Search Results: losing fat

Yes, I get that some people will say "they should've never gotten fat to begin with" or that "normal weight people don't get praise for not getting fat" and all that jazz. The thing is, it's EXTREMELY F*CKIN HARD TO LOSE WEIGHT.

Despite what some armchair nutritionists may think, it's not just simple math of starving yourself at a caloric defecit and eating next to nothing for a month or more until the pounds shed off. Actual experts will tell you starving yourself doesn't work, and that weight gain isn't as simple as gluttony. There's a ton of factors that contribute to weight gain, with one of the biggest ones being mental and stress. This may be an assumption on my end, but most overweight people don't seem very happy. (I sure wasn't, my entire life.) Stress is a heavy contributor to weight gain, even if you avoid fast food and have a pretty vanilla plain diet.

So while I'm not saying it's "heroic" to lose weight, I don't see what the point is on sh*tting on people trying to turn their life around. Same with people coming off drug addiction, or other problems in life. If people are going to be assholes to them regardless, why even bother to improve themselves along the way?

So I ask, do people who lose a lot of weight or otherwise improve their bodies deserve kudos and respect for turning their life around?

This one is going to be controversial, I'm sure.

When I was in high school, I was planning on joining the military after graduation and becoming a real estate investor during or after my service. But things happened in my personal life that caused me to drop out of high school and lock myself away for the last 5 years, and it kills me.
So I've decided that it's better to regret joining late than regret not joining at all. I'm going to spend the next year or two losing weight and getting in the best shape of my life. I want to join the military to better myself as a man, do something extraordinary in my life, meet new people, and enjoy my younger years to make up for my missed childhood. But I don't know if I should join the Army or the Marines.

About the Army. They have better equipment and better living quarters. They have more free time so I can take real estate classes, get my license and maybe even invest while I'm serving. I also feel like I would be able to socially adapt better in the Army as an older recruit since I'll be 23 or 24 when I enlist.
The big downside of the Army is how their standards have tanked. They got rid of the shark attack in BCT and I've heard that trainees can have stress cards. I see people in the Army who are fat, dumb or both, and I wonder if they're just letting ANYONE enlist. I often wonder why the Army can't be held to the same standards as the Marines.

About the Marines. I like how absolutely badass they are and I want that challenge. They do what they're afraid of because they're afraid of it, and they're the first ones into battle. I also like how they use land and water, I've been swimming for as long as I can remember. The Marines can really help me better myself as a man.
The downsides of the Marines are they have less free time even working on weekends, so I probably won't have time to work on my real estate career. I might not be able to join the Marines with a GED anyways.

This is just what I see from the outside looking in.