I didn't start getting heavy till I left home. Our whole family ate healthy, rode bikes, lifted weights and were always in sports. Weird, but after us kids grew up and left, we ALL got heavy! Another weird thing, we all recently lost a bunch of weight. My dad lost 70 pounds, my oldest brother around 100, my mom about 30 and my middle brother just started running again and watching what he eats and lost 25 pounds in a couple months.

I am entirely convinced one of the reasons I became as heavy as I did was my mother. I like Rosinate was born wildly small - I was fed constantly to make up the shortfall. After that from the age of around 4 I was oerweight, nagged constantly for it by my mother and then made to feel inadequate for it my whole life. The only yimes I have ever had what could be construed as a positive relationship with my mother has been at my thinnest. Now I weigh a lot less than I have done in years, but haven't spoken to my parents in over a year. I do not need their judgementalism or opinion on my weight loss. I will be 44 this year and although I feel I have found my secret to weight loss, old feelings run deep!

my whole childhood i was around a healthy weight. sometimes on the heavier end, but i was never teased for it. i did always feel like i was hungry, and seemed to eat the same and same amounts of food as my sister. she was always told she was over weight from K/first grade and up. it seemed like i felt her pain sometimes.

i still don't know why i was slightly lighter. maybe a slight change in activity level. i'll never know. i do know i didn't really understand how she felt. i understand a bit better now. this last yr i was around the size/weight she was in high school, which was very difficult for her.

my exact moment was when i was around 7. i remember thinking that i WANTED a homemade chocolate cookie, but i wasn't hungry. i just wanted it.

i think i was just trying to comfort myself. there was a tough family environment at the time. thankfully i quickly moved out. although with my grandparents, the fairly strict controll over what we could or couldn't eat still messes with me today. i still say, since we were rarely allowed to have real cheese(i hate velveeta or american slices) and fruit except apples. i can't get enough of either.

i'm determined to teach my kids they can have everything, especially very healthy choices/foods/produce. and some foods aren't good for us so we don't have them very often- soda,chips,etc. they are in elem. school so there's alot of emphasis on what they CAN have. so many different produce options at the store for example. they are really excited about growing our own garden with foods they love.

I started having a weight problem when I lost a baby. I was in my early 20's and gained 20-30 pounds I could not get off. It sort of turned into more over the next few pregnancies. I hovered around 190-200 for a long time.

The next big "burst" came after my divorce. I gained 80 pounds in less than a year. I was distressed.

I never had any issues as a kid other than eating a lot of junk my parents gave me but I wasn't fat.

I have a picture of myself at about 1 year old, and my older sister (who was about 7 at the time) was holding me, and i was such a chub i was bigger around than her! My mom had had a child die before me, and she spoiled me senseless (NOT blaming her, I'm a grown up, i control what goes in my face now!) but i grew out of that fat baby stage and was thinnish til about puberty, put some on. A bit heavy in high school. Then when I moved out on my own, at about 19 or so, all the limits were off! I didn't go crazy with booze or boys LOL just ice cream and McDonalds!!!

Right when I started public school and got incessantly teased, so about 8 years old. The weird thing is, I wasn't even that fat! I had a round face and was slightly chubby, but not horribly so. I also developed earlier than other girls my age (I have been the same bra size and height since I was 12). I am trying to work against 13 years of habit.

I'm trying to think back to when it started for me. I was fairly small in the early grades of Elementary School. In the 2nd grade I had a belly, just remembering from home videos. I think it started in the 2nd grade. When I got to the end of Middle School, I went on a diet and lost down to a size 12/14. I got pregnant in 9th grade, and started to gain weight continually since then.

I had a bout of major depression towards the last year of college. I made the poor choice of moving in with my son's father. My son's father was not ready at all and was on another plane than I was. He left me after a little over two months. I fell into a deep depression and gained to my highest weight. I think I was in the 280s. I lost the weight down and it's been a roller coaster every since.

I'm at 249 now and trying to get to 135 or 140...somewhere around there.

Fourth or fifth grade is when I start to look a little chubby in pictures. Definitely by sixth grade. I blame puberty... and since I now know I have PCOS, that's probably why that time of life made me add the pounds.

Interestingly, I wasn't THAT big even through high school. Definitely heavy, but certainly not as obese as I see some kids at my daughter's school. We just didn't have kids that big when I was growing up. Looking back at my senior prom picture, I'm definitely heavier than most girls in my class, but I'd love to be that small and shapely again.

I was diagnosed "hypo-glycemic" in high school... which is 80s-speak for insulin resistant. Focused on protein every few hours, low-fat, whole grains, no sugar. We joined the health food co-op; it was the only place we could get brown rice and whole wheat pasta. And I ballooned up even so. By college I was over 200 pounds.

I dieted off and on over the years. Low-fat. Pritikin. Protein Power. Low-fat vegetarian (the year I turned into a raging *itch!).

Diagnosed with PCOS when we tried to get pregnant in my late 20s and found I couldn't easily conceive. Took us until I was 37 to finally have a baby. By that time I was 280 lbs.

Each time I tried to lose, I was able to drop 20-30 pounds fairly easily, then it stopped. Didn't "plateau" or "slow down". Weight loss stopped. So I'd give up, and gain it back.

Last year I was dx as pre-diabetic. No real surprise, but with the use of a blood monitor I was able to immediately see the results of eating carbs on my blood glucose. Talk about feedback!

So I cut out most sugars and starches, and began monitoring my calories again. Dropped 50 pounds. And have been hovering here at 255-260 since last September. /sigh

But this time I'm not really seeing it as a diet. I know that if I go back to my higher-starch way of eating, my BG will skyrocket again. I do NOT want diabetes. It may be inevitable, but I'm going to fight it every step of the way!

So it goes pretty far back. And I'll be fighting the rest of my life. There are days when I don't really expect to get down to a normal weight. But anything under 200 lbs would take SO much pressure off my knees, ankles, heart, blood.

I WILL walk and bike and hike and canoe. I can do some even now. I WILL do more. Even if I end up with diabetes, I will control it as best I can, with food and exercise and eventually with medication.

It's no longer a race for me. It's not a diet. This is my life, with this wonderful, frustrating, broken, amazing body and its tendinitis, insulin resistance, hormone imbalances, and moods.

Wow, hearing these stories is so tough, it seems like there are so many parental mistakes that can lead to children having weight problems. I'm in the midst of my own parental struggle, I have six kids, one is underweight and another is slightly overweight, and I *need* to offer one child more food and one less, but how to do this without causing problems? I'm actually going to post for advice on this on another thread so as not to hijack this one. :)

Anyway, I don't know when my eating problems started. I've had the desire to overeat for as long as I can remember, but for the most part in my house meals were only allowed at certain times of the day so I never had much chance of becoming overweight unless I snuck food (which I did, occasionally.) I know for sure that my bad self image started around 3rd grade - that's the first time I can remember trying to "diet" and it makes me so angry, because my mom was always telling me I was overweight and I look back on pictures and I was tiny!!! But my mom had problems with self-image, too, so I really can't blame her.


I believe that for some people food is an addictive substance just like alcohol and cigarettes. I've been reading up a lot on addiction lately, and there are people who can consume as much alcohol and cigarettes (and I'd say processed foods) as they want and never become addicted. There are others, however, who become chemically dependent (addicted) on these substances once they pass a certain threshold of use. I learned yesterday that sugar affects the brain in the same way heroin does... so it would make sense to me that for some people, food becomes not just an emotional addiction, but a PHYSICAL addiction. I think I'm in that category. When I eat refined foods or sugar, I can't seem to stop! If I stay away from it altogether, however, I don't have nearly the same problem with overeating.

Okay, so that was a long answer to your question. :)

Rina

Start weight: 250
Goal 1: 199lbs (current: 212)
Goal 2: 180
Goal 3: 150
Goal 4: 130

I was 12 when it got bad, I could eat and eat and no one ever stopped me. now trying to do different for my daughter and struggle....