So I've always known it. For years, it didn't bother me. Now that I'm 31 years old, it's starting to catch up with me. I'm fat, I'm lazy, I'm a slob.

I've always been the fat kid. Eventually once puberty kicked in, I was able to deal with being the fat kid. I became the funny fat guy. It didn't bother me to get hassled about my weight or anything. I could take and I could dish it out. Plus my weight helped me see which of my friends were REAL friends.

I have only made 1 honest attempt to lose weight in my life. This was probably 4-5 years ago. I lost nearly 100 lbs on this adventure. I felt great! However, my ignorance kicked in and I found this wonderful drug called Marijuana. It pretty much went all downhill from there.

As great as I felt, MJ helped me feel better. However, one of the side effects is the munchies. And when I get the munchies, I can rip **** loose. I can just eat and eat until I make myself miserable. Usually this is followed by skipping breakfast the next morning while my night food still digests. Eventually, I chose MJ over a healthy lifestyle and gained all that weight back that I worked so hard to shed in the past.

Now, I've pretty much lost all willpower. I spend my days doing just enough at work to keep from getting fired. Then I go home and smoke up until I fall asleep. I poison my body with ungodly amounts of fast food. I don't exercise. I don't eat well.

I feel like crap these days. My knees hurt. My back hurts. I get out of breath with the smallest amount of exertion. I don't sleep well. I've gone years without an 8 hour night of sleep. Also, there is so much I can't do because of my weight. I can't fit in some chairs. Which in turn means I can't go to a lot of concerts, movies, shows, etc. I dare not fly. I'm a hideous creature.

My social life has become non-existent. It's not because I don't have friends or anything. I do have some wonderful friends. However, my weight has just made me a miserable person and I've grown to really despise other people in general. I chose sitting on the couch and smoking up so many times on going out and having a good time that I've become this anti-social hermit.

Forget women too. Over my years, I've had 3 girlfriends. None last for more than a few months. One was a wild party girl. I landed this gem about 1 year after being at my lowest weight. I met her in a bar, we hung out in bars, she loved Weed. She was wild and I had the common sense at the time to ditch her ass before I got into trouble. Next up was a chick I landed who was on the rebound. She was psycho and nothing really ever developed there. So it was pretty much a mutual "this ain't gonna work thing". Lastly was probably one of the best women I met in my life. We were only together for a couple months. She knew about my struggles with balancing smoking weed and living life. I quit smoking prior to meeting this chick and I think I might have smoked 1 time in then 5-6 months we were together. Then I had a best friend go to jail and it ****ed with my head. I turned to MJ to basically avoid the reality of my best friend's incarceration. Soon I choose MJ over the girl and that relationship was almost lost.

I have only deteriorated more and more each year. The good girl that I mentioned has expressed interest in getting back together. In a way, I'd love that, but I know what I've become since we've last gone out. I'm a miserable person who would rather sit on my ass and just avoid the real world. So we just talk every now and then and I kind of avoid her otherwise. She's a very social chick and I've become this anti-social blob.

I don't really know where I'm going with all of this. I guess opening myself up to a bunch of strangers for ridicule might be the motivation I need to get my butt in gear and start living life. I need to lose at least 150 pounds to even consider myself being healthy. 200 would be even better. I'm pretty much at rock bottom now and feel I have wasted the best years of my life. I feel I have let down those that love me. And now I guess I'm ready to change that.

Some fallout/side effects of being fat

- It's so much easier to be lazy and unmotivated

- I'm a slob. I don't take pride in my appearance anymore. I shave like once a week tops and haven't had a haircut in months.

- I'm pretty much a child. I've sheltered myself so much from the real world that even though I'm 31 years old, I don't feel like an adult.

- I settle for everything in life. I settle for a career which I hate. I settle for being mediocre at everything. I even settle for being a low limit grinder in poker because I'm too lazy to learn to properly play the game and dedicate the hours needed to move up the ranks.

I really want to get my life back on track. I'm miserable right now and I want to change that. I want to lose the weight, get in shape, quit the drugs, recharge my social life, and maybe even start a family. I want a new career that isn't just something I settled for too. I make decent money now, but I hate my job, coworkers, and boss (that will never change no matter how much weight I lose).

There are so many things I want to do. I want to land that good job or start my own business. I want to travel to various parts of the world. I want to go to the movies, concerts, shows, etc without fear of fitting my fat ass into a seat. I want to go to a club and not feel so self conscious about myself that I become a wallflower. I want to be a social person again.

Nothing really enthuses me anymore, so it's hard to get the motivation to make any changes in my life. One hobby that I have really found to be fun, exciting, and something fresh in my life is cooking. I eat a lot of fast food, but if I have been to the grocery store and have a stocked pantry, then there is no question I will cook something over going out for fast food. Cooking is so fun for me.

I want to take my newfound love of cooking and channel that into making myself a much healthier person. I love to try new foods and fresh foods are OH SO MUCH BETTER than fast food. I don't mind eating healthy stuff if it's fresh and cooked properly. The big challenge will be keeping a stocked pantry and going to the grocery store as needed.

I also want to start exercising. I can't do much right now as I'm such a slob. I guess walking is a good start. I have a new puppy that helps me get out and get some exercise while taking him on a walk. I like weight training as well. I love the feel of exhausted muscles that weight training gives you. You can actually feel the results and then eventually see them. I have 4 bedrooms in my house and 1 of these I have dedicated to be an exercise room. Unfortunately, that means I painted it and put the weight bench in there and haven't touched the room since.

My current weight is somewhere in the 400 lb range. I'm around 5' 11" tall.

Cliff Notes: I'm fat, lazy, and anti-social and after 31 years of that, I want to change. I love to cook and want to use my cooking as a catalyst to change my lifestyle.

Sort of grunching, as I only read a bit of the OP (the beginning and the end). If you love cooking, and like to cook with natural, wholesome ingredients (not a lot of stuff in cans), I'd think you could lose two pounds a week (maybe more) just making sure you home cook every meal. You don't have to eat white rice with skinless chicken breast every night either. You can eat good food, just eat less of it. And if you're eating out a lot now, then you'll notice a huge difference right away.

EDIT: And plan ahead for the week. That way you go to the supermarket once, get all the stuff you need ahead of time, and you won't say to yourself, "****, I have nothing to eat at home. Better get some fast food!"

I don't have a car (don't live in an area where you need one). Me and the wifey go to the supermarket, produce store, whatever once every three days or so, and I have three recipes in mind for those three days. Then we eat leftovers for lunch.

make sure you cook before you start blazing, have your food and drink all prepared. That way once you're high you'll have no excuse to rolll over to mcdonalds

Sometime the hardest part of the journey is taking the first step.
Congratulations for admitting that you need help.

Do you have a plan in place?
Start off with diet.
Make certain to always eat breakfast. Start with either oatmeal or cream of wheat. I usually start my day with a peanut butter and honey sandwich on whole wheat bread. Make sure you use natural pb without any hyrogentated oil. Two hours after breakfast have a healthy snack like an apple or a banana. Consume 8 small meals a day, this will get your metabolism moving. Make certain to drink at least 64 oz of water a day.

As far as exercise, start with walking. Move to weight training when you feel like you can handle it. I would reccomend starting off with simple compound exercises like squats, bench press, dead lifts and military press. For now start off by doing pushups from your knees.

If you believe you can do this, you will.
You just have to want to.

Good luck.

I'm spending the day laying out my plan. I guess this post was one of the first steps to my plan: admitting I have a problem and need to change.

As for a meal plan, I'm kind of laying one of those out as I type this. I don't have any problems eating healthy. I like many healthy foods. The biggest thing will be properly planning a breakfast and lunch. With my lifestyle right now, I'm rolling out of bed just early enough to get to work on time. I skip breakfast most days and then eat Fast food for lunch.

With a little planning and grocery shopping, I can have a healthy breakfast and have my lunch already made when I get up in the morning.

I don't mind doing all of this, my problem is just motivation and sticking with the gameplan. This means, I stay away from the MJ. When I smoke, I lose all motivation and desire to do anything productive. It doesn't even hardly affect me anymore, so I'm not so sure why I smoke anyway.

***

Also, My Mom keeps hounding me to join Weight Watchers. When I lost all that weight a few years ago, I was on weight watchers. The problem I have with WW though is they treat you like a kindergartener and they push all these pre-packaged foods and dinners which I absolutely hate. The only positive I got out of WW back then was having someone to hold me accountable and weigh me every week. My motivation was not to gain weight while someone else is weighing me.

I need to find a different way to hold myself accountable.

sounds like me a year ago.

first off, stop smoking weed.

i just started slow. going to the gym a couple times a week. jumping on the bike. that led to eating better. stopping the junk food. cooking at home.

i got used to eating boring food, like chicken breast and spinach salad with olive oil. this was the toughest part, as i love eating.

so once i got used to going to the gym, it became a part of my routine. and it became something i didn't dislike. i look at it, as a meditative part of my day. just me working out.

go to the health and fitness forum too. they help a lot.

Change in steps, if you start out trying to drastically change everything, you are just going to fail.

Sit down and make a goal sheet, tape it to your bathroom mirror or something, so its there to remeind you every day of what you want to accomplish.

You need to quit smoking, you need to work out, and you need to eat healthy. But like I said, dont be all like "tomorrow Im starting my new me!!"

Just start out cooking yourself healthy food, and slowly keep doing that until you arent eating fast food at all anymore, which should be good cuz it sounds like you enjoy doing that anyway. If you drink lots of soda, switch to diet (or better yet quit), and slowly start drinking less and less every day. Slowly start working out, just go for a small walk once or twice a week and build from there until eventually you have joined a gym and you are working out regularly. Start doing simple things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking farther away at the parking lot when you go places, stuff like that. I know weed doesnt make people the burned out pothead that the media tries to make them out to be, but it also is waaaay more destructive than potheads will admit. Quit smoking and you will be amazed at how much clearer you think, and how much more motivation you have and how much youll eventually start to actually enjoy things that are sitting around and getting high.

Do that for awhile until youve got a little more confidence and start to feel better about yourself and life, then use your love of cooking to meet other people. Lots of places have cooking classes and **** like that, sign up for them.

Its hard to start because youve got soooooooooooo far to go, and im sure it feels overwhelming and impossible. You are at the bottom of a long climb and staring at the peak is only going to demotivate you and depress you. Just stare a little bit down the path, forget whats after the next bend, and just focus on getting there, when you get there, just look a little bit farther down and do the same.

one thing about eating healthy is you really have to plan ahead. make sure you have plenty of healthy snacks.

I eat a banana and a bowl of rolled oatmeal. the oatmeal is easy as i can just microwave it, and then add some protein powder to it.

Gastric bypass is prolly ur best option. Unless of course money is the problem.

From what you wrote sounds like motivation is ur prob, for everything. I dont have to tell you that da weed is causing the motivation prob. You basically have to stop that cold turkey to improve the rest of your life (diet, exerecise, social etc..), because these things require some sort of will power and smoking just zaps that.

So your key would be to stop smoking. I think I smoked literally everyday for 12 years, then stopped for a year or 2 now I smoke a healthy once a month or so. If youre going to quit smoking, you can't, CAN'T, CAN NOT have any in your house. Once you stop smoking (after a week of not smoking you can go a year), you will be in a much better place to fix the other things in your life. GL

OP, how are your financial resources? I recently decided that getting in better shape was a MUST so I signed up for a healthy-food delivery service. I get all my meals delivered. The food is great and it's teaching me portion control. I'm not going to stay on it forever because it costs an arm and a leg, but I think it's really helped me kick-start my healthy lifestyle.

Also, you are most likely depressed. My personal choice was to receive medication when my depression became apparent, there are other options as well. Addressing your mental well-being will help as well.

Congratulations on admitting you have a problem and need help, and good luck.

Go out and do something about it

this loolks really interesting, could u PM me some more details about this plz.

OP i feel like a lot of people could relate to you, i see some of the problems you mentioned above for myself but not all of them. depressed people are a lot more likely to view there failures as dispositional vrs situational. Basically dont be so hard on your self, being depressed just makes us feel unmotivated and that we cant change so i would say that you should focuus on your mental approach before you do anything physical, once you have more confidence you will realize that EVERYTHING is easier to do than before and you look at things as half full instead of half empty

Wow, some bad diet advice in here. White rice is not healthy. Eight meals won't make your metabolism go faster, and is a huge pain in the ass.

At over four hundred pounds you won't register on most scales, so I'd advise picking up some fatty scale that can measure that high. Making sure you're making progress is important.

For someone of your physical condition I wouldn't advise any exercise more strenuous than walking. If you can do body weight squats or lunges, knock yourself out. (Don't actually pass out, that could be unsafe.) Walk every day though, hopefully you live somewhere where you won't have excuses not to.

For your diet, anything that is fast and cheap is unhealthy pretty much. Fat and protein are much more filling per calorie than carbohydrates. Even a fatty like you probably wouldn't eat a dozen egg omelette as a snack, but I would have complete faith in you to finish off a medium unbuttered popcorn, which happens to contain just as many calories, though all carbohydrates instead of fat and protein so it probably won't interfere with your desire to eat dinner two hours later.

get a dog so that you have to walk at least 3 times a day.

I'm OK financially and could probably afford such a service as the health food delivery. I would just rather cook my own meals and use fresh ingredients since this is one of the most enjoyable things in my life right now.

Gastric bypass seems like a viable option. However, only once in my life have I put forward a solid effort to lose weight and I lost 100 lbs over the course of about a year. Surgery would be a last ditch effort. Also, I have a lot to change other than my weight.

Done. I can stop anytime I want . Seriously, I have no problem stopping smoking. I've quit for stretches of time before without any withdrawal symptoms other than the fact that sitting on the couch wasn't as fun as it used to be. I did smoke every single day. However, there have always been couple week dry spells where I just couldn't smoke because it wasn't available. Again, I'm not even sure why I smoke anymore. I get stoned, but not like I used to. I'm smoking about 1/2 oz a week. It's just more of a habit than anything. Or it's just my hobby I guess. I dunno. But I have no problem quitting the stuff.

I am depressed. I know that and I know why. I'm not ready to go out and see a doctor yet though. Like you suggested, it seems like every doc's answer is a little pill. I have an addictive nature about me and being around medication scares. The only "drug" I've abused in my life is MJ. I took a 2 Mg Xanax one time and slept for 10 hours, so I don't really see the point of using a drug like that recreationally. Thankfully, I've kept myself away from any other types of drugs, even when they have been available to me. I've got very little willpower, but I do still have some wits left in my system.

I'm depressed because of my position/status in life. After 31 years on this planet, this is where I stand? Lonely fat and I hate my career choice. I guess I'm kind of hoping a lifestyle change will fix some of these depressed thoughts. Plus I've never been depressed enough to eat a bullet, so I guess when I start having those thoughts, it's time to get help, but I guess I still got a lot of sinking before that happens.

It's like a chain reaction: fat --> don't want to deal with fat ppl problems in a social environment --> anti-social --> depressed because there's nothing to do and no spice in my life.