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The mental pain of being overweight is certainly real. Chances are real good that if you’re reading this you are overweight or know someone who is. For someone who is not over weight it can be hard to sympathize or understand what overweight people go through. Perhaps understanding the pain these overweight people go through will help those of us who aren’t overweight be better able to support those we care about.
Plus to those who are overweight just knowing that there are people out here who care about you gives you something to draw on in the area of support.
I recently spoke with several severely overweight people, the following are some of the mental pains they felt due to being overweight.
- Overweight individuals said they often felt in public that people stared at them, which made them feel uncomfortable.
- Overweight people said they often felt ashamed for themselves – that felt their family, spouse and kids were ashamed of them because of their size.
- People who considered themselves fat said that they don’t fell sexy and even feel ugly to the opposite sex.
- Overweight women especially lack confidence and have poor self esteem and women especially don’t like their spouse to see them undressed.
- Then there is the pain of their clothes fitting to tight and the pain especially with overweight women of shopping for clothes.
- Then of course overweight people have told me they sense people are whispering behind their back, which of course just further damages their low self-esteem.
- Fat, overweight people obviously tend to overeat, which makes them feel guilty about eating, which tends to depress them, which leads to further over eating and a vicious cycle of gaining weight.
- Overweight people feel the major discomfort of feeling extra hot and miserable during the summer.
Then there is the pain of potential health issues.
Overweight people tend to worry and stress about their health. They often have low energy and shortness of breath. Certain activities like walking can be a real chore. Overweight people often have pain or discomfort in their joints especially their knees and their back because the extra weight they carry is adding extra stress on the knees and back.
The point is this is not about just about identifying the mental pains associated with being overweight so we can feel sorry for overweight people.
This is about helping those we care about finding a solution for maintaining a healthy weight. This could be in the form of exercise, treadmills, exercise equipment, weight loss supplements or whatever works in a healthy way.
A major factor why people don’t lose weight is lack of exercise and to a lesser degree the wrong types of exercise. For example a brisk walk on a treadmill can cause your body to go into the fat burning state called ketosis better than running.
Muscle mass in also very important in maintaining a healthy weight. This is why purchasing any number of the exercise machines on the market to do light resistance exercises is so effective in losing weight because it helps you add muscle mass. This doesn’t have to be massive amounts of weight, even light resistance amounts of weight can be effective at adding muscle mass contributing to weight loss.
This is why men and women who use an exercise machine in light resistance exercises 2-3 times a week for 15-20 minutes almost always lose weight when they combine this with their weight loss program. This has been our observation over the last 13 years or so.
