Does "fat" run in your family?
 

It does on my father's side. Dad isn't heavy, but the women on his side tend to be so. My Aunt Karen, my father's sister, is tall and about a size 16 with most of her weight above her waist. Her 19 year old daughter is also tall and is now starting to put on weight. I have a similar body type with large boobs and a belly, but I'm a couple inches shorter.

My mom, on the other hand, is skinny, so is my older brother.

My mom is one of those truly genetically thin people. She has always been a side 4, ate whatever, no formal exercise. My dad is very heavy.

Now that I know a little more, I realize my mom just kind of eats when she wants to and stops when she's full and she's a very hyper, fidgety person. My dad has been an off and on dieter, serious yo-yos, big losses and big gains.

I started off by taking after my dad, ate too much, too fast, constant diets and weight gain. I always thought I was destined to be fat just like dad, but I realized I was fat like dad because I ate (and dieted) like he did. Now that I eat better, I am amazed to discover I am built like my tiny mother. We have the same legs, the same bird wrists, the same collar bones.

I used to tell myself all kinds of lies when I was heavy. I said I was big boned. I said I had a slow metabolism. I said that I must be heavy because dad was heavy. None of those things turned out to be true.

I stopped binge eating and started eating whole foods. Stopped eating fake foods and restrictive short term dieting. All of a sudden, I am my mother.

My Mom's side of the family are all overweight.All 3 Aunts and my Mom,my Grandma and GreatGrandma as well.My Uncle is slighty overweight,but he carries it well...at least from what I remember.I seem to take after them and my sister takes after my Dad's side...who are all thin.

Porking out on sweets runs in my family. My grandfather used to have HUGE portions whatever sweet there was. He wasn't really overweight, but he was a farmer and worked it all off. My dad followed suit, was also a farmer but wasn't able to work it off after a point. My mom is a hidden eater (eats standing up over the sink in the kitchen. A lot). Lucky me. I got the two for one deal.

I don't know if I would say that being overweight runs in my family, but I think weight is an issue on both sides of my family. Everyone has some weight on them, but it's not huge.

My mom was short and chubby. My dad was tall and thin. Both brothers are tall and thin. I got the heighth but also the weight. All the girls in my family have had to watch what they eat or gain weight. We kind of go in cycles of who is trying to lose weight.

No one in my family that is a blood relative would be considered obese, but some are overweight by anywhere from a few to 30 or 40 pounds. My dad is definitely overweight. He has a big old beer belly--he looks perfectly thin from the back, but from the front or the side he looks pregnant. His brothers have jokingly asked him when he is due. He has been this way for as long as I can remember, but he was thin when he married my mom. Sometimes he gives up beer for a while and it is amazing how fast the weight comes off when he does. I wish I could lose weight just by giving up beer (I hardly ever drank beer even before I started this diet).

My mom was stick thin when she was my age. I look at pictures of her literally days after she gave birth to my sister and can't believe anyone could be that thin. When they were married, my dad could put his hands around her waist and have his index fingers and thumbs touching. He once broke two of her ribs just by hugging her. My sister and I were already too big to fit into her wedding dress by the time we hit junior high (and neither of us was overweight, in fact, we probably were considered to be on the thin side at the time). She loathed exercise and I never once saw her break into a run; she simply refused to do it. In fact, I never once saw her do anything that would be considered exercise other than walking. But she was on her feet all day and rarely sat down to rest until the evening. Her only nod towards dieting was to eat lettuce every night with dinner (but with regular salad dressing on it).

She did end up gaining weight in her 40's, but was never overweight by more than 10-20 pounds. She was 5' 6" and weighed around 150 at her heaviest. Like my dad, she also carried her extra weight in her stomach and--surprise, surprise, that is exactly where I carry it as well. So I didn't get either of my parent's metabolisms, but I did get their spare tires. I'm 5' 3", 118 pounds, 23% body fat as of Friday, and yet I still have the spare tire around my stomach, so I don't think I'll ever be rid of it.

- Barbara

LOL We've just had this discussion this weekend. I've been at the grandparents' for the weekend. My aunt was in from FL. She's now doing WW. I wondered what she needed to pay WW for, she's not overweight. But she's wanting to trim her hips and thighs. She's got that pear shape thing going on. I told her all the women in the family have that, it's a trait. We started talking about how it doesn't help that the grandparents have no healthy food. I had a couple bags of the veggie barley soup from the Amish (just add water and simmer), and she loved it. Grandparents always have a fridge full of fast food, candy, cakes and cookies. No wonder grandma's diabetic. IF anyone cooks, it's biscuits and potatoes with whatever they can put together. But biscuits and potatoes are the staples in our family. It gets difficult for my grandparents to do any cooking though, so family generally takes them fast food. Last weekend, they had 2 McChickens, pepperoni pizza and a Chinese dinner in their fridge.

My whole family, except for my dad when he was younger are all skinny. My sister has some meat on her, but not like I do. :o People on my dad's side are all tall big people.

Everyone on my dads side is big. Tall, overweight, muscular and big boned. You can see those people coming! My moms side, most people are short and rather small. Even the men are 5'7 or below with small to medium frames. Only thing is, with the women, we are all pear shaped. I have yet to meet a woman from that side of the family that isn't. So I have the pear shape and height on my moms side, with a large muscular frame and all the weight that comes from dads. Gotta love genetics. :p :p

Yup. On both sides. Lots of fat.

only those of us who are ( were fast food addicts fattening food addicts )

My mum is like lillybelle's kinda short and cuddly. She's had times when she's been just over the obese mark, and times when her weight has been within healthy range. She's a classic yo-yo dieter. My dad is a stringbean.

All the women in my family are pear shaped on my mothers side. On dads side they tend to be more straight up and down, carrying weight evenly if they gain any at all.

People tend to gain weight in my family, yes - whether on my father's or on my mother's side. I think the only truly genetically thin person in the immediate parenthood was my father's mother (I never knew her though, she died before my birth), and my sister is the lucky one who has inherited this. All the others, grandma, mother, grandpa, me, tend to gain weight easily. My father too, but only around the midsection. I think my cousins have it worse than I, though, so I might shut up and cling to the little consolation lot I have here? ;)

My dad's side is mainly skinny. Maybe a few extra pounds around the midsection, but skinny.

My mother's side, not so much! I don't know much about the men (except for one uncle that was a farmer...stayed skinny) on her side, but the women were all quite large. My mom is big. It's all mainly around the midsection. I don't mean everything else is skinny, but if she lost the stomach, by the time that was skinny the rest of her would be stick thin!

My sisters....ah...one has always been big, but that's ALL because of the foods she eats! One has been up and down up and down for as long as I can remember. They both go on various diets, pills, all that good stuff regularly. This month it's no sugar, I remember when Atkins came out so big, weight watchers...you name it, they've done it, and failed. They don't understand the concept of just eating right.

The other sister was thin all through her teens, twenties...all through her party days I should say! She was the one that was out all night dancing, then working all day. No idea how she ate. Now that she's in her late 30's and settled down she's really packing the pounds on.

Brothers...one is very tall and skinny. Other two are pretty big guys...I think alot of it comes from mobility issues though.

Distant cousins I've noticed are mostly bigger. I guess I have my dad's side to thank for the fact that I never got too overweight and seem to be dropping it sorta easily. I have a metabolism that I didn't know about...lol.

Kim

My biological parents are both obese, due to unhealthy relationships with food, zero exercise and mental illness.

My biological grandparents are both normal weights, way into their 70s. Grew up during the Depression. When I take them out to eat, they share a salad and a main course and still do not eat it all.

Genetics? Or food habits? I'd have to say the latter. Genetics did not make me fat. Eating crap, and too much of it, did, although the reasons I abused food probably have roots in an abusive family of origin.

Most people in my family are carrying a bit of weight, other than my dad and his mum. On my mum's side, both my grandparents have pretty much always been on the large side since I've known them, and judging by their wedding photos, my grandfather at least has been for longer than that too. Mum's an only child, and while she apparently got quite skinny in her 20s, she's put it all back on and then some as she's aged. I think she was "chunky" in her teens and early 20s, lost a fair amount, then put it on. She's never been able to exercise due to a heart problem that made her spend a load of time when she was in hospital as a kid, and her cooking was never dished out in modest portion sizes. BUT, she's lost 15 - 20lb over the past year or so by picking up on a couple of things I do and increasing the amount she walks, so she's heading in the right direction at least.

On my dad's side, his mother is tiny and his dad is huge - height wise as well as ever increasing girth. However, that's just how his dad is now, having been confined to a wheelchair for the past 30 years or so (polio) it's no wonder that the weight has been piling on as he goes through his 70s and 80s. Dad's mum was always pretty sporty, right up to her late 60s I remember her taking us to play tennis, and she was pleased as punch when I started running because that's something she used to do at university.

My dad and his brothers are all probably naturally all borderline normal/overweight, with their actual weights varying depending on their lifestyles. My dad is a scuba diving instructor, so keeps himself relatively slim compared to his brothers (particularly, not that I'm pandering to stereotypes here, the one who lives in the US).

My sister is again borderline overweight, but fairly muscular so she looks pretty good at that weight. She's a scuba diving instructor too (family business), but whereas my dad will go through the day eating little more than an apple, she has a far healthier appetite! Which is most noticeable in her boyfriend who has put on a fair bit of weight since they moved in with each other - I thought it was normally the other way round, but my sister's cooking seems to have had more of an effect on him than her!

Looking through my family, almost all of the weight or lack of it seems to be linked to lifestyle factors rather than genetics. Or at least, while some of them might be naturally at the heavier end of the "normal" scale and there's no-one stick thin, how far they deviate from that natural weight (which isn't overweight) depends on how they live their lives.

A LOT of health problems run in my family. Unfortunately this generally leads to a lack of energy, which leads in turn to a sedentary lifestyle. Add to that a love of food, and yes, there are a lot of overweight and obese people. I grew up thinking it was normal and inevitable for me. :(

Your sister has such a cool job!

I know a few guys who gained after having a steady gf/ wife cook for them.

My family is all large-boned and really tall, ranging from very thin to overweight. The one thing we all have in common is eating a lot. Family get-togethers always consists of tons of food - and unhealthy food at that. I've been the heaviest of the women for years, but my baby sister is now heavier than me. She is 14 years younger than me and has no children. I just hate to see her putting on all the weight because I know she will fight it all her life, just like I do.