Did you get fat as a kid?

sanfromny

Kids teased me in elementary school and called me fat, but when I look at my old pictures if those kids weighed 80lbs I weighed 95. Not hugely overweight, but just enough to make life hard. Junior high school I started joining organized sports, by 9th grade I was in pretty good condition, but never skinny- stayed about 130lbs. I became obsessed and developed an eating disorder. My mom was so happy to show me off because I had lost weight but it was really non- sustainable, especially when playing sports.

I did pretty good keeping my weight in check, well on the high side of the 'normal' bmi scale (135lbs). Then college hit--freshman 15, well more like 20... Actually the worst part was I used to work at K-Mart and there was a Lil Caesars (pizza place) in there. I was a broke college student and the manager had a bit of a crush on me. So even tho they are supposed to stop making pizza 30 minutes before the store closes, he'd make one every night for me about 10 minutes before cause he knew he wouldn't be able to sell it and give it to me to go home with...Needless to say, living on pizza pies for almost 3 years....

I yo-yo'd throughout my 20s, through marriage and pregnancies and moving. A lot of excuses led to me topping out around 220lbs. I tried in my 30s to get control of it. I finally have got a grasp. I'm around my college weight now (155) and plan to get back to 135lbs before I hit 40 (7months to go!)

Panda_Poptarts

Yes. I've been fat since I was 7. My mother couldn't cook and all we ever really ate was spaghetti and oatmeal and pre-packaged foods. Lots of junk food. I was also raised in an abusive household. In addition to treating food as a comfort, food was used as a punishment (e.g. bad behavior = no dinner). My brother and I both stockpiled food in our bedrooms and took to eating in secret late at night. As a teenager, the abuse was much worse and food was a coping mechanism. Bad habits were learned young. I've since lost 84lb, but I've got a good ways to go towards a 100% healthy relationship with food.

kshama2001

Not fat as a kid. Had to lose 10 pounds to join the military. (Soon after they changed the standards and I would have been fine under the new ones.) Got two stupid fad crash diets from my recruiter - 1. banana diet and 2. cabbage soup diet. Lost 25-35 pounds before and during boot camp, which started 30 years of yoyoing. Wish I'd known then what I know now.

PixieGoddess

Nope, I was tiny as a baby and a child. My mom's pediatrician recommended giving me lots of fattening stuff b/c I was considered underweight at 6m/o but she refused b/c they'd said the same thing about my brother, who was already having weight problems at 3y/o b/c she'd followed their advice with him and regretted it. Sure enough, I was at a healthy weight within about a year and stayed healthy throughout childhood.

Then puberty hit me like a ton of bricks, and I've struggled with my weight ever since (30 now)

louisepaul16

Nope. I was never skinny, but always a healthy weight. I swam, trampolined, danced, went horse riding, and was never overweight. Then I left school and started working in a call centre with odd shifts, and my oh my the weight piled on!

I think j would have been an overweight kid if I hadn't have been so active. I've always loved food and has an overeating issue since I was probably about 14 I would say, but didn't recognise it as that then.

sanfromny

kshama2001 wrote: »

Not fat as a kid. Had to lose 10 pounds to join the military. (Soon after they changed the standards and I would have been fine under the new ones.) Got two stupid fad crash diets from my recruiter - 1. banana diet and 2. cabbage soup diet. Lost 25-35 pounds before and during boot camp, which started 30 years of yoyoing. Wish I'd known then what I know now.

I remember my navy recruiter gave me that cabbage soup diet. I was 7lbs over military standards...smh. It worked but boy oh boy

michael1976_ca

nope I was all boney it looked gross up and into my 20's then I started gaining weight. then I was put on meds for anxiety and depression which in turn me into a bottom less pit. I was always hungry. then from bad habits I got type two diabetes. I beat it once and got off the meds. fast forward 4 years no going to gym and barley working out. I didn't follow up with the doctor. now i'm on insulin plus the meds. so not worth it. but I will fight this. i'm not giving up

2011rocket3touring

...born fat.

GMAC2016

Yes. No idea why but I obviously ate too much and played too little.

I don't ever remember being anything but fat. I was about 170 in grade 6, first year I wrestled in school. I got the flu in grade 9 and lost maybe 20 lbs to wrestle at 204, was 240 in Grade 13, last year I wrestled was about 20 years old at University at 282. I have stayed around 280 for the past 25 years although I am definitely higher % fat. But Like I said, I don't remember ever being anywhere close to what would be considered "normal". It has definitely colored my personality and how I interact with people. Not in a good way.

MonkeyMel21

When I was 12 I started riding my bike to the park (maybe a mile) every day and getting a chocolate milkshake from the new gazebo there. Every day. I got up to 125 lbs (not real fat but that was my highest weight till after I got married at 23). Then I wondered why my mom kept forcing me in to sports, haha. I started track and cross country and never had a problem again (until aforementioned marriage and then pregnancy).

edit: around 12 I also started going to the 7-11 with my new friend (who was fat) and getting cappuccinos and pringles every day after school. And then I started wearing one of my brothers plaid shirts open over all my clothes every day. Sooooo glad I got out of that phase quickly, lol.

Anaris2014

I have been fat my whole life. My mum likes reminding me that the Dr put me on a diet at 2 months of age (after mistakenly thinking I was nearly 6 months rather than 2). I've been fat ever since.

There was a period in my early 30s where I got down to being merely over weight, but I was constantly hungry and running every day - it waant really sustainable. Now I'm just trying to avoid being too overweight.

I feel like I should add that I've always been active, played football, martial arts, cross country running and hiking into my late teens, continuing with running, football and, at varying intervals, the gym as an adult. My issue has always been food (and possibly metabolism), not exercise.

km8907

When I was 6, my mom was giving me a bath. She grabbed my stomach and said we had to do something about this. I don't remember feeling the same about my body after that. I gained weight, but until puberty, it kept up with my height. After puberty, all hell broke loose. I've never been a normal weight since.

ashleyjongepier

Yes. At even three if I was hungry after eating an adult sized portion my mom would give me another adult sized portion to eat. If I whined or cried or did anything I was given cookies, never had to go outside, my mom was very thin and didn't have to do anything to be that way, my sister was the same. Often my mom would be asked if she starved my sister and over fed me.

Sabine_Stroehm

I was SKINNY. I graduated high school at 5'6" and 94 pounds. That said, I've always said I gained weight (slowly) from birth to 35. I gained the freshman 15, a bit while on prednisone, and then another 15 while writing a dissertation.
At 35 I learned how to eat, and began losing weight.

brb_2013

I got chubby around 1st grade, I remember being teased. I just gained and gained from there. I'd say I was legitimately fat in middle school but not obese until High school. I probably graduated at about 250lbs, then gained another 50ish after that with my "freedom". Was at my heaviest at about age 22, started changes at 23.5 and had lost 100lbs by my 25th birthday. By 26 I'd regained half of that and now here we are 6 months or so into fixing that.

OCF_020

I was. During my younger years I was always over weight. I was a really active kid but my eating habits weren't the greatest. When I moved to Oregon I went through a seasonal depression and lost all of it, when I moved away from Oregon I started to gain the weight again because I wasn't depressed anymore at that time. After that I wasn't really fat, I hardly ate but what I did eat wasn't healthy.

HuskyGent

I was always in pretty good shape as a kid. Was a regular gym-goer from about 15 till 19 when I traded the gym for the pub...found the workouts were getting in the way of my drinking commitments

Late nights in the pub inevitably led to late night takeaways and the rest is history!

Moxie42

Nope. I grew up average and a month or two after turning 14, I became obsessed with my weight. I dropped down to slightly under-weight and then stayed at the low-healthy end of the scale for the rest of high school (I was also swimming 4+ hours a day). I was unhealthily obsessed and in general I was extremely depressed. So when I moved away to college and discovered "freedom," I completely went off the deep end with drinking, eating, smoking, and stopped all exercise. I immediately started gaining weight. Then things really went bad- entering and leaving an abusive relationship, broken relationships with family and friends, my parents splitting up, dropping out of college, losing my job, my dad dying- all of which happened within less than 2 years. My weight yo-yo'd a lot during this time. It was after all that, when things finally started to get better a little bit, that my weight really ballooned and I went from overweight to obese. I think part of me felt like after everything I had been through, I deserved to be happy and for some reason I started equating food with happiness. I was living with my boyfriend (now husband) and his roommate who was also a guy. I ate like they did- burgers and pizza and whatnot...and I was still smoking and not exercising. Everything was about immediate gratification. Two years of my life had been stolen from me, and I wasn't going to "deprive" myself anymore.

It's been 11 years since that low point of my life and I'm just now finally learning to make decisions for my long-term goals instead of living based on immediate gratification. For me the key has been getting honest with myself and focusing on health and happiness instead of a number on a scale.

Toribeth23

I was actually a fairly healthy/skinny kid until age 11. I took a sharp nosedive into the awkward puberty stage and rounded out. In high school I was probably just on the edge of healthy weight after growing a few inches taller but still had a chubbiness to me, and of course I hated gym class, I hated sports, and exercising. I gained a little more weight eating a lot of fast food my senior year of High School. Then the "freshman 15" in College and then even more after getting married. I never, ever, understood "Calories In VS Calories Out." until I joined MFP.
In my parent's house my Dad (a medical professional!!) has always done all the grocery shopping, and for some reason he can't get it through his head not to buy absolute crap food all the time. He'd come home with 10 boxes of snack cakes and say "They were on sale!". And if I or my Mom mentioned anything about being overweight then he'd say things like "You just need to exercise more." as if the junk food we were constantly eating had nothing to do with the fact that everyone was getting fat. When we'd point out to him that all he buys is junk food the excuse was "Well, I bought it for me. YOU don't have to eat it!" I do love the man, but honestly I'm so sick of his grocery shopping habits. I feel bad for my Mom who's been trying to lose weight for YEARS, but hates grocery shopping more than anything, so she's stuck eating the food he brings home. I hope that if I can be really successful on my journey eating healthier I can help get my parents out of their snack-cake-pop-tart-chip-soda-calorie-bomb prison!

TL;DR- I was a skinny kid but started gaining weight in puberty and slowly kept gaining until now because I didn't understand the influence of food, and my medically inclined parents still don't understand it, sadly and bafflingly.

Moxie42

km8907 wrote: »

When I was 6, my mom was giving me a bath. She grabbed my stomach and said we had to do something about this. I don't remember feeling the same about my body after that. I gained weight, but until puberty, it kept up with my height. After puberty, all hell broke loose. I've never been a normal weight since.

That's very similar to what started my unhealthy obsession when I was 14. It was a week before the first day of high school and my mom and I had just come back from vacation. She had me step on the scale and I had 134 lbs on my 5'4.5" body- I was average and was a very active swimmer so looking back, I think this was probably healthy. But she said "uh-oh, looks like someone needs to start doing some situps!" I dropped to 111 in a month, and after that would never EVER let myself hit 125- if I did I would literally starve myself back to under 120. Even now, 18 years later, I have to force myself to be happy with ANY bit of progress instead of thinking "I'm fat until I'm 120." Slowly but surely my thinking is changing but that voice will always be in my head.