As I was talking to a fellow co-worker about her weight loss program, I realized there seems to be a different mentality for people who have "always been fat" and people who have been "thin until now."
I am in the "always been fat" catagory. Heavy since my pre-teen years, I've always struggled with weight-loss and the stigma of being the "fat girl."
My co-worker is in the "thin until now" catagory. She said that her therapist told her that recently something happened that made her label herself as a fat person and she gave up the idea that she was thin. Consequently, she ate like a fat person, exercised like a fat person and no longer tried to be thin and if she regained that thin mentality, she would struggle less. (Also, it is interesting to note that she was 30lbs overweight, the heaviest she had been in her life).
So, my question to all of us who have 100lbs or more to loss:
Are you in the "always been fat" catagory or were you "thin until now?"
Interesting question. Technically I have always been overweight but for the longest time I really didn't think anything of it. I didn't look terribly fat, I was still athletic and was happy with myself. I think it is only the past couple of years that I have been really concerned about my weight.
If I knew when I was 30 lbs overweight, what I know now at 100 lbs overweight...
What an interesting subject. I always weighed around 150
throughout my teen years and I was teased about being
too heavy.
When I look back upon those picture of myself now I looked
great! Anyways......a five or ten pound problem escalated into
a 100 pound problem. I now weight 250!!! After I quit smoking
12 years back my weight sky rocketed to 309 I joined
weight watchers lost 100 and have only been able to keep
half the hundred off. I still consider that pretty successful
especially when the odds are you'll gain all the weight back
and then some. This time I shall overcome. I am 45
and healthy and I want to keep it this way. Even though I am
too big I am in good shape.
Anne.
I think it has something to do with always being told you're fat. In high school I was 180lbs, 5'9" and a size 16. It was a great size for me but everyone told me I was FAT. And it was drilled into my head at school and at home, with my "friends" and my family.
So, is it because it's drilled into you that your fat that you go from curvy to obese? Is there studies done on this kind of mentality with children? If children are told that they are fat, and berated for being that way, do they grow up fatter?
I don't think I ever weighed more than 155 untill I was pregnant with my first child. i was acurvy 5'9' and weighed anywhere from 135 (after mono in college) to 155.
I didn't think I was fat, but I did desperately wish for tight abs, no belly pooch etc. so I was always in an self-defeating excercise cycle.
I know that I have always felt big, never worn smaller than a 9, and I always had petite size 4 roommates. My grammy used to hound me to lose weight, pinch my "chubby thighs" etc.
But it was always surreal because I didn't see myself that way, my Mom was super-protective of my self-esteem and no self-hate was allowed in our home.
To be honest I was more "scarred" by being a pale skinned red-head growing up on Miami beach. I thought i was a hideous color and spent a lot of time in tanning salons and bleaching my hair so I could pass as a blonde. It sounds so silly, but i really obsessed about my paleness, hated to wear shorts always wore pantyhose, I still use self-tanners (and sunscreen now!) and my DH thinks I'm insane. I am so jealous of my easy tanning friends.
Ok but this is about being fat, and I am now, but i have for the last 5 years considered it a place I was visiting, I just never saw myself in the future at 275, even when my present was there. My Dh says that he thinks i am losing weight fairly easily (yeah right I'm working my *** off) because my body and most importantly my mind remembers what it was like to live in a smaller shape.
No, I wasn't always fat. I was 5'5" and between 127 and 143 from the time I was in late high school until I was 35. I'd lose a few pounds from time to time but kept them off for a good while too. Even lost weight reasonably quickly after both my babies.
Went back to school at 36; between then and graduation at 39 I put on 30 lbs. Of course during that time my daughter had surgery for scoliosis, my MIL had cancer and my fil died. Bit I'm not sure it was stress only - I've formed the idea that some of my weight has come from not taking the time to be vigilant about it.
In the next 25 years (yes, I am older than dirt), I put on another 80 lbs. Lots of things went on during that time, of course, including problems that restricted physical movement but not much losing weight. (note, that's only a couple of pounds a year average and that comes easily, only a few extra calories a day.) Anyway, I never really seemed to feel like I was fat, maybe my body was overweight but somehow "ME" wasn't fat. I've read a lot about how hard it is for people who have lost weight to think of themselves as anything but fat but I think I had the opposite problem.
I'm at a point now where some of my physical problems have improved to where I can move around more again and it seemed like a "now or never" time.
I'm now about where I got to about 11 years ago and am thinking back to how it felt then to be that weight. Isn't it strange how a number that felt so bad on the way up can feel so good on the way down?
Good question though - our minds are such powerful forces.
I also like this question too, hmm...
Well, I was slightly overweight as a child. I was the tallest and would be bigger than the other girls but not "fat" really. In high school my highest size was a 16. A large which is overweight compared to the size small girls, but still not really fat. After high school I gradually put on the weight, lost 50, gained 50-- several times!! My highest was 19 months ago--->313. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would weigh that much. It's interesting though, now that I am seperated from my husband I keep losing weight. I call it the "divorce diet". I lost 30 pounds before we seperated and 32 since then. It probably kills him that I am losing the weight now that we are no longer together!!
(his loss cause I would never take that loser back!!)
I was very tall in school. I left my 6th grade class at 5'9" tall, and a C+ cup bra. I was then 130lbs. That is in the low range of what I was supposed to weigh, but being so much taller then my friends I was teased for being fat. I look back and almost look sick. In high school I was varried from 155-175lbs and still thought that was fat. I swam on the swim team so I was in shape. But still teased by the shorter, thinner girls. Boy what I would do to be that "fat" again.
In my senior year of high school, I had a hip operation and was not very moble for about 6 months. From there I did some dieting and lost about 30 lbs and then got pregnant, and then got pregnant again. That puts me at the place I'm in now. So you could say I am in the "thin till now" place. But I have always seen myself as fat. I truly think that is my big problem.
I had a big ol' post going and my damn computer locked up! AARRRGGGHHHH!!! Anyhow, suffice it to say that I always thought I was in the "always been fat" category until I really thought about it. I'm actually in the "always THOUGHT I was fat" category. Wasn't fat in jr. high or high school, but was a size 11 compared to a sea of size threes. Size is relative.....
I'm in the middle of the road.. late highschool I started to put on some weight. Gained a little more by college. By 21 I was 150 lbs and considered myself fat. Funny - that is basicly my goal weight now
I was a "chubby" child -- although people always told me I was the cuter of the two of us -- my sister was a rail thin child.
I was a thin teen, 5' 2", 110 lbs. in high school --
I gained a little weight in college -- grew to 5'4" in college and up to 135-140 lbs. I loved this weight range -- I looked great and felt great.
Then after college, I don't know what came over me -- I just could not stop eating -- and about 10 years after graduating college, I weighed well over 300 lbs. Thing is, I didn't really acknowledge the problem until I acquired RA and lost joint mobility.
Guess I really did come full circle --
But, I am working to change that, and I'm gonna win.
Always been fat?
I joined
I am 45
Thing is, I didn't really acknowledge the problem until I acquired RA and lost joint mobility.
