Calling out to the former chubby kids

Thanks so much! Glad to help!

I was always chubby. I was the fat sibling, with a skinny sister and brother. Being Italian, there was always tons of breads, pastas and calorie heavy foods around and I found comfort in devouring more than my fair share. When I turned 18 I basically starved myself skinny. I knew nothing about nutrition and just knew that if I ate like a bird I would lose weight fast. What a dummy. I did this again when I let my wight slip when I was in my mid 20's...again..what a dummy.

As I got older and kept struggling with my weight I knew I had to get this figured out. I needed to do something that I could do for life. So I started eating more mindfully, planning my meals in advance, discovering a love for weight training, educating myself about macros/meal timing and generally just eating with a purpose.

So here I am at 52, weighing less than I did at 15.

Well I was teased for being a chubby kid but I probably wasn’t overweight technically. I wasn’t interested in sport so was sedentary as a child. Mum was always ‘on a diet’ but was actually a normal weight and was trying to lose what we would now say were vanity pounds, Dad was obese and sedentary.


I yo-yoed in my twenties up and down 30 pounds. Finally sorted myself out about 5 years post baby. It took quite a lot of effort to change some bad habits and substitute good habits. Far from perfect but getting there.

I think being a chubby kid just set me up to be "ok" with being an obese adult, really.

Growing up I was by far the biggest kid in my class until middle school. Not just chubby but huge for my age - 5'4" and about 130-135 lb in 3rd grade. I thought it was cool, actually. I liked wearing juniors clothing and people assuming I was a teenager.

Like several others here, I was mostly sedentary and used food for entertainment, comfort, etc. So did my parents to some extent. My mom was always dieting but we had a ton of meals out all through the week and dessert every lunch & dinner.

By high school I was over 200 lb and didn't get back down below that until age 36 with MFP. At my heaviest I was much much larger than that. To me it was really normal to be bigger than most other girls/women around me, even though I'm not that huge of a person at 5'8" I just always had it in my head that I was meant to be plus-sized. Apparently not!

Now 43, I plan to never hit those high numbers again. I'm still technically a bit overweight, but I'm at a healthy weight according to my doctor. Mostly it's been education on nutrition/calories and like 20% of it for me is being more active.

Current stats/description: 30M, 6'1" average around 175 lbs, estimate body fat at <15%. Has been within "healthy" by BMI since Fall 2006, avid weightlifter since 2015, will occasionally run to support the handful of 5/10Ks I do each year. I also enjoy playing golf and tennis (both poorly).

Backstory:
I was always mild/moderately overweight as an child/adolescent. My family ate a fairly varied/balanced diet but not a particularly healthy one. Snacking has always been a big thing (still is for my parents), and I definitely could've been more active, though I was fortunate to grow up on 5 acres of former farm land so there was a decent amount of outside activity. Between being a little pudgy and having glasses and braces by age 7 self-confidence was a formative struggle and something I've dealt with into adulthood. I recall routinely expressing to my mother that I wish I looked better and thinner... more like my friends with whom I played sports and were at healthier weights. The reply I most-often received, in what I expect was aimed at bolstering the little self-confidence I had, was typically along the lines of "people are just built differently". The confluence of those lifestyle habits and inaction to correct them I was around 6' 200lbs at 17 in the summer of 2006. At the time I did not weigh regularly so this is a ballpark figure. I played some sports as a kid but that 200lbs certainly wasn't muscular-looking.

Phase I: Healthy Weight for the First Time
My initial weight loss occurred almost by accident. I happened to spend three weeks that summer at a college-prep type engineering camp at a University in a neighboring state. I was living in a dorm without a TV or computer, eating three meals/day at the student union with minimal snacking, and was very active doing intramural sports as part of the camp or playing ultimate Frisbee or racquetball with friends I'd met there, all in the muggy Indiana summer heat. Some time during the second week I'd realized my pants were feeling a little loose: "awesome, let's keep this going" I remember thinking. Without tracking my foods I focused on making "better" choices in the cafeteria line based on what I perceived was healthy. I don't recall exactly what those choices specifically were nearly 15 years later now, but the net effect was returning home and weighing in the 180s. During back-to-school shopping I discovered I now needed a 34" waist, not the 36" I'd worn for years. My snacking habits had also been curbed significantly and I continued to inadvertently lose down to the mid 160s over the following 3-4 weeks, needing to drop to a 32" waist and medium shirts. For the first time in my life I was truly at a healthy and basically ideal weight for my height. My eyes were opened to the reality of how much control I had over how I looked and after finally getting my first girlfriend before the previous school year ended my confidence was higher than ever heading into my senior year.

Phase II: Weight Maintenance
Fortunately, I maintained that ~30 lb loss without too much extra effort until after graduating from college (2011). In college, I fell into a great friend group who had plenty of active pursuits, I made frequent use of the campus rec and would meet my eventual wife and take up running as a hobby she enjoyed.

Phase III: Steve gets a real job/Operation "don't be fat"
Upon entering the work force after graduation the position I held entailed a good bit of travel. Nutritionally unchecked and armed with an expense account the frequent appetizers, burgers and craft beers caught up with me quickly and I was back up in at least the 180s after three months on the job. For the first time I was intentionally trying to lose weight but I didn't really know how best to go about things. I started doing P90X as it was something I could do at home or from most hotel gyms and that at least stopped the bleeding as I navigated trying to eat better while travelling. A few months later, in May of 2012, I found MyFitnessPal. It was a another revelation in terms of just how much I was eating and how easy it was to manage and dropped almost 15 lbs in the first two months using the site and reached a recorded adult low weight of 159 in May of 2013 before getting married that June. I was successful in my mission of staying "not fat" into 2015.

Phase IV: Takes Aim at New Target
In the fall of 2014 I'm able to transition to a new role with far less travel. Come spring of 2015 I weigh right around 170 lbs but I'm not happy with what I see in the mirror. I'd previously always had the mindset, due to my childhood weight struggles, that losing weight = looking better. However, I'd been at lower weights and knew that I didn't appreciably like how I looked 10 lbs lighter than I was. I had been doing P90X3 workouts (because y'know, that's what people do to get ripped right?) but I didn't really like them, nor was I finding that I was making any progress... I was just doing them. At was at this time I first came across Marc Perry and his BuiltLean programs. Marc's similar arc of gaining and losing weight with his first "real job" resonated quite a bit and his aesthetic was certainly better than my own. It was also at this time on the heels of Captain America: Winter Soldier having been released in 2014, my wife and I get firmly entrenched in the MCU hype. My wife is also thoroughly smitten with Chris Evans' Captain America look, and so that becomes my new goal; no longer to simply be "not fat" but to really try and transform my body. I fully recognize the extent that hollywood imagery distorts our reality and it's not necessarily encouraged to aspire to any on-screen goals... however, that's still my main objective. In April I start a more traditional weightlifting routine with the dumbbells I'd purchased for P90X. By July I'm convinced I need to level up to barbell training to continue progress and take the plunge taking advantage of 4th of July sales. Introspectively, I see building my own home gym as a watershed moment. Growing up a huge nerd I've always admired the muscular, Superhero-style aesthetic but never allowed myself to pursue it. I didn't belong in the weights section at the rec in college, who was I kidding? Having my own equipment and own space in my basement was what ultimately allowed me to permit myself to make strides towards my goals; removing my mental hurdles and getting out of my own way.

Five years later I happily get up to lift every morning and I'm stronger, look better, and am happier in my own skin than at any other point in my life. I still sometimes struggle with diet and getting/keeping lean(ish). I've never gotten to where I have really visible abs and I don't think I really have the mental toughness to execute a true bulk so I've bounced between 170 and the low 180s. I log more meticulously now that I ever did when trying to lose in big chunks, and have a streak that dates back to July 2017 going right now. I find a great deal of comfort in the element of perceived control it provides.