When I was in high school, I thought I was SO FAT...
...and I weighed 140 pounds!!! I felt like a chubby giant next to all of my friends. We were getting fitted for wetsuits for a snorkeling trip, and I was so humiliated that I had to wear a size LARGE.
Fast forward to now, and I am 100 pounds heavier! I am so sad that I spent my time at 140 thinking I was fat. Now 140 seems impossibly slender to me.
(I can't even imagine what size wetsuit I would have to wear today!!!)
Tetra, I could just copy and post your entry and it would be me exactly. I seem to recall I was a size 14 - which TODAY is a plus-size model! AARRGH It just goes to show you that negative body image isn't a new concept. I was tall, and I do have a large frame. I wasn't a teeny little cheerleader. But I could swim a mile non-stop, bike thirty miles, walk two miles to and from school carrying books. I was trim and tight - just not teensy - but you looked at the SKINNY and probably less healthy "popular" girls and thought that was is what I am supposed to look like..not realizing that your frame and height made that impossible and that you were great the way you were!
ANother irony is that I have run into so many guys from high school who tell me years later that I WAS HOT..they wanted to ask me out, but I was too smart, too this too that....double AARGH.
A few years back I ran into a high school friend who is now a professional photographer. He had kept every set of negatives he ever shot and he reprinted and sent me copies of some he had taken of me in Grade 13 (when Ontario still had that grade). I WAS TINY! Okay not tiny, but trim and HEALTHY. As of my TOPS weighin on Thursday I am exactly 100 pounds heavier, and I have been 35 pounds heavier than this! My goal weight is 170-175 . To know then what I know now..may have made a difference. A little more self-acceptance, more of the nutrition knowledge we have today.
BUT it is never too late. I have to love myself as I am, if I am going to love myself enough today to take charge of my health again and make the changes I need to make. Maybe I should change those I's to We's
I remember the first diet I went on at about 18 years old, went to Nutrisystem, I weighed 155 lbs at 5 ft 9. No one batted an eye and were perfectly happy to take my money. I lost 20 lbs and so the journey of "gain, lose, gain GAIN 5-10 lbs more than I lost" began.
It is silly looking back on it. I was THIN, young and very healthy. I worried and dieted myself into a 100lb weight gain over 20 years!
I feel your pain, Tetra. When I graduated (a looooonnnnngggg time ago) I weighed 122 and I ALWAYS thought I was fat. What exactly was I thinking? I am now about 140 pounds heavier than that and can not even comprehend that it was me that was 122!!! I am striving for 155 now and we will go from there. Did you have someone back then telling you that you were fat? I did........ a friend of mine..and I believed it, because even though I was 122, I could never fit into the size 26 jeans (waist size, not size, size) she wore.....thus, I believed her. Biotch. Regardless, this weight is coming off for the last time, this time!!
I can identify with what you all are sharing. I too thought I was fat back then. I now weigh 100 more pounds than that. Now, to look back at pictures of me then, echoing you ~ what was I thinking? Oh to be that "fat" now.
Location: Northeastern Ohio But my heart belongs to Canada.
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I think most of us can relate. I was one of those cool, alternative chics (not POPULAR, just cool) but I played softball. I played fast and slow pitch and in the summer, I played co-ed softball AND played on a boys baseball team. So I was athletic. I was a pitcher and had great arms too. I also had a tiny waste, some junk in the trunk (but good) and athletic legs. I HATED those legs. (And I wasn't thrilled with the arms either.) I thought I was so fat. No matter what I did, those legs didn't loose an inch. I thought my arms looked "manly".
Now, those thighs are at least twice what they were back then, and not rock hard like they were back in the day either. My arms, they sway more then a tree in the wind.
That's interesting. I, too, weighed 140 pounds in high school (at 5'7) and thought I was fat. As a matter of fact, other kids SAID I was fat. My thighs, specifically. I doubt I will even weigh 140 again but I am quite sure I would NOT feel fat at that weight. Oh to be 17 again.
When I was 16 I was I think 125lbs and felt self conscous about my weight. I was 5ft6 and my little 5ft2 friends were all like 20lbs smaller. Now that I look back I was the one with the nice body. They all looked like 12 year old boys. If I only knew then what I knew now.
my first year of high school I weighed 220 pounds.
I was, in fact, "soooo fat"
I know how that feels. I was 250 in middle school, which is the weight I am currently. I was 298 the January after I graduated. Last February, I was 214, the smallest I have ever been!
I think I was somewhere around 180 when I started high school at 13, mind you I was 6 ft tall as well. When I graduated I was around 230ish. I thought I was huge, because all my friends were 110lbs (i'd die to be 230 now). In sophmore year of high school I did the Atkins diet lost like 60lbs because my dad had deemed our family was fat and we all were going to do this diet. Well I gained all of that back and then some by the time I graduated.
Then the college freshman 15 turned into the freshman 35, and my sophmore 20. I pretty much tacked on about 20-30lbs a year until last April when I topped at 325, and then me and ww became best of buds.
Another "me too!" here. When I graduated from high school, I weighed around 150 and wore a size 12. My eating issues started way before that, though. I starved myself down to 103 (I'm 5'5") when I was in 7th grade. Of course, that was in the early '80's, when the in thing was to look like boobs-on-a-stick.
When I was in high school, I thought I was SO FAT...
