Did you get fat as a kid?

Nope, I was skinny as a splinter.

Only started getting overweight gradually in my twenties.

Lost weight and gained a few times, but never obese till late forties.

Have now lost it all again before reaching 50.

I have always had to keep an eye on my intake... I've always seen the scale move up if I ate everything I wanted. I got pudgy for a brief time as a kid when I lived with my father and he let me eat 2 ice cream sandwiches when I got home from school every day. I went back to live with my mum and she very subtly - without instilling any shame or making a big deal out of it - cut me back. She did tell me I should not be eating 2 ice cream sandwiches when I got home from school. So she didn't buy me all the great things my dad did, and it was effective. I was never overweight again until...

I got fat when I was pregnant. If our house had been made of the icing-cream filling in donuts, or the cream filling in chocolates, I'd have eaten the house, shelter be damned. And then not just ice cream, but this chewy double the fat ice cream we have here at the local creamery. By gawd. I ate. Boxes and boxes of cheerios. And I never ate like that before or have since (2 ice cream sammiches would have been tame compared to my second trimester)... it was not lack of knowledge of nutrition or lack of desire (I felt really guilty about exposing my little one to all that junk). It was just simple madness. As I work even now to drop it, I totally get why I did it. The draw was Real!

Yup. I was fat by kindergarten. I look normal weight in pictures as a toddler. I was 200+ by middle school. I ate the same foods my siblings did, but I didn't have an off switch. I would eat until I was sick. My mom would put snack cakes and such in her closet as I got older, but I would find them and eat them secretly. I would eventually get caught when she discovered empty boxes. Everyone else in my family was normal weight.

Yes. I started gaining weight at around age 8. Why? Because I liked food and ate larger portions of it. Nuts were scarce as a kid because they were expensive we didn't have a lot of money. They were like my holy grail of food. Once things became financially better and I had access to more of them I started gaining weight. This also happened to be the age I started developing a special liking to olive oil but was never taught how to moderate it.

tomteboda wrote: »

I perceived myself as fat from Elementary school, but looking at Lucy's I was pretty slander but muscular for a kid until 15. That year I was in college and ate way too much Mc Donald's and didn't get much exercise. Went from 150 to 200 (5'11") but because it's always thought I was fat the change didn't shock me, only depressed me.

.. I really shouldn't try to write posts from my phone. This is almost incomprehensible.

I was a fat baby and a chubby child. Always active and outdoors, playing loads of sports, fit and very healthy. Always walked to school despite it being a fair distance away.
Food was nearly always home cooked and high quality. I never had a sweet tooth so no excessive sweets, snacks between meals were unusual.

Both parents grew up poor during the war with war time rationing which meant food was scarce and precious (imagine queuing for an hour for one orange and your Mum sending you back to re-join the queue for a second one for your sister...). That definitely had a carry over into their expectation that you would clear your plate rather than stop when full. Looking back I don't see that we ate a lot, but clearly a bit more than we should have.

Teenage years I was still slightly overweight but a very fast sprinter, played every sport going. Could get into 30" waist jeans if I could get them past my over-sized quads!

I've never had a time in my adult life when I could eat intuitively without gaining weight. Can maintain weight (whether maintaining overweight or slim) with a bit of care to both sides of the CICO equation but to lose weight takes conscious effort.

Yep, I was a size 11 at 11 years old. I slimmed out and was a size 3 by the time I graduated. My great grandmother, mother, and my daughter now all went through that chubby period at the beginning of puberty.

Underweight all my life until I got sick in 2008. My whole life I could eat and eat and not gain weight. I exercised probably 4 times a week. Now I've had to adopt a completely different mindset.

Yes, chunky as a younger child, and then at my adult height and 200 pounds by age 13; more than 40 pounds heavier than now.

Loads of reasons...

* A bit genetic I think because ate the same food/had the same activity as my brother and he was never chubby at all.

* Yes, the clean plate thing was in force. Spent many mornings sitting in front of a cold plate of eggs because I just couldn't stand them.

* Comfort eating and food as a reward...check and check.

* Restriction by my mother leading to sneaking food; put on my first structured diet around age 11 or 12. Yes, I know she was trying to do the right thing.

* Not diagnosed in childhood - my brother was - but ADD = crap impulse control and poor attention = overeating.

* Grew very quickly and was tragically uncoordinated - as in falling walking across a flat unobstructed surface. So since I was crap at any kind of sports actively avoided them. I finally got some kind of normal coordination around age 14-15 after I stopped growing.

* Besides comfort eating I was a bookworm. Read and read for hours, day after day. So sedentary + eating too much = fat.

I was always a skinny kid. My Dad fed us a balanced diet, though we still had fish fingers, chips & peas or sausages beans & chips once a week then meals with veg the rest. He also cooked/baked most things from scratch (I guess that's where I get that from now) We were very active, out with our friends on our bikes, building dens, climbing trees, playing games and very rarely sat in front of the TV or computer all day. Sweets and treats were bought with our own pocket money, so didn't always want to spend my money on them and no fizzy pop!

I only started putting on weight when I left home and had to fend for myself, then it was a yo yo till now.

Was a regular/skinny kid. It was only after I finished school and started working full time that I was starting to gain weight. It was the change from school to a desk job, buying lunch everyday & snacking in the office. I feel very lucky that I noticed early and changed my behaviours before I had a significant amount to lose.

I was on the lower end of a normal weight range (potentially slightly underweight) when I was very young, and my parents did everything they could to make me eat even when I wasn't hungry- including eating junk. I'm pretty sure that's where it started.

Anyway, I was a fairly normal weight until 2nd or 3rd grade, and from then on I was always overweight or obese depending on if I had hit a growth spurt or not. My parents contributed in different ways- my father would give me all the sweets and fast food I wanted, and my mother's idea of healthy eating was always pretty skewed. Our house was always stocked with chips, sugary cereals, 3 full cookie jars, backup cookies in the cupboards, baked sweets in the freezer, etc.

I remember when my mom started trying to tell me to be careful about my snacking when she'd see me pass through or enter the kitchen (I did a lot of boredom eating and would just grab things on my way through the kitchen). It just made things worse, though, because I would start sneaking everything. It was really easy to just stock up on crap when her back was turned and take it to my room.

I remember the first time I realized liquids contained calories in them- and I drank a LOT of juice and milk. It sounds ludicrous to me now that I believed I could drink as much as I wanted without consequence, but it was true. I had no idea. I remember looking at the label of a juice container and really soaking in what it meant.

In high school I was an exchange student to another country and lost a decent amount of weight just by eating extremely healthy food and being active. I discovered how much I LOVE vegetables and all of the different things that can be done with them- and I also realized that my mother rarely ever includes vegetables in any meal (she also thinks that fruit is an acceptable alternative). I came back to the U.S. at a normal BMI- I was at the very upper end of normal, but I was there. My mother said she didn't want me losing any more weight, and I was frustrated. I struggled so hard in that house of sweets to maintain my lower weight but eventually failed miserably.

Over the course of my college years I ballooned up and up to morbid obesity (260 lbs), for various reasons. And I'm tired of it. This isn't who I am, and I'm sick of letting it define me, so I'm changing. I've dropped 51 lbs so far.

I know my parents had good intentions. I try very hard not to blame them. I just know that if I ever have children I'll do my best to teach them a healthy lifestyle knowing that prevention will always be the best method of tackling weight.

I was super skinny as a child. Normal weight as a teen and started gaining at 25 when I got married and stopped taking care of myself.

incisron wrote: »

If so, why?

No, I was below average weight until my 20's. I wasn't athletic but walked places a lot. I didn't diet or overeat I guess.
I gained weight with pregnancy but was still a healthy weight. My lifestyle became much more sedentary and I ate too many calories for that level of activity. My weight crept up over the years.