Jbug, I want to congratulate you on your awsome weight loss. What a great accomplishment for you to be very proud of. Taking care of yourself like that is wonderful.

Good post.....The possibility of there being a gene that allows the tendecy in a person to gain a huge amount of weight because they don't feel the full sensation could probably be real. There are many gene issues that are just now beginning to be learned about & understanding is growing with studies.

I know from my experience, the concept of being over weight was something I looked at my Mother & grandmother & swore when I was young that I never wanted to look like that. They weren't that morbidly overweight either.....however in my mind, 160 at 5'2" was way too much overweight.

Growing up, I listened to what was being said & there was talk about the fact that once they were married, they didn't have to worry about having a guy find them attractive. They didn't have time to be active anymore....no time for playing tennis. It was important to dust the house & cook dinner. Cooking was the most important part of life. They had to cook breakfast, lunch, & dinner to take care of their husbands. My dad grew up on a farm & having the meat & potatoe dinners with fresh baked pies & deserts was what being a wife was all about. For some reason, I looked at them & swore that I would never be like them.

From the time I was young, I swore that that would never happen to me. I know when I was in school, I could eat a whole batch of fresh baked brownies, a pound of M&M's, or a whole bag of BBQ potatoe chips & would end up loosing 5 pounds. For some reason, when I was stressed, no matter how much I ate, I would loose weight. I have no idea how that happened. Even when I was pregnant, I only gained 10 pounds with 8 pounds 2 onces being my daughter. I was still in college at the time & stress was still controlling my weight along with the fear of having a c-section to deliver my daughter which I found out 1 month before her due date. Then when I started my career, I got involved in playing racquettball with the guys at lunch everyday. That also helped me keep my weight down.

After I went out of work on disability 12 years ago, it turned out that the psych meds I was given caused me to loose weight to a dangerously low point which was 20 pounds below my minimum safe weight. My low weight wasn't caught until I was continually passing out & then my pdoc forced me to go to an ED treatment center. It didn't do any good & I stayed at that weight for over a year, in & out of the medical hospital every month for IV nutrition. While in the treatment center, they treated overweight & underweight together. We were all forced to go to Overeaters Anon every week. It was interesting to listen to everyone there. The people who were overweight didn't remember much about how they got there. They remembered being that way always. Many had been abused. Some just loved food, & most ate food for comfort. Then once they gained the weight, they were afraid to loose the weight because they did't want their skin hanging on them. That was the basics of what I remember from that experience.

I don't remember too much after that period of my life, but I do remember my migraines got really bad. I had some other horrible side effects to meds & ended up laying in bed. I remember getting onto the scales once & they read 175 pounds. That was right at the time when a med was found to help my migraines & allowed me to get out of bed & start riding my horse again. With the exercise, my weight started to fall off at a safe rate until just about 2 years ago. With me, stress acts just the opposite of what is does for others. Stress causes me to loose weight. I end up feeling nausea & because I hate to get sick to my stomach, I don't eat. The experience I had catching the RN stealing my mothers ID & dealing with the threats was when my stress became horrible & again, my weight just started to fall off. If felt like I was going on adreneline. At the time my mother was dying, I was with her 24/7 & was only able to catch 5 minutes of sleep every once in a while trying to keep her comfortable once we got her back into the hospital. My nausea was so bad that my weight loss became dangerously low & ended up in the hospital for about 2 months with IV nutrition again just at the time my mother died. My weight has stabalized at a fairly safe place now, but it is continually fluctuating as it follows my stress level. When I lost all the weight this time from my higest weight I was at, my skin looks horrible. It had been stretched out & then there was nothing to fill it out so it just hangs....my face, arms, & stomach. I looked worse this time than the last time since my weight gain had stretched my skin out so much. I really don't remember my highest weight or even how got there or how long it took me to get there. I don't even remember how I looked. I only remember looking at the scale at the highest weight, swearing that I had to loose weight. Even though my weight wasn't morbidly obese, in my mind it was. I can understand the feelings & the lack of understanding how we get there until we are there.....then we wonder how it happened. It doesn't make sense to not realize that the weight gain is far out of control when you can't get through a doorway & I would think that there would be a knock in the head with a baseball bat at some point in the weight gain, but I know with me, I ignored the whole weight gain as much as I ignored my weight loss.

I had always heard that our bodies get a set point weight they get used to. From that point, they vary in the different directions depending on what we do. I had also heard that when loosing weight, it was important to slowly get down & stay at a lower weight for a while to change the set point. Then from there, weight can again be slowly lost. I don't know how much truth there is in that concept either.

I watched a Dr Phil program a few weeks ago about a guy who was also about 1000 pounds who finally decided that he had to loose weight or he would die. It could have been the same guy that you are talking about. The mother had constantly fed him & he had his friends bringing in food when ever he wanted it. It is rather sad that the person caring for him didn't care enough to stop doing the food thing long before him reaching the point where he couldn't get through the doorways.

I found that Dr Phil has an interesting weight loss method. He takes what is being eaten & then tells the person that if they just cut out one item how much weight they can loose in a month & how much it adds up to over a year. I know for me though, that even though I cut out something, there is quite a delay in the actual weight loss....I am sure I am not alone with that situation either. The one thing I have found in my experiences is that weight issues in either direction is dangerous & also difficult to control without alot of determination. Right now with my low weight, eating has become a difficult thing. I can eat only so much & then if I take just one more bite, I end up feeling extremely sick & have to stop eating immediately. I don't know if this is going to be a constant battle the rest of my life or not.

Debbie