Do you wish you had started earlier/younger?

2

Replies

  • SkinnyWannabeGal
    SkinnyWannabeGal Posts: 143 Member
    I am so glad that I wasn't obsessed with my weight at a younger age. I only became overweight during pregnancy. And thank goodness I didn't know anything about counting calories or how many calories I needed to burn or eat in a day to lose weight, until recent years. You see, when I was much younger and didn't have any kids yet, I was engaged to a man who became obsessed with needing me to be thinner. I learned later that I was at the lower end of a healthy weight for my height, but he wanted me to be underweight and would limit how much I ate and even pull food out of my hand and tell me I'm too big to eat. He forced me to exercise even when I was so exhausted from working 13-15 hours a day, 7 days a week for months straight with no day off. And my job was a very physical job, being on my feet and rushing around all day long. Plus, I would walk over 10 blocks to get home every day. I barely had time to eat in a day and would usually skip dinner and just shower and head to bed ASAP when I got home. No matter how hard he pushed me to lose weight, I could never be tiny enough for him. If I had the weightloss knowledge back then that I do now, I would have misused it to be unhealthily underweight and that would have possibly led me to actually marry that guy. So I'm super happy that I was naive about weightloss until recently. And glad that it wasn't until after having my child that I Iearned how to lose weight so that I was able to use that knowledge to get back down to a healthy weight.
  • BuckyArden33
    BuckyArden33 Posts: 146 Member
    i wish i had started lifting weights in my teens, its taught me to be a better me in so many ways since i started last year
  • YalithKBK
    YalithKBK Posts: 317 Member
    edited May 2015
    I very much do. I've been overweight since high school. I was healthy once in college as I had a very active summer job (landscaping) but after that year, I got HUGE. I managed to work it off as I was still young and had a good metabolism but it has come back as I've aged.

    But I wish I would have learned about weight management at that age so that now, when I'm older and my metabolism has slowed, I would have a head start on my weight and I wouldn't have to be learning everything WHILE trying to lose.
  • DawnieB1977
    DawnieB1977 Posts: 4,248 Member
    I was thinner when I was younger, but I restricted calories too much. I wish I'd understood that I could eat normally to be healthy, and I wish I'd discovered strength training years ago.

    The reason I've been losing weight over the past few years has been pregnancy, so I don't think it would've made a difference if I were younger. Although maybe I'd have lost weight quicker if I'd had my babies in my 20s instead of in my 30s. Who knows.
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  • flrancho
    flrancho Posts: 271 Member
    I wish I had been more serious and had more will power or something earlier - maybe I would't be almost 30 and still single.

    I'd lost it all but 10 pounds once, stopped my diet and gained it all back in the first diet experience of my life. From then on it was a constant struggle to loose it again and I never could - until a year or so ago when I got off of the medication that, in large part, greatly helped my weight gain along. Now that I'm off of it, I'm steadily loosing weight.
  • nettam3re3
    nettam3re3 Posts: 66 Member
    I'm one of those people that believe I had to take the journey I did to be the person I am today. Many aspects of my life were impacted by my weight and insecurity but, because of the choices I made back then, I have two wonderful children and a loving hubby today that I may not have had if I'd started taking better care of myself earlier and therefore making different life choices. If I believed being thinner earlier wouldn't have changed anything and I'd still be here doing this today- then I would also have to negate the impacts loosing weight now is having on my confidence, activities and perspective today. This maybe a more philosophical response than you were looking for but today is today and there isn't anything I can do about yesterday :)
  • mygnsac
    mygnsac Posts: 13,413 Member
    try2again wrote: »
    It's not that I didn't care about my weight when I was younger- I just lacked appreciation for how years of carrying around all the excess weight was going to impact my life in every way in the long run. It never seemed urgent. Now it seems urgent.

    Me too. I'm 50 years old now and I can't help but wish I had smartened up when I was younger. Nothing I can do about that now, but I sure do have regrets.
  • cincysweetheart
    cincysweetheart Posts: 892 Member
    edited May 2015
    Well, I've always been big. I'm probably smaller than I was in middle school by now and I'm still not at my goal. But I grew up knowing about calories and nutrition and moderation and portion control. None of it was new information for me. I just didn't care.

    Do I wish I had started caring earlier? Started trying to lose weight? No. Not really. And not because I was able to have so much fun eating and drinking everything I wanted. But because I learned to accept myself and love who I was inside. Because I learned an awful lot about myself just in the 5-7 years immediately prior to when I started my weight loss. All of that self-knowledge and understanding was extremely helpful to me when I started planning out how I was going to do this. And in the time that has followed. It has made it so I could be successful. I'm not sure I would have been successful had I started earlier. I started when I was ready and when the time was right for me.

    The only thing I've learned and really wish that I had learned before is how absolutely powerful our brain is. Your body will 100% obey whatever your mind tells it. I wish I had learned (not just known… but learned) this is years ago. It would have saved me so many tears and so much stress (but not related to weight loss).
  • maasha81
    maasha81 Posts: 733 Member
    I never had weight issues till closer to 30 and I was simply eating too much. I do wish I started strength training earlier though.
  • kimondo666
    kimondo666 Posts: 194 Member
    i prefer not to linger on past. It just experiences that made you who you are now. Think about it as a experience and not an errors.
  • MarziPanda95
    MarziPanda95 Posts: 1,326 Member
    Yes, a little. I actually started earlier than a lot of people here since I started last year when I was 18. But I still wish I had started earlier. I have always been big but I was very depressed to be an overweight and then obese teenager. Since I lost weight I've become much more confident which I think is important since I started university in September. I don't feel like I'm losing out because I do still eat what I like, just less - and I feel good eating more fruit and vegetables than I used to. I feel that losing the weight now has given me a good platform to go on with the rest of my life... but I wish I'd had that platform earlier.
  • CooCooPuff
    CooCooPuff Posts: 4,374 Member
    I think so. I was obese though out high school.
  • Meganthedogmom
    Meganthedogmom Posts: 1,639 Member
    I've been overweight literally my whole life, so yeah, I wish I had started sooner.
    Of course I have been off and on diets since I was like 10 years old. This is the longest I've ever stuck with something.
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    I've had issues with weight for a long time, and have gone up and down the scale for years.

    Hindsight tells me that I was never in a place to deal realistically with my issues with weight until now. I have no regrets. The person that I was and all those experiences have made me the person that I am now. And she's pretty awesome.
  • Ninkyou
    Ninkyou Posts: 6,666 Member
    Yes. Unequivocally.
  • AmazonMayan
    AmazonMayan Posts: 1,168 Member
    I wasn't overweight other than pregnancy until late 30s. I was one of those that would notice a little extra weight and think "I need to lose some weight" and then without trying hard, I'd lose it. Sickening to think of now lol. I do realize I ate less and was much more active then so of course any extra came right off.

    I do wish I had started to lose this weight 5 or 6 years ago once my medical issues improved. I have a lot to lose because I had given up for awhile. But, can't go back so I push forward :) I'm happy I'm doing it now.
  • suke28
    suke28 Posts: 22 Member
    Five months ago I wasn't ready to give up eating to my heart's content. Now I want to see my abs again and be able to look down in the shower and see my holahey without my pouch being in the way :)
  • BioQueen
    BioQueen Posts: 694 Member
    I wish I had been able to figure things out in college and that I was able to lose it all and keep it off when I was 18. I was able to lose weight, but I yo-yoed a lot and was never able to get under 147 (from 181). But I realize now that I just couldn't get in the right mindset at the time, and that's okay. I am doing it now at 25, and while I wish I was where I would ultimately like to be, I am SO PROUD of myself for doing it now. Ultimately my health is what is going to matter the most, and I going in the right direction :)
  • LMS120yesIcan
    LMS120yesIcan Posts: 35 Member
    I wish I had the knowledge earlier on how to eat heathy and lose weight. When I was younger I straved myself to lose weight which never worked over a long period of time. now I know the best way to lose weight is to eat healthy and watch your portion size with some physical activity thrown in.
  • pollypocket1021
    pollypocket1021 Posts: 533 Member
    85kurtz wrote: »
    Hmm interesting question. When I was younger I had an eating disorder so am well aware of the pressures on young people (especially women) to be ultra thin. From that perspective I am glad I spent a while recovering from that. But I do wish I hadn't let myself become so fat now.

    This is a lot like me. I wish I had had the good information as a teenager to make decisions that wouldn't have led me down that path.

    But since I did, I'm glad I spent 10 years in recovery (never weighing myself or restricting, despite having 3 pregnancies). I was told I could never again safely diet, and I believed that for a long time.

    But for the first time, I have real information to make safe and healthy choices for myself. So I think since I wasn't able to start with MFP 15 years ago, the timing now is perfect.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I just wished I would have kept up on things. I never had a weight issue when I was younger and in fact had a hard time keeping weight on sometimes. I was always involved in athletics growing up...I was a track and field sprinter and jumper from 2nd grade through my senior year in high school...played football...swim team...gymnastics, etc... and then the military and then in college I was still a really active person and didn't own a car and road my bike or walked everywhere. I've always been a foodie so I've always eaten pretty well. I gained weight starting when I was about 30 when I graduated and took a desk job and my general activity went way down but I was still eating the same.

    I just wished I would have picked up some exercise to help offset sitting at my desk and I wish I would have made more efforts to continue to do the recreational activities I enjoyed. At the time, climbing the ladder was my main priority though and I was working about 70-80 hours per week and on the road for business about 25 weeks out of the year.

    If I could go back and tell my 30 year old self anything it would simply be to hit the gym and make some time for hiking and whatnot.
  • darcelchoy
    darcelchoy Posts: 89 Member
    I started many times when I was younger but I guess at 28 I've finally got the motivation to do something about my weight.
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  • grandma107
    grandma107 Posts: 70 Member
    The point of power is in the present moment. Blessings.
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  • Forty6and2
    Forty6and2 Posts: 2,492 Member
    I thought I was fat since I was a little kid, despite the fact that I was at a healthy weight. Even for most of my high school and middle school years, I was at a healthy weight but I wore clothes that were 2-3 sizes too big because that's what I thought I wore. And then I gained weight when I was probably a senior in high school, kept gaining through the beginning of college until I was 220 lbs. Through my childhood and teen years, I tried all kinds of stupid stuff to lose weight and I even began MFP with a stupidly low calorie goal

    So to answer the question, I wish I had appreciated myself more when I was healthier and I wish that I started exercising more frequently when I began gaining weight. Now I love exercise so I truly wish I would have began that sooner in life!
  • Tubbs216
    Tubbs216 Posts: 6,597 Member
    SkinnyWannabeGal wrote: »
    I am so glad that I wasn't obsessed with my weight at a younger age. I only became overweight during pregnancy. And thank goodness I didn't know anything about counting calories or how many calories I needed to burn or eat in a day to lose weight, until recent years. You see, when I was much younger and didn't have any kids yet, I was engaged to a man who became obsessed with needing me to be thinner. I learned later that I was at the lower end of a healthy weight for my height, but he wanted me to be underweight and would limit how much I ate and even pull food out of my hand and tell me I'm too big to eat. He forced me to exercise even when I was so exhausted from working 13-15 hours a day, 7 days a week for months straight with no day off. And my job was a very physical job, being on my feet and rushing around all day long. Plus, I would walk over 10 blocks to get home every day. I barely had time to eat in a day and would usually skip dinner and just shower and head to bed ASAP when I got home. No matter how hard he pushed me to lose weight, I could never be tiny enough for him. If I had the weightloss knowledge back then that I do now, I would have misused it to be unhealthily underweight and that would have possibly led me to actually marry that guy. So I'm super happy that I was naive about weightloss until recently. And glad that it wasn't until after having my child that I Iearned how to lose weight so that I was able to use that knowledge to get back down to a healthy weight.
    I'm sorry you went through that abusive situation. Glad that you moved on and sound happy and healthy now.
  • geraldaltman
    geraldaltman Posts: 1,731 Member
    Yes. If you were to turn the Hubble Space Telescope and look at the way back parts of my life, you would see a skinny bean pole kid who was active, was a four year member of the school swim team. I was never fast. I wasn't a star. But I participated and worked just as hard as the stars. Then I grew up. Got a job and with that all the associated life matters. Got physically lazy. Started smoking. Made poor diet choices and probably used every excuse available when all attempts to change that failed.
  • CrabNebula
    CrabNebula Posts: 1,119 Member
    Yes, all the time.
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