They are talking about weight and diets again over on LBYM. I'll respond there once I figure out what I'm thinking here. Someone who was overweight and has lost a lot of weight over the last year or so asked:

Do you choose not to try to lose fat because you don't feel it's important enough (relative to the other priorities in your life) or because you don't feel it's likely that you would succeed at it? Or is there another reason?

So here's my answer:

I choose not to try to lose fat (at the moment) because even thinking about it makes me feel awful. It makes me feel less valuable as a person. It makes me feel fat and worthless. It makes me feel inferior to other people around me. It makes me feel angry that I have to struggle with this while other people around me eat as much or more and don't have to worry. Thinking about and concentrating on my body makes me constantly aware of my flaws. It makes me feel judged by the people around me. It makes me feel helpless and out of control.

I know exactly what I need to do to maintain at 120 (a "good" weight for my 5'4" self according to the charts). I did it when I was 13 - 15. I merely have to eat only 20 grams of fat per day while doing gymnastics workouts 6 days per week, 5 hours per day. Problem is - I don't have 30 hours a week to devote to working out right now. I know what I have to do to maintain at 130 - 140 too because I did it throughout high school. Dance for 2 hours each morning plus a few afternoon practices and performances here and there. Unfortunately I don't have 10+ hours per week to devote to working out either. I could maybe find them if I dropped a volunteer committment or two and stopped reading.

So why am I not all gung ho to lose fat? It is not important enough to devote my life to it (not to mention that when I was 15 years old and weighed 115 - 120 pounds I still felt like I was horribly overweight because the other gymnasts were more in the 90 - 100 range). It just isn't. I devoted all of my free time to gymnastics in the past and yes, I enjoyed it. Yes, I liked competition. Yes, I was really strong and very fit. But I hit a point at which the recurring injuries (back, ankles) were too much and I wasn't going to get substantially better at the sport so I quit. Mind you, I still tried for over a year after an injury that left me only doing 3 hours of my full workout before switching to something easier on my back (beam usually) for the last 2. I didn't just drop it easily or on a whim.

Yes, I could and should lose some of the extra weight I'm carrying around. I know that I can get to 160ish with a moderate amount of effort. By which I mean only 4 days per week of exercise (I'm currently down to 2) and slightly more attention to food choices. I've bounced up to 180 in the past 2 years because of a knee injury and my work schedule messing up the regular free weights class I had been taking. Yes, I should learn to do it on my own, but the class motivated me. My eating habits are actually pretty good already. I eat mainly fruit and vegetables. (Case in point: lunch today was baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, broccoli and sugar snap peas, some fruit salad, strawberries, vanilla yogurt and a sprinkling of granola.) Chicken on occasion. I don't like seafood, so fish is out. But lentils and other legumes I can do. White bread is mostly out, as are white rice and potatoes. I do eat too many sweets (normally one thing per day) and I could change that. I don't want to enough at the moment.

My main problem with the whole debate raging on the LBYM board is that the biggest part of the weight wars is not the diet or the exercise. It is trying to realize that my value as a person is not dependent on my pants size. Truthfully, I'm not there yet. I still use words like "should" and "ought to" when discussing food. I still think that "if I were only x pounds lighter I could do such and such" when I could probably do such and such now. I still think that I don't deserve a relationship at my current size and that no one could possibly find me attractive. I see my body as an indicator of my self-worth most of the time rather than a wonderful thing with many abilities. I can go down the self-criticism path effortlessly and hate something about every single part of my body. My brain is great. I can feel confident and accomplished there (not mega-super-genius smart, but good enough). So sometimes I stay in my brain where I'm good enough and I don't hate myself. I'll sit and read for 5 hours on a Saturday instead of doing something active because, well, it's fun and I don't have to worry about something being jiggly that shouldn't be. It makes me feel good. Hikes by myself do too, and I do that most weekends. But that isn't serious exercise, it's just walking around. It doesn't have an effect on my weight.
To clarify - I am currently roughly 180 and I am not totally weak and blobby. I do gymnastics and yoga every week. I just don't run marathons.

So I guess the answer is that it isn't important enough to me AND I don't think I would be successful enough without humongous amounts of effort AND there is another reason -- my body image issues are such that it is easier to not face it at all (other than the occasional, or not so occasional, bout of body-loathing).