How has your weight changed over your adulthood?

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Replies

  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    edited July 2020
    @Jthanmyfitnesspal I always enjoy hearing about your exercise plan, too. Hope you're getting some swimming in. I love to swim but the pool is just a mess these days.


    @Go_Deskercise Have you ever lingered long at the Fresh Pet 'fridge in the grocery store. I have. Some of it looks really, really good.
  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    edited July 2020
    Alrighty then. Full disclosure. I ordered some of that food delivery and it tasted just like dog food no matter what I did with it. Think cans of beef stew here. :p I'm now saving it for the apocalypse and I stashed all of it under the house in a crawl space. It will still be there 100 years from now. I couldn't throw it out because it was too darned expensive.

    You can come and get it when I've crossed over the great divide which I hope is many moons from now.


    alimydn2rolu.png

  • MikePfirrman
    MikePfirrman Posts: 3,307 Member
    I've went from thick to thin to huge to thin to thick.

    I was athletic as a kid, so I was one of the few siblings (youngest of six) with no weight issues. Even through college and for like 11 years after. Though I picked up a horrid habit in college -- smoking.

    I worked in restaurants out of school for like 9 or 10 years. During that time, I couldn't gain weight. When I see restaurant managers that are heavy, I don't know how they do it. I never sat and never hardly had time to eat. I was smoking and 160 or 161. Probably 12% body fat just from never slowing down. But very lean and not a lot of muscle.

    Then, I got a desk job in recruiting and stopped smoking. Ballooned up to 220 within a year. Even though it was my idea to stop smoking (for my kids), I think I ate more a bit out of passive aggressiveness -- my wife was like the cigarette Nazi. She hated my smoking. So I replaced smoking with eating more. Not a wise decision. Then, over the course of several years, kept gaining until I was around 255 at my biggest. I blew out my right knee at like 41 or 42 and couldn't walk for a year or more. Rehab started my weight loss. I lost like 25 to 30 by working out and the rest in like 7 months of tracking.

    Got down to 170 at my lightest post obesity and I'm 192 now, but the 192 looks a whole lot different at 56 (this year) than it did on the way down. I've lifted and done an indoor rower for years, so I look actually stronger than what I think I am. I'm not weak by any means but I look like I lift a lot more than I do currently. I'm happiest about my weight at 187 or so. I'm pretty lean and ripped at that weight. Nearly 10 years into maintenance, I've learned that more muscle isn't what I'd like to do -- weight still hurts your joints, even if it's muscle. And I don't like getting above 195. That's my red line to buckle up again.
  • Geneveremfp
    Geneveremfp Posts: 504 Member
    I was obese (probably - self guess based on photos etc - certainly overweight) since about 9. I left school at over 100kg.

    I'm now around 83kg.

    If I convert to lbs it's an average of - 3lbs a year. I'm pretty proud of that and I think it's an unusual cycle - most people I know as an adult are surprised I was so big when I was younger.
  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,214 Member
    edited July 2020
    Over the summer before senior year of high school I lost about 30 lbs getting to a healthy weight for the first time. Since then I've stayed within the "healthy/normal" range per the chart below. (Male, 6'1" for reference).

    81gvqjq1qqlh.png

    Weight alone does not tell the whole story, though. If you take the starting point of ~165lbs at high school graduation in '07 I'm +0.5 lbs/year (gasp!). However, I started weight lifting in 2015 and my body composition has continually improved since then with my weight staying relatively flat.

    25t2vbxf2kjo.png

    Muscle has increased and fat decreased to the tune of going from ~18% body fat to 12%. I've also gotten a lot stronger with a 1055 lb total (330 Wilks) and am the most confident in my body than I've ever been. I guarantee I'm stronger, healthier, and more physically capable now at 31 than I was at 18.
  • annieu613
    annieu613 Posts: 143 Member
    edited July 2020
    My weight has varied a lot from when I was 18 until now (34). When I started college at 18 I was around 150lbs (5'8"). When I was 20 I went through a period of depression which involved anorexia and dropped from 150lb to 124lb over 3 months before getting help. Then I gained weight back and evened out again around 145lbs. When I was 21 I studied abroad in the UK and ended up gaining a lot of weight, and got up to 165lbs. It took a while to lose that weight and when I graduated in 2009 I was around 155lb.

    My bf proposed for me right after graduation, and I worked hard to lose weight and when we got married in August 2010 I was 142lb. I gained a lot in the first year of marriage, and joined MFP 9/23/2011 about a year after I got married and I was 160lb. At that point I was working a job I hated, commuting 3 hours a day, working a ton of overtime and weekends and basically eating convenient junk because I was never home. I got a new job and focused on getting healthier, trained for a half marathon, and dropped down to 143.6lb by September 2012.

    My next entry in MFP was 7/10/13, where I was 158lbs. There are sporadic weigh-ins from 2013-2016 which are all 155-160. Then in April 2017 I logged 170lb. I logged sporadically throughout 2017-2019 and all were 165-170.

    In January I was the highest I've ever been at 175lb. I started really tracking and logging my weight and food every day, and I'm now down to 148.6lb, so my lowest weight in eight years. My goal weight is around 140lbs, but my main goal is to maintain at that weight long term. I'm a boredom eater, so I've been trying to learn to not snack so much, and I just need to keep doing that. I want to maintain my fitness and activity level as well. I was so out of shape just a few months ago, and now that I'm lifting and running regularly, I feel so strong and good in my body. I want to keep this up.
  • MaltedTea
    MaltedTea Posts: 6,286 Member
    Hmm, I truly don't remember stepping on a scale at all in my 20s, and before that, either my pediatrician or gym teacher from Catholic high school was weighing me. Since then I've been...

    up a lot --> down a bit --> up a bit --> down a lot --> up a bit --> down a bit --> up a lot --> and NOW?

    Down a lot to stay because I'm sick-'o-this and the threat of cholesterol meds for life got me to the "enough is enough" point about 15 months ago.

    While I'm not 50 yet, if I was to guess an average thus far it would be +2.3 lb/year (based on average weight over, ahem, mumble-mumble years).

    So, for now, I'm just above average but I've got some time yet to reduce it to < 2lb/year if I continue my current health plan and then maintain until 50 (and beyond).

    Thanks for the perspective in this thread: apparently, I'm just shy of average and working on being exceptional lol
  • justkeeprunning91
    justkeeprunning91 Posts: 96 Member
    Well I’m only 29 but I thought I’d share since my story is atypical. I was always overweight as a kid and peaked at 230 lbs when I was 16. I made my first effort at weight loss and was down to 185 when I graduated high school. Through college I fluctuated a lot but stayed between 205 and 185. Starting law school at 23 I had gotten up to about 205 again and was sick of it. Took up running and was about 160 when I got married at 25. Found myself creeping up towards 170 again and found MFP. Slowly got down to about 135 and stayed that way for about six months until getting pregnant. Got up to 185 before delivery but slowly got back down to a steady 142-145 when my daughter was about 8 months and had been hanging out there for about 5 months until lockdown hit. I’m now seeing 147-148 more often than I would like so I’m back at it to try to make my last push back down to 130-135 and then hopefully start thinking about skin removal at some point (I’m 5’ 4”) for reference. If I hit 130 before I turn 30 (in 10 months), it will have taken me 15 years to lose 100 lbs. But I wouldn’t change it and I’m confident I’ve set myself up for success in the long run. It’s wild now to look at people I went to high school with with more “normal” weight patterns, since I’m now the smaller one.
  • zebasschick
    zebasschick Posts: 910 Member
    when i was 17, i weighed 104 and walked for fun at least eight hours per week. when i was 24, i weighed 97, knew i was anorexic and did my best to eat. i was 126 at 26, then when i was 27, i discovered stress eating and went up in weight but didn't own a scale - i'd guess to 140. i bounced from 170 when bodybuilding to 170 without bodybuilding - a very different thing - and finally in 2006 hit my top weight at 242.

    three years ago, i was down to 145, let life get in the weight and ended up at 180. am currently at 168, for four weeks have been using the exercise bike in ways that don't bother my injuries, and am doing well, developing more flexibility, which is very helpful. i look forward to losing more weight and gaining more muscle!
  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    I've always been overweight and never had a normal relationship with food. As a child, my pictures show an unhappy fat kid. :( As a teen I felt so out of place and judged. I remember a girl in high school that was my height(5'10" at that time)and I overheard her say she weighed 140. That became my ultimate goal because she was so pretty. :/ At that time I was probably in the 170-180 range. I think I got down to 160 during high school. Then I headed out on my own, drank like a fish, and ate whatever I wanted to. I remember being around 200 in my early 20's. Got married, had kids, opened a daycare in my home and yikes I became the stress eater, so handy having a kitchen accessible all day long. I didn't weigh myself all the time but my highest was around 235. I lost/gained 50+ lbs. throughout my life, several times. Lowest I got was 129 in my early 50's. It's never been sustainable for me. :( I ballooned back up to 170ish. I'm now 66 and have been trying much harder the past year to get down and stay down into the 130's. I actually made it to 130 before the holidays(then the dastardly Covid) hit and I felt fantastic, frikkin fantastic. Now I'm back to struggling, currently weigh 145ish but am trying to hang tough again. :) Maybe not 130, I think it's too low for me. I'm aiming for 135-138 and hope I an settle into a more active maintenance routine.

    So that's my up and down story, without all the mathematics involved. :)
  • amart4224
    amart4224 Posts: 345 Member
    At 18 I was around 130, went to college and maintained for the first two years but then I moved off campus and started eating more and exercising less. At 21 I was about 165 and went on the slimfast diet which took me back to 135. From 22 to 26, I gained back some weight and stayed around 150-160 for a lot of that time. At 26, I lost my job and went through some depressing times and over the 2 years between then and now, I've gained 60 pounds to 220, which is where I am currently. I would say I've well exceeded the 1-2 pounds a year average gain 😣

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