Was anyone overweight during their childhood or teen years?

I was always chubby for as long as I can remember, I was bullied at school because of it and I always struggled when we did running, or anything physical really, I was last everytime we did cross country

I started gaining a lot of weight when I was 6 or 7, right around the time I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. For the past 14 years of my life, I have been overweight and struggled trying to lose it. I'm finally losing the weight now, and I feel great! I'm getting my diabetes under control, and my self esteem that I lost over the years is coming back. I'm hoping to get down to my ideal weight by this time next year.

I was it was the most frustrating thing i broke out of obesity and just over weight for my 10th grade year but by the end i was back to being obese saddly!
im trying so hard now! i always think back to the days where i was obese as a child and being like 8 or 9 and already having boobs which was just fat! i graduated high school at 230 240 pounds it takes a mission to make the cap and gounds look fat but i did!
so now i want to lose weight because im graduating college june of 2014 so i want to make it look amazing!

I've been fat since I was around 10. Before then I was overweight but not massively so. I was given steroids as a kid to help with a medical condition, and together with low self esteem, comfort eating and general laziness I just grew. Sure I was bullied and stuff at secondary school, but that's what kids do - pick on those different from themselves to support pack mentality so I don't blame them now. As a result I ended up bullying others to try to gain acceptance - something I regret massively since.

Some things I have been trying to do to fix where I am:
* Be more active
* Be better at portion control
* Make healthier choices more often
* Not be too hard on myself if I have a bad day and let it get me down. This previously would be the largest cause of me giving in

Being fat throughout your life, or having it sneak up on you later in life still leaves you in the same place. For me, coming to this site has been the first thing that has given me decent hope of being able to succeed though. Meeting lots of random strangers who give you support just seems to be good. You can post when you are having a bad day and you'll get support. We all want the same thing.

So good on all of you - you're in the right place, and you're doing the right thing. As I just read "I don't know how to lose 50lbs, but I do know to lose 1lb 50 times". It's a great quote and I plan to exercise it

So feel free to add me if you want another friend - you'll get where you're going.

I was not overweight - but I thought I was. My grad dress was a size 5 and yet I felt huge. I, too, grew up in a poor family. I sometimes went to bed hungry. My mom could bake for cheap and she was a great baker. I developed a huge sweet tooth. And, for completely different reasons, an equally huge lack of self-esteem.

It's odd how much what we think about ourselves affects the way we see ourselves. It also has a lot to do with media, unfortunately. I grew up in a time when Cindy Crawford was touted as having curves. Seeing J. Lo. and Byonce and the like has been great for my self-esteem. I'm happy my young neices see curvy healthy images all over the place. I never did.

Anyhow, by the time I was 22 I was as big as I felt.

It's more complicated than that, I know. And, yet it's not.

Thanks for the post. It's an interesting topic and I love hearing about all of our unique journeys.

I was chubby, and because kids can be very cruel, I was teased all thru school till I went thru puburty, and I did loose weight. I have always struggled with weight issues, in one way or another.

omg right!!! i was bullied so much through my life!!! it was at its worse senior year in high school! and you know what bothered me my two worst enimes were obese!!! i had a guy he weighed at least 300! and he told me i need to go kill my self im so ugly! it really hurt my self esteem i would sit there and eat my lunch alone since my one true realest friend had the other lunch period!

another time that really bugged me was i got to class a little early to my math class and sat in the front because i have bad vision and these girls sat around me and through the first couple of weeks they sat by me and told me to get lost that im to fat and no one wants to be around fat people!

this is just two of the many occasions that i had of being pushed around and made fun of! ugh people are just so mean!!

I was always chunky. It sucked.... ppl were *kitten*.

I was a fat baby, a fat toddler, a fat kid, a fat pre-teen, a fat teen and now I'm a fat adult.

Fat has become part of my identity.

I don't know what it's like to be thin or fit, I don't know what it will be like for me when I reach my goal. I don't know if I will be happy. I have hopes, but it's all conjecture, really. And all this not-knowing is rather frightening.

Will my hard work will pay off?
Will I be bitter that I had to do so much to get to what most consider "the starting point"?
Will I always feel so separate from people?

Everyday I have to fight these fears and have hope and optimism for my future self. My better self.

I could have written this myself! I have no idea what it feels like to be thin or if I ever will be thin or just a lot healthier! I got excited when I could sit cross-legged yesterday though without feeling like my circulation was being cut off, haha!

I was overweight as a child, but thinned out in my teens and by 17 was underweight. Then gradually put it back on through my 20s. I have never been properly overweight as an adult, but was borderline for a few of years while pregnant and breastfeeding.

I was never skinny like my sisters. I can remember being 150 pounds in 5th grade, but I was already 5' 5" tall. This put me right on the border between normal and overweight. The biggest problem I had was my mother telling me I was fat and various other things too. I never felt that I was pretty or attractive, then I joined the military. Imagine my shock and surprise when guys started talking to me and complimenting me. I'd look around to see who was behind me because of course they could not be talking to me right? Turns out, I was never fat to begin with, I just wasn't tall and skinny like my sisters.

Now, 20+ years later I am currently obese per my BMI. I am not at my heaviest, that was back in December, but I still have a long way to go. Looking back, I can see that I was healthy, not fat, not skinny, just right. Getting down into the 160s will put back into the normal BMI range.
I wish you success on your journey to a healthier you.

i've been heavy almost all my life with a drastic turn for the heavier when my aunt was murdered back in 1994. i have managed to wittle myself down to the same pant size that i graduated grade school in ( as sickening as that sounds at the moment) but still have a ways to go before i'm down to a manageable size.

I've been fat my whole life primary school/high school/uni. Leaving high school I was a size 20 and 17.5 stone, I carried on gaining for the next 6 years and topped at 19 stone 3. School was horrible for me every single day was horrible and I was bullied terribly I was just counting days till I didn't have to go anymore. I was rubbish at PE therefore avoided every possible lesson I could by 'forgetting' my kit or being 'ill' which didn't help, I'm also a comfort eater when I feel bad I turned to food and it wasn't exactly a salad I was eating. I've now lost 45lbs and I'm lighter than I was in high school but I still have a way to go.

I've been overweight most of the time since I was 11. I was normal for a year or so when I was 16, and also dropped down to normal for a while when I was 22 from doing yoga/relaxation. Until I was in my 30s, I was around 30lbs over - from where I am now - that would be a good place to be.

I was the one fat kid in my class since I was about 8 years old till I graduated. I was a really active kid, I just ate like crap because my family had terrible eating habits and I followed in their footsteps because I didn't know better. My classmates actually never teased or bullied me - I'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that I lived in a small town and went to a very small school, so I had known my classmates pretty much all my life. I did sometimes get rude comments from strangers/new people.

Looking back, while I was definitely overweight, I was not nearly as fat as I perceived myself to be while I was growing up. I was incredibly insecure, and I really thought I was morbidly obese. This resulted in some pretty unhealthy "dieting phases" in my teen years, which most people would probably classify as disordered eating. It wasn't until I moved out on my own to go to university that I learned proper eating habits and lost a lot of weight.