A question was posed at the running bulliten board I am completly addicted to. We tend to get off track very quickly and usually threads derail into silly rubbish by page 4 or 5. The question in this thread (which began asking about first time marathoner stats) was this:

can you be both overweight and happy?  

Well most of the folks on this board have been active their entire lives, and pretty much all are very lean (by my standards) and athletic.  So I chimed in. I am still classified as overwieght- a BMI of above 25 is overweight, this morning I was 25.6, that is down from 33.9, which is officially obese. Want to check your BMI? Click me

As the fattest person on the board I decided I had a place to answer. Here is what I said:

Absolutly- Im pretty happy these days, the happiest Ive been in years. I am overweight right now, formerly obese.
I went on to say, Perhapse I can lend a little insight on why people who are overweight get there and how they stay that way. Alot of it for me wasnt a consious decision at all. Im an emotional eater, when Im stressed I eat, when Im upset I eat, when Im angry I eat, when Im depressed I eat. I lost a baby in 2002 and that began my downward spiral of depression for me that lasted about 3 years. It takes a lot to do more than just exsist when you are depressed, just getting through the day seems monumental. After my second pregnancy (that would be my oldest son ‘A’) I developed post partum depression. 5 months later, oops, here I am pregnant (this would be my second son ‘C’) with a 5 month old and seriously depressed. Did I care about my weight at that point? I absolutly did, I knew I looked and felt like crap, but doing anything about it was just completly beyond my capabilities at that point, just making it through the day was all I could think about, there were many many days that I didnt get out of my pajamas. Here comes baby #2 and the post partum depression is still raging. For a year I gained more weight topping out at about 210lbs and a BMI of 33.9-clinically obese. Finally I couldnt deal with it anymore. It was either die or stop treading water and swim to shore. Thankfully all the stars lined up right for me one day and Im still here, 52 pounds lighter, happier than Ive ever been and a much better mom than I used to be. It was a series of very tiny events that planted a seed of hope in my mind. Could I really get through this?I thought maybe, there was that little ray of hope. That is when I began my journey of losing wieght, finding myself and becoming a happy healthy woman, wife and mom.

 So before we go judging people on how lazy they are {this has come up a few times, about how overweight people are just lazy}, maybe stop and think there may be some serious things going on in their lives that we/you as thin/active people may never have delt with. Everyone deals with their problems differently, most people probably deal withthem better than I did.

Posted by Shelley in Whatever on March 30th, 2007 |