Am I being too hard on myself by feeling like I need to get into shape before bothering to hit on/ask out anyone I think is cute or interesting? I have interested girls, but I rarely feel the same way back.
Pic semi-related. I get compared to chubby Chris Pratt a lot, but I'm 6'0, hovering around 200 lbs. I used to be in much better shape.
You're probably fine man. Yes, you should get in shape. But no, you shouldn't do it for other people.
You should do it because your existence is astronomically rare and beautiful and you want to experience the best end of it. You should do it for you.
But you can ask out girls. I'm 6'2" and 230lbs. Married - but I got married not in the best shape. After her pregnancy I was 280 - almost 300lbs. I'm back down now and it has nothing to do with my wife's approval or anything else, it's to do with me feeling better and being a better version of myself I'm happier with.
It you’re willing to be with a fat or skinnyfat girl, I don’t see why not. Most Americans are sedentary.
Now is always a good time to improve your diet and physical activity, but I guess you’re asking whether or not you should wait to date until months or years from now. To me, that seems arbitrary.
I struggle because it's really my only motivation. I don't feel bad at my weight. I feel like the only way to get into shape is to get rid of all of the things I genuinely enjoy. So I need to have a goal, y'know? Drinking with buddies, and eating what I want is a lot better than dying a couple of years later. But congrats on slimming back down.
I'm totally not willing to be with a fat girl. Skinnyfat? Maybe? But I tend to like thinner girls. I know it's always a good thing to work out a bit, eat better, skip alcohol... but it seems like it's a huge mountain to climb before I ever get to a spot where I'm comfortable in my own body again.
I'm to the point where I actively turn down situations that are "hey man let's go chill with these girls" because I feel like I don't have a chance. It doesn't mean I can't have fun and have shut myself in, but I don't hang out for the specific purpose of girls.
Hey, in my opinion, you deserve a partner just as imperfect as you are. So in your case a chubby Taylor Swift or whatever.
Skinnyfat is thin by American standards. It’s a state of unfitness where the person’s bodyweight is normal but their muscle mass is that of a sedentary person’s.
>I’m not proud of my body etc.
Are you overweight? Do you get fatigued easily? You can improve your diet and switch from moderate drinking to social drinkiny right now. Just stop ordering booze and food that’s bad for you. The same goes for grocery shopping and trips to the liquor store.
I think if you limit your drinking to like 30% of what is was, and start eating real food instead of Dominoes and all that, you’ll feel better very quickly. 5lbs won’t make a big difference in how you look, but you’ll notice it and you’ll feel accomplished.
Haha. I’d take it, OP.
I love Taylor Swift. Are you stalking me?
Anyways, I know I don't "deserve" anyone, and I'm pretty happy being alone. I just sometimes see chubbier guys with these cute girls, and I wonder if I'm just letting myself down by giving myself artificial boundaries.
I'm a little specifically bummed out because I like a particular girl and I'm about to just walk away from the situation because I find her attractive. Like I could only date someone I don't think is pretty.
Advice more on the positive side:
Get a gym membership and form an execise routine with their fitness trainer. They’ll probably give you a lot of strength training. Your job is to find the cardio exercise that is enjoyable to you, and just do it!
Eating healthier feels better. All those bowls of cereal we had for breakfast as kids, waking up all sleep deprived to board the bus at 7:15? Fuck no. Make yourself a real goddamned meal in the morning, with PROTIEN, FAT, and CARBS. You already know what exists. Fry some eggs really quick? Make some toast? Bam.
Now, with a sedentary lifestyle, switching to a nutritious breakfast might make you less hungry during lunch or something like that. So eat a nutirious snack like cheese, apples, peanut butter, carrots, or celery instead. NOW YOU’RE LOSING WEIGHT.
Easy peasy.
Different guy but Goddamn that last part is the same for me. If I find a girl attractive enough to want to date then I lose confidence because if they’re attractive, why would they date me?
You’re a normal person living in the current year, so naturally you want to nut into Taylor Swift’s pursed lips.
I'm overweight. Not obese, but seriously, my proportions are just like Chris Pratt in the OP. I'm relatively tired, but not when it's not a work day. I also have a very stressful job that encourages me to drink as part of it, which hurts things. As a single guy around 30, drinking is also a thing I just have to do to have any semblance of a social life.
The past three years, I've lost about 20-30 lbs and have ended up gaining it all back each time. I get all of this attention when I lose the weight, but to keep it off I have to just shut down my life. It isn't very good reinforcement, for people to insist they love me as I am, only to suddenly be adored when I'm 20 lbs lighter.
I don’t like to drink because it interacts with my medication and my head gets swirly. I also am on a diet. So, I can think of a lot of ways to work around being expected to drink. It sounds like you might be making excuses.
Unless you’re mandated to drink multiple high calorie drinks a day at work, in which case get a new job...or maybe that’s an awesome job and you should just buy a larger pant size.
I dig the positivity. Thanks! I really should get a trainer. I just need to be really committed, which is the same kind of issue as in the first post, where I feel like I need to make this huge change before having a chance with any girl I'm into. I mean, if that's the answer, I guess it's why I asked, right? Either suck it up and do it, or accept that I'm just going to have to date chubby girls or stay single (of which I'd pick staying single).
I don't do breakfast in the morning and probably won't. I have a couple of reasons for it, but I will say that I only eat 1-2 meals a day, mostly augmented by beer. I don't snack either. It's probably the difference between me being a little bit under 200 or sitting in the 250s, though. I do think all of your advice is good, just not one that fits in.
Yeah, it sucks, huh? Then when some girl proclaims her love to me, I just can't justify it, because I'm going to break her heart.
I got into an argument with two people tonight that legitimately thinks she's ugly. I can see her not being someone's type, but ugly? Seems ridiculous.
I love drinking. It's how I keep up my social life, it waves away the social anxiety I grew up with, and because I have to keep up relationships with work vendors, it's a very important part of what I do. I'm wined and dined by these people, frequent dinners are a part of my job.
Don't get me wrong, if I really disliked booze, I'm sure I could find a way around it, but it's hard to turn down a $110 steak with Dom Perignon.
I’m just saying a gym rat might not want to be with a sedentary person. Lets not take it to an extreme.
>I don't do breakfast in the morning and probably won't. I have a couple of reasons for it, but I will say that I only eat 1-2 meals a day, mostly augmented by beer
The fuck? You just said you wanted to lose weight! You’re going to leave out breakfast because you have to make room for beer? I’m done. Also, only eating one or two meals a day is the best way to be overweight besides simply eating too many calories.
That’s entirely understandable. I kind of got the idea your job was fun when you said you were expected to drink. You also seem like a busy person with high expectations on them, so the likelihood of making time to exercise goes down. Like I said, you could just stay overweight.
How do you expect to lose weight if you refuse to make any of the necessary changes? You speak about it as though it’s something that will absolutely happen.
Nobody is forcing you to order the steak and heavy drinks, by the way. I’m sure these restaurants have a variety of things. You can eat breakfast, too.
Well, I drink too much beer, but that and breakfast aren't associated. Breakfast is for two reasons. 1. I have stomach issues that developed in my teens, some kind of Crohn's/Colitis/IBS variant. Since then, I've learned that if I eat in the morning, it's really hard for me to predict if I'm going to have a bathroom emergency. Sometimes I'll eat eggs, and be fine. Sometimes I'll eat lettuce, and shit out my intestines. It's just never consistent, and sprinting out of a classroom or meeting to shit is never worth it if I'm never hungry in the morning.
2...
>Only eating one or two meals is the best way to be overweight
Like I said, I appreciated your earlier positivity, but this is pseudoscience. I'm not claiming to know the exact answer, but if eating once or twice a day is terrible, intermittent fasting wouldn't exist. Whenever I try to eat throughout the entire day, I end up eating a LOT more than I would in one or two meals. It makes me constantly hungry, never satisfied, and turns eating food into just something to do with my hands.
Please keep in mind, I don't think I have everything figured out, I'm really just asking if getting down on myself knowing that I'll only do all or nothing is the right thing.
Appreciate the answers. My job has some fun moments from the outside, but the social obligation can be painful. I love hitting the bar and telling relative strangers stories about my adventures, but it's not always what you want to do. I don't get to take three hours away from the office to go to the three hour business dinner, y'know? After a full, mentally taxing day, I want to go home, pet the dog, have a beer, watch my comic book shows/football, and shitpost.
>You could just stay overweight
Yeah, kinda the point of the thread, again. Am I doomed to never find someone I like if I do that? It seems like the answer is yes.
>How do you expect to lose weight if you refuse to make any of the necessary changes?
I've made them before, but they're always short term. I'm trying to determine what to sacrifice here. Like I wrote in another post, I normally lose about 20-30 lbs in a year, and that's when I tell everyone I'm shutting down from drinking and going on a diet. I take about 2-3 months off, normally right after the Super Bowl, where things slow a bit. I've found that people can accept a short period of drying out and getting in shape, but a true lifestyle change isn't very easy unless you want to lose everyone you know.
>Steak and heavy drinks
Nah, I know, but you get wrapped up in it with friends, coworkers, vendors, whatever. Everyone gets to hanging out, and it's too much fun to stop in the moment. The only way to avoid it is to not go out. It's not like I don't want to drink and eat bad shit, afterall.
I wasn’t making an appeal to nutritional science, just pointing something out that I’ve seen and heard.
There are probably tons of scientitic arguments I could make about how eating many smaller meals is better than a few big meals, but you asked for advice, not a debate.
If you don’t believe me, go see a nutritionist, and a fitness trainer. They’ll probably give you better, more detailed adivce as well.
There might be things the nutritionist doesn’t understand about your GI problem, so maybe get a doctor’s appointment. Plus, if you’re having urgent bathroom trips, there’s a good chance the situation could be improved on. GI doctors have, in my experience and in the experience of some of my family members, given life genuinely lifechanging prescriptions and advice.
But yeah, it’s just the laws if physics that if your diet has problems in it, you’re 250lbs, and you don’t want to change anything fundamental, then you can expect more of the same. That’s realism.
I was positing that you can lose weight if you acknowledge diet as important and make some fundamental changes in what you’re doing on a daily basis.
I was also saying that maybe being 250lbs isn’t the worst thing in the world and it’s very arbitrary to let women you like go because of some supposed connection to your weight and whether or not you ought to be with them.
You can date any girl you want. If they really like you as a person, they’ll probably look past the fact you’re chubby, if it even bothers them in the first place. Maybe they like it. Who knows?
My takeaway advice is to see a good GI doctor, nutritionist, and fitness instructor, and tell them you’re shooting to lose 50lbs, instead of losing 20lbs and gaining it back. I think this will be a good thing. Even one meeting with these people can make a big difference.
I just lost a lot of weight myself and would recommend it to everyone.
I went from obese to normal weight in 6 months and it completely changed everything about me. People treat me better, I have more energy, last month, I had a girl giving me the elevator stare and her eyes lingered on my dick for 5 seconds. It feels so fucking good and gives you so much confidence.
Before, I never even had girls smile at me.
I'm not 250 lbs, I'm 190. I can fluctuate between 190 and 200 depending on how badly I'm treating myself in a given week. That's why I said hovering around 200.
My doctors have recommended against any GI medication/tests unless it's really killing me, or there's blood in my stool or something. It's apparently costly and won't work unless I'm committed to sobriety anyways.
If I fixed my diet, this wouldn't even be a question. However, the question isn't "should I get into better shape," because we'd all accept that everyone should, but, "if I don't get down to a particular weight/look, am I completely screwed?" I'll admit it's insecurity.
It's very hard to meet a person you're attracted to who will "like you as a person" when you're already out of shape. I'm not lacking for options, just not confident to go for anyone I like. Because I'm being shallow.
Lastly, yeah, those people are all going to tell me the right thing - to eat correctly, stop drinking so much, and get in the gym. Like I asked in the OP though, this answer basically means that yes, I need to get in shape before I have a chance. Which means months of hard work. Not that I'm necessarily against putting in the work, but the answer is that yes, I have to fix this before I have a chance, so I need to spend a year or so focused on fixing this, which means I need to give up on picking up on the girl I like on the other side of the building.
>which means I need to give up on picking up on the girl I like on the other side of the building.
nobody is saying that except you. are you looking to get hitched or something? if you as a whole person are worthy of dating that girl, weight shouldn’t be relevant.
an example of a real reason not to ask a girl out would he if your mom just died or something.
>You should do it because your existence is astronomically rare and beautiful and you want to experience the best end of it. You should do it for you.
Fuck... I'm going to the gym.
6'0 200 is manly as fuck
Chin up op if you have enough muscle to do 10 push ups under that you're fine.
It's literally what the point of this thread was. Asking if I was being too hard on myself. I definitely struggle with the concept that I'm good enough for girls I like, because I personally wouldn't date a chubby/fat girl after trying it. People tell me I'm entertaining to be around, I feel like she and I had fun together at the Christmas party. But she's so pretty and I'm out of shape.
Weight's a relevant thing to many people. My parents look like Barbie and Ken, so it's probably part of my issue. I don't think I'm worthless or anything, though.
I can, yeah, no problem. But I do have a bit of a beer gut. Keep in mind, when I graduated high school I was 125 lbs, so I feel like anything outside of skinny is fat. But it is more fat than muscle.