time to get into my story, which is long and convoluted.

Also, for the last four years, most of the time my hair is so short that I joke I look like a new recruit/jarhead. The result has been at least one woman has cut her hair shorter, inspired by me. At least one other woman has talked about considering cutting her hair shorter because she likes my hair so much. Granted, I am a tad overdue for a haircut at the moment, so my curls are showing. This has very likely made my problems worse in recent weeks (in terms of turning heads/ garnering attention). Nor will I be dying it red as hair dye causes me to break out in hives. Frankly, I'm not sure it would help.

Thanks.

Set up a system whereby you re-read this post on your 45th birthday.

See if your thinking's changed about it by then.

If you really didn't care about being fat you wouldn't even post. The rest is rationalisation, I mean why hang on 'til 50? Go for it, emulate Hendrix, or Joplin, live fast, die at 27.

Health issues typically kick in just after 30 ..

I've never understood this attitude toward obesity. If you had any other 100% curable, 100% terminal condition, you'd make it a priority to do something about it.

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