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Once you are overweight, it is hard to lose the weight mainly because fat secretes estrogen, which is a hormone that keeps extra weight on. So, not only do you have to exercise, but you also have to radically change the way you eat.

This may be easy if you are rich and can afford to have someone make healthy food for you all the time and have plenty of time to exercise and have professional one-on-one trainers. But it's not all that easy if you are living at home (ie: your parents make the food decisions), or you live from paycheck to paycheck and most of the money goes to rent and other necessities.

The main reason that I gained weight was due to hormonal birth control. It just really messed me up because my chemistry was like "OMG X_X" in response to it. But every doctor I went to kept saying "It can't be the pills!" So after a bunch of years, I finally got to talk to a doctor who told me to go off it, and lo and behold, I lost weight AND my health improved drastically.

Of course, the other thing that causes weight gain is starving yourself and then binging, which happens a lot to college students.

If all it takes for you to lose weight is to walk your dog once a day, then whoop de doo, lucky you. But it's difficult for everyone to try a method because our bodies are chemically so different.

Hah. It's funny, but when I'm going up the stairs with my thinner coworkers, they're gasping and grunting by the second flight while I'm fine for at least three more flights before I start getting tired.