Did anyone else grow up with obese parents or family members?

TavistockToad wrote: »

Yep. My mum is morbidly obese - she's always been overweight but gained a lot when she stopped smoking aged 40 and never lost it.

My dad was overweight but not massively so.

My mum has a load of health problems, which is why I want to be healthy now so I don't end up like her.

Same here. Mine has disordered eating attitudes and behaviors (hiding food, eating in secret, emotional eating, crash dieting, rewarding with food, unrealistic expectations, etc.) that I learned and have taken a long time to unlearn. Everyone in her family, though --everyone on all sides as many generations back as we have photos-- was tall and lanky. Not an overweight soul in the bunch. Her weight gain was entirely behavioral, no indications of genetic predisposition at all. Her related conditions have cost Medicare a fortune. Equally costly to her quality of life.

Pretty much every adult in my family was and most still are obese. I blame this on the way we were shown to eat. We did a family dinner every Sunday. Most of the time the meals would be something like this: Spaghetti, fried potatoes, and garlic bread. Or Meat loaf, mash potatoes, rolls, and mac and cheese. I never noticed or thought anything about until my husband (then boyfriend) went to a Sunday dinner and asked my grandma if there was a salad or vegetable. Now when we go to Sunday dinner grandma makes sure there is a salad option. My step mother was overweight and pushed food on to her step kids. She always believe we weren't eating when we said we did. I think she wanted to feel good about herself and birth kids by making us gain weight. In high school I was thin, when I started working I would eat dinner at work and she would insist I was lying and make me eat again when I was home. Because I couldn't go from 11:30 to 9:30 with out eating something I started to put on weight. Getting a car and I stopped walking 4 plus miles a day didn't help.

Oh, and my husband’s side! His dad was overweight, borderline obese most of adulthood. His mom was maybe slightly overweight. They both have gotten really healthy in retirement. They eat food they like, in moderation, and are very, very active in their 70s. My husband has always been thin and seems to monitor his food intake pretty intuitively. He is also super, super active and always has been. He maybe has a little “dad bod” after breaking 3 major bones in 7 years and having the associated surgeries to repair them (slowed him down a little). His only sibling is obese. Our kids are 2 elementary schoolers (both will try any food, but care very little about food and would always rather play than eat, even treats. They are skinny, where I monitor that they aren’t skipping meals because they’re busy) and a preschooler (loves sweets but eats a good variety. On the thin side of normal. I try to watch that she develops healthy feelings about treats).

My mom thinks that I look perfect on the high end of the normal BMI range. I definitely don't agree... but again, she's always thought that her overweight weight was fine too.

No. My dad was overweight when we were growing up, but now he is in pretty great shape and has been for at least 20 years. My mom is normal weight never been overweight. My brother and I are also normal weight, never been overweight.

My mother was always obese when I was growing up. She exercised some (Jack LaLane) and tried to diet but never lost much. She loved to bake and was really good at it. She has now lost the weight after a heart attack and bypass.

My dad was never overweight. He had a physical job and jumped on the low carb bandwagon back in the 70's. Skipped desserts most nights, rarely ate potatoes.

Only my mom is still alive. So far she's outlived him by 11 years.

My father, his parents and all 14 of his siblings are/were morbidly obese, complete with every illness correlated with obesity. Their kids/my cousins are either obese or athletic (there's myself, the cross-fit maniac, Zumba instructor, yoga instructor and several runners). I have a lot of cousins. My mother and her whole family are all very thin, except for a few who've gained later in age.

No, my parents were not obese, but a little over their normal weight. My mom always cooked from scratch and we never ate out (no money for that). My mom didn't like to bake, so sweets were an occasional treat. She had a sweet tooth and she knew that she had to control it. My dad never liked sweets and I think that I got that from him; my brother on the other hand, had my mother's sweet tooth and didn't care to control it. He ended a little bit on the heavier side as he got older, before cancer took him away.

I never met my grandparents so I don't know their stats. As I remember father's sister was a little bit chubby, probably because she was a great cook and loved to bake. But in general obesity is/was not part of my genetic makeup, and I try to keep up with that trend.

My mom and my aunt. Mom had gastric bypass and struggles with her weight still. Calls me "skinny b**ch." Aunt stays heavy. I have 3 sisters, two of whom seem to be having weight issues when they never did before. I was always the fat one as a kid.

Oh and I forgot about mom's habits, many of which I've taken on. We both pretty much live in bed when not needed elsewhere (yup. I still do that to this day, though I consider running and walking as "places I need to be" so those habits help to offset that). Mom used to send myself, my dad and my sisters down to the gas station for Ben & Jerry's (1 pint=1 serving. We'd do that as a family once a week or so), Symphony bars, funny bones, devil dogs, etc. She always had a stash of snacks or sweets under her bed which we'd sneak into, and I started my own stash once I had a driver's license and a job. When it was my turn to cook, it was always at least two boxes of hamburger helper. Most "home cooked" dinners had a meat and two starches. Not much in the way of vegetables, and they were always heavily buttered. Also a lot of hot dogs and ramen noodles.

My dad, his parents and his sister were all overweight when I was growing up. My dad still is, but my grandma and aunt had some health scares which set them on the straight and narrow, unfortunately for my grandad it was too late. My mum has always had a strange relationship with food, she has about half a meal a day and drinks too much, we could go out to dinner and she will take one bite of her food but finish the bottle of wine... My dad has always been a secret eater, he is a type 2 diabetic, if you ask him he says he never eats sugary things but it is not unusual to find sweet wrappers in his car or in his coat pockets. As a family we would eat huge three course meals (mum excluded lol she just sat with us and ate a few pieces of food), and we ate out a lot too. Although we were provided with plenty of fruit and vegetables, there was no portion control and there was always junk food around too which we could eat to excess. My mum didn't have that growing up so she just wanted us to never feel deprived. Everything they did came from a place of love, and it wasn't all negative, we learnt good table manners, we learnt how to hold a conversation at the table, we learnt how to identify quality ingredients and often we wanted to recreate foods at home that we tried at restaurants.

At my grandparents house we would have golden syrup sandwiches, then a fat laden dinner, then a homemade dessert. All huge portions and only one vegetable option.

So the lessons I learnt were that it was OK to binge on food, and then to feel guilty about it, also that it was OK to overeat and lie about it. When I was a teenager I even modelled my mum's behaviour and ate just one piece of fruit a day and half a dinner. Neither of these examples did me any favours, I would either eat too little or too much. I am still working on eliminating these kinds of attitudes towards foods and it is difficult to remove the guilt factor.

I think, I hope, that generation by generation we are learning more about food and health. My parents didn't mean to pass on these behaviours, they probably don't even realise what they are doing, they are just modelling what they learnt. But I am learning a new way, so when I have children, I can be a good example to them.

My mum always struggled with her weight but has done an amazing job at losing and maintaining over the past 10 years or so. She’s got a great figure.

Everyone else is very fit and healthy.

My entire moms side except one uncle is overweight. My dads entire side is very thin.

We were a "large" family. I wouldn't say we were obese though. The hardest part was being conditioned that you had to compete for some of the more paletable food items and treats. Leftovers would be eaten quickly by someone else so you had to stake your claim. Same thing briefly as an adult, if you had a treat in the house e.g. chips or a desert, it quickly disappeared. For me, the hardest part about losing was about managing portions. A big part of that was the fact I was conditioned to stake my claim or else. Once I got over that, and realized nobody was going to steal my food as an adult, I was able to manage my portions. The irony, after my brothers and I all left home, my mother, brothers, and I have all lost weight and live much healthier now.

imanibelle wrote: »

Just curious.

Maybe a follow up question would be - how did growing up in a family with overweight/obese family members shape your view of fitness and nutrition?

My parents ate a lot (and unhealthily), drank a lot, and smoked a lot, and their example caused me to reject 2/3rds of that (the drinking I embraced because it just appeared to be fun to me as a kid, which in retrospect, was anything but...I digress). I came to view food as primarily fuel, as in "what is this doing for me in terms of meeting my nutritional needs" rather than "food, yum, eat" as a guiding principle for my diet. Of course, I eat desserts and sweets occasionally, but the pursuit of "comfort food" isn't a driving force in my life, food is a means to fuel myself. I combined this with prioritizing exercise, and as a result, I have never been overweight.

Obesity runs in my family. My mother and uncle were morbidly obese, my maternal grandmother was overweight, as well. My great grandmother was 6' with a large build. I'm 5'10 with a large build. I have quite a few pounds to lose myself. My mom had food issues as far back as I can remember. She would strictly diet, then give up and go back to reckless abandon. She could never find her "middle ground". We ate when we were happy, we ate when we were sad. It's hard growing up with food issues of your parents and also dealing with your own. I kicked my smoking habit in 2008 (my mom and grandmother had emphysema and COPD) and I'm working on weight now, I have been my whole life, but I'm learning everyday and seeing things in a different way. I will win this fight too!