Curious -- When Did You Get Fat?

The WLS path isn't an easy one.  You'll stumble along the way, and probably have a lot of emotional growth as well.  Stick with it and it will be one of the most rewarding experiences you can have!

Kix

I was also born early and underweight (and with blood sugar issues, ironically) but I started to look bigger than other kids at around 4 or 5. I know by first grade I was clearly fat, because I have my class picture and while I am not glaringly large I am much bigger than the other kids. Taller too. Then I hit puberty in 4th grade and it seems like that's when I got seriously larger than my peers. Taller, heavier, quickly growing boobs. By 12 I passed for 18 easily. By 12 I'd also reached my present measly 5' tall. 

I gained steadily through to high school, I graduated at a little over 300lbs. Two years later, when I had my gall bladder out, I was 350. The next time I weighed, a few years after that, the scale didn't work anymore, meaning I was over 400.

I had a weird childhood, I'm not completely sure why I started eating, sneaking food, etc. I was kind of lonely, and my family smoked A LOT of pot around me and that made me nervous that they'd go to jail or something, and I think it also gave me a permanent contact high and munchies. I did not smoke pot myself until a few years ago and my first thought was "this is how I felt when I was a kid!" It was like coming home... sad eh? Oh, and also, potheads don't generally make the best family food decisions.  My mom is a great cook, and cooks very healthy, but there were always chips, little debbies, things like that to get my hands on, and I did. I snuck food bigtime, and ate constantly if I was home alone.

Add being a bookworm and very intense student to the list, and I think I was very tightly wound. Food was how I eased that tension. It doesn't help that it tastes so good too!

I wonder if my parents would have been happier had they smoked pot all the time instead of Pall Malls constantly?   

Hard to say, my mother abused prescription pills (uppers, downers, whatever she could get from the docs, and it wasn't hard because money wasn't an issue), and the pills turned her personality into manic-depressive.  I never knew from one minute to the next what kind of mood she'd be in, and as a result, I became highly intuitive of other people's feelings.  I once told a boss, "I'll know how you're feeling before you do."  He thought I was kidding. 

I don't know why I started eating or sneaking food, either.  My formative years were kind of emotionally unstable (according to my older siblings), but I have obviously blocked out most of the early stuff.  I will say that I had good parental surrogate role models in friends' parents, who kindly took me under their wings, which is why I identify strongly with the poor young girl who seeks refuge at your house.

Darn those tasty snacks, especially donuts.  I love donuts and would eat them by the gross if I could.

Kix

Those damn formative years! My parents separated and I got a new Dad during my formative years, and I never knew WHY my parents separated but I'm pretty sure I thought it was my fault somehow. Between the upheaval of moving to West Texas a year earlier, leaving grandparents, cousins etc. behind, and then their separation, I did not adapt well. So maybe that's where it started, I don't know. I've always blamed the drug use though because I specifically remember fretting every night before bed that tomorrow my mom was going to get arrested and taken away for ever and ever.

When I was 15 my brother was born, and I finally told my mom how I felt about the pot. She cut it down a LOT and swore to never smoke when my brother was around, only if he wasn't home. She's kept that promise, and I'm glad. I'm actually not anti-pot, but I'm not exactly pro-pot either. If it was legalized I'd probably be more relaxed about it, but I definitely think there are complicated repercussions from its use. You screw up your kids totally! 

mmm donuts... actually donuts were never a weakness here... mmm tortilla chips and salsa...

Thanks Kix..that was really interesting.

I wasn't fat that I can remember until about 6 or 7 years old.  I do recall being sexually "touched" by a friend of my brother and perhaps that's what started it because before that I was fine.  I have that dreaded memory in 5th grade of Mr. Cotton weighing  us in front of class and I weighed 107!  I was the only one over 100 pounds.

Middle school was the akward growing up, puberty thing with boobs and period starting...

High school brought on watching my eating and keeping my weight constant  until about 10th grade.  I was around 150 until 10th grade.  Then I got a boyfriend.  We ate, and did other "things" together.  And I got comfortable.  I was 170 when I graduated and the weight started piling on from there.  207 when I got married at 18.  260 after giving birth to my son @ 19 and then up and up and up from there.  I don't know when I went over 300. Probably sometime around 22 or 23.  I've been over 350 forever!!!  Well, not anymore, but you now what I mean.

In pictures, I'd say I looked fairly normal until I was 4-5 and then it all started!  Why back in the old days did teachers feel it necessary to weigh the class and announce (2nd grade teacher) I weighed more than she did?

My mom was obese and my dad worked a blue collar job so he expected big, hearty meals---chops, gravy, potatoes, baked beans, bread, maybe a vegetable like CORN.  We really weren't a dessert family, but there were rides to the Dairy Queen for cones (and always ice cream in the freezer), chips and pop on payday, and my mom made a layer cake for Sunday.  The school cafeteria didn't help.  We had great home-cooking cooks who encouraged eating.  Real stuck to your ribs meals instead of the unhealthy trash most kids eat for lunch today.  They too I think were cooking and serving for their coal miner-steel worker husbands!!!

AND there was the Nickles Bakery delivery truck!  We lived out in the country and once a week, the doughnut guy would drive by-----banana flips, snowballs, and devil dogs----sort of like a milkman but much sweeter!!!!

So mom realizing her family was getting pretty round started with Ayds (tasty diet caramels), Roman meal bread?????? I guess it was more dietitic than Wonder, and tuna salad for lunch.  Those not working, we embarked on Weigh****chers when I was a sophomore in high school...

so started the rounds of various diets and exercising....

"started with Ayds (tasty diet caramels), "


i remember those!!

Yeah, I remember those!  I thought they tasted a bit like plastic, but I still ate through the whole box.

Interesting topic, Kix.

I was an average sized baby, but as the long-awaited first born, my parents obcessed about me getting enough to eat, especially after I got very dehydrated after a flu at age 2 or 3. My folks were jocks, so had big appetites to fuel the activity level, but it was pretty healthy food for the most part. I can remember getting kudos for polishing off 3-4 ears of corn on the cob plus 2 burgers at 8 or so. Despite all the food, my activity level was high and I was in good shape.

I didn't consider myself "fat" so much as "big" until Jr. High - I was also taller than most kids my age. In elementary school we used to get weighed in the nurse's office. When we were done, we went back to our classroom. I was always glad I was near the end of the alphabet, so i must have had at least some weight issues. I remember weighing 90 lbs in 5th grade and 120-130 in 7th, but I was 5'-8" by then too.

In junior high and high school I was never one of the really big girls. My family doc said I was "cosmetically overweight" but not medically overweight. At this point I was 145-150 and 5'10". And I thought I was fat. Go figure.

I think I really started packing on extra pounds in my early 20s. At this point I was with my ex, and I have noticed over the years that I tend to gain when in a relationship, lose when unattached. After years of feeling fat (even when I wasn't) it was a relief to indulge myself. I went from a college low of 140 to 220 in such a short time that my mom thought I was preggers - I wasn't.

Since then I've lost significant amounts of weight a few times (50-80 lbs), but not kept it off for very long.

I do see an interesting trend in our responses - so many of us really started gaining at puberty. As someone who is in early menopause, I'm wondering if the decreases in estrogen will make it easier for me to lose now. Hey, anything helps!