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Upbringing and weight
lucytalbot94
Posts: 32 Member
in Debate Club
I think I already know that a lot of people will agree; your upbringing effects your weight as an adult.
For me, my daddy fell very ill when I was only young and due to that we didn't do much that involved being physically active. Before he was poorly we would go swimming, walking, playing in the park etc. However, after his operation we spent a lot of time doing activities at home (drawing, painting rocks, racing snails, writing stories together etc).
It was a real shock when I started attending the gym everyday; I was so unfit and weak! My dad encouraged me to start attending when I was 18, and I've worked out every since! Whenever I take a break, I gain weight almost instantly, so I'm grateful that he keeps me on track nearly a decade later!!
For me, my daddy fell very ill when I was only young and due to that we didn't do much that involved being physically active. Before he was poorly we would go swimming, walking, playing in the park etc. However, after his operation we spent a lot of time doing activities at home (drawing, painting rocks, racing snails, writing stories together etc).
It was a real shock when I started attending the gym everyday; I was so unfit and weak! My dad encouraged me to start attending when I was 18, and I've worked out every since! Whenever I take a break, I gain weight almost instantly, so I'm grateful that he keeps me on track nearly a decade later!!
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Replies
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My childhood involved very little activity
and using food as a reward. Not a good combo at all. Plus I seem to have inherited a gigantic sweet tooth. In our house, there was *always* dessert to follow the meal, IF we ate everything on our plates. And if we didn't clean our plates, we were given the guilt trip of starving children in Ethiopia. I remember any kind of Drakes snack foods and Kool-Aid always being available in the house. So, yeh, it was a rough start but have learned a bit along that way. Better late than never, right? 
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My early childhood experiences were ideal really. Mum and dad were never overweight. Dad was very active and so was I, Dad cooked our meals from scratch, most of the fruit and veg coming from his own garden. It was when I reached teenage years I began to notice how critical they both were of overweight people and what they ate and this made me uncomfortable. Dad would voice his opinion privately and was horrified that people would risk their health. Mum made remarks about people’s appearance and didn’t have much of a filter so they often overheard (she was later diagnosed as somewhere on the autism spectrum but this wasn’t something that was heard of in adults in the 1970s) Me being an anxious and embarrassed teenager never rebelled in the usual stompy grumpy way, my “rebellion” was to eat junk food. I’m not blaming my parents at all, but I can look back to see how this was part of me creating my own bad relationship with food.
Edited to add - so in reply to OP, I don’t think your upbringing would usually directly affect your actual weight but it can in many ways affect your food related thoughts and behaviours as an adult.10 -
Notable elements of my upbringing:
- aside from a bit of tennis and squash when I was really young and Sunday walks, my parents really weren't into exercise at all. My mom still systematically calls my home gym my 'torture room', to illustrate her mindset
As a kid I'd ride around my neighborbood on my bike and I played some tennis in high school. Nearly the only exercise I did was in school though and PE classes gave me an aversion more than anything: gymnastics which I was scared of, swimming which I hated, a PE teacher who insulted me after a dismal shuttle run test (as if it was lack of willpower on my part instead of lack of fitness) etc.
- both parents gained weight as I grew older, from a healthy weight to overweight to obese
- my mom was always 'trying' to lose weight, but never did and finally gave up entirely. Never ceased to say weight loss was impossible and hopeless etc. And her favorite mantra (which I cannot stand) is "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips"
So basically: no good examples around me regarding a healthy weight and being active/doing sports, topped off with 'brainwashing' regarding the hopelessness of weight loss. It 'only' took me till I was 37 to break free of all of that and find enjoyment in exercise/being active and realise weight loss was indeed possible (and not even that hard).
(PS: on the plus side, we did always have home-cooked meals with lots of vegetables at home, so it could have been way worse regarding my food habits!)4 -
I was a perfectly normal weight my entire childhood, as were my parents. My father had a physically demanding/physical labor type job most of the time, and my mom was a nurse (also physically demanding). I wasn't into sports or anything, but I did bike and walk everywhere, and when I got a job it was as a waitress. There were snacks in the house (most of them unhealthy) and cooking/feeding people was a love language, but we were active and it didn't really matter.
I didn't really gain weight until I was a young adult and married. My activity dropped a lot with a desk job, and my income increased. Also pregnancy. All about the same time period/within a couple of years. And my eating habits were formed around high activity levels.
Truthfully the psychological thing that bit me in the butt were periods of being broke and that 'treat' food (and I mean fast food, chips, candy, whatever) that were standard in my cupboards as a kid became a rare, limited opportunity, thing that signaled being okay financially. And 'rice/potatoes/pasta' to make more expensive ingredients stretch further. THOSE took a while, but it wasn't a childhood thing. It was a 'broke young adult' thing.
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My childhood involved very little activity and using food as a reward. Not a good combo at all. Plus I seem to have inherited a gigantic sweet tooth. In our house, there was *always* dessert to follow the meal, IF we ate everything on our plates. And if we didn't clean our plates, we were given the guilt trip of starving children in Ethiopia. I remember any kind of Drakes snack foods and Kool-Aid always being available in the house. So, yeh, it was a rough start but have learned a bit along that way. Better late than never, right?
Oh, oh god this 'clean your plate/starving kids' thing. This one is absolutely a thing that went on - and I think it's largely generational because I know my mom grew up with it from my grandparents and it's likely directly related to not dying in the Depression but being able to throw food away/not eat everything given to me and clear my plate was a THING.
I have MEMORIES of you're not leaving the table until you've eaten it all stuff, and just.
That one probably helped absolutelye no one and created a lot of weird food issues for a lot of people in one form or another.7 -
Yep. My father was pretty traumatized by going to boys schools and being relatively unathletic himself. I think he felt like he was protecting us from some of the teasing that goes along with sports. Youth athletic experiences can be very negative, depending on the oversite. But, when you don't start team sports early, you join in rather behind the curve, and it's really discouraging.4
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I agree that upbringing definitely plays a big part in weight and eating habits. Being overweight definitely runs in my family and a large part of that is due to the eating habits that have been ingrained into us. Basically, it is eat whatever you want. As someone with a sweet tooth, those calories add up fast. My mom's definition of healthy foods tend to not be low calorie. She also plans everything around food. Every family get together, that is the main thing she talks about when planning the event. My mother is ok living in denial about what it takes to actually lose weight and keep it off (she always wants to lose weight, but doesn't want to listen to me when I tell her what it would take), but I am not. I hope to be able to teach my kids to have a much healthier relationship with food than I have.3
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Love=food=love, why is that such a hard notion to break free from??? People always think of food as a way to show love. I used to get caught up in that many times and maybe still do from time to time.
I know when any of our 3 kids comes back home, I try to bake something special I know they like or at least have items I know they like available in the house, in case they want to cook.
And then there's the sabotaging mindset where people want to indulge so almost push it on you to help alleviate their own guilt. But that's something different.
Side note: My mom was a wonderful cook and baked a lot of treats! I distinctly remember begging her to help me lose weight and she said 'just don't eat it'. K, thanks. I also remember begging a Dr. to help me as well and her suggestion was eat carrots, not cookies. K, thanks. Again. It all boils down to the fact we gotta do this for ourselves and not expect it to come from others. Hopefully, inside each one of us that wants this, will be a strong enough inner self that gets us where we want to be. I mean, when we grow up we have no excuse except for ourselves. Our parents' feeding us is done with but it's hard letting go of habits and changing our mindset. 8 -
I was always a bit bigger than my friends and definitely felt that way, but was active outdoors a lot until my pre-teens, maybe? My mom was a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids, and cooked every night of the week. Going out to eat was a rare occasion, a treat. We did definitely have a lot of snack at home, but we also ate a fresh salad with lots of fresh veggies at every meal. I was allowed to drink soda once a day, and got a candy bar once per week. However, I definitely remember eating Little Debbie's after school. I was the only one one in my family (3 brothers) who ever seemed to be "chubby," though. My 2 brothers were "skinny," and one was probably underweight. My mom didn't seem to be like most moms in that she never seemed to be on a diet or unhappy with herself....if she was, she never said it out loud. Overall, though, I think for my mom growing up in the south and us living in Indiana, our diet was probably healthier than most in the area. There were definitely comments from my parents about my weight, but they were few and far between and I know were coming out of a place of trying to help. My mom actually said something along the lines of the dreaded "You'd be so pretty if you lost some weight".
I went on an extreme diet at age 14 and lost a lot of weight (putting it back on and then some), but it set up the path of disordered eating and thinking about food and years of restrict/binge cycles for years and years. It took a lot of my own self-awareness and changes in mindset to be able to lose in a healthy way and keep it off.
I have 2 kids now, ages 10 and 12 (in a few weeks). They are both on the bigger side, chubby (and it is more noticeable in my daughter). I wonder if them seeing me exercise frequently, track my food, etc., will seem obsessive to them when they are older, or healthy habits. I tell my kids that I was chubby and didn't feel good about myself, and that's why I'm passionate now about making healthier choices and exercising. They also know I have a lot of digestive issues and muscle/joint issues that can be exacerbated by what I'm eating. I have really tried to instill in them making food/movement choices that make us FEEL better, not to lose weight. It's funny, we talk about added sugar and I don't buy regular soda or juice, and they don't even drink diet soda all that much. They bought some drinks at Six Flags the other day, and they were SHOCKED at how much sugar was in the drinks. My nearly 12-year old son said he didn't want to drink it all at once, and didn't want to have any other sugary treats the rest of the day...which he forgot, because he then ate an ice cream cone at his friend's house 4 -
lucytalbot94 wrote: »
For me, my daddy fell very ill when I was only young and due to that we didn't do much that involved being physically active. Before he was poorly we would go swimming, walking, playing in the park etc. However, after his operation we spent a lot of time doing activities at home (drawing, painting rocks, racing snails, writing stories together etc).
This really hit home. My dad got sick when I was a teenager. Same general scenario.
I asked my Dr. what I could do to make sure that didn’t happen to me in a few years. He laughed, said I was a little young to start worrying and very healthy. Then he said to eat apples instead of french fries and bananas instead of chips and keep playing hard after school. It really had an effect on me. I still don’t eat fries, most deep fried foods, or chips often.
However, he didn’t tell me about the fat in milk, cream, ice cream, butter, etc. Now, that’s my biggest healthy eating battle.3 -
Mixed bag. My mom was never particularly active until much later in life. When I was a child my dad played tennis regularly on the weekends and we had friends with a boat and lake house so we would often spend Sundays up at the lake water skiing. That said, the higher up the corporate ladder my dad climbed, the busier he got and started putting on weight in his mid to late 30s.
I think the bigger thing for myself and my sister is that our parents realized early on that we were both naturally athletic so they started us out in youth sports pretty early. I started running club track in 3rd grade with Hershey's Track and Field. I ran track in the spring, swim lessons and then swim team in the summers, football in the fall, and gymnastics in the winter for most of my early life. I dropped gymnastics after 7th grade when I hit a growth spurt and couldn't tumble all that well anymore. In high school I played one season of football in 9th grade but was starting to specialize much more with track and field. I ran track all through high school in the spring and continued with club swim team in the summers. Fall and winter became kinda my off season though I would start working on track stuff in the winter to prepare for spring.
I remained pretty active into my adulthood joining the military and then in college I did warehouse work and landscape construction and didn't own a car for most of that time and walked and biked everywhere. My friends and I were really into Ultimate Frisbee and did lots of hiking and backpacking. I graduated when I was 30 and took a desk job working 12+ hours per day and traveling about 25 weeks out of the year for business. I became much less active and put on about 40 Lbs from 30-38 years old when I decided I needed to turn things around. I enjoy road cycling, mountain biking, family walks and walking my dog most mornings, hiking when I can, playing around with my kids in the pool, and archery...which isn't much of a workout, but it's dang fun and still active.
My kids are both active. Both play soccer but my oldest is moving from club to play for his school. My youngest (9) has a fall and spring season. My oldest (11) will have a fall season of soccer at school and wants to try track and field in the spring. My oldest has also been doing archery for about 3 years which is what got me into it.3 -
Thank you all so much for your insight!
I think the take away from this is that our upbringing definitely effects our mindset; whether positive or negative; and due to that it can effect our relationship with food/exercise!2 -
wunderkindking wrote: »My childhood involved very little activity and using food as a reward. Not a good combo at all. Plus I seem to have inherited a gigantic sweet tooth. In our house, there was *always* dessert to follow the meal, IF we ate everything on our plates. And if we didn't clean our plates, we were given the guilt trip of starving children in Ethiopia. I remember any kind of Drakes snack foods and Kool-Aid always being available in the house. So, yeh, it was a rough start but have learned a bit along that way. Better late than never, right?
Oh, oh god this 'clean your plate/starving kids' thing. This one is absolutely a thing that went on - and I think it's largely generational because I know my mom grew up with it from my grandparents and it's likely directly related to not dying in the Depression but being able to throw food away/not eat everything given to me and clear my plate was a THING.
I have MEMORIES of you're not leaving the table until you've eaten it all stuff, and just.
That one probably helped absolutely no one and created a lot of weird food issues for a lot of people in one form or another.
I grew up with this, but the portions were appropriate. It became a problem when I started eating in American restaurants where the portions are just way too big. These days I'm pretty good about planning to just eat half. (Of course, I haven't been to a restaurant in ages and prior to the pandemic we had slowed down on eating out after redoing our backyard in 2016.)
Now that I have been logging food for so long, when I serve myself something familiar I'm pretty good at not putting a gram more on my plate than I want. With new recipes, it behooves me to get the calories before I start eating
But other than "The Clean Plate Club," Mom modeled very good eating and exercise habits, which unfortunately did not stick when I left home.2 -
I was an unathletic kid, partly because I'd rather be reading a book than, well, anything, and partly because of what we now know is the kinesthetic difficulties that are common with autistic people. It took me longer to learn physical sequences, and that shuts you out of group sports quickly.
I pudged up just before puberty really hit and my mom panicked and put me on a strict diet. If she'd left me alone, a year later the pudge would have relocated to curves, but it pretty much damaged my ability to leave food alone if I wasn't hungry. I was always ravenously hungry. This is not surprising as during the worst of it I was doing things like changing shoe size every three months and growing two inches a year. That degree of ravenous, unsatisfied hunger bites deep. But my requests for seconds were met with denials. I'd had enough. I didn't need to eat like a laborer, my mother would say. Be a lady. I also lived in a house where anger and frustration were not emotions that we kids were allowed to have. I piled food on them to keep them down.
And I like food. Food is tasty. Food is fun. Food opens up other cultures in accessible ways. Food practices are deeply linked to everything from family to religion to commerce to cultural constructions of gender. This was and is fascinating stuff to me. The combination of that bottomless pit within me and my straightforward enjoyment of food meant that I was not thin when I got married.
And then when my eldest son was two years old, I was in a car wreck, and mangled a foot. They rebuilt my midfoot with pins and screws and it took me two years to walk normally again. This doesn't help you have an active lifestyle.
We were poor, and ate a lot of starch-based but tasty poverty food. I became a very good cook because, well, one has to eat, and I'm good enough that my experiments were always edible if not always what I was aiming for.
After I left my first husband and moved in with my boyfriend, I learned a lot about expressing emotion in a healthy way. I wrestled the bingeing habit down to a minimal point, which is where it is now; these days, a binge is an extra dessert eaten in a certain mood. He and my girlfriend were amazingly supportive of me getting better, as I am of them. So when I went to the doctor and the scale said 296, I knew that I needed to do something.
I am still autistic. I still have ADHD. They impact the day to day weight loss issues. The doctor said I would have arthritis in my midfoot by my forties, and he was right, I do. So I have to spend a certain amount of my time non-weightbearing, because I'd like to be able to walk tomorrow. But I have lost 55 pounds so far just with diet, and as I add in weight work, I feel better, my body is tightening up, and I'm beginning to feel like myself. I'm not thrilled that it took me till 50 to reach this point. But at least I reached it, and I'm still working on it.
I go back to the doctor for the first time in person since the revelation of the scale in January 2020, tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what she says.12 -
wunderkindking wrote: »My childhood involved very little activity and using food as a reward. Not a good combo at all. Plus I seem to have inherited a gigantic sweet tooth. In our house, there was *always* dessert to follow the meal, IF we ate everything on our plates. And if we didn't clean our plates, we were given the guilt trip of starving children in Ethiopia. I remember any kind of Drakes snack foods and Kool-Aid always being available in the house. So, yeh, it was a rough start but have learned a bit along that way. Better late than never, right?
Oh, oh god this 'clean your plate/starving kids' thing. This one is absolutely a thing that went on - and I think it's largely generational because I know my mom grew up with it from my grandparents and it's likely directly related to not dying in the Depression but being able to throw food away/not eat everything given to me and clear my plate was a THING.
I have MEMORIES of you're not leaving the table until you've eaten it all stuff, and just.
That one probably helped absolutelye no one and created a lot of weird food issues for a lot of people in one form or another.
I grew up with that as well, but my parents never put massive amounts of food on my plate. For the most part, "clean your plate" was largely attributable to me not wanting to eat my peas or something...it was almost always the veg.
My mom was also very sugar conscious, so we didn't really have sweets and such in the house. No fun cereals...usually just cheerios or oatmeal and candy was nonexistent in the house. My sister and I were allowed one glass of orange juice, apple juice, or grape juice per day...usually breakfast. After that it was water or milk. Desert was typically served on Saturday evenings only.
I did develop an affinity for soda...I was 10 years old and had a walking paper route and part of my route was a retirement home that had an old fashioned soda machine with glass bottles. I had my own money with having the paper route, so I'd pretty regularly buy myself one and drink it on my walk home at the end of my route and toss it before I got home so my parents would be none the wiser...shhhh, don't tell.4 -
Upbringing played a very large role in the way I eat and move. I was one of those "smart" kids always in the top 3 in class. I liked books and anything that had to do with learning, I was a very curious child. I also liked art and doing things with my hands. Naturally, my parents chose gifts and activities that aligned with my interests because they wanted me to be happy. This meant most of my gifts were books or something that had to do with learning/crafting/painting. All sedentary activities. They tried introducing me to sports a few times but I showed no interest at all, so they stopped trying and my gifts and activities continued to be mostly sedentary. My sister, on the other hand, showed great interest in sports so that's what they supported her to do. Thankfully, they didn't have to juggle activities for 2 very different kids because there is a large age gap between us.
As for food, we grew up with idea that "food is love". Mom cooked our favorite dishes when we were feeling down or when they wanted us to feel special, my grandmother always loved us with food, and showing hospitality has always been (and still is) about food. Many of my pleasant childhood memories involve food and eating in some way. I grew up loving food and enjoying it guilt free. I didn't even consider dieting until I was in my 30s despite being morbidly obese (for comparison, I'm now lighter than I was in high school!). My sister is very active and juggles several kinds of sports, but she's slightly overweight because she too grew up in this environment where good food is always available, allowed, and encouraged.
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I grew up on a farm, doing school by Distance Education (not homeschooling as such, we had teachers & a curriculum but lessons were delivered by our parents and/or via radio - nowadays via video online but my time was before that). So school was a bit less traditional, in the sense that we didn't have PE classes with other kids etc. and a lot of our PE was more theory-based. Now, you'd think growing up on a farm would mean lots of outdoor time and lots of activity - and you'd be right, we were outside more often than not as kids. We'd play our own version of sports adapted for two or three kids to play, or ride motorbikes, we had pushbikes to ride as well, and horses, and just generally outdoor play.
And yet, the three of us were (are) obese.
I hadn't really thought about why that is, but looking back I remember the size of the meals we were served, and I remember unhealthy snacks being always available and eaten every day. We were definitely pushed into finishing everything on our plates (there's a photo somewhere of me asleep at the table with my head on the plate and my arm in the gravy). But I really, honestly think that it's the size of the meals that was the issue, and eating three square meals a day plus two snacks and dessert.
My parents didn't really model healthy eating or activity. Dad was always busy on the farm and I realise now just how many calories he must burn on a daily basis. But Mum stayed home with us, taught us school, did the bookwork and the housework and didn't have (make?) time for exercise. As a teen, she was thin, and so was Dad, so it's not genetics at play, it's all environmental.
I don't blame my parents for my size, not at all. I knew from a young age that I was fat, and I was bullied for that at school get-togethers. My sister and I tried a few times to lose weight as teens, we used to do aerobics in front of the tv, make up dances to songs, play tennis etc. But we weren't really equipped with the knowledge that we needed about what and how much to eat.
Now, I do have that knowledge and I'm working to fix the damage to my body. Now, I'm a Mum myself and I want my son to have a healthy relationship with food, and activity, and his body. He's two, so he doesn't like to eat many vegetables but we always serve him some and sometimes he eats them. We don't force him to eat any more than he wants to - within reason, of course. We offer a couple more times after he says he's done, and then leave it at that. His dessert is typically greek yoghurt with fruit, so even if that's most of what he's eaten it's not terrible. We try to get him outside every day to play, I take him for walks with me, we kick a ball around or he rides his bike. And we celebrate what his body can do, how he's growing up big & strong.
This was a very long-winded way to say that yes, I believe that my upbringing contributed to my weight as an adult - though ultimately the blame is on me, not my parents. Armed with this knowledge, I am aiming to make sure my kid/s is given an upbringing that equips him for a long & healthy life!
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I was a very unathletic kid, was fed a lot of "junk" food, but was super skinny. I have always been active as an adult, and gained weight later in life. So I guess I don't fit the mold.
I had a lot of trauma in my childhood, and was raised by a narcissist, so if you count the fallout from that surfacing later in life, then maybe I can blame it on my upbringing.
For my own kids I was always active and modeled healthy activity for them, we took active vacations at the cottage, and they always did sports (hockey, soccer, swim team) and are all far more athletic than I ever was. Hopefully that gives them a good base as they get older. I think it probably helps but is only one piece of the puzzle.2 -
Pretty sure my family broke all the molds.
Mom was and still is overweight - sometimes obese - and has never been (what I would call) fit so long as I can remember.
Father was and still is thin/trim, always had a physical hobby (running and then bicycling as his knees gave out).
Food was always a special thing in our house, and still is when we visit mom (they're divorced). Food is her way of showing she loves you, it's how she tries to make people and groups feel special and like she cares. Not sure how or why food was always a thing, but it was.
I grew up on a large hobby farm, tomboy, so always outside, doing chores, playing with the animals, riding the horses, climbing trees, dog sledding in the winter with my huskies - you get the idea. I was the oldest, and the only one that never was "overweight" as a child.
My brother and sister, who also had chores and stuff, have spent most of their lives a little chunkier - not obese, but they wouldn't be accused of being "skinny" either. I was thin until my mid-30's when I finally got a desk job LOL.
Even at my absolute heaviest, I had about 30 pounds to lose. Right now that's more like 15-20, and my version of "overweight" has been that 15-20 pound range. Pretty sure my sister's lowest weight ever (when she was in her undergrad and heavily involved in the bicycling and cross country teams in her small college) she probably still had a good 20 pounds she could have stood to lose. She was, however, the "girlier" girl, and clearly spends a lot more time primping than I think I ever have LOL.
Brother, like my sister, has never been thin/trim. Neither of them have gone into obese territory, but neither has ever been "thin."
I *feel* like activity levels between my sister and I are similar, but despite being 11 years older than her, I often still feel like the more fit one, and am still the more trim one.
The only thing I can really say is that I am also the one that took more after our father in terms of overall build and looks - my siblings both took more after mom. I do think I am prone to more easily gaining, and carrying, more muscle than my sister - not that she is weak, but just in our shoulders alone, mine are clearly more "muscled" than hers.
The food thing has been an issue - I still have problems throwing food out or not finishing a meal when eating out. Plus, for 30+ years, I could just about eat whatever I wanted (during a couple periods of intense activity, it was all I could do to consume enough food) - so when I've had multiple points in my life when I had to pack away 3-5K calories a day just to maintain my weight, and now need to eat more like 1600-ish to lose anything, my stomach hormones are in complete rebellion LOL.2 -
very early childhood i am told we didn't have much food. we lived in poverty and my parents weren't around much. sometimes my older brother would make us ketchup sandwiches.
my dad remarried and my step mom cooked throughout my childhood but was very strict on portions. i remember one time i got seconds at dinner and my mother was so mad and cried bc that meant my dad couldn't eat. our church would sometimes donate food to us around the holidays. there was a lot of body shaming in my family. ive never been overweight but my stepmother would tell me i was fat and should eat less.
currently i struggle with portion control/binging behavior and disordered eating. i eat too fast and im not picky at all very few things i won't eat. i will literally pull food back out of the trash and eat it im a mess.
still struggle with body image issues bc of my upbringing.16 -
very early childhood i am told we didn't have much food. we lived in poverty and my parents weren't around much. sometimes my older brother would make us ketchup sandwiches.
my dad remarried and my step mom cooked throughout my childhood but was very strict on portions. i remember one time i got seconds at dinner and my mother was so mad and cried bc that meant my dad couldn't eat. our church would sometimes donate food to us around the holidays. there was a lot of body shaming in my family. ive never been overweight but my stepmother would tell me i was fat and should eat less.
currently i struggle with portion control/binging behavior and disordered eating. i eat too fast and im not picky at all very few things i won't eat. i will literally pull food back out of the trash and eat it im a mess.
still struggle with body image issues bc of my upbringing. That sounds pretty rough and I can imagine could create a whole host of issues. I hope you can come to more peaceful terms with foods.
Why does food create such complications for some of us? And it's so different for all of us.4 -
I have two tales.
First: My husband. He is a decade older than me, and has a family of origin that put the fun in dysfunctional.
By which I mean horrific neglect. Bare cupboards were the norm, and parental supervision was nearly nonexistent.
My husband was the oldest of four (who were still in mom’s custody. There were others) and frequently had to beg neighbors for food. Or just straight up shoplift.
Please don’t judge. He had to start doing this kind of thing even before he began grade school. And if he didn’t? His younger brothers wouldn’t eat.
Now he has dementia. And a big part of my job is making sure he can physically see that we have food. Milk in the fridge. Bread. Some cheese. Cans and cans and cans in a full pantry. A stuffed chest freezer.
And meat for dinner every night.
If he begins to think we don’t have enough? He gets very agitated. It’s no joke.
Eating out? It doesn’t matter where. It might as well be the Ritz. Restaurant food is his Big Safe Emotional Spot.
So yes. His relationship with food in childhood has had a lasting effect.
Me? We were really poor after my dad’s heart attacks. And after he died when I was 13? We went from poor to “will the electricity be on when we get home from school? Who knows?”
But somehow my mom managed to always have something for us to eat.
No Little Debbies of course. Those were for rich kids. But we had fresh veggies from friends. Actual government cheese in the 10 lb loaf with the block printed cardboard box. Hamburger helper with no hamburger.
And free lunch at school.
The best, though, was every year at the end of the school year, the lunch ladies at the school where my mom taught always “accidentally” made too many ham salad sandwiches on the last day. And they’d give my mom a massive box of them to take home at the end of the day. I mean a massive box. And their ham salad sandwichs were chef’s kiss perfect
So, my only food related emotional issue from my childhood is the feeling that the sword of Damocles is somewhere above. But also that literally anything that’s actually edible has a place at the table somehow. Which makes me like big batch cooking, and buying in bulk. I’ve even developed a very good recipe for a nutritionally complete dehydrated soup that we now have packed in big boxes of seal a meal bags.
The restaurant supply house is one of my favorite places to shop because of this. And also because it means I can give food to anyone who is going through a hard patch.
Giving back, and paying it forward.
Exercise wise? I was a reader. All day if I could get away with it. And painting, model building, etc were top activities. When I was old enough I got a paper route, which burned calories daily. I rode my bike everywhere when I was a kid. And my unicycle that I got when I was 11 was my favorite thing until I had to sell it when I was poor and 19.
But I was utterly useless in team sports. Or on a group hike. I was the kid picking daisies in the outfield. Always picked last for the team. Hated gym because literally everyone was better than me, and usually my gym teacher just gave up on me.
Dodgeball in third grade I was nothing but a target. More than once I would just sneak away from the field and no one cared at all that I was gone. It didn’t help that I needed glasses and couldn’t see ten feet in front of my face. That wasn’t discovered for a couple more years.
High school though…. I talked my gym teacher into letting me ride my unicycle around the gym while everyone else did whatever it was they did and that was fantastic. I think that gave me a sense that I might be an autistic clumsy useless to any sports team kind of athlete - but it didn’t matter because I could do my own thing and that was good.
I was always skinny. The weight didn’t start piling on until my thyroid took a nosedive when I was in my early 30’s and my doctor back then absolutely refused to increase my thyroid medication until I’d gained 50 lbs.
I’d work off 30, the thyroid would give me a couple middle fingers, I’d gain 50…. Lather rinse repeat. It was a decade or more before I could get a doctor to listen to me about my thyroid issues. And a few more years even before one recognized I needed more than one thyroid med.
I finally worked almost all that weight off…. And here comes the balance disorder….
That’s been steadily getting worse for 12 years now. No doctor has seemed to care enough to figure it out. But here I am. Now diabetic with neuropathy because of a neurologist who I would sue for malpractice if I felt like going to that trouble. I’d probably win…. Off topic.
Anyhow. Ya.
Upbringing has some lasting echoes for everyone, I think. And I’m lucky mine aren’t darker than they are.15 -
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I don't think we had any starving kids to be threatened with because nobody was not eating in our house. 😀0
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springlering62 wrote: »
Yeah, I bet we could map age by that. We got Ethiopia too, or more generically Africa.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1231240172 -
springlering62 wrote: »
Yeah, I bet we could map age by that. We got Ethiopia too, or more generically Africa.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123124017
I think we got Africa as well... and don't ever offer to let the poor starving kids have your plate of food... 4 -
springlering62 wrote: »
Yeah, I bet we could map age by that. We got Ethiopia too, or more generically Africa.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123124017
I think we got Africa as well... and don't ever offer to let the poor starving kids have your plate of food...
When I was in elementary school, there was a lunch room monitor (one of the teachers) that made sure you ate everything in your lunch. She would check to make sure you were not throwing out any food.
One day, I got caught trying to throw out part of my sandwich. The teacher made me go to her classroom and look at photos of starving children in Africa and said I was the reason they are dying. Nice, huh?6 -
I'll say yes and no. You learn a lot of behavioral habits as a kid and some of them you keep. For me it has been keeping things organized. I did that as a kid and still do it today (OCD issue) especially at the gym.
But then you learn things behaviorally as an adult too. It's NOT uncommon to see so many people who may have been active all their teens and early 20's, to become couch potatoes once they get out of college and join the REAL WORLD. I've seen lots of instances where parents were normal in weight and their kids who are grown adults now all overweight and obese in some cases.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
3 -
springlering62 wrote: »
No starving children for me. I grew up with Scottish parents and it was waste of food that was the real horror.
My petite ladylike mother ate like a bird. My tall lanky father and I would finish her meal. No food was allowed to go to waste. I still feel that need to clean my plate, and I've been known to finish other people's meals.
Other than that, the influence was more about dietary choices, and it wasn't bad at all. I was taught that vegetables could form an entire meal, meat was not necessary. My dad had hypertension from a young age so we ate low sodium and never added salt. I find most prepared food tastes overly salty to me because I'm used to food without it. We ate whole grain/whole wheat before it was cool and that remains my taste preference. Of course, we also ate all kinds of organ meats, which may be part of the reason I no longer eat any meat.3 -
springlering62 wrote: »
No starving children for me. I grew up with Scottish parents and it was waste of food that was the real horror.
My petite ladylike mother ate like a bird. My tall lanky father and I would finish her meal. No food was allowed to go to waste. I still feel that need to clean my plate, and I've been known to finish other people's meals.
Other than that, the influence was more about dietary choices, and it wasn't bad at all. I was taught that vegetables could form an entire meal, meat was not necessary. My dad had hypertension from a young age so we ate low sodium and never added salt. I find most prepared food tastes overly salty to me because I'm used to food without it. We ate whole grain/whole wheat before it was cool and that remains my taste preference. Of course, we also ate all kinds of organ meats, which may be part of the reason I no longer eat any meat.
Yeah, no starving children for me, either, but I was never a problem child when it comes to food. I always finished everything on my plate. The only thing I refused to eat was chicken and meat, so my mom basically didn't put any on my plate and that was that.
My family hated wasting food (without starving children). I just remember mom saying she needs to cook/use this or that before it spoils so it doesn't go to waste.3
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