I've spent most of my life overweight, but did have a brief "window" of five years that I was thin. So what's worse? I know what it's like to be thin and have on occasion "beat myself up" over letting myself go. Do you think it's less intimidating/depressing if you have always been overweight or better to have been thin once so you know what it's like?

For many years I beat myself up for having let myself go
But... knowing what a hot babe you will look like once you actually lose the weight can be motivating.

Well... I don't know. I mean, how could one judge? One has been either one or the other... so how would we compare?

I try to stay in the "now"...

Jay

I was thin up until about 20. BUT...I didn't THINK I was thin. I thought I was overweight, frumpy, and ugly. I thought I had a HUGGGGGGGGGGE butt. Found out after I'd gained weight that that is NOT how other people saw me. But being thin didn't make me think anymore of myself.

this question kind of struck home with me. I grew up in a family that was very weight conscious. I was thin until I had kids and gained about a hundred pounds. My younger thinner me was not done in a healthy way...more of a stress thing. As a teen and young adult, I got lots of attention from the opposite sex. I was homecoming queen one year...this is not a brag,,,,,I was TOTALLY miserable. Pregnancy was my escape(I believe now)
Now that I am overweight, sometimes I feel like I am invisible. fortunately it has never affected my dh, he remembers the old me and still loves me as I am now. I know I can take this weight off but now it makes me wonder about trusting people..I have found there is a lot of discrimination when it comes to being overweight....Just my thoughts...

I don't really know, it's quite a tough and "philosophical" question. I was extremely athletic when I was younger, I played basketball, netball, football(soccer) and hockey even rounders and cricket and I even represented my school in long distance running. The funny thing is, I was a size 10/12 then and I thought I was massive thats about 135 pounds especially because I was around 5'2"/5'3". And the reason I thought I was massive was because so much of me was muscle so my weight was higher. As I grew older I grew lazier and the sports started to get cut out of my life. So being once skinny and now I'm big gives me a sort of comfort... because it means that I know I can be skinny... I can do it - i've been skinny once before. There isn't that uncertainty... I'm not sure what its like for people who have been overweight all their lives, but I feel comforted by the fact that I know roughly what I'll look like once I can be bothered to get off my bottom. Another thing as well, I have sizes in clothes from when I was skinny to my top weight which is now... So I'm prepped with clothes regardless what weight I am (unless I put on weight.. then i'll need some more).

For me, I think it's been harder to be smaller earlier on and then put on weight over time. It's a harsh reminder of how far I have to go every time I open up the closet and see all those cute clothes that fit me 3-4 years ago

I was always in the thinner side weighing between 115-120. My daughters have never seen me thin and my younger daughter thinks I look way too thin at that weight when she looks at pictures of me. She said that it will be so different to see how I will look once I've lost my weight, but she's my biggest supporter, because she said she wants me around for a long time and to be healthy. I have beat myself up over and over for letting myself go and not getting a grip on myself years ago! All I can do is go forward from here and know that I will be on thinner side once again, eventually.

Interesting topic. I have been overweight for my entire adult life, so I do not know what I would look like as a healthy adult. I do know that it's hard to hear things like "You used to be cute, what happened?" (yes someone actually said that to me).
for me, I think back to those times. I was anorexic in middle school, I got to a point where I could stop looking at the scale and the stresses in my life finally subsided a little where I felt like I had control again. But I was always bombarded with men, from the time I was about 10 until I got fat, I was hit on and bothered. I was too young to know what to do with that.
So I think that may have something to do with why I gained so much weight in the first place. Plus just having an unhealthy relationship with food and only having my parents unhealthy relationships with food to go by as an example didn't help.
Knowing I used to be small does sometimes bother me because I think about how I should never have gotten this fat to begin with. But since I've been fat since I was 17 I also think about how whatever weight I do end up at when I'm at goal - it will be completely new to me.
Someone mentioned the invisibility. I think I like being invisible and the thought that people might notice me again is a little bit scary.
Either way, being fat sucks and losing weight is hard and everyone has a compelling story. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this question.

On a side note - I've been thinking about the term "Let myself go"... I don't think I like it.

ROFL! OMG! You've met Cookie!

That's how I found out that I wasn't fat before, when I had thought I was. I ran into an old friend and his first words were "What happened to you?!?! You used to look GOOD in high school." He quickly started backpeddling when he realized what he'd just said. He didn't mean it negatively. He just spoke before thinking. LOL

I was "thin" until I had my second child. I am 100 pounds heavier but I am happier than I was. Yes, I sometimes beat myself up for the letting myself gain so much during pregnancy and not get it off right away, but my kids love me no matter what weight I am.

I think it sucks equally, either way.

Until my 20s, I was never more than 15 - 20 pounds overweight, but had you asked me, I'd have SWORN I was an easily fifty-pounds-overweight eyesore. I always felt just that huge, just that different.

I see younger girls now who are the size I was then and they look fine! They look great! They swim with their friends and don't worry about it. They have the confidence to wear things that don't actually look that great, but who cares! They FEEL good! And I do know that part of the issue is that so many more people are some degree of overweight now, whereas back then (late 80s, early 90s) in my class of 200 people, there was me, one other girl about my size, one very very fat person, and a bunch of thin people. If you look at a current graduating class, many are at least somewhat overweight, with a few very overweight people thrown in. While I don't think it's necessarily good for our health, I do think it's great that some not-so-fat girls are growing up feeling normal. Had I felt NORMAL, I would not be as big as I am now. I thought, I'm already MASSIVE so what are a few more pounds?

Ok, I've depressed myself.

In the past few weeks I've been really reading and gearing up for some kind of big diet shift. I can feel the momentum getting going - but I also feel sad. There is no bouncing right back when you've been 100 pounds overweight and had a C section. There are no two piece swimsuits (or great boobs) in my future, outside of medical intervention. And it's sad. I never had that. I've never had one single moment where I didn't feel fat and flabby and awful and embarassed and ashamed. That seems just awful, doesn't it? Therer are so very very many things I've missed, things I can't get back, because I was so consumed with knowing exactly how bad I looked. It seems like such a waste.

I agree. I always felt awful about how I looked no matter if I was 97 lbs or 255 lbs. To think that I was (at the same height I am now) 97 lbs, and upset about that and thought I looked disgusting makes me sad.
It also makes me worry a little bit, if I ever do get down to a reasonable weight... will I accept myself and stay at that weight, or will I just try for a little more weight loss, lets see if I can lose 5, 10, 20 more lbs... that is scary.

When I graduated eighth grade, I weighed 118 pounds. That fall when I started HS, I was 130. I was mostly between 130-150 for 25 years. That included a period when I was really healthy, going to a martial arts/physical fitness academy, where my 150 was mostly muscle. I looked about 130. But I was 157 when I started going out w/my husband-to-be, 165 when we married, 175 a year later, and have been on a roller-coaster between 195-205 for most of the last 17 years. I had a high weight of 222 about 4 years ago, got appalled, lost 30 pounds, then gradually crept back up to 211 about 5 1/2 weeks ago, when I joined here and FitDay. I have lost 10 pounds since 3-22-07, when I joined. Now you have my history.

What's "worse"? Shelby897 who started this thread is possibly one of the few able to actually answer this question, since she's one of those rare ones who has actually kind of been in both camps. As Jillybean720 put it, "it depends 100% on the individual". JayEll made the point I myself agree with: "...how could one judge? I mean, one has been either one or the other," so how could one compare?

My mother (who was 4'11", about 95 pounds) used to call me "FatAss", and would deny me sweetrolls she brought into the house "because you're fat" (at 135!)--but then would treat me like a human garbage disposal once they were stale & she didn't want to waste them--then she wanted me to eat them! No, I don't think she ever once saw the irony. (And she was big on irony!) So I grew up, like so many of the other people with stories in this thread, believing I was fat, even when I wasn't. Now that I am fat--I know what it's like!

Still, I--and any of the rest of us who did not grow up truly overweight--do not know what **** it really was to have grown up that way.
So really, we cannot compare.

I can say I believe it would be much harder to have always been heavy. But I can't ever really know.