Obese/Overweight Since Childhood

Hi and welcome! I don't really have any specific advice other than keep trying. I have battled my weight my entire life, and sometimes I feel defeated but other times I've lost weight and felt great. I only know that you can't ever give up.

My experience with obese people is usually that of an ongoing personal issue that they haven't found a way to resolve and have used food as their escape. Like anything else HABITUAL BEHAVIOR is the key factor. People fall back into weight regain after losing weight because they go back to bad habitual behaviors. So it's NOT the diet that that's the main issue. It's HOW MUCH you're eating and addressing WHY you're eating that much. Check NOOM. I've had a few clients turned on to it (I don't work for them nor get anything from them) and the psychological segments they have on a daily basis helps. Their approach is subtle but seems effective.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I know there are other threads on this topic you may find, including some I've responded to. But in a nutshell, I was a chubby kid, always overweight & big for my age, and by age 16 I was obese. When I graduated from high school, I was already well over 200 lb as a 5'8" female. During my twenties I slowly gained, occasionally lost, and found myself eventually hitting 300 lb when I worked at a very stressful job. At 31, I got serious about trying to lose. I cut out some things from my diet and I started exercising 10X more than I had before...but w/o a good plan it was very difficult to lose, and went very very slowly. I never went back up to my heaviest, but it took me YEARS to lose 40-45 lb on my own without a site to count calories and realize where I was going wrong with my eating habits. For me a lot of it was trying to restrict too much, and then going for high calorie things when I got to the point of being seriously hungry (every day), so I was eating more calories in the long run.

Now I am 42 and have been in a healthy weight range for 6 years so far. My losing & maintaining experience has been somewhat similar to rainbow198 above, with the way I've found to live comfortably not starving myself or exercising 24/7. I have found the meal times that work for me and I have really learned a lot about what kind of calories & nutritional content are in different foods. Some of it has been shocking to me. I was never that person shoveling in huge portions but I was still eating a crazy amount of calories and didn't even know it...stuff like milk & juice seemed innocent but I would drink huge glasses...same for lattes and mochas. Now...eating healthy food, with some junk still, and moving more. Consistency is the #1 thing! If you eat appropriately 90% of the time it makes a big difference. For me personally, staying within a calorie goal calculated with this site has helped me to lose 90 of a total 130 lb weight loss. That happened "quickly" (about 14 months) and I've maintained within a 10 lb range for years now and plan to do so indefinitely.

I agree with what others have said above about not using food for comfort, entertainment, stress relief, etc. I believe that behavior comes naturally to a lot of us and we have to recognize it and make a real effort to find alternative routes for dealing with certain things like sadness, boredom, stress, etc.

ETA: I have seen a lot of people who like me weighed 200 since their teens, thinking it may not be possible for them to be back under 200 as an adult. Definitely not true. While I still weigh in the 160s-170s, I hadn't been this weight since I was in 7th grade! So yes it's possible! And plenty of other people on here were in the same boat too and are now much smaller than me.