I was always the tallest and chubbiest girl in my class growing up. I never weighed myself. I knew I was bigger but as long as I beat people at running, lifting, jumping etc in gym, I didn't really care until I was in highschool. When I started highschool my "friends" made sure I knew I was fat. They would suggest I shop in the maternity store because I couldn't fit in the clothes from the stores they shopped at and they refused to go in Lane Bryant. Luckily I joined marching band and found a better group of friends. Who knew I was overweight but also knew it takes a strong and fit person to march and play 50 lb sousaphone all at the same time.

It wasn't until last year when my stomach passed my boobs when I was standing did I realize I truly had a problem. I still don't weigh myself very often, I prefer to go with what I see, because I've always looked less then what I weigh. My arms don't touch my sides anymore and I have a collar bone! My main concern has always been to be strong and healthy.

I gotta agree with most you ladies. I've always been chubby. I was a big kid. No clue what I weighed as a child or teen. i just remember always having a belly and I accepted it. I'm slowly losing the weight and last week was shocked to see a slimmer me. Not skinny mind you but less bulky. It really, really surprised me. I was honestly shocked. I've always been the shame shape and it's changing. Makes me want to work harder but I'm sticking to slow and steady so I don't freak out and sabotage myself. Thank goodness for these boards and everyone who shares their journeys. And you're doing fantastic

no skinny stories here... I was always the big girl in school. I reached 200 when i was in junior high and have been gaining since. I do not even know what i would look like at my goal, i havnt been there since before puberty! i

I was a chubby kid, was around a size 12 (150-155 pounds) in middle school. Then in high school I stopped eating for a little while and got down to 135, but I can honestly say that I don't even remember this period. Maybe I was so malnourished that my brain cells just gave up! Then I got up to around 200 (definitely considered obese) at graduation time, and lost 30 pounds or so my first semester of college (take that, freshman 15!), and have been battling these last 20 pounds ever since.

I've always been chubby..never skinny.. The lowest I can remember weighing is maybe about 150 lb. in 10th grade and I think that only lasted a couple of months before I was up to 160s...and then higher.. Unfortatnely I shall never look skinny because even when I lose more weight I still am a big boned individual.. :-(

I was 13 when my dad took my sister and I to Disneyland. There was this stupid scale there that told you your weight on Earth, the moon, and I believe Jupiter, for 25 cents. So I hopped on, and found out I weighed 134 lbs. My dad proceeded to ridicule me, saying that I weighed almost the same as him (which is ridiculous, since he was 160 or 170). In any case, that is when I learned to hate myself.

I think I'm gonna steer clear of childhood threads from now on... too many bad, repressed memories

I was a normal sized kid up until about 4th grade. I wasn't particularly skinny but I wasn't fat either- just normal. That's when I started to gain weight. I know by 6th grade I was 130, which is still relatively normal but as I was going through puberty and hadn't grown, it made me look huge. In 7th and 8th grade, I gained about 50 pounds. It shocked my doctor because I was a very picky eater and ate relatively well as well as doing both competitive and expo tae kwon do year round and basketball and softball in their respective seasons.

At that point my weight got kind of out of control and my eating disorder manifested in binging and obsessively overeating because no change in diet would help. Even when I was in marching band where it was 4 hours a day of running and marching around during the fall, I put on weight.

I entered college at 220 and left at 225, which is kind of a miracle. I feel like I put on those last 5 pounds just in the last month of school because my roommate took out her psychotic break on me and finals were killer, so I was binging on 3 cartons of Ben and Jerry's a week.

The only time in my life I was skinny was at birth, I weighed a whopping 4 pounds. I was a chubby kid but very active so I was able to keep it at chubby for a long time. I remember weighing 152 pounds in 7th grade. By the time I graduated highschool, I was 215. I stopped playing sports a year or so later, and have yo-yo'd between 160-225 for the last 10 or so years.

I was a chubby baby, loved to sleep alot. Growing up I was always "bigger" than the other girls, not alot but enough to make me feel different. I grew up in a large family (5 kids) and with a mother who made sure her kids had plenty of food. Second helpings of food was normal in our house. When I was 9 I was diagnosed with an ulcer so I was not allowed to eat the type of food my mother liked to cook. So I found other "unhealthy" foods that my body could handle. I learned to cook at the age of 12, I loved to make breakfast.. Fried eggs, buttered toast, all that greasy yummy bacon. I believe from the age of 12-15 I gained quiet a bit of weight. When I turned 15 I became more involved with other people, I was a very shy child. Whenever we would plan a group get together I would get so nervous I couldn't keep anything down except a little toast, and it started a very bad pattern for me. I had a nervous stomach so I wouldn't eat much. I started dating when I was 15 as well, and I never wanted a guy to see me eat. So I dropped the extra weight pretty fast and very unhealthy. When I met my husband at the age of 16 I weighed around 160, which was the smallest I have ever been since I reached my height of 5'7" at the age of 12-13. I grew up believing that I would always be "heavy" and that it was "normal" for my family. All of my siblings have weight problems. My mother has been battling her weight for years, and my dad has slowly been gaining weight the past 15 years. Anyways, I've never been "thin" and I am also a little scared to see what I will look like at a healthy weight for my height (around 130-140), but I think that is normal so I set my goal for my weight at 160, once I meet that goal I will be able to set a new goal of 145 and see how I feel/look from there. Weight is not my main goal, my main goal is to be healthy and happy with myself.

I don't remember exact weights for ages, mostly because I blocked out just about all of my childhood. Anywho. I remember weighing around 150'ish in 7th grade...and er...when I was 14-15..I weighed around 180'ish...and when I graduated HS..I was at 260 something lbs. I've always been chubby, fluffy as some ppl call it. LOL. I can't wait until I am at a decent, HEALTHY weight.

I always have been. I was "the fat kid" in my classes, and of course I was relentlessly picked on in shool.

Congrats on a huge loss so far! You'll be there soon enough!

i was never really thin per say but i was never that big either. I weight about 165 when i graduated high school and when i got put on Topomax after i had a seizure about 7 months out of high school i lost 35lbs. I was about 130lbs after that and stayed that way until 2006 when i gained 50lbs in one year due to hypothyroidism. Now i'm at 189.

I can relate to a lot of these stories I was always a chubby kid, not huge but definately noticible fat on my body. I was around 130lbs in 5th grade I wore a woman size 10/12 and in 6th grade I was around 150-160 and wore a 12/14 at this time I was very active in sports and could almost keep up with my peers. Once I got in 7th grade something changed...I dont know what but I gained almost 100lbs between 7th and 8th grade. I remember being 245 in 8th grade and going to school in sweatpants since I didnt have any jeans that fit me, I would tell people I wore them because I was comfortable...as if they didnt know. I joined a gym the summer between 8 th and 9th grade I think I lost around 30lbs that summer, and I remember people telling me that I looked like I had lost a lot of weight which made me feel great. But I never lost more I stayed right around 225-245 throughout highschool. When I got out of high school I was 265 or more.

The next summer out of high school I got down to around 210lbs / size 18 by basically starving myself, eating about 400cal a day. I ended up with a kidney infection and had to stay 2 days at the hospital where they made me eat. After that I was able to maintain staying under 235 for about a year. Then I got married and ballooned up to over 300 lbs I wore a tight size 28W
I got divorced a few years later and was down to 265lbs again.
then I got in another relationship and got back over 300lbs again wearing a size 24/26 this time though...I remember before I was wearing a 28 and it was very tight on me.

Anyways I have no idea what it would be like to be at a normal weight, I dont even feel like its possible sometimes. I feel like perhaps I am mean to be fat and I would feel lucky just to get down to 235 again.

I guess I've been what many people would consider” thin” for most of my life. My highest weight was maybe 160 (we didn't have scale). When we got the scale I was 155. I was always on the chubby side however. I was never picked on for being fat, and I was never the fattest kid in the class. But even as young as 9 or 10 I can remember feeling that there was something wrong with me because I was “fat.” I can remember doctors talking to my mother about my weight like I wasn’t even in the room, talking about my “baby fat” I think a lot of my issues stemmed from that.

For much of my younger life I was so self-conscious about what I looked like and how fat I perceived myself to be, and looking back on pictures from there I wasn’t fat. I just got into a mind-set where I knew I was “fat” and that I shouldn’t be doing things because I was “fat.”
Now that I’ve started working out, I’ve moved out of the overweight BMI range (which is good) and I feel a million times better about myself. I actually like my body! It's such a nice feeling to look in the mirror and feel proud of all that I have accomplished and how strong my body is instead of berating myself about my imperfections and flaws.

Even if I never lost another pound I’d continue to workout and eat right just because it makes me feel so much better. Although I’d still like to loose a few pounds.