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I'm around 310 lbs (a smidge over 22 stone for UK people). Like yourself, I always thought when I was younger 'how do people let themselves get that way?'. It

I'm around 310 lbs (a smidge over 22 stone for UK people). Like yourself, I always thought when I was younger 'how do people let themselves get that way?'. It just kind of happened for me. I know I eat unhealthy food; I know I drink too much; I know I don't do enough (as in, any) exercise... I look at my face in the mirror and think 'that's not too bad!' but then catch my side profile at some point and think 'eek!'. It's all a bit miserable, really. :-( You should be so proud of yourself for your weight loss!!! I really hope things continue on the right path for you.

dkdbejwi383 4y ago
As a person from the UK in their mid-30s I have no idea what a stone or a lb is. I did the conversion and 310 lbs is approx. 140 kg.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  Weird, I'm also mid-30s in the UK and stone is my native person weight. As well as pounds and ounces for babies. That said, I have a reasonable intuition for the conversion factors. Enough that I wouldn't have to run to Google to understand the jist of the story.
  - nikanj 4y ago
    And the memes still claim that the UK is metric.
    - weberer 4y ago
      So is the USA on paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act
- smcl 4y ago
  Ah that is a bit unusual. We're roughly the same age, and I only switched to kg after going abroad - otherwise bodyweight was always stone for me.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I'm 39 and never used imperial weights despite living in the UK from birth until relocating in 2018. I don't even know how many pounds to the stone today without looking it up, and constantly get surprised by all the other Brits who don't think in metric by default (but that happens enough that I do know to multiply kg by 2.2 to get lbs).
    - smcl 4y ago
      Yeah Pounds to Stone is a pain in that it's fourteen while Ounces to Pounds is sixteen. I think the only thing I used imperial for is bodyweight and that's just due to either parents or doctors using it. Other than that we used to ask for a "quarter" of boiled sweets at the shop, but I never internalized what the exact weight was (I guess a quarter of a pound) it's just what my dad taught me to ask for when I was ~4 and I kept it up.
nickybearblog 4y ago
_Really_ sneaks up on you, doesn't it? Especially the side profile thing. I have a couple of shirts that make me look fine from the font, but I turn to the side and just see the gut. Are you looking at losing weight at the minute?
- saw-lau 4y ago
  It's something that I know I need to do, but - and I know this is pathetic - always gets put off ('I'll start next week; after Christmas; after my birthday...').
dxuh 4y ago
If you want to be accommodating to people using different units of measurement, I would consider adding kilograms rather than stones.
- k__ 4y ago
  Kg is around 1/2 of the pound value.
  - andrelaszlo 4y ago
    I weigh around 1.64 Ezra Pounds...
  - smcl 4y ago
    Yeah it's ~2.2 lbs to the kg, so when I have to convert I divide kg by two and then take off an amount that feels about right (or in the other direction, double it and then add a similarly gut-feel amount)
    - dustincoates 4y ago
      There's an even easier way of going from kg to lbs. than gut feel: double the kg and then add a tenth of that value. Voilà.
      - smcl 4y ago
        Yeah it's that one-tenth that I just sorta fudge, if you're converting 84kg to pounds then multiplying by 2 lands you with 168, at which point you can either: 1. add exactly 16.8 to the value in your head 2. open the calc app (at which point you might as well put "84 kg in lbs" to google) 3. don't worry about the exact result, give a rough approximation: "it's about 180-something" #3 will suffice, people are usually looking for a rough ballpark figure. If it was important then I'd obviously convert it carefully, but I'm talking about when I've done a conversion when talking with a US friend in the pub or something where I'd probably mess up whether you add a tenth of the original value or the doubled value anyway :)
- 4y ago
turing_complete 4y ago
You can do it too!
0dayz 4y ago
I hope you're able to take the right path to, it's a hurdle but possible.
smcl 4y ago
I think "the right path" here is finding happiness regardless of your weight. Whether that involves losing weight, or eating/exercising a bit differently or simply being happy and comfortable with the build you currently have. People can spend their lives spiralling into depression and ill-health by constantly following diets or setting goals that even if they achieve doesn't always make them feel satisfied. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do anything in particular - but I hope you don't feel pressured or guilted into something by what others say or what you think they feel. The fact that you can look in the mirror and think "that's not too bad" means you're already happier than a lot of people - there are some shredded people with physiques you or I may envy, but who are either miserable about their lifestyle or who still just don't like how they look. I don't know how this comment comes across - but my intent was to give a little support that wasn't just "you can lose weight too!" because that is not the be-all-and-end-all :)
- thfuran 4y ago
  >because that is not the be-all-and-end-all :) Not quite, but it is important. Being ~100 lb overweight is a serious medical condition. It's bad for your knees, it's bad for your heart, and it puts you at much higher risk of tons of other problems.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    Okay, but also being miserable about it isn’t going to help the fat guy. In fact being miserable makes it statistically more likely he stays fat or gets fatter.
  - smcl 4y ago
    This is where it starts to become complicated. I am not the best person to properly enumerate these complications so if this comment made you curious, check the podcast Maintenance Phase and their episode "Is Being Fat Bad For You?"[0]. However I can briefly try to summarise some of them for your curiosity: - it is received wisdom that if you are fatter you are "unhealthier" and this is reflected in a lot of data whenever this is studied - however this tends to not get controlled for some important factors (e.g. lower income people are generally more unhealthy overally than those on higher incomes) for a whole variety of reasons that aren't necessarily related to weight or whether you're categorised as overweight - a very undeappreciated problem is that if you're "overweight"[1] you tend to be quite under-served by doctors currently. So it's common for an "overweight" person to go to the doctor with a problem - heart pains, gastro-intestinal problems, whatever - and to be told "lose some weight, you're overweight". While someone thinner would get some more attention even though they may both have a weight-agnostic root cause . This is not very well studied or measured, but this type of treatment is widely reported problem whenever you survey "overweight" people - people with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are often excluded from these studies with the intent to get untainted data. These eating disorders are usually only diagnosed for people below a certain BMI, when in fact they are still definitely present among higher-BMI individuals and have a similarly detrimental effect on their health. Sustained dieting can have pretty serious effects on your body, and if you go to a doctor because, say, you're a woman on a diet who has stopped menstruating ... well, see the previous bullet point, you're just just get told "lose some weight" There a few other additional issues, but I hope this is enough to make you stop and think that while yeah there's possibly increased health risks it's potentially less than we might realise and is a pretty complex subject that deserves careful study and to be treated with more nuance than it usually is. [0] - the answer is "kinda yes, but not as much as you think and not in every way and it's more complicated": https://www.stitcher.com/show/maintenance-phase/episode/is-being-fat-bad-for-you-88332059 https://www.stitcher.com/show/maintenance-phase/episode/is-b... [1] - Aubrey Gordon, a host of the podcast I mentioned, has suggested she doesn't like "overweight" etc euphemisms, but I chickened out of using just "fat" like she does ... but I still think "overweight" possibly incorrectly suggests there is a correct weight you should be - so I surrounded it in coward-quotes :) I do know for a fact that "obese" (and morbidly obese) are heavily frowned-upon and tbh not particularly helpful categorisations, I saw them floating around elsewhere in this thread.
macintux 4y ago
I hadn’t exercised for over 20 years, but then I bought an Apple Watch. I ignored the rings for the first few months, but finally started taking them seriously. The gamification of fitness is very much a thing. I still hate exercise, I still have no upper body strength, I’m still overweight, but my overall fitness level has gone up significantly and I’ve lost some weight. Baby steps.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  Same here with the Apple Watch. After a couple of months of thinking that the rings were ridiculous, I found myself taking intentional steps to close them. Last night, even though I should have been sleeping, I went for a brisk walk just before midnight… after I realized that I was just shy of closing a ring. I like it.
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
Yes, I think a key for stopping that is making sure you weight yourself once a week at least. It's much easier to catch the weight creeping up and manage it when it's 5 pounds and not 15.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Right. Catch yes, do something actually working about it, not really.
hhjinks 4y ago
I find it funny that you did a conversion for stone, but not one for kilograms.
- saw-lau 4y ago
  I know! I clearly wasn't thinking straight...

dkdbejwi383 4y ago

As a person from the UK in their mid-30s I have no idea what a stone or a lb is. I did the conversion and 310 lbs is approx. 140 kg.

VBprogrammer 4y ago
Weird, I'm also mid-30s in the UK and stone is my native person weight. As well as pounds and ounces for babies. That said, I have a reasonable intuition for the conversion factors. Enough that I wouldn't have to run to Google to understand the jist of the story.
- nikanj 4y ago
  And the memes still claim that the UK is metric.
  - weberer 4y ago
    So is the USA on paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act
smcl 4y ago
Ah that is a bit unusual. We're roughly the same age, and I only switched to kg after going abroad - otherwise bodyweight was always stone for me.
- ben_w 4y ago
  I'm 39 and never used imperial weights despite living in the UK from birth until relocating in 2018. I don't even know how many pounds to the stone today without looking it up, and constantly get surprised by all the other Brits who don't think in metric by default (but that happens enough that I do know to multiply kg by 2.2 to get lbs).
  - smcl 4y ago
    Yeah Pounds to Stone is a pain in that it's fourteen while Ounces to Pounds is sixteen. I think the only thing I used imperial for is bodyweight and that's just due to either parents or doctors using it. Other than that we used to ask for a "quarter" of boiled sweets at the shop, but I never internalized what the exact weight was (I guess a quarter of a pound) it's just what my dad taught me to ask for when I was ~4 and I kept it up.

nickybearblog 4y ago

_Really_ sneaks up on you, doesn't it? Especially the side profile thing. I have a couple of shirts that make me look fine from the font, but I turn to the side and just see the gut. Are you looking at losing weight at the minute?

saw-lau 4y ago
It's something that I know I need to do, but - and I know this is pathetic - always gets put off ('I'll start next week; after Christmas; after my birthday...').

dxuh 4y ago

If you want to be accommodating to people using different units of measurement, I would consider adding kilograms rather than stones.

k__ 4y ago
Kg is around 1/2 of the pound value.
- andrelaszlo 4y ago
  I weigh around 1.64 Ezra Pounds...
- smcl 4y ago
  Yeah it's ~2.2 lbs to the kg, so when I have to convert I divide kg by two and then take off an amount that feels about right (or in the other direction, double it and then add a similarly gut-feel amount)
  - dustincoates 4y ago
    There's an even easier way of going from kg to lbs. than gut feel: double the kg and then add a tenth of that value. Voilà.
    - smcl 4y ago
      Yeah it's that one-tenth that I just sorta fudge, if you're converting 84kg to pounds then multiplying by 2 lands you with 168, at which point you can either: 1. add exactly 16.8 to the value in your head 2. open the calc app (at which point you might as well put "84 kg in lbs" to google) 3. don't worry about the exact result, give a rough approximation: "it's about 180-something" #3 will suffice, people are usually looking for a rough ballpark figure. If it was important then I'd obviously convert it carefully, but I'm talking about when I've done a conversion when talking with a US friend in the pub or something where I'd probably mess up whether you add a tenth of the original value or the doubled value anyway :)
4y ago

turing_complete 4y ago

You can do it too!

0dayz 4y ago

I hope you're able to take the right path to, it's a hurdle but possible.

smcl 4y ago

I think "the right path" here is finding happiness regardless of your weight. Whether that involves losing weight, or eating/exercising a bit differently or simply being happy and comfortable with the build you currently have. People can spend their lives spiralling into depression and ill-health by constantly following diets or setting goals that even if they achieve doesn't always make them feel satisfied. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do anything in particular - but I hope you don't feel pressured or guilted into something by what others say or what you think they feel. The fact that you can look in the mirror and think "that's not too bad" means you're already happier than a lot of people - there are some shredded people with physiques you or I may envy, but who are either miserable about their lifestyle or who still just don't like how they look. I don't know how this comment comes across - but my intent was to give a little support that wasn't just "you can lose weight too!" because that is not the be-all-and-end-all :)

thfuran 4y ago
>because that is not the be-all-and-end-all :) Not quite, but it is important. Being ~100 lb overweight is a serious medical condition. It's bad for your knees, it's bad for your heart, and it puts you at much higher risk of tons of other problems.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  Okay, but also being miserable about it isn’t going to help the fat guy. In fact being miserable makes it statistically more likely he stays fat or gets fatter.
- smcl 4y ago
  This is where it starts to become complicated. I am not the best person to properly enumerate these complications so if this comment made you curious, check the podcast Maintenance Phase and their episode "Is Being Fat Bad For You?"[0]. However I can briefly try to summarise some of them for your curiosity: - it is received wisdom that if you are fatter you are "unhealthier" and this is reflected in a lot of data whenever this is studied - however this tends to not get controlled for some important factors (e.g. lower income people are generally more unhealthy overally than those on higher incomes) for a whole variety of reasons that aren't necessarily related to weight or whether you're categorised as overweight - a very undeappreciated problem is that if you're "overweight"[1] you tend to be quite under-served by doctors currently. So it's common for an "overweight" person to go to the doctor with a problem - heart pains, gastro-intestinal problems, whatever - and to be told "lose some weight, you're overweight". While someone thinner would get some more attention even though they may both have a weight-agnostic root cause . This is not very well studied or measured, but this type of treatment is widely reported problem whenever you survey "overweight" people - people with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are often excluded from these studies with the intent to get untainted data. These eating disorders are usually only diagnosed for people below a certain BMI, when in fact they are still definitely present among higher-BMI individuals and have a similarly detrimental effect on their health. Sustained dieting can have pretty serious effects on your body, and if you go to a doctor because, say, you're a woman on a diet who has stopped menstruating ... well, see the previous bullet point, you're just just get told "lose some weight" There a few other additional issues, but I hope this is enough to make you stop and think that while yeah there's possibly increased health risks it's potentially less than we might realise and is a pretty complex subject that deserves careful study and to be treated with more nuance than it usually is. [0] - the answer is "kinda yes, but not as much as you think and not in every way and it's more complicated": https://www.stitcher.com/show/maintenance-phase/episode/is-being-fat-bad-for-you-88332059 https://www.stitcher.com/show/maintenance-phase/episode/is-b... [1] - Aubrey Gordon, a host of the podcast I mentioned, has suggested she doesn't like "overweight" etc euphemisms, but I chickened out of using just "fat" like she does ... but I still think "overweight" possibly incorrectly suggests there is a correct weight you should be - so I surrounded it in coward-quotes :) I do know for a fact that "obese" (and morbidly obese) are heavily frowned-upon and tbh not particularly helpful categorisations, I saw them floating around elsewhere in this thread.

macintux 4y ago

I hadn’t exercised for over 20 years, but then I bought an Apple Watch. I ignored the rings for the first few months, but finally started taking them seriously. The gamification of fitness is very much a thing. I still hate exercise, I still have no upper body strength, I’m still overweight, but my overall fitness level has gone up significantly and I’ve lost some weight. Baby steps.

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
Same here with the Apple Watch. After a couple of months of thinking that the rings were ridiculous, I found myself taking intentional steps to close them. Last night, even though I should have been sleeping, I went for a brisk walk just before midnight… after I realized that I was just shy of closing a ring. I like it.

leeroyjenkins11 4y ago

Yes, I think a key for stopping that is making sure you weight yourself once a week at least. It's much easier to catch the weight creeping up and manage it when it's 5 pounds and not 15.

AstralStorm 4y ago
Right. Catch yes, do something actually working about it, not really.

hhjinks 4y ago

I find it funny that you did a conversion for stone, but not one for kilograms.

saw-lau 4y ago
I know! I clearly wasn't thinking straight...