Were you the overweight/obese kid? What were dietary mistakes adults made for your upbringing?
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Was anyone else here the big kid growing up? I was definitely the obese kid and I can pick out the exact time I started to gain weight rapidly. I had suddenly acquired a taste for fast food and no one stopped me. I was told to finish everything on my plate and to ask for seconds. The larger I got the more my family (the very obese family that I dearly love) encouraged my "healthy" over eating. I remember eating until I was going to pop was normal growing up, nobody slapped my hand or told me the slightest bit about nutrition!
There was a saving grace in HS, nutrition class! I had told the teacher that "I switched from milk to soy milk! I drank so much of it I must be so healthy!" And she said no, you can even drink and eat too many calories. You have to watch out for calories to lose weight. I gotta find her and thank her for that lightbulb she turned on.
What was your childhood horror stories? I hope this thread can also help some aspiring parents to avoid bad upbringing
There was a saving grace in HS, nutrition class! I had told the teacher that "I switched from milk to soy milk! I drank so much of it I must be so healthy!" And she said no, you can even drink and eat too many calories. You have to watch out for calories to lose weight. I gotta find her and thank her for that lightbulb she turned on.
What was your childhood horror stories? I hope this thread can also help some aspiring parents to avoid bad upbringing
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I know that I always /felt/ like the bigger kid. But looking back at pictures I didn't really gain weight until middle school. And, I gained it fairly quickly. It's never been that I eat a lot. But I made horrible choices when I did eat. Soda, chips, boxed dinners....
We didn't really keep fresh veggies around when I was younger. Not much fruit either. If we wanted a snack before dinner there were hotdogs or other similar things to pop in the microwave. Dinners were high in breads and pastas, but low in meats, veggies, variety in general..Which had a lot to do with income at the time. Single mother, 3 kids. top ramen is cheaper and easier to get kids to eat than to sit them down with a salad or something.
There are/were other factors besides foods.
I was dealing with a lot of depression and self image issues. Which, when brought up around the adults, was just brushed off as a phase. So I didn't get any help on that front.
So I withdrew from meeting new people, spent time online a lot.
The friends that I did have nearby often chose to sit inside and watching movies, ordering pizza, instead of going out and being active.
I'm working on fixing the bad habits I've settled into over those years. I walk wherever I can, watch what I eat a little better((though currently limited by/relent on what someone else is paying to put in the house)) and I'm trying to meet new people in the area who are hopefully going to be better influences/willing to hangout outside.0 -
I was also that overweight kid. But my mother DID have pretty much only 'healthy' foods in the house, and she DID tell me off when she saw me overeating (as I did all the time). NEITHER of these things helped. I ate the 'healthy' food, I just ate way too much of it. And all her nagging just made me resent her and hate myself for my lack of control. So I don't know what I would have done in her place!
(ps- my mother is overweight as well, that just adds in to this interesting mix)0 -
We were a poor family. We could only afford cheap, processed foods that we got from food pantrys or on sale. When my dad had time to spend with us between working 3 jobs, he spoiled us with junk food. He regrets it now, but he just wanted to see us happy.
That pattern of eating put my body on a bad path. I was addicted to bad food before I was old enough to know better. I know better now, but I still struggle to get my weight under control.0 -
i was actually super skinny. well fat baby but then i was always tiny until 26yrs old
my family did try to instill good eating habits.
it wasn't that i was eating poorly, i was just eating more than i should
well ok, i may have had a cheesecake and brownie habit. and I miss malts0 -
I'm Italian...
enough said, you never say no to food, basically a sin.
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I worry about my kid. He's skinny now. In fact, he's too skinny, so I tend to let him eat a lot of junk between meals just to get the calories he needs. . He also has a very limited diet. I don't know when it happened, but he just stopped tolerating new foods and slowly has started rejecting foods he used to like. . And his friends are even worse so whenever I have to feed all of them (which is often), it's chicken-nuggets, mac-n-cheese, pizza, or hot dogs.
He does like fruit and a select few veggies (carrots, peas, corn, and broccoli). . so It's not hopeless!. .0 -
My parents made mistakes with me when I was growing up, as did other adults. They did the best they could.
I've tried to learn from those mistakes with my own children, but I'm sure I'm making plenty of my own mistakes. I don't relish the thought that they will pick apart my parenting in 10-20 years.0 -
I don't think I was ever really obese as a kid, but I was definitely overweight. Looking back on pictures, it wasn't even that bad, but it was moreso that most other kids and teenagers were just so small in comparison until they became adults (obviously some are still tiny, but I digress).
I think my family's lifestyle definitely led to some of that. The whole "eat your whole plate" mentality combined with eating in restaurants a lot more than eating at home, and eating fast food before my dance classes because my father got out of work so soon before we had to leave and there "wasn't time". Dance I think was the thing that definitely kept me in that lower-middle overweight range instead of it being higher.0 -
i was never overweight until 2014 i was deprived as a child of many "sweets" especially cake, thats probably why now i just freaking love cake, Juice i never drank and i still dont like it. Only thing i was allowed to have as a child was pretty much Pop, and Halloween Candy.0
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I was always the taller kid so I always felt lumbering/bigger than the other girls. Then gained weight rapidly in middle school. My parents were poorer, Docs never really said anything about it back then and my mom was very depressed at the time so it just kept going. My father's family was Italian as well...so I did learn the "eat until you burst, then eat some more" was a good thing and I love that feeling. That is what I most have to fight today.0
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_A_Real_Mouthful wrote: »i was always a chubby kid.
one little thing i look back on and laugh at now though...when i was a kid, I hated lettuce on anything. on burgers, salad, tacos, whatever- I hated it.
i'm talking about the typical iceberg lettuce. something about the consistency always bugged me...the crunchiness and to me at least, plastic taste that it has.
anyhow I hated it with a passion. my ma, grandma, everybody used to give me such a hard time about it...like oh you're gonna be fat because you won't eat healthy stuff instead. legit made me feel bad all the time when it came up but i don't care i hated lettuce.
got older and discovered fresh spinach and how i love it more than anything. i always try to keep some in the fridge at home. makes me laugh now though thinking how they kept trying to force something on me i hated and still do when there was something else i could eat a ton of and still want more.
And it actually has more nutrients and healthier for you.0 -
I remember back when I was 11, I would always watch cartoon on TV at around 5pm and even when I was or wasn't hungry, I would eat rice with soy sauce (kicap as we call it). In retrospect, I'm a very fast bloomer, both body and mind and what would've been my rebellious teenage years turned into my rebellious pre-teen years. My emotions were eratic, etc etc. I suppose to combat all that the only way I knew how - I ate my feelings. When I asked my mum about it now, she told me that that was the period I bloated up. I was a bit chubby, nothing serious before that but that started from 11, the weight gain was rapid and I got severely obese.0
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The whole "make a Happy Plate" thing messed with me. Now I don't feel guilty if I don't eat everything. Yes of course my parents did a lot of things that stuck with me. But I'm a freaking adult now and have had to take control and responsibility for my own actions and behaviors. I'm sure I'm screwing my own kids up somehow, parents only do the best they can with what they have. My mom showed love with food. But she loved me. So I'm not going to dwell on the negative.0
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I had horrible body image issues my whole life, still battling them! I was tiny growing up, until I hit 30 and had an injury that pretty much kept me down for over a year...But thinking back, my mother always said I was chubby, and she was constantly on some diet or another. Every day, I heard her complaining about her body, about her fat, about her wrinkles....She did needles, diets, surgery, you name it.....I don't want to blame her for my issues, but I do believe she had a lot to do with the hard time I've given myself, daily, for the last 40ish years. When I see her now, weight and fat is still the #1 conversation topic
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JustMissTracy wrote: »I had horrible body image issues my whole life, still battling them! I was tiny growing up, until I hit 30 and had an injury that pretty much kept me down for over a year...But thinking back, my mother always said I was chubby, and she was constantly on some diet or another. Every day, I heard her complaining about her body, about her fat, about her wrinkles....She did needles, diets, surgery, you name it.....I don't want to blame her for my issues, but I do believe she had a lot to do with the hard time I've given myself, daily, for the last 40ish years. When I see her now, weight and fat is still the #1 conversation topic
I can closely relate.
I make it a huge point to not talk about body image in a negative way with my daughters. That crap sticks with young girls.0 -
I was an overweight kid. I was picked on and teased relentlessly (the other kids called me "fat and ugly"). My mom was always putting me on diets...my lunch would consist of plain tuna , 1/2 piece of white bread and water. I would get home from school and binge on whatever I could get into my mouth until my mom got home from work. The binging eventually led to purging, which led to anorexia by the time I was 15 and dealt with it on and off until I was 30.
My mom was really just doing what my pediatrician wanted her to do, so I no longer blame her. I think I was just overly-sensitive, but I definitely still have self-image issues.0
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