Anyone else who has been overweight since they were kids???

2

Replies

  • BranMuffin86
    BranMuffin86 Posts: 314 Member
    I'm about to be 27 and have ALWAYS been overweight. I was suffering from high blood pressure and I knew that it was time for a change plus I was official in plus size clothing for the first time. I've always hovered between the juniors and plus. Now I'm trying to reverse 26 years of thinking and change my lifestyle for the better and reap all the benefits of it.
  • moontenshi23
    moontenshi23 Posts: 29 Member
    I've been overweight since about 7 or 8 years old. By the time I was 13 I was already over 200 pounds and at a size 16. Not only was being teased because of my weight not fun as a kid, but being forced to shop in the women's section (the place I referred to as the old lady section at the time) wasn't great either. I managed to get down to 195 or so with the help of weight watchers at 18, but then ballooned up further than before. At 21 I weighed my highest, coming in at around 245 pounds and bursting out of a size 18. Today I weigh 184, pounds, which is less than I did as a 13 year old and so strange to think about. As someone else mentioned, it is hard to figure out your goal weight when you have no thinner you to reference.
  • qtgonewild
    qtgonewild Posts: 1,930 Member
    I was always obese, from childhood until less than a year ago. Everyone keeps asking me what my goal weight is but I am not real sure because I have no thin comparison of myself to go by. I've lost 100 pounds since July of 2012 and it's interesting because there are lots of things I like about being thinner but some things I don't like.

    i too have no idea of a goal weight because ive never been thin. may i ask what it is you dont like about being thin :O
  • AmyP619
    AmyP619 Posts: 1,137 Member
    I've always been over weight. Maybe since the age of 5? I started getting chunky in elementary school, and I've been overweight ever since. This is actually the smallest I've been since I was 12, and I'm still overweight. I have like another 50 lbs to lose before I'm not overweight anymore!! Lol sad but true!
  • sugarstrawberries
    sugarstrawberries Posts: 140 Member
    I remember my pediatrician's chart always having me in the 95th percentile. I always thought it was a good thing I was at the top of the paper.
  • Boogage
    Boogage Posts: 739 Member
    Me! I'm finally kicking this fats butt though and determined to finally wear a bikini before I'm 30!
  • amcsouth
    amcsouth Posts: 283 Member
    Yeah! I weigh less now, at 22, then I did when I was 6 :/ At my highest I was 265lb and I'm now down to about 156lb! So I totally get what you mean when you say you have no idea what your goal weight would be! So I have a goal range :):)
  • honey_bee_keysha
    honey_bee_keysha Posts: 773 Member
    I was for about 25 years. It wasn't until last year that I started to take control of my weight. I am no longer overweight according to the BMI.
  • abheshek
    abheshek Posts: 525 Member
    i was overweight for about 14 years
  • Crusader_82
    Crusader_82 Posts: 22
    Been a fatty my whole life. I’m 49.
  • NikiChicken
    NikiChicken Posts: 576 Member
    Yup, I'm 42 and have been overweight my entire life. I was *close* to goal weight for a time in my mid-20's, but never actually got there. This is the first time in my life that I actually feel in control of my eating and exercise and like I might actually get there. It's also the first time in my life I'm not trying to crash diet and instead I'm eating at a moderate calorie deficit and exercising moderately. Things I can sustain for the rest of my life instead of eating a starvation diet of frankenfoods and exercising like a mad woman trying to lose 50 pounds in 2 months and then giving up when it didn't work.
  • creech6317
    creech6317 Posts: 869 Member
    Up until I was 10 years old I was a very active tomboy type of girl. Riding dirtbikes and being outside playing in the woods, climbing trees, etc.
    Then my family moved to a larger city, no more dirtbike riding, no more woods to run around in, so I plopped in front of the TV and started gaining weight.
    I weigh less now (at 150lbs) then I did in junior high school. This is the smallest I have weighed and I am now 43, so I would say that I was bigger for a lot longer than I have been thin (and I am still considered overweight according to the whole BMI thing).
  • sealevels
    sealevels Posts: 123
    I've been overweight all of my life. I've tried crash dieting, exercising like a fiend, and only have maybe a year of "skinny time" to show for it. Now I'm doing it the right way. I hope I'll be where I want to be by 2015.
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    I am much older, 36, but yes I have been overweight since childhood!

    When I was 0-5 years old I was average weight or maybe even a tiny bit "thin"! But around age 6-7 I had a major growth spurt, started looking like a preteen, and weighing what a preteen does. I didn't have visible "pudge" or anything really, I was just huge for a kid of my age.

    That continued through my elementary years, and by the end of 4th grade I was 5'6" tall and around 125-130 lb. So I was average for a full grown woman - but not so average for a 10 yr old. My dad was a big guy, 6'4" and around 250 lb so everyone just expected me to shoot up to 6 feet by age 18.

    I didn't. I got to 5'8" by age 14 and then stopped growing height wise. However, I continued to put on weight. By junior high I was in a size 14 and weighed around 180-190 lb. By high school, I was a size 20 jeans, 2X shirt, and hovered around 240 lb.

    In college I got bigger due to stress, a spider bite (steroids prescribed and lots of inactivity during hospitalization), depression and anxiety. By my junior year (age 22) I was 299 lb and feeling pretty awful. I started an obsessive phase that wasn't exactly an ED, but not very healthy either...and got down to my previous low adult weight of 227 by the time I'd been out of college one year.

    Then I got married at 25 and went back up around 260-270 lb for years, through the rest of my 20's and into my early 30's. I always hovered around that weight and felt pretty comfortable with it, to be honest. Then I had a new stressful & totally sedentary job and a lot more money (for my ex and I that meant lots of "treats" and frequent dining out), and wound up at my all-time high of 307 lb at age 32.

    I exercised and lost quite a bit from just that, back into my "comfortable range" 270 weight. I wound up divorcing my ex and moving, changing jobs, etc, and still stayed at that weight. Then I met my current partner (my wonderful fiancé) at age 35 and since we have been together I drastically changed my eating habits and got to 262 lb, then joined MFP and have lost another 43 making me now 219 lb at age 36.

    Sorry that was so long and quite a lot of info. If I get down to my mental goal weight right now, I'll be the same size I was when I started 8th grade (180-ish pounds).
  • ravegee
    ravegee Posts: 999 Member
    I've been overweight on and off throughout my entire life
  • lavaughan69
    lavaughan69 Posts: 459 Member
    I was always considered "a solid girl" growing up. I did my first diet with my parents in grade 6, we did the Atkins diet. I got a lot of compliments on how I looked which was nice, but as with all fad diets, the weight came back on. At age 16 I did Atkins again but it basically turned into a tic tac diet until I passed out one day stepping out of the tub. At age 17 I was the thinnest I'd ever been, 116 lbs, but it was impossible to maintain as I was starving myself. Since that time I have yoyo dieted every couple years, losing and gaining the same 30-40 lbs. Unfortunately after each child was born I added 15 lbs to my "base" weight, so that 30-40 lbs swing resulted in a much higher number over the years.

    Here I am at the age of 42 and I'm down 36lbs....again....I'm really hoping that since I'm not doing a fad diet, that I don't restrict myself from eating and drinking the things I love, I just do it in moderation, that I will find a way to maintain when the time comes.

    Fingers crossed!
  • coolraul07
    coolraul07 Posts: 1,606 Member
    I was a overweight kid at the age of 3 and now im 19 and still overweight :(

    anyone else out there like that??
    I grew up below the poverty line so didn't have regular doctor visit except when absolutely necessary (vaccines, mandatory physicals, etc.), so I didn't start keeping track of my weight until age 10 and height until age 14. If I had to guess, I think that I've been borderline overweight since age 7 but I've always been tall so I was proportional. I know that I haven't been shirtless in public since about age 9 though.

    At age 10 (90-100#), I had to take a prescrip-med for a couple of years and it absolutely WRECKED my metabolism! By 12 I was 148# and by age 14 I was 196# (5'4"). At age 14 I was probably in the worst physical condition of my life; walking more than a few blocks or a couple of flights of stairs and I'd be winded.

    Then puberty went into maximum overdrive and I had rapid cycles of obese to 'skinny fat' and back. At 16 I was 4" taller but 36# lighter! I grad high school at 17 and I was 5'11.5" and 190#, "skinny fat" and technically overweight, but in decent shape because of a high-activity weekend job.

    At age 20 (1992) I finally stopped growing, upward that is, at topped off at 6'4". I was probably 240# at that point. That was probably the last time (before this year) that I was not obese as per BMI.

    I started this journey March 2013 at (probably) my highest BMI ever, 36.03 (296#). However, I was in MUCH better shape than I was at age 14 though, because I could wear a 40# backpack and walk for hours (zoos, amusement parks, other vacation spots). It was the scare of being officially diagnosed with HBP that triggered it for me. I'm now maintaining in the 240s and ascend 100+ floors of stairs/day semi-weekly and can do 2-4 continuous hours of high-incline treadmill (e.g. 3.0mph at 10-15%). Cardio is all-good and I'm in the best physical condition of my life at age 40 (recently stopped HBP meds), but I'm long overdue for strength training.
  • coonl0422
    coonl0422 Posts: 5
    I was born 9lb 7oz, which is the biggest birth in my family so far. From then on i was a little chubby; then as i got older i was always the one to go back for seconds. I remember being an XL in 6th grade...and it kept going from there. Now I'm 22 and waaaaay heavier than i want to be.
    The most important thing to remember...look to the future. Don't let who you were define you, be defined by who you want to be. Work hard, and keep your chin up.
  • FitBelleVie
    FitBelleVie Posts: 125 Member
    Looking back at pictures of myself, I think I was about 8 years old when my weight really ballooned. I think it was in part to my parents divorcing and the stress that it caused me but more so to my steroid inhalant for my terrible childhood asthma. I was an extremely active child and rarely watched TV and such. We even had a basketball court and lived right on a lake so I was always playing HORSE with my dad and brother and swimming. I was also in swimming lessons, basketball, soccer, baseball, ballet and tap dancing. But still, my weight ballooned. I remember being in fifth grade, I would turn on my radio and I would run circles around my bedroom for 20 minutes to get some cardio in to try and lose weight. I was conscious of my food intake even back then. Now that I have a child that age, I cannot BELIEVE that I was so consumed by my looks and weight at that young of an age. When I was in eighth grade, I was 180 pounds. I've just never been "small." I was in 7th grade working out every day on my mom's NordicTrac. I used that thing more than she did. The summer between my eighth grade and freshman year, I ran a mile every single night. My body shape did change but I didn't really lose weight. BUT, I did feel better about how I looked and the way I felt. I did pretty well keeping my body under control until I became pregnant with my first baby, when I was 20, and I gained 80 pounds. At least 35 of it was water retention and that fell off within three days of giving birth (I had pre-eclampsia). I did get down to almost my pre-pregnancy weight after I had him in about 9 months to a year but then I became pregnant again. Anyway, this has been a life-long struggle for me. Currently, I take blood pressure medication twice daily because after my last baby, whom I had in August 2011, my pregnancy induced high blood pressure never went away. It did with the other two pregnancies but not that one. I feel that I can get off of this medication if I can lower my weight significantly. But it might require that I get below where I was even before I was 12 years old. I am almost 30 years old now and I've never been so dedicated in all of my life to getting my weight down and my body confidence up. If you would like to cheer me on (and have me cheer you on!) would you add me? I am in need of some other really dedicated friends who are on MFP more than Facebook ;)
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  • rlinaresv
    rlinaresv Posts: 108
    I'll be 40 in Octuber. I've been overweight all my life. To be honest this is the first time in my adulthood that I wear size L in shirts and 34 in pants.

    Cheers
  • d6melanie
    d6melanie Posts: 84 Member
    Yup! Growing up and through my early 20's I was always 20-30 pounds over weight.... Then in my late 20's I added (gradually) about 50 pounds to that.

    I can totally relate to not knowing what a goal weight should be. When I was in high school anybody I told my weight too would be shocked, assuming I weighed 15-20 lbs less. (Which I SHOULD have.) So I'm not sure what I would even look like if I were actually 15-20 pounds less.

    Also, I remember having a conversation with a small (but curvy) friend when I was 19 or 20. She was complaining about gaining weight and she knew it because her stomach touched her legs when she was on the toilet, unless she sucked it in. I remember thinking.... you can be thin enough that that doesn't happen?! I had never experienced that and just thought when you sat of course your stomach would touch your leg, because it was bent....
  • laursoar
    laursoar Posts: 131 Member
    Yeah, I've been overweight since fourth grade or so! It's really hard for me to envision myself any other way, which makes things like goal weights pretty tough for me to figure out. I think the lowest weight I hit in high school was around 185 so that's the thinnest I can imagine myself (as an adult-sized person) in my head. By next year, hopefully that will have changed!
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    I was born 9lb 7oz, which is the biggest birth in my family so far. From then on i was a little chubby; then as i got older i was always the one to go back for seconds. I remember being an XL in 6th grade...and it kept going from there. Now I'm 22 and waaaaay heavier than i want to be.
    The most important thing to remember...look to the future. Don't let who you were define you, be defined by who you want to be. Work hard, and keep your chin up.

    My fiancé was born 10 lb 2 oz. He weighed 200 lb by age 9 and was around 400 lb when he graduated from high school, although he is not sure because his parents' home scale only went to 380. He's now been in the range of 220-240 lb for 11 years (he's 32 and 6'3").
  • Sugarhiccup03
    Sugarhiccup03 Posts: 88 Member
    Yup, I've struggled with my weight my entire life. Now in my 30's I'm determined not only to get it under control but to make an entire lifestyle change as well. Anyone feel free I add me. I'm on everyday and I try to motivate everyone along their journey :)!
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member

    Also, I remember having a conversation with a small (but curvy) friend when I was 19 or 20. She was complaining about gaining weight and she knew it because her stomach touched her legs when she was on the toilet, unless she sucked it in. I remember thinking.... you can be thin enough that that doesn't happen?! I had never experienced that and just thought when you sat of course your stomach would touch your leg, because it was bent....

    I have soooo been there. A hundred or more times!!

    Especially when talking with friends who were ALWAYS thin or smaller average sized, and then they gained a lot during pregnancy. It is simultaneously a bit amusing and frustrating to me dealing with those who haven't had a lifelong battle with their weight. Not that I don't sympathize...but it's just so different for them, I think!
  • whillowtree
    whillowtree Posts: 6 Member
    I am 52 i never have been thin even a heavy baby. I was never the one that wore a size 8 it was always double digits even grade school i was wear 16. high school weighed 200.
  • whillowtree
    whillowtree Posts: 6 Member
    I have always been the one to sabotage my weight loss. I would start losing then when my friends would get discouraged i would start to feel guilty cause i was doing it they were not i would start sabotage myself to make them feel better. That is very dumb of me to do. Now I see it which is good. Anyone else ever do this?
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,740 Member
    whillowtree, I have not really been in that situation because almost all of my friends have always been thin, or thinner than me anyway. I have actually had a difficult time maintaining friendships with some larger women my own size and larger due to problems with constant self-degrading. I won't abide that.
  • elmanre
    elmanre Posts: 14
    When I was born, people say to my mom, is he 3 months now? :( always overweight since I was born

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