Gabe Rocks!

Contents

• Introduction
• Eating Troubles
• Mobility
• Sleep
• Emotional Difficulties
• Memes

It Ain’t Easy Being Big

As I’m starting to make progress I hope to document the troubles I’ve had to bear in getting this large. This post is to share how difficult it is to be severely overweight. My motivation is to help others understand what those my size are unlikely to share widely. This is because, in my opinion, the heaviest thing many heavy people carry is shame. Nobody wants to be this big, nobody enjoys it. One of the hardest things to learn getting this big is that one is not their weight. It’s hard to reconcile the need to choose and enjoy life, despite being unhappy with the state of their own body.

One of the hardest things about getting not just heavy, but huge is the fact that that the inevitable mental anguish makes it so much harder to turn things around. As somebody becomes accustomed to being numb to the regret, shame, and despair they’re so very far from having the mindset to choose life. This is why I think many misguided attempts to “de-shame” obesity are coming from the right place. Compassion absolutely has to be at the center of helping people overcome it, but not at the cost of factual information.

So yes, obesity is not good. It’s actually horrible for you and those around you. It may, or may not be entirely, or even mostly your fault. No matter where the blame may lie, the only way to resolve it is taking responsibility. Taking responsibility for it can be difficult in different ways. One may struggle with denial, refusing to recognize the path they’re on. This is made worse by relatively low levels of obesity being vaguely normalized in particular circumstances. But the worst thing getting in the way of taking responsibility is despair and hopelessness that leads one to believe it is too hard or outright impossible for them to change their situation. Even worse, many may lack support and guidance necessary to begin and endure the process.

My hope is to be one of many examples that it is possible to reverse even the most dire circumstances. I wholeheartedly believe that with enough support, patience, and hope for the future, anybody can return to a healthy body weight and keep it off. The road is long, and sadly doesn’t end once one has merely shed the weight. The journey is about gradually building (or re-building) a healthy lifestyle to maximize quality of life. I am confident that I’ve begun to make lasting changes in my life, and that I’ll be able to show a way somebody can recover from even class V obesity.

As somebody who has been all of these obesity classes at some point in my life or another, I feel the need to emphasize that things get so much harder every class you go up. I’m currently working to leave class V, but vividly remember the gradual worsening of so many different things in an easy to underestimate way. It’s worth emphasizing, the larger one becomes, the more dire health risks present themselves. Personally, I think it’s important for people to recognize the different classes to recognize the additional challenges imposed by greater sizes. Of course, this is only a rough outline based on my own experiences. There are a wide variety of reasons why one person may encounter different troubles earlier or later. Fat distribution alone has a significant impact on various quality-of-life troubles.

I believe that severe obesity is a very complex problem to solve. While the ultimate solution: eat right and become more active, is the answer, in practice there are a wide array of obstacles to taking corrective action. Some of these are physical, some emotional, and others a complicated mix of all kinds of things. I think it’s important to recognize severe obesity as not merely a single problem (excess weight) but a variety of interconnected problems that each are non-trivial to overcome.

Eating Troubles

I’ve written an entire post on this, but in this part I want to specifically tackle the numbers problem. It’s often hard to make any progress at all without the dreaded counting of calories. When one has become accustomed to having massive amounts of food, especially calorie-dense foods, it is quite difficult to dial it back. One of the biggest reasons is expectations. In my opinion, raising obesity rates are a consequences of rapid shifting baseline both individually and collectively.

The idea is, that your expectations (and other’s expectations) aren’t actually static. Over time, they can shift to accept a (much worse) “new normal”. This erodes social and emotional barriers to things that would otherwise be unthinkable or too obscene to be considered. In short, both in terms of one’s own comfort, but also in terms of social acceptance, the slope is quite slippery. As one personally gets accustomed to eating worse and worse, even greater excesses become much less strange, especially over longer periods of time.

Metabolism Mismatch

This is never so clear than when it comes to how chronic over-eating impacts metabolism. Intuitively, when one is supplying their body with a huge surplus of resources, the body becomes less efficient at processing them. Another way to think about this is that your body can only digest so much in a given day. I believe this is why obese people constantly crave more and more calories. I remember getting to the point where I felt I needed to have at least 4-6 thousand calories a day, if not in a single sitting, to “function”. When one is “filling” themselves with sugars which quickly turn to body fat, they are also potentially depriving themselves of other important macro & micro nutrients. I’m under the impression this mismatch can create unending hunger that could be addressed with getting the correct nutrients.

In some ways this is great news! The silver lining is that numerically losing weight is easier than gaining it. This is incredibly counter-intuitive to those who haven’t been able to change their diet yet, because they don’t realize how close they are to turning things around. The biggest challenge of this however, is that the road itself is long, so it’s very easy to under-appreciate small but important steps to progress. What’s very difficult to recognize is that while we live day-by-day, how one lives over weeks, months, and years is so much more important than a single day. Finding ways to structurally improve one’s eating situation in the long run can have very effective results.

Mobility

As more weight begins to weigh you down, the harder various tasks become. Even simple inconveniences and slight pains can over time radically reduce how active a person is. In my own life, I’ve gone from being highly active, to being all but bed-ridden. The larger one becomes, the more dangerous it can be to take on various activities, as risks of injury grow significantly. If one is not at least maintaining a certain level of activity as they gain weight, they may even lack the strength to move the body that confines them. On top of all this, the larger size of areas of the body can interfere with all kinds of movements.

You’re not going to think to run around and take on all kinds of activities when simple tasks like going up stairs, walking, or carrying things feel almost entirely out of reach. It is horrifying to think about how things that once only seemed out of reach eventually fade into being actually out of reach.

Why can’t I stop eating? - Helplessness

In my personal experience, mobility is something very easy to be in denial about. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that one is every bit capable as they were within memory. This predicament creates a very dangerous false sense of security. Being objective about your activity level is vital to maintain and improve your longevity.

Mobility isn’t just about the ability to get up from seating, or out of bed. As one becomes significantly large, various real-world experiences also move out of reach. Traveling becomes difficult, more expensive, and sometimes logistically impossible. Hygiene and cleanliness become more and more of an uphill battle. This means that one who is severely overweight can often miss out on things that could otherwise benefit them in other areas of life. This alone is enough to fuel serious emotional distress and regret.

Getting moving

The exercise paradox is a hot topic of discussion. The idea is that as one becomes more active, their body gradually adjusts to that level of activity overtime, including burning fewer calories. This can be pessimistically interpreted to mean that exercise has no place in a weight loss journey. I couldn’t disagree more! There are many inherent benefits to exercise that make weight loss easier. In addition to this, when one is entirely sedentary, they have a long road to a high level of activity. There is a huge amount of room to keep gradually improving until the body catches up to all of it.

If nothing else, the stress reduction benefits are immense. When one is entirely sedentary trapped with their own emotions, it’s hard to feel useful at all, much less productive. Being as active as one can be is amazing for how you feel day-to-day. I’ve already felt amazing benefits from gradually ramping up my exercise over the last year. I never imagined I would be able to be active 5 days a week, but here I am. I’ve personally experienced that even minor increases in mobility greatly benefit my ability to do other weight loss related tasks, like cooking for myself.

Starting to get moving is hard. Since really escalating my progress by getting personal training, I’ve experienced an incredible amount of pain on a very frequent basis. But, even beforehand every attempt to become more mobile was rewarded with at least a non-trivial amount of pain. I remember when walking around the block felt like more than I could handle.

The problems with becoming mobile are twofold: 1) You have to be strong enough to move yourself. 2) The heavier you are, the more painful even simple movements will be. It’s effectively a judgement call to say what ratio of pain to gain is worth continuing with. However, it is incredibly important to avoid injuries. Falls, or even overdoing it can cause lasting pain that will interfere with your progress. Like many other things in life, becoming more active is a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve benefited greatly from focusing on being more stronger and more mobile. It’s an incredibly painful journey, but I experience significant progress on a weekly basis.

Don’t be afraid to modify!

Bodyweight exercises are incredible ways to get stronger quickly when starting out. A significantly heavy person may not be capable of performing particular exercises. A tip I stumbled on recently is that you can search for whatever exercise with the word “progression” and you’ll find ways to gradually work up to a particular exercise. It’s important not to feel guilty making modifications, as an obese person one is behind the starting line! Constant effort and gradual step-by-step modifications can make improvements way faster than one would think possible.

Poor Sleep

Not getting enough sleep is one of the worst “gainz goblins” that interferes with progress. Insufficient quality and quantity of sleep can negatively impact weight loss and muscle gain in a variety of ways. This is a significant challenge because obesity overlaps with many difficulties that negatively impact sleep. At my current size, it’s very difficult to find a comfortable resting position. I used to work nights, but I’ve always struggled with consistently sleeping at night.

I don’t have any particularly good advice for improving sleep quality. I struggle to get to sleep when I’m not merely too tired or too sore to stay awake. There was a brief time this Summer when I got a bit more sunshine that sleep came easier, but other than that quality sleep has been fleeting. Sleep is definitely something I really hope to improve in time, but all I can say is that it’s something I struggle with, and I’m sure many others in the same situation do as well.

One of the huge challenges of poor sleep habits is that it makes interacting with society harder. Simple things like being awake early enough for most jobs can be a significant challenge. There’s a huge cut when one needs to work their own hours. Even worse is that it’s often hard to be meaningfully productive later at night. While you can do all kinds of things these days from a computer or phone, generally people aren’t cooking for themselves and running errands late into the night.

Emotional Difficulties

In my opinion, the hardest parts of living with severe obesity are the emotional challenges. I’ve gotten a lot out of reading Dr Peter Breggin’s book Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions I’ve written before about how emotional difficulties often turn into over-eating.

Shame & Self-loathing

Unless one is in a terrifyingly toxic echo-chamber, generally obesity is looked down on. At minimum, the inconveniences themselves induce a non-trivial amount of shame & self-loathing. Regardless of the source, these emotions congeal into a thick layer of projection that can make it harder to connect with others, perpetuating a downward spiral. Eventually, chronic shame boils into self-loathing.

“Do not speak badly of yourself, for the warrior that is inside you hears your words and is lessened by them. You are strong and you are brave. There is a nobility of spirit within you.”

David Gemmell

Self-loathing is a very challenging emotion. Like every feeling, it’s your heart & soul trying to communicate something real to your conscious mind. When one is constantly avoiding these feelings with food and other strategies, it can be impossible to recognize what the feelings are trying to communicate. Self-loathing is a very strong signal that I would sum up as “Things need to change”.

I can personaly attest that once one even begins to reorganize their life for the better, the relief is phenomenal. This is an immensely challenging thing to do when one has numbed themselves to their own self-directed hatred and pain. Confronting this directly was the only way I began to make progress again. It’s very hard to begin to make long-term efforts when one is entirely focused on deafening themselves from a torrent of emotional anguish.

In Dr Breggin’s book, he recommends committing to becoming a source of love in your and other people’s lives. I have a shorthand for that, choose life. The way out of your darkest moments is to choose to live for what God put you on earth to accomplish. That means embracing life as it is, ups and downs and all. To make it more concrete: choosing life to me means doing everything I can to rise above the challenges set before me to be a compassionate source of inspiration for others. Which is a non-trivial part of the reason I share my personal collection of memes that have helped lift me up.

Hopelessness

Inspiration is essential. One of the greatest dangers when one is obese is hopelessness. The road to positive change is long and difficult, and it can be very easy to be tormented into giving up. The worst part about hopelessness is that it leads to a significant amount of self-sabotage. The worst form of self-sabotage is being unwilling to even begin to change. When one knows they could be doing better, but is dissuaded by the fear of failure, they can further spiral into despair and more troubles.

Hope, faith, and love are the way out. One needs to have hope that meaningful improvement is possible, and it always is. Faith is what will sustain you through challenges and setbacks. At the very least, having faith in the process can keep you from going mad. Love is what will fill you with purpose to reach higher and higher. It can be love for anything, your friends & family, the natural world around you, a skill, or your wider community. Allow that love to fill you with dreams of what you can accomplish once you’ve reordered your life and given yourself time to mend your physical and emotional wounds.

🚿 Hygiene 💩

Now for the uncomfortable part. This was saved for last, and omitted from the contents list for a reason. Keeping clean becomes harder and harder as one becomes larger and less able to reach particular places. In addition to this, poor diets will radically change the consistency and frequency of defecation. And intuitively, the more one eats the more the more volume of feces that must be dealt with on a regular basis. Beyond a mere inconvenience, this is a huge source of shame and self-loathing as it gets worse. Messes and accidents become more common, even using restrooms can become a logistical nightmare.

Just like exercise, it’s important to remember that modifications can be made to make cleaning easier. Buying particular tools can help in the shower, and carefully planning when you eat can buy you time for particular errands and outings. It’s unpleasant, but staying clean is vital for a variety of reasons beyond peace of mind. There are some absolutely painful and gruesome results if one neglects to, or is unable to stay clean. I am glad that I had managed to avoid the worst scenarios, but it’s been it’s own challenge.

More Memes!

Feel free to browse the full collection!

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