People say there's two kinds of fat people...
 

Hi there! I hope you don't mind me crashing your board, but I have a question that's like an itch in my mind and I'm sorry, but I have to scratch it.

For those of you who have lost a significant amount of weight are working to maintain it.. did you basically grow up fat, or did you grow up thin and become fat later on in life? And I'm also curious about your thoughts on the subject. ie. Do you think that fact influenced your weight loss/maintenance at all?

If you grew up fat, do you still feel like a fat person inside?

I went from thin to fat at age 9. When my parents split up and we moved, I turned to food for comfort. I have been in a "normal" weight range 3 times since. All 3 times, I dieted and did manage to keep the weight off for a couple years before slowly gaining it back.

My father died in his 50s at a weight of between 450-500 lbs. So, I definitely have some genetic disposition to being fat.

I do believe that being fat most of my life DID influence my weight loss this time. I did NOT want to continue the lose/gain cycle I have done so many times before. Thus, my decision to stop dieting and change my lifestyle instead.

Ironically - for most of the time I was fat, I didn't feel like a fat person. I was happy with myself, thought I looked OK in clothes, did what I wanted to do, and generally thought of myself as "pleasingly plump" rather than "fat".

It was only when my weight started to affect my mobility and my health that I had to wake up and see myself as I really was.

So, do I occasionally still feel like a fat person inside? Yes.

Since I have a bit of saggy-baggy skin, I never see myself as thin. Seeing pictures of myself, catching a glimpse in a store window, or even occasionally noticing my shadow has finally helped me get a more realistic picture of what I really look like.

People will comment, "you are so tiny". In my head I add the following words to their comment, "compared to how you used to be."

A year into maintenance, I'm still a work in progress when it comes to seeing myself as others see me.

Growing up I always thought I was fat, even though I wasn't actually for most of that time. I only started to actually cross into the "overweight" BMI category late in high school, but I was always heavier than most of my friends and I was very out of shape so my body composition was mostly fat.

I didn't actually become seriously overweight and then obese until college. I didn't think about it that way until looking back on it after losing weight though -- I *feel* like I "grew up fat."

I definitely grew up with extremely poor eating habits. There have been a million debates about whether or not parents can be blamed for their children's weight problems, especially since my problems technically didn't really start until I was in college (although they mentally started long before). All I can say is that I did not know how to eat healthy, and I was not aware that my eating habits were unhealthy.

I don't know if that influenced my loss or maintenance at all. I mean, I do still have cravings for all the junk food I used to eat. But since I started my weight loss journey when I moved out of the dorms and started cooking my own food, I really have been cooking and eating "healthy" since I've been responsible for making my own dinners.

I have been overweight since I was 5. I have never seen myself as physically "thin", even at goal, though I obviously recognize that I am smaller than I was. And I definitely still see myself, from a personal standpoint, as a fat person who has become thinner, not as a thin person. Subtle, I guess, but also meaningful...and helpful to keep me on track (after all, if I'm a fat person on the inside, and stop being vigilant, I'll quickly return to being one on the outside as well).

I, myself, grew up fat. Skinny stopped at like age 6. Sometimes I wonder when I get thin, if I'll look at the mirror and not recognize myself anymore. I wonder if I'll have some kind of identity crisis. I wonder if I'll be completely ill-equipped to deal with things I've never dealt with before, like compliments, getting hit on, etc. It's so much a mental straight jacket when you've been fat all your life.

I have a friend who lost about 75 lbs and looks GOOD, yet he will still not take his shirt off when he goes swimming, because mentally he's still uncomfortable inside. Very odd.

I pretty much grew up fat. I know my parents thought I was fat, and my (overweight) father didn't miss too many opportunities to let me know that I was fat. But for most of high school, I was thinner than I am now so I have no idea. Like someone else said, I always "felt" I was fat.

Your second question is harder. I guess I don't know. I don't want to end up back where I started, that's for sure. And now that I'm older, the spectre of diabetes, which my father had, keeps me in line for the most part.

Sheila, that is me exactly. Even when I wasn't *technically* fat, my parents made it pretty clear to me that they thought I was fat.

I was slightly underweight (for the times) at birth and a picky feeder. Hard to believe. I was my mother's first child, so understandably she worked very hard to feed me up.
I've been fat all my conscious life, apart from 2 brief spells when I lost a lot of weight triumphantly but not for long.

My parents and youngest sibling (brother) were/are all overweight. My younger brother was skinny until he'd been married to his American, home-cooking wife for about 15 years! He's gone skinny now by 'just' giving up snacks.

me too, kinda. sure, I wasn't thin but when I look at photos, I was rounded but to my mother I was shamefully, don't-mention-it fat.

And again for me.

I was not a fat child. I weighed 112 when I got married. I started gaining weight after marriage and pregnancy, I was about 30 when I went on my first diet and I believe I was about 130 at the time. From 112 to 130 seemed enormous at the time. Little did I know that the time would come when I would be over 204 pounds.

I always thought I was overweight as a child, but in looking back I don't think I really was. I always had a noticeable tummy, which I clearly remember being self conscious of in ballet classes as an elementary aged child. In pictures though, I had a slim face as a child, and a reasonably slim frame.

I was bigger than the girls I wanted to look like in junior high and high school, but not the biggest. Again, the tummy haunted me. I probably crossed into officially overweight for my BMI in college (155 is the threshold for my height I think), dropped back under for a while during a bad first marriage, came back up in my newly single years. Lost back down to the 130s when DH and I got together, bounced back into the 140s after things settled back down, lost to where I am now starting February 2008. Trying to maintain now - going on ten months.

I always thought I was overweight - my mother is 5'3" and was always petite, so I felt fat when I grew past being able to share her clothes in sixth grade. I don't remember any family ever putting any pressure on me as a teen to get skinnier, other than the subtle pressure put on by mom always talking about how fat she was. Mom had her own eating disorder & related issues, I realize as an adult. Dad also made comments occasionally when he saw me eating things like 'boys don't like big girls, are you sure you want to eat that?' I think that is related to mom's eating disorder - he still will ask me 'how much are you going to have to work out later to get rid of that?' if he sees me eat something like cake or dessert. I believe he developed a 'tick her off so she won't eat it so she'll be mad later instead of guilty' survival instinct with my mom...

So, anyway, back to the original question. How has my background influenced my maintenance? I still look in the mirror and see my tummy. :) I measure it and my waist almost every day. I look in the mirror and see chubby still, unless I make a conscious effort to pull my eyes to other parts of me. I sometimes balk at buying clothes that fit right because I flash back to the low self image of the teenager who thought she was fat.

I know I'm in the best shape I've ever been in my entire life, and I'm determined I'll maintain it. I'm watching a lot of women in my life have health problems as they age and I want to head off as many of those as I can.

I didn't get fat until after college, although I did gain (and lose) some weight in college. So I do have some years of identifying with a normal weight to draw on, although over 10 years overweight and obese followed that time.

And another one here.