Anyone else here been overweight long enough that you literally, don't remember what it's like to be a healthy/normal weight? I started getting big when I was around 7-8 years old. This month I'll be 31. That means I've been overweight for nearly 24 years. That's a long time. When I read other people's posts and they say that they've gotten down to their high-school weight, or whatever, or that they're in better shape now than when they were in their 20's I wonder what that feels like. I've not been in "good" shape since I was a young kid. I don't know what it's like to be able to buy clothes that are not in a plus-size. I've spent nearly my entire life being the fat girl. I don't know what it will be like whenever I finally reach my goal.

I have been obese since I was five years old, and my closest brush with a healthy weight was during my freshman and sophomore years in highschool with the assistance of prescription stimulant appetite suppressants.

I don't remember being or feeling thin.

Even if I can currently boast that I'm in better shape now than I was in my 20's, I know your pain. I'm literally lighter now than I was in junior high thus I'm the lightest I've ever been as an adult . . . yet I'm still obese and am still in plus sizes. I haven't been "thin" since fourth grade or so, and sixth grade is when I really ballooned (due to illness and emotional issues). I'd spent most of my life being at least 100 pounds overweight, and even spent a part of it being over 200 pounds overweight.

I've often said that although I've often longed to be thin, it's scary because I don't know anything about what it means to be "normal." Being the fat girl really is all I've ever known, but I've spent the past several years working on that both physically and mentally. I think I actually made a mental breakthrough in the past year, which has allowed me to make more progress than ever. Still such a long way to go though, especially since I have to take a maintenance break for the rest of the year.

I am currently lighter than I was at age 14, maybe younger. I just remember that when I got my first job at 14, I weighed in the 160's.

It's very strange being this small. Sometimes I feel like I'm living another person's life. I was never able to shop at normal stores- I was a size 12 by age 13 and easily in the plus sizes by high school.

If someone had asked me 2 years ago if I'd rather learn Spanish or finish at 5K, would definitely have chosen to learn Spanish. I joke that since I did finish a 5K earlier this year, I should go ahead and learn Spanish- how hard can it be- I already did the 5K!

I'm also convinced that I'm the only soul alive that thinks airplane seats now feel roomy hahaha

I haven't been "skinny" since I was probably 11 years old, I started puberty and my Mom told me it was just part of the process when I started to get a little chubby, but then it just kind of snowballed - 190's through most of high school, 210's when I met my husband, 230 when I got married, 250's after 2 years of marriage, 270's after five years of marriage, 290's by the 10th anniversary, and then the 310's before I realized I was slowly killing myself.

Sadly, this is the smallest I've been in ten years. I bought a XXL in the regular clothing section this week and almost did a jig when the shirt fit. I know this shrinking process has messed with my head more than I thought it was going to, but I think I'm doing this for the right reasons - not just so I can rock a pair of skinny jeans (I mean more than I do now).

Underwater - I can't wait for airplane seats to feel roomy, it's the main reason I've avoided airplanes for so many years!

BASarp - I don't think any of us definitively know how this journey will end or how we will feel once we've met our goals. Some of us will find confidence that has been tucked away under layers of far, some of us will find we had been using our fat as an excuse for not taking on life, some of us will find that life maybe doesn't get a whole lot better being "normal" but hopefully achieving our goals will enrich our lives. Best of luck to you!

I have never been a normal weight. I was nearly a 10 pound baby! Throughout my entire life, I've been heavier and bigger than my peer group. I look back at photos of myself when I was 5 and 6 years old and just shake my head. To me, looking back now at pictures of myself then, I see a large framed, solid kid. But doctors started telling my mother that I was chunky and needed to diet, I didn't fit into "normal" sized clothing and people around me kept patting me on the head and saying, "It's OK, it's just baby fat. It will come off when you grow up."

It never came off. I just gained more and more and more until at age 47 I ended up staring at a scale that said 302 pounds.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if when I was very young if I'd been taught to accept the differences in the way I was built instead of being taught in both overt and subtle ways that my build was bad and ugly. I wonder if I would have still fallen into the trap of extreme overeating.

Who knows?

I can't go back and change history. All I can do is change what I'm doing now. Sorry for the long winded response. The short answer is I'm 49 years old and I've never been a normal weight. I have no idea what that would be like.

To be fair, they will never feel "roomy" as in a roomy regular chair. But compared to how I used to squeeze in, the fact that my thighs don't touch the arm rests anymore means I can sit comfortably for the 5-6 hour cross country flights I do at least a few times a year.

I started gaining weight in 2nd grade. I remember being 104# in 4th grade, 160# in 7th grade, and 267# in college. Perfect strangers, and even my teachers tried to talk to me about my weight. As a kid, I knew it was a problem, but I didn't know what to do about it, and it was not discussed at home, since all of my family was overweight.

I'm at 212# right now, after having been 350 at my highest. Honestly, I feel "thin" right now. This is thin for me. I am ecstatic that I can wear an XL shirt and size 16 pants. It messes with my mind when I read comments about these sizes being SO big. To me, it's small. It's all about your frame of reference.

I'm really beginning to know that it's not about the number on the scale, it's about how you feel in your skin. I've even decided that I will no longer tell people around me how much I've lost and my goal weight, because it always seems that they have a comment on the numbers, and I don't like to dwell on that. As long as I'm happy and comfortable, that's all that matters.

I wish you well on your journey, and that you find joy in the little things as you get smaller... like fitting into airplane seats! REAL JOY!

I've been overweight since 5 or 6 years old. Obese since 15/16 years old. This is my lowest as an adult. I will be going in unknown territory when I go below 150. Bit exciting and scary at the same time!

I'm with you OP! I've been fat for as long as I can remember. It started at maybe around 5 years old for me.

That's a good point and I try to take other people's perspectives into account when I post because right now to me my old 24-26 are my "fat" clothes, but there are people on here working to get to that size. There are wonderful people on here that have done far more than what I've done just to get where I started at and I think sometimes when we reference our weight in clothing sizes we don't take into account how our negative associations with that size impact other readers. Personally, I'm a little jealous of you size 16's...I barely got a pair of 18's zipped yesterday.

We all have different interpretations of what being thin means, we just have to get to where we feel comfortable. But I totally get the "thin" feeling - I'm just now getting used to catching a glance of myself in a mirror and not getting depressed when I'm out shopping and I'm still almost 100 lbs. overweight, but it's been sooooooooo long since I've been this small that it does make me feel skinny.

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I took a few days to respond to this thread because it is such a difficult question to me. I felt fat and was teased as the fat kid pretty much since kindergarden, so 4 years old. But looking back I wasn't really overweight until jr high and not noticeably so until early high school.

Instead I was thick and tall. Until 6th grade when the boys started getting growth spurts I was easily the tallest in any of my classes by a full head, and I was almost a full year younger than most of them as well. I come from german farmer stock, at almost 5'10 I am the shortest in the family. Everyone has wide hips and shoulders even when they are as skinny as they can get and not look ill.

I can look back and realize that I had some normal childhood roundness but I was not fat. But the other kids just saw that I was bigger then them and that meant I had to be fat. I also had exercise induced asthma and no inhaler so I couldn't run the mile etc. so obviously I was fat and lazy. I couldn't fit into the right clothes because I was tall and my shoulders are more like a linebackers than a girls, but that meant I was fat and slobby. So I got teased, and I felt huge.

As I got older I figured I was already fat and had always been fat so why not eat what I want and not bother to exercise. So I GOT fat.

Perception wise I have never felt normal so, while I was normal for my build once upon a time, I have no idea what to expect when I get there.

I haven't been below 200 lbs since 7th grade, 120+lbs in 4th grade. Like a lot of the other people who commented on here, I have been overweight even at my earliest memories.

I can remember being 4 years old, locking myself in a bathroom and crying my eyes out because my grandmother was telling everyone at a family function how fat I was and how much I ate. She use to get wide belts and tighten them around my belly to the point that it was painful and say, "you aren't going to have a waist, you have to do this for a waistline. You're going to be a fat potot (some Cajun word for potato I think) otherwise."

Good times

I have been overweight my entire life. There was a time right when I graduated from college that I crash dieted my way down from 200 to 150, but I never felt normal. Over the years, I got down to 180's once on WW, but it never lasts. I never feel good enough, I always feel like the morbidly obese person. Trying very hard this time, now that I am 47 to recognize the changes and let my mind process them. I realized for the first time in my life last week that even when I get to goal, my body is not going to look like a Sports Illustrated swimwear model, it never will, and I am O.K. with that. It's more about health for me now.