How has your weight changed over your adulthood?

ONUnicorn

So, the average American adult gains on average 1-2 pounds per year from their 20s to their 50s.

How does that compare with you?

For me, when I graduated high school I was 145 pounds. By the time I turned 30 I was 245, an average of 8.3 pounds gained per year.

I started trying to lose weight, watching my calorie intake and working out and over 3 years got down to 195. An average of 16.6 pounds lost per year.

Then a lot of things changed in my life - I went to grad school while working full time, lost a job, went through a deep depression, watched my Mom get sick and pass away, became more depressed, etc. Diet and exercise fell to the wayside.

I just turned 40. I now weigh 286.6 pounds, meaning since I stopped losing weight at 33 I've gained an average of 13.08 pounds per year.

Taking it all together, since high school I've gained an average of 6.43 pounds per year - almost 3x the national average.

That's . . . a depressing thought.

So, what about other people? Taking together what you've gained, what you've lost, periods where you maintained a weight - what's your average change per year since you graduated high school?

hipari

This is an interesting topic and I’ve been pondering about it quite a lot lately.

In 2008-2009 I did an exchange year in the US and remember weighing about 150lbs then. My current weight is just over 210lbs. That’s 60lbs gained in 11 years, averaging about 5,5lbs per year.

Looking back, my starting date (on this profile) on MFP is in December 2015 when my weight was 215lbs. I’ve been fluctuating between 200 and 220 ever since, it was actually 65lbs in 6 years (2009-2015), so almost 11lbs per year.

More annoying is that during my years on MFP, I’ve lost an average of less than a pound per year. Sure, the trend is in the right direction, but it’s definitely lacking consistency.

Ironically, my weight gain began when I returned home to Finland from the US. The obesity issues in the US were discussed in the media so much, that I was very careful during my year there. When I returned, I pretty much thought it’s safe to eat whatever I want and started gaining. Around that time I also started taking the birth control pill, so I don’t really know what caused what. I’m going off the pill soon, so it’s going to be interesting to see if it causes any changes.

AnnPT77

I don't have records (or memory) of every year back to 1973.

The overall average, 1974 to now, is about a negative quarter pound a year. (Weighed about 140 at graduation, weigh about 129 now, -11 pounds. ).

More seriously: I can't give you year to year averages.

Lost without trying when I went to college, from 140-ish down to about 112-113 at one point, but usually more like 120ish most of the college years. Once I got out into the world and got a sit-down job (and a spouse with a bigger calorie allowance that effectively created envy-based temptations for me ), I slowly gained up to the 190s by my early 40s. Lost a few pounds during/after cancer treatment at 45 (some of the loss surgical), settling into 180s in thereafter, and pretty much staying there until age 59, when I lost from 183 back to a healthy weight in just less than a year. Since, I've drifted up from 120s to mid-high 130s, and most recently intentionally drifted back down to 129 (at around a pound a month loss or less on average since October 2019). Still targeting slow downdrift, though I regard myself as being in maintenance, as the last 4+ years have all been weights in a healthy range. (I'm 64 now.)

nanastaci2020

I think my weight changed because bad habits eventually caught up to me.

I was the skinny kid in high school, into books and nothing active. Weighed perhaps 110-115 at 5'5". College I probably put on 10-15 but looking back: can't say if its because I was eating more or because I was still growing/changing? I was more active as I lived on campus, walked to where I needed to go for the most part. I think I was 130-135 when I got pregnant @ 23 and got back to that weight by 8-12 weeks post-baby but my body was shaped differently. Had my 2nd child at 25, and weighed perhaps 175 right after she was born. I went on the Depo shot for a couple of cycles, and I understand that can make weight loss difficult. But I also was not doing anything to actively lose weight. I weighed about the same 175 when I later became pregnant with my 3rd, and probably was around 190 a year after she was born when I made my first ever efforts at weight loss.

Gaining pregnancy weight is pretty normal, and perhaps the Depo shot rounds made losing the weight the 2nd pregnancy a little harder. I worked desk jobs all through those years, without any particular intentional exercise.

In 2014 I got down from 178 (do not really know my highest weight as I avoided scales for a long time) to 128 and maintained around 130 for a few years. Over the past 2 years I've been mostly n the 130s, then creeped up into the 140's. In the past 12 months made a couple of half hearted efforts to get it back under 'control'. Started this last time 6 weeks ago, and I'm down from 148 to 141.8 in that time. Headed back to the low 130's and plan to stay there!

Comparing 135 @ 23 to 178 @ 39: +2.7 pounds per year

Comparing 128 @ 40 to 142 @ 45: +2.8 pounds per year <--Glad I'm getting it under control now before it gets way out of hand again.

Shortgirlrunning

I gained a lot of weight in college. When I graduated high school I was around 130. When I finished grad school (when I was 24) I was in the 170s/180s.

I hit my highest weight of 190 when I was 26. That’s when I really started making serious efforts at weight loss.

I lost 50 lbs and got down to 140 between 27/28. Maintained/gained a bit back when I was 29.

I’m 30 now and have just gotten under 140. So I’m just under 10 lbs from my goal weight of 130.

So if you just looked at weight in 2008 and my weight today it’s only a 10 lb difference which would actually be less than a 1 lb per year gain. But I spent most of the years in between obese.

yirara

So I moved out 20.5 years ago. I was mid 20 and had no experience with adulting. I was 59kg at that time, which is not a lot. Until 2014 I gained to about 75kg. So I was basically systematically overeating by about 700 calories per month, or 23 per day Not to bad, considering how much I was snacking and how calorie rich I was eating. So I decided to do something against it, and lots to a nice level. Some fluctuations, but I'm generally at a weight I'm happy with (around 63kg). I'd not want to get lower as my face will look terrible.

threewins

I'm a yo-yo dieter so I've gained and lost numerous times. I think I've gained/lost about 260 kg in little bits and pieces. My highest weight above goal weight is 28 kg (twice). I've been at goal weight 5 times, the longest for 18 months and the shortest for one day (hangs head in shame). Longest time not being at goal weight is about 11 years. In terms of how much I gain when I am not caring, it's about 1 kg a month, it's quite consistent around that number.

sardelsa

Well I'm not 50 yet I'm only 36. I am about the same weight I was in my 20s, maybe less. I'm definitely more fit, lean and have more muscle. I did gain 30-40lbs with each pregnancy but that was temporary and came off a few months after birth.

Mouse_Potato

I was underweight in high school. 5'3" and graduated at 93 pounds. I gained to about 125 in my late 20s and then dropped back to 107. Got married and crept up to 117 then moved out to the country and started cooking everything from scratch. Went up to 145. Moved back to the city, divorced, and dropped to 140. Met my boyfriend and went back up to 149. A year later I found MFP and began my slow journey back down to 114, where I'm pretty happy. I've got a lot more muscle than I had at 18, so I look much better. I'm 46 now, so overall I've gained .75 pounds per year since graduation.

RelCanonical

I'm about 50 pounds lighter than I was in high school. I recalled getting weighed once and I was about 170. I did not weight myself often, so these are all estimates.

I probably gained about 15 in college, due to no longer being under the supervision of parents, which I think naturally regulated me through the embarrassment of eating too much.

I then probably gained another 10 after college. I lived alone for the most part (I had a roommate, but she was never around), it was my first full-time job and also my first time living permanently away from my parents (i.e. too far away for weekend visits like with college). All my natural regulators were gone, and there was free food at work. It's possible I gained more than 10, but I wasn't weighing myself at all, and honestly, wasn't even thinking about weight loss.

I didn't even think about losing weight until 2013, which was a couple years after college. In short, I got down about 50, gained it back quickly, then gained probably another 10 over four years.

Two years ago, I started losing again, and have lost about 70. Net since highschool is about -50lbs. Broken down into years, that is about -3.57lbs. per year.

lgfrie

Short answer: 5.33 lbs per year.

Longer answer:

I was in GREAT shape in grad school, when I was working out with weights and doing cardio constantly to avoid studying, and also because the university (U of Chicago) had a mega well equipped gym that almost no one used, so I had it pretty much all to myself. 5'11" and 186 pounds.

When I started working at age 25, I had mushroomed to around 200 lbs. My weight was very stable and slightly increasing from there to age 30, in the 200-210 range.

Then around age 30 something went wrong. Lot of job changes, moving to a new city, deaths in family, etc. I started steadily gaining weight and was up to ~ 300 lbs by age 40. This peaked at 330 pounds around age 50 and was stable in the 320-330 range for another 6 years.

At 57, I've now beaten my weight back to around 240.

So, using age 23 and 186 lbs as the baseline, and counting the peak as age 50 and 330, that'd be an average annual increase of 5.33 pounds.

The 5.33 pounds per year doesn't seem like that much as I type it, and OP, it's quite close to your number!! The real problem for me is the number of years that number kept getting added to the total LOL

I knew when I was in grad school that working out and eating right was important. Somehow that got lost in the mix of my complicated adult life. If I could advise a person in their college /early 20's days now, I would grab them by the throat and say "Eat right, work out hard, don't let other s**t get in the way of that, buy a scale and use it, and save yourself a LOT of trouble later on."

spiriteagle99

I've been a yoyo dieter all my life. In high school and college, I would go from 120 to 140 then I'd diet back to 120 then gain back the weight the following year. I had a depression period in my 20s when I went down to 108, but then I quit smoking, started exercising, emerged from the depression and gained weight again. For a while in my 30s I was active - walking every day, hiking a lot, and had little money to eat out so I was fairly stable in the 130s. I got married at 40, got too comfortable, and gained weight until I reached 175, so then I lost 40 lbs. A few years later we were travelling a lot, eating out at fast food places too much, and I was back up to 177. We settled down again and I dieted and lost 45 lbs. I joined MFP, started running, and continued to lose weight down to 120. Since then (about 7 years) I've stayed mostly stable at 120-125 by running regularly and continuing to log all my food.

deputy_randolph

I weighed 153lbs when I graduated high school (I'll always remember that weight b/c I had lost nearly 40lbs by my senior year). At 40, I'm 133lbs (give or take a couple of lbs).

With the exception of the 2 kids, my weight has stayed in the same 10lbs range since college (lost an addition 20+lbs during college). I think I have a huge advantage for maintaining my weight, b/c I was a chubby kid that lost weight without adult support. I was "forced" to learn about nutrition and exercise at an early age.

Since I had previously lost a significant amount of weight, I was able to slowly and methodically lose the weight gained during pregnancies in 8-10 months postpartum.

My habits for maintaning my weight are engrained and just part of my daily rituals at this point. I exercise most days. I eat reasonable portions most days. I eat a variety of healthy foods most days.

I might gain weight as I age...that's normal. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and see what happens.

Terytha

I was 180 pounds at 16 and 280 pounds by 26 and now finally at 32 I'm back down to 175.

I've just always been fat, so I'm hoping to be thin for the first time in my life in my 30s.

Diatonic12

My weight was normal all through childhood. Abby normal started around the age of 21. Blood glucose going sideways...a total cluster.

I started going to the ww weight loss club with my grandma. She never graduated and neither did I. It was like going to the local saloon. Going through those swinging saloon doors and starting over and over and over again. Same people sitting on the same bar stools until they carried them out of there. One day, I decided to blow that pop stand and I've never looked back over my shoulder.

I've tried the fancy food protocols, denatured protein powders and the like. Food delivery. Fresh Pet. All of those things got me nowhere good so I joined MFP. I gutted it out. I posted photos and songs while I was tooling along because the weight releasing was slow.

I know all about rebound weight gain with friends. I've released 100 lbs with MFP. I didn't lose it because I have no intention of finding it again. I am bent on finding long term weight stability. To say I'm not is to underestimate my personality by several thousand degrees.

csplatt

I got married at 22 at 127 lb, very lean and muscular. I am 38 now and my heaviest has been about 155. Currently at 138 but working on trimming up a tad and putting muscle back on, so basically recomp. Would like to be closer to 132-134 but I always have trouble staying there.

mom23mangos

Avg. of 0.4lbs per year if you look at current weight at 45 minus weight at 20. But in reality weight was stable at HS weight until about 35 (outside of pregnancy and post-natal). So in reality, it was more like 1lb/year.

And it's fluctuated up and down within 10lbs several times. I'm currently sitting about 10lbs heavier than at 20, but at approximately same size (except my back) as most of that gain was muscle mass.

Go_Deskercise

Diatonic12 wrote: »

....I've tried the fancy food protocols, denatured protein powders and the like. Food delivery. Fresh Pet. All of those things got me nowhere good so I joined MFP. I gutted it out. I posted photos and songs while I was tooling along because the weight releasing was slow....

Am I reading this wrong or is this saying that you tried Fresh Pet to lose weight???

Diatonic12

You read it right.

I ate bowls of food that tasted just like dog and cat food, on a bed of lettuce with some secret sauce drizzled over the top.

Go_Deskercise

Diatonic12 wrote: »

You read it right.

I ate bowls of food that tasted just like dog and cat food, on a bed of lettuce with some secret sauce drizzled over the top.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

I really love hearing these stories. So interesting! I wish everyone the best success in improving their personal health-- of which body weight is just one metric. I hope we never neglect also our personal mental health!

I was non-athletic in my first 14 years of life. I was overweight prior to puberty. After puberty, I was only slightly overweight. At 14, I fell in love with bikes, and started cycling everywhere. My interest increased in college and even more in grad school, where I also discovered weight training and swimming. I would say I was in the best shape of my life at 30, with bodyweight below 165lbs, fast swim and bike times (for me). And, I graduated from grad school and got married! Life was good!

But, by the time I was 40 I had gained 50lbs! (These were very happy family years. Lots of work, child rearing, happy married life, good time!) So, when I turned 40, I decided I needed to control my weight. I first did it by using an app on PalmPilot. I used a few other web sites, but for the past 7 years, I have used MFP. I initialy reduced my weight into the 190s with a goal of keeping it at 190lbs. (Requiring several loss cycles as it drifted back up!). In the past few years (spurred by mild high blood pressure), I reduced to the low 170s.

My weight is currently 174lbs with the short-term goal of reaching 170lbs. (For the 2nd time this year-- quarantine is a *kitten*!)

Diatonic12

@Jthanmyfitnesspal I always enjoy hearing about your exercise plan, too. Hope you're getting some swimming in. I love to swim but the pool is just a mess these days.


@Go_Deskercise Have you ever lingered long at the Fresh Pet 'fridge in the grocery store. I have. Some of it looks really, really good.

Diatonic12

Alrighty then. Full disclosure. I ordered some of that food delivery and it tasted just like dog food no matter what I did with it. Think cans of beef stew here. I'm now saving it for the apocalypse and I stashed all of it under the house in a crawl space. It will still be there 100 years from now. I couldn't throw it out because it was too darned expensive.

You can come and get it when I've crossed over the great divide which I hope is many moons from now.

MikePfirrman

I've went from thick to thin to huge to thin to thick.

I was athletic as a kid, so I was one of the few siblings (youngest of six) with no weight issues. Even through college and for like 11 years after. Though I picked up a horrid habit in college -- smoking.

I worked in restaurants out of school for like 9 or 10 years. During that time, I couldn't gain weight. When I see restaurant managers that are heavy, I don't know how they do it. I never sat and never hardly had time to eat. I was smoking and 160 or 161. Probably 12% body fat just from never slowing down. But very lean and not a lot of muscle.

Then, I got a desk job in recruiting and stopped smoking. Ballooned up to 220 within a year. Even though it was my idea to stop smoking (for my kids), I think I ate more a bit out of passive aggressiveness -- my wife was like the cigarette Nazi. She hated my smoking. So I replaced smoking with eating more. Not a wise decision. Then, over the course of several years, kept gaining until I was around 255 at my biggest. I blew out my right knee at like 41 or 42 and couldn't walk for a year or more. Rehab started my weight loss. I lost like 25 to 30 by working out and the rest in like 7 months of tracking.

Got down to 170 at my lightest post obesity and I'm 192 now, but the 192 looks a whole lot different at 56 (this year) than it did on the way down. I've lifted and done an indoor rower for years, so I look actually stronger than what I think I am. I'm not weak by any means but I look like I lift a lot more than I do currently. I'm happiest about my weight at 187 or so. I'm pretty lean and ripped at that weight. Nearly 10 years into maintenance, I've learned that more muscle isn't what I'd like to do -- weight still hurts your joints, even if it's muscle. And I don't like getting above 195. That's my red line to buckle up again.

Geneveremfp

I was obese (probably - self guess based on photos etc - certainly overweight) since about 9. I left school at over 100kg.

I'm now around 83kg.

If I convert to lbs it's an average of - 3lbs a year. I'm pretty proud of that and I think it's an unusual cycle - most people I know as an adult are surprised I was so big when I was younger.

steveko89

Over the summer before senior year of high school I lost about 30 lbs getting to a healthy weight for the first time. Since then I've stayed within the "healthy/normal" range per the chart below. (Male, 6'1" for reference).



Weight alone does not tell the whole story, though. If you take the starting point of ~165lbs at high school graduation in '07 I'm +0.5 lbs/year (gasp!). However, I started weight lifting in 2015 and my body composition has continually improved since then with my weight staying relatively flat.



Muscle has increased and fat decreased to the tune of going from ~18% body fat to 12%. I've also gotten a lot stronger with a 1055 lb total (330 Wilks) and am the most confident in my body than I've ever been. I guarantee I'm stronger, healthier, and more physically capable now at 31 than I was at 18.

annieu613

My weight has varied a lot from when I was 18 until now (34). When I started college at 18 I was around 150lbs (5'8"). When I was 20 I went through a period of depression which involved anorexia and dropped from 150lb to 124lb over 3 months before getting help. Then I gained weight back and evened out again around 145lbs. When I was 21 I studied abroad in the UK and ended up gaining a lot of weight, and got up to 165lbs. It took a while to lose that weight and when I graduated in 2009 I was around 155lb.

My bf proposed for me right after graduation, and I worked hard to lose weight and when we got married in August 2010 I was 142lb. I gained a lot in the first year of marriage, and joined MFP 9/23/2011 about a year after I got married and I was 160lb. At that point I was working a job I hated, commuting 3 hours a day, working a ton of overtime and weekends and basically eating convenient junk because I was never home. I got a new job and focused on getting healthier, trained for a half marathon, and dropped down to 143.6lb by September 2012.

My next entry in MFP was 7/10/13, where I was 158lbs. There are sporadic weigh-ins from 2013-2016 which are all 155-160. Then in April 2017 I logged 170lb. I logged sporadically throughout 2017-2019 and all were 165-170.

In January I was the highest I've ever been at 175lb. I started really tracking and logging my weight and food every day, and I'm now down to 148.6lb, so my lowest weight in eight years. My goal weight is around 140lbs, but my main goal is to maintain at that weight long term. I'm a boredom eater, so I've been trying to learn to not snack so much, and I just need to keep doing that. I want to maintain my fitness and activity level as well. I was so out of shape just a few months ago, and now that I'm lifting and running regularly, I feel so strong and good in my body. I want to keep this up.

MaltedTea

Hmm, I truly don't remember stepping on a scale at all in my 20s, and before that, either my pediatrician or gym teacher from Catholic high school was weighing me. Since then I've been...

up a lot --> down a bit --> up a bit --> down a lot --> up a bit --> down a bit --> up a lot --> and NOW?

Down a lot to stay because I'm sick-'o-this and the threat of cholesterol meds for life got me to the "enough is enough" point about 15 months ago.

While I'm not 50 yet, if I was to guess an average thus far it would be +2.3 lb/year (based on average weight over, ahem, mumble-mumble years).

So, for now, I'm just above average but I've got some time yet to reduce it to < 2lb/year if I continue my current health plan and then maintain until 50 (and beyond).

Thanks for the perspective in this thread: apparently, I'm just shy of average and working on being exceptional lol

pink_mint

5'5" female. At 18 my weight was around 125 lb. My weight has been sort of a rollercoaster over the years. I'm 40 now.

Lowest adult weight was 110 lbs and that's when I was a drug addict (I have been clean for years fyi). On my frame 110 looks sick, which, of course it was. Highest non-pregnancy weight was 205 lb. Which was a result of a combination of things, one of which was losing my mind after being "keto" for 3 years and piling on 50 from a year long carb fest. Down to the mid 180s since I started counting calories earlier this year. Hoping to make it to 149 which is top of the healthy weight category for my height.

One thing that's encouraging to see in this thread is that people's average weight gain per year is usually in the single digits. So if gaining weight slowly really adds up to a lot, then so does losing weight slowly. Good to remember when feeling impatient.

justkeeprunning91

Well I’m only 29 but I thought I’d share since my story is atypical. I was always overweight as a kid and peaked at 230 lbs when I was 16. I made my first effort at weight loss and was down to 185 when I graduated high school. Through college I fluctuated a lot but stayed between 205 and 185. Starting law school at 23 I had gotten up to about 205 again and was sick of it. Took up running and was about 160 when I got married at 25. Found myself creeping up towards 170 again and found MFP. Slowly got down to about 135 and stayed that way for about six months until getting pregnant. Got up to 185 before delivery but slowly got back down to a steady 142-145 when my daughter was about 8 months and had been hanging out there for about 5 months until lockdown hit. I’m now seeing 147-148 more often than I would like so I’m back at it to try to make my last push back down to 130-135 and then hopefully start thinking about skin removal at some point (I’m 5’ 4”) for reference. If I hit 130 before I turn 30 (in 10 months), it will have taken me 15 years to lose 100 lbs. But I wouldn’t change it and I’m confident I’ve set myself up for success in the long run. It’s wild now to look at people I went to high school with with more “normal” weight patterns, since I’m now the smaller one.

zebasschick

when i was 17, i weighed 104 and walked for fun at least eight hours per week. when i was 24, i weighed 97, knew i was anorexic and did my best to eat. i was 126 at 26, then when i was 27, i discovered stress eating and went up in weight but didn't own a scale - i'd guess to 140. i bounced from 170 when bodybuilding to 170 without bodybuilding - a very different thing - and finally in 2006 hit my top weight at 242.

three years ago, i was down to 145, let life get in the weight and ended up at 180. am currently at 168, for four weeks have been using the exercise bike in ways that don't bother my injuries, and am doing well, developing more flexibility, which is very helpful. i look forward to losing more weight and gaining more muscle!