I haven't tried them, but Widewiths.com has several calf sizes: wide, extra wide, and super wide. That sounds promising. And they ship here to the UK.

There used to be a Canadian company that made very wide calf boots. I guess they went out of business, because I haven't been able to find 'em for a few years.

While y'all are looking, if you see any *totally* flat boots with very wide calves, would you let me know? I can't wear any heel at all cuz of fibromyalgia pain, and I can't seem to find boots with very wide calves with less than a 1" heel.

So I've been various flavours of hurt/upset/angry/confused by a number of posts lately, in which members here (most of them apparently not fat, though I don't know that for sure) explain to the rest of us that fat is by choice.

This seems to me a very very complicated thing indeed. Of course, how fat I AM at this moment is by choice. And that's presumably true for most, if not all, the gainers here. But I thought it would be interesting to hear from people who have not been able to be thin in a reasonable, healthy, maintainable way.

I, for one, have never had a viable choice not to be fat. To lose weight in my 20s and 30s, I needed to eat ridiculously little--like no solid food for four months, or under 1000 cal/day kind of little--and exercise a lot, which manifested in a very unpleasant, very tired, very unproductive me. The minute I went back to what they told me was a 'maintenance' diet, i.e. 2000 cals and half an hour a day of exercise, I gained weight.

I would love to hear from other members who think of themselves as 'naturally' fat--what extremes did you have to go to to lose weight? How did you feel about yourself and your body? Or, alternatively, how did you get happy with your body without going through the Diet Madness Tunnel of Darkness?

Curious that you don't want to ask us what we want to hear, instead.

I'm going w/Ruby. That is one gorgeous meal. Except for the beef fat fries--they do crisp gorgeously, but I don't like the taste. Buttery horseradish or garlic mash for me.

And all-you-can-eat sushi? yummmmm. I rarely eat the fish anymore--just kinda stopped being into it one day--but I still love futomaki, tamago, oshinko, california roll, all the veg or fake crab ones. Mmmmmmmm...

Maybe we should start a thread where we post our dream meals?

Yep, I'm definitely a foodie, lol.

I think it was meant as a compliment. At least, these days, that's how I take it when someone says I'm huge.

Like many other posters, I have no idea of my size. Every now and then I get a little zap of a shock when I see a pic or vid of me, but generally I see myself as not very different from what I looked like 30 lbs ago. Which can't possibly be right, but that's what I see in the mirror...