Tombridges1

Happy girlfriend is more important than fat girlfriend. I've learned that pretty intimately over the past year. Mine started off about 160-170 lbs for a 5'5'' girl, but lost about 15-20 lbs because she stopped drinking beer as often (yet we were eating dominos twice a week, go figure!). At first I was a little bummed 'cause I had already expressed my preference for slightly bigger girls, but I pretty soon found out that I loved her way more because she was happy and confident being skinnier. Now her weight is pretty stable and it doesn't look like she's going to be gaining any more, but in the end you really have to ask yourself do you love your girlfriend or do you just get turned on by fat girls? As long as she's happy and healthy, you'll find a way to be happy as well. So don't worry too much no matter what happens.

Honestly, that might work for a 20-something male, but women do not work the same way. Cutting calories and going for "short" walks is going to be enough to *maybe* maintain the weight of a lot of people older than the age of 30. There are girls with metabolisms so slow that they have to eat tiny amounts and run regularly to keep their shape. I think for a girl like this who is still in her 20's and devotes her life to fitness or this Kang woman who was clearly in shape before she had kids anyway, losing the extra 30-50 lbs won't be as difficult for someone who is already 100 lbs overweight and is 35-50 with no where the same base fitness. If you don't lose the weight by 40, you're going to have a really tough time dropping it, especially if you're on certain medications, which many people are. Maybe you haven't noticed, but diets fail *all* the time and it's not just because people are cheating. I don't struggle with my weight and am lucky to have a metabolism that hasn't slowed down much, but I can tell you it really isn't as easy for everyone. Calling context "excuses" for someone who is already past their early 30's is a completely moot point, because at that point the good habits aren't there and it's a big uphill battle to develop those kinds of things the older you get. Young people have the luxury of having a clean slate fitness and health-wise and have the time to set good habits. I think some people really could put in more effort to meeting their goals, but at some point the weight and fitness snowballs and it gets to a point especially for women where it's almost insurmountable. I don't want to drag this thread down with this discussion because it's tangential to why we're watching this girl's videos, but I would like to see what Maria Kang looks like in 15 years when her three kids are teenagers and she's running around taking care of them. I really doubt she's gong to have a chiseled set of abs when she's 45.

Yeah that does piss me off. There's nothing wrong with making a change in your life if you're not happy and that's great for her that she was able to lose all that weight. That being said all this does is antagonize people who weren't as lucky in losing their weight. Not everyone is able to make the sacrifices she probably made in order to lose the weight. Also having a base level of fitness makes this sort of thing way easier. A few people would see this and get fired up and work harder, but most would probably just get upset and feel even worse about themselves. Her phrasing on that photo is purposefully aggressive, making people feel like it's their fault that they didn't lose weight as they've been making "excuses". A lot of people though this was fat shaming at the time and I agree. Being healthy is great, being a dick about it is does more harm than good especially since a lot of people struggling with body issues are going to be especially sensitive about to begin with. On a side note, Maria Kang (the woman in that picture) is self-employed and currently works as a "freelance writer". What that means is that she owns her own schedule. If she needs to take some extra time to work out more to lose weight, she can put off articles a few hours and do them after dinner. Most people don't run their own businesses and instead are at the whims of their employers. Especially jobs with lots of travel, uneven hours, and high stress make it difficult to stay fit. I just resent the lack of context in her whole campaign. Context is everything.

Oh please. I don't think anyone seriously thought that. Everyone here gets what she's doing, some of us just think it's a pretty rude thing to do in the name of making a point. Most people don't respond well to antagonism, so how is making fat people feel like crap b/c the weight doesn't fall off for them going to help them lose weight? It's an interesting idea, but again I think the application could have been worked better.

Maybe, but then why make the whole set of videos about her specifically *gaining* the weight only to go ahead and lose it right away. If she really wanted to do it right she'd put on 80 lbs like a lot of girls wind up putting on between college weight gain, work-related stress, slow metabolism, kids, etc and try to lose it without the fitness advantage that she has going into it. If I were a girl struggling with body image, this video would not help me at all. In fact, I feel like I might feel worse about myself or just find myself hating her. All this being said, she does look good in the before/after clip she did in the final week.

Would be pretty ironic if she found it really hard to lose all this weight she's put on. A little part of me thought that this whole idea was kind of arrogant in a "yo fatties, look how easy this is!" sort of way.