This is a question i would love to know peoples thoughts on. I watch reality TV shows, i see people in public settings and social gatherings and i notice the obese and overweight people in the room and i "see" them smiling or laughing like every other person but inside i truly wonder if they are happy or okay with themselves?

I guess my curiosity stems from the fact that when i was 19, i too was/am very overweight and i dated a wonderful 20 year old guy..fell in love really. He was very obese. Morbidly obese i think. He weighed close to 400 pounds. I loved him, was attracted to who he was, he even had beautiful eyes and beautiful smile. However, when i was with him i often felt guilty for him. I felt ashamed of my body and the size i was, but i felt even more ashamed of his size. I couldnt stand watching him eat and eat and eat. It made me want to puke(past hx of eating disorder issues) out of guilt. Like how could he not feel bad or ashamed of how much he ate. Anyway..long story short.. we broke up and years have gone by and now he has married to a pretty girl but now his weight is closer to 500 pounds and his wife is probably around the 300 mark. However i see in all of there facebook photos(un-edited) that they both seem very happy.

I guess the thing is- I have met lots of very obese people who claim to be happy and im happy if they truly are happy but i personally dont know how you can be truly happy with being obese or morbidly obese. I confess this is not my biggest weight. My highest weight was 320 lbs and i was beyond happy..i was opposite. I was suicidal for a long time. I just wanted to die. I hated being in a body that did not match my inside. I hated the fact that i could barely walk around a block. I hated that i couldnt fit into nice clothes and i hated how people stared and called me frumpy behind my back when they thought i would never know. I had no hope and i begged God to let me die because i couldnt keep living like this. I couldnt be happy no matter what i did.

Now i am significantly smaller thanks to help from WLS and counselling but i guess my question is: Can you be obese and genuinely happy?