My mom is morbidly obese, and so is my sister. My sister is autistic and doesn't really have much options for food choices, so she usually gets (and likes!) the same high fat stuff my mom likes to eat. My dad is a little overweight but he is trying to get in shape. As for me, I work out six to seven days a week and eat a mostly plant-based diet, some chicken from time to time, and weigh 219 (I'm just starting out... again), which is actually less than my mom. :)

My mom used to make cutting comments about my weight, but now that I'm losing weight and she's gaining, she tends to compliment me more for things I'm doing right. Plus she has kind of mellowed out a little as she's gotten older. My dad never insulted my weight or mom's but my grandma (my dad's mom) did somewhat.

I'm adopted so no genetic connection to my parents. I also don't live with them and haven't for a while so it doesn't matter much at this point...

My mom was skinny growing up, she got married at 23 weighing 110 at 5'6. My dad was a chubby kid, got athletic, and was in great shape until maybe 20 years ago when he started eating badly and stopped exercising. Now he's obese and can barely walk a mile without serious knee problems.

I'm just amazed at the profound influence our mothers have on our self esteem and I'm starting to question my actions around my 7 yo daughter.

My mom never told me I was fat,but she also never told me that I look okay,or that I'm beautiful just as I am. My nieces and friends were all small framed 110lbs while I was around 145 ish lbs all my life, but taller and broader then them. And I grew up thinking I was fat. And when I look back at photos I see that I was perfect just the way I was. Maybe I needed my mother to tell me that.

I agree Flattum2be, its amazing to hear how much influence everyone's moms have had on their self image. Anyone had a particularly GOOD relationship with their mom in that regard? I have a 14 month old daughter and sometimes I wonder what pitfalls I'm going to fall into as a mother.

I don't really know anything about my biological father, but my mother was overweight when I was a kid, she's a good 5 inches shorter than me and just told me the other day that at her heaviest she was probably about where I am now (now if that doesn't sound like a barbed comment I don't know what does).

There's tension in our relationship for a bunch of reasons, weight definitely being one. I was very athletic and slim as a younger child and Mum use to get compliments about me from her friends. I put on weight as a young teenager and spent the rest of my childhood as the fat sibling (out of 4).

She was always sure to talk about how pretty my younger sister was and seemed to just give off an 'it's unfortunate' attitude about my weight gain. She's always been the type who cared a lot about appearances and I think it was a tough pill for her to swallow to have an overweight child instead of the slim athletic one she use to.

Now as adults all of my siblings have put on weight, one brother took most of it back off. But between the 4 of us I'm not the fat one anymore lol. Mum works very hard to keep herself slim and my younger sister who is getting married in a year has become a pet project of hers to help lose weight before her wedding.

The most I've gotten from her when talking about my own weight loss was a conversation about how she just doesn't understand how all of her kids ended up fat when she was such a great role model when we were growing up. Lol she seems to have blanked out the many cheap processed food dinners we had and lunches filled with junk. Or the fact that vegetables in our house were limited to mashed potatoes and canned corn.

My mom was bigger than me for a while but she lost weight and then I was bigger than her. Now I'm much smaller than anyone in my family.

I have a very good relationship with her now. There were some things during childhood that probably helped contribute to my obesity, but it was because of her that I got into exercise in the first place—she took me to the gym when I was 16.

There were some times during my weight loss when she kept cautioning me not too lose too much weight, and when I was around 120lbs she actually made me step on a scale in front of her because she didn't believe how much I weighed. I know now that it was probably just her (and everyone) not used to the thin me. Right now I'm around 10lbs lighter and nobody seems to care...I think they've finally gotten used to me.

This made me sad to read this. I'm sorry your parents said something like that about you.:hug: Do they know you heard them?:(

Oh, I didn't mean to make anyone upset!

No, my parents don't know I overheard them, and I doubt they'd even remember if I brought it up. But I'll never forget that memory, so I always try to be very careful about the things I say to--and about--my kids.

I think reading this thread made me realize just how lucky I am to have the mother that I do.

At my heaviest I was 180 pounds which is not morbidly obese by any stretch, but it was very dramatic on me, and having gained about 50 pounds in a 3 month period was pretty indicative of the fact that I was really struggling at that point with life in general.

Still, even then my mother never said anything to me about my weight, even with good intentions. The only time she ever comments on my appearance is to tell me how good I look or how beautiful I am, yet she has never gotten into specifics about my body. She might compliment me on how I'm wearing my hair or if my skin looks particularly healthy, but that's about it.

She's never told me "you look so good at that weight..." or anything that even remotely ties into my weight or size. She gives me generic compliments, which I think says a lot about her. Her mother is the same way with her, my aunt, and all of us grandkids. It's always "Oh my beautiful Granddaughter!" but never "thin, curvy, fit" or any other adjective related to our bodies.

I think that non-specificity is actually really important. I never look back and think "My mom complimented me MORE when I was xxx pounds, so now that I'm heavier I must not be attractive anymore. She loves me less now that I'm heavier..." Because of my mother and Grandmother, I don't associate my weight with my beauty.

I just want to say thank you to you all for sharing your stories, even though they may be difficult. Seeing them really has made me even more greatful for my family, and has given me another reason to appreciate how wonderful they are.

canadianmomma: I have an excellent relationship with my mother. And my father too. I was the obese kid. My mom has had weight problems since I was little but she was maybe overweight, not obese. I on the other hand was definitely obese AND I had an older brother who was on the other end of the spectrum, the scarily stick skinny side of things. In my teens and early adulthood, my mom was morbidly obese, I was plain obese, and my brother and dad were the normal ones. Now, for the first time, I'm the lightweight, my older brother is morbidly obese as is my mom and my dad is now overweight.

One thing I can say though is that I've never felt my parents' or brother's love for me was conditional on my weight. Even now, I don't think they think I'm prettier or better or more loveable because I've lost the weight. I felt loved no matter what. Even though I was exposed from an early age to a mom who was battling her weight and always trying to lose weight, I never felt there was something wrong with me or unloveable about me because I too was fat. My parents were THAT awesome and I felt loved THAT unconditionally.

In fact, all my body issues and loss of confidence and self-hatred didn't start until I left home and moved away to college and didn't have that back up of unconditional love and kind of had to learn that the world isn't particularly kind to the chubby. It's not that I was never teased in elementary school or high school, I was! But it didn't even bother me. Most kids were teased about one thing or the other and because I didn't care and I was so beyond the teasing and confident in myself and my own worth, I hung out with the popular kids for most of my pre-college education.

I can't imagine what I would feel if my parents did things to me that are as messed up as some of the things I've read here. I don't even blame my parents for my obesity. We weren't really a fast food family. We ate freshly-prepared whole foods 99% of the time, no sodas etc. The problem is that I just ate too much of it. Right now, I know my parents are concerned that I seem to want to lose more weight. But they don't say anything or obnoxiously concern-troll me trying to get me to stop. I think their concern is more whether I'm getting obsessive and if I'll know when to stop. They could care less about what I look like. Compliments in my immediate family at least, never had anything to do with weight. Now, my extended family.... that's a whole different story! #sigh

Hm to the mom thing. I have an OK relationship with my mom, but it's pretty obvious that I "learned" my unhealthy relationship with food from her. She bounced back and forth a few times between a healthy weight and morbidly obese, finally settling on morbidly obese. She has some emotional issues, too, and growing up, I watched her eyes just glaze over as she over-over-overate. She was self-sedating. I started doing the same when I hit puberty. A couple times, she half-heartedly told me how unhealthy I was eating but continued to stock the cabinets with junk, so not much was done about it. We rarely ate breakfast, never ate dinner together as a family, and ate a lot of fast food. Fruit and vegetables were rare (as a poster said above, potatoes and corn were considered our "good" food). Not great habits.

As an adult, I learned to love vegetables and while I ate well sometimes, I also overate on junk food, overindulged on craft beer (WEIGHT GAIN), and sometimes relied on quick, cheap, fast food. My mom still self-sedates with junk food, and I'm disgusted when I see it because I see myself in that behavior. It breaks my heart a bit, too, because while I've gotten some great counseling and am moving forward on addressing my emotions rather than masking them with food, I see her still using food to mask her emotions. But I have to separate myself from her and do what's right for me. Just like someone whose parents are thinner than them-- your weight loss is about you.

Anyway, my dad's been overweight here and there but is much better about regulating his weight. His new wife went vegan so that also helps him by default, even though he still eats animal products.

Sorry if this has gone off-topic from the original post-- definitely an interesting topic.

My mom is an inch or two taller than me and has been overweight for as long as I can remember. I love her so much and she is so beautiful but doesn't see it. I want her to lose weight so that she can see what everyone else sees and not be self conscious.

My dad used to be overweight and technically (by BMI standards) is a little overweight still but he completes multiple triathlons a year and is incredibly in shape and muscular. I get my body comp from him so we are both just naturally heavy people.

My parents never gave me a hard time about my weight and I am happy for that as I gave myself enough of a hard time. I'm sorry to hear some of your stories about the difficulties you had with your weight and your parents!

What I am wondering about is how do we with weight issues now stop the cycle with our daughter's? Should I keep my intention to lose weight as a secret or how do I make sure this doesn't influence my daughter to think that she needs to diet or something?? Any thoughts??

Thanks for everyone who shared their positive relationships with their moms.

Flattum2be, I've been wondering that myself. My daughter is too young to get what I'm at right now, but maintenance is a life time thing and once I've lost the weight sometime she's going to realize that I'm careful with what I eat.

I think my solution is to emphasize the importance of healthy eating. Honestly in today's world you can't just put your head in the sand and pretend everything isn't stacked against our children nutritionally. Unless we are active in teaching them about healthy vs unhealthy food how are they ever going to be able to make smart decisions, regardless of whether they are thing or overweight?

Haha I have NEVER weighed less than my mom (as she is now).
At most she got up to 210 but that was when I was young. She was hospitalized for a year when I was 9 and had a heart transplant. She came back a living skeleton, muscle atrophy, etc. but once she was home for a year getting healthy she started working and plumped back up...to about 130ish at the highest. Then she realized she was "fat" and has been around 118 for years now. She loves that weight, its what she was when she joined the army at 18 years old!! Mom's 56 now.
So she's 5'4" ish and 118-120
My lowest was 5'7" and 140..but I was 16-17 lol
so I TOTALLY feel your pain. Especially when she wears my old skinny clothes and they are big on her!!!! (About size 11)
I don't mind since I cant use them but man is it frustrating!! But, I probably have one of the most stylish moms out there at least :p

Makes me mad at times becasue she does not, DOES NOT!!! work out in any way. And she's diabetic so if anything should be heavy. (The diabetes came when she was in the hospital, so she has never been before her 40's) I worry about her though. It's perfectly normal not to eat all day until she gets home from work (we work together, just don't live together) so I am constantly worries about her sugar levels. When she's home she grazes a bit which is good, but I'm not sure if she doesn't eat for any reason other than she's busy and not hungry. Her old job didn't give her time to eat because she had to drive all day to clients houses (she was a homemaker) so it might be habit by this point, but it is so frustrating to see her so skinny without working at it at all. Maybe she's one of those people who have it in their genes.

As for my sister and I, we are just fat. But we know what we have to do and are doing it. I want to be healthy and stop being so self conscious. She wants to have a baby. We have motivation and will make it some day.

What about siblings? For the most part are you all heavy or is it a personal thing? I don't necessarly believe genetics determine everything, more like how you are raised. Nature vs nurture I guess. But it interests me to think maybe there's a deeper reason behind our weight. My sister was always skinny until she moved out. We weren't really raised together since she's 12 years older than me, so I'm not so sure it was our parents that taught us to be heavy.
I am rambling I'm sorry haha

Viking- The sibling thing is interesting to me. I am one of 5 kids. I am the only girl. We all have the same mom and dad. Both sides of my family are 90% morbidly obese. My older brother and I have ALWAYS struggled with our weight. We are in absolute perfect health. My older brother is in great shape. But he is still a little overweight, and not because of muscle mass. Even when he was in the military he was overweight. I have never been below a size 12 since elementary school. We both played sports, had fairly decent eating habits, etc.

My middle brother is very average. Just average. When he really applies exercise he gets fit. When he doesnt, he isn't. But he has never been overweight.

My two youngest brothers. SKELETONS. They are so skinny that the youngest one concerns me. But all they do is sit on their butts and play video games all day. They will go through a 12 pack of Mt Dew, eat an entire pizza, and inhale a few king size candy bars... and walk around with 6 pack abs and have problems with not finding clothing that is small enough in the waist but long enough for their legs. Tough life.

The two oldest are the same. Overweight but healthy lifestyle. The two youngest are the same. Lazy little snots with awful eating habits. And the middle child is the middle child :)

I find it so freaking bizarre!!!