I guess what I'm trying to find out is how many people on this board were overweight as a a child and has there been a lot of success with changing lifelong eating habits.

I know many have gained weight after a pregnancy, many just started eating more after marriage or college. How long have you been overweight and was it harder or easier if you were newly overweight or what have you?

For me I was a very overweight child (197 was my top weight in ELEMANTARY school) and I fought this battle for a very long time, with diets, pills, drugs, shakes, exercise until I found this way of eating. Yet even after I knew that this was the answer for me I still tried to do things my way. I couldn't admit that food has been a lifelong problem. What's everybody else's experience?

I pretty much have the same story as you, i was overweight as a child then when i was a teenager my weight would fluxuate up and down depending on what unhealthy diet or choices i was making at the time and its been that way since, except when i started atkins last june and im thankful for it everyday since and im going to stay this way forever.

If you asked my mom she would say I was overweight from birth!

I was heavy as a child ... but not as overweight as I am now . In my late teens I lost a bit of weight and felt OK about myself . After I had my kids I gained the majority of my weight. My first 2 kids were close together and I never lost the weight from my first when I got pregnant with my second. But really having 4 kids has been my crutch ... and really its just an excuse. I eat to much of the wrong things that is why I need to loose 100 pounds

One of the reasons I ask is to see if it is harder to lose the weight when you have been heavy all or almost all of your life.

I too lost weight in my teens and certain times in my adult life.
I have no doubt that weight gain is progressive.

For the ones that have been overweight since childhood, there maybe psychological setbacks to losing weight also.

For me, I haven't been thin (really thin) since I was about 7 years old. I have been thinner many times in my life the lowest being 150, but that was a drug induced weight loss.

For many it seems that they were thin shortly after having children and then they usually seem to lose the weight quickly, I have a few speculations at to why. One being that there bodies are not use to being over weight, they psycholgically are not use to being overweight and therefore go back to eating they way they use to. I'm sure there's more reasons also.

As to the people who gradually gain over time, they may just have some bad eating habits combined with a the metabolism slowing down over time.

But I was wondering if there are people on here who have been fat all their lives and what changed to make their weight loss a success.(among other things )

Hell I was 10lbs when I was born, I don't know if I could start much bigger. By the age of 10 I was 5' 0" and 150 lbs. I remember well, cuz that's when we got our military ID cards, and I was teased endlessly. Always the short fat kid of school. At about 15, I started to grow up, rather than out. Worked out alot and played some sports which got me pretty thin, although never in my mind. I always saw myself as the fat kid.

Did the gym thing alot in early 20's (not 1920's)just so I could get a date. However, at no time did I change my eating habits. Just exercised alot so the weight came off with 3 hrs in the gym everyday. Got serious about college and stopped the gym, got married, and over the course of 9 years put on about 50 lbs. Considering my diet, that was damn good. I'm surprised I didn't end up at 300+. I guess I should feel lucky.

I've tried dieting before, but it only lasted about 3-4 days. Could never do the low fat stuff. I was starving. Not until last year had I really focused on dieting and stuck with it for as long as I did. It wasn't easy to loose what I had, but it felt great. Now back at it again and being very serious about it being a way of life, I'm glad I made the decision.

I was a thin child until about the age of 7, then quickly gained A LOT. By the age of 12 or so my weight started to come down, and then through highschool my weight yo-yoed (i had anorexia for part of it).

I was normal from birth until the summer I turned 6 years old.

I stayed the summer with my grandparents and great grandmother. Every meal, they told me to eat what was on my plate and then would add more until nothing was left on the table. My grandmother would say, "finish it so I don't have to throw it away" and then my grandfather would say, "go get on the scales".

I probably gained 25-30 pounds in three months. I do not recall the conversation, but my uncle who was four years older at the time told me this story, years later.

He said, when my parents came to pick me up and I jumped out of my grandparent’s car, my Dad turned white as a ghost and said to me, get in the back of the truck. He exploded at my grandparents, jumped in the truck and we sped away. My Mom said he did not say a word on the 500 mile drive back to our hometown.

My grandparents eventually moved back to our hometown and it wasn't until we moved to Houston that my grandpa didn't bring me food to eat. He would pick me up to take me to school and there was always a high fat, high calorie treat in the glove box. Same during baseball season, in fact, every time I saw my grandfather he was feeding me something that tasted great but was high calorie.

Sorry to say, and I loved them dearly, but my grandparents caused my problem. I was a child and had no idea the damage that was taking place. My parents could not change my habits, hell, I learned how good food was and learned to love it before I new what to do.

I gained steadily from 1'st grade through 11’Th grade. I was picked on without mercy through elementary school. I received all the corny elephant, hippo and "fat" Valentine cards. I never kissed a girl and I never had many friends. Once I moved to Houston, everything changed in my life but the abuse. I took it through 7'th and most of 8'th grade until I beat the living crap out of one individual on the football team who shoved me down into a canal. Afterwards several of his friends tried to get even on his behalf and I beat the crap out them too. The last half of 8’Th grade was fairly smooth and it seemed that most of the boys truly respected me, or possibly feared getting the crap beat out of them.

I moved on to the 9'th grade and the abuse continued due to our family moving to a new school district and finding a whole new group of abusers.

I continued to gain until 11’Th grade. When we had weigh-in the first semester of 11’Th grade, the scales hit 225. The alcoholic old man we called coach, said, "damn, we'll call you Fat Albert". I replied with a string of curse words and was rewarded with 5 pops.

I don't remember exactly how I lost the weight, but we ate at Taco Bell quite often for lunch and put away the sunflower seeds like they were going out of style. I dropped to about 190 by the end of the year, and to about 175 by the beginning of my 12’Th year. I had one or two girlfriends that year and a few during the summer before college.

I hovered between 165 and 195 all through college...afterwards all went downhill.

BTW, I say it's my grandparent’s fault but I never treated them poorly or ever said anything about it out of respect. As I know their intentions were good.

Sorry for the short story....

I can recall (and from pictures) being heavy from at least the age of 6 or 7. I had some friends and wasn't made fun of much until I was 9 or 10. I do recall being made fun of then, and would get upset and then just go eat to make myself feel better. It seems thinking back that schools didn't do any sort of healthy eating programs.

I can distinctly recall one of the frequent lunches at school being a big bowl of chili, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate milk!

We moved to St. Louis in 6th grade when my parents got divorced, and while I hung out with some people, looking back now they were never my friends. I once went back up to school to get something I'd left in my desk and my so called friends were drawing mean pictures of me on the blackboard (I know b/c they were even labelled with my name). I ran home devastated.

I kept gaining weight through High School. Lost a bit during senior year, but not enough not to be overweight.

This time the loss is for good. I have decided my life and my marriage are too important to me to throw it away.


Phew, from reading the posts above and writing my own, this is turning into an emotional topic!

I was not overweight until I hit puberty (12 yrs old) then it started slowly. I was round and pudgy and when I hit 18 I really started to pack on the pounds and became very overweight and I've been that way for 6 years now. Frankly, I'm done with it! I'm on my way to becoming a slimmer, healthier me!

I can tell exactly when I started getting chubby, because pictures taken within the same year showed a very distinct difference. I was 8. I believe puberty was kicking in, because I was a D cup before I even started my period. I started to level out into the 170s after my breast reduction at 15, but after some life happenings when I got into college, I packed on 40 pounds in less than a year. eek!

I lost ten of it when we moved to Missouri, without even trying -- I sat on my butt playing neverwinter nights and drinking sugar-sweetened tea. I stalled out there though, and not even running 5 times a week worked. (It probably didn't help that I was working at a certain ice cream/fast food restaurant...) When we moved back to Georgia, my bad habit of not cooking combined with working a desk job and no exercise at all helped me put on the 10 I'd lost plus ten more pounds. The little bit of weight that I gained during my short pregnancy I lost pretty quickly after the miscarriage, which put me at where I started on the 1st.

I was always small as a child. When I was in the 2nd grade I had to have yet another hip surgery (born with congenital hip dysplasia). After the surgery the doctor put me in a cast from below the nipple line down my entire left leg. For 2 solid months I laid in a hospital bed in our living room. Once out of the cast I gained, and gained and gained. I've battled my weight ever since.

I was not chubby as a child....I didn't gain my weight until after I had my children. When my son was born, that weight came off quickly, because we lived with my hubby's mom and dad and they had treadmills, exercise bikes, etc. After my daughter was born, I started working the night shift, my schedule was all messed up, and I would eat all night, then have breakfast before going to bed in the morning.

When I was in high school, I weighed 130.....it's gone up since my daughter to my highest of 260. Never wanna see that again.

I was a skinny boy, but my mom says I ballooned up after I started on a medication for something, I dont remember what... I dont really have any skinny memories, but I do remember having to go to Sears to buy Husky sized pants. And my fondest memory of Sears is that they sold donuts at the front of the store, and if we were good, we would get a donut reward.

Hmmm. . . kind of all starts to make sense now, doesnt it???

Thanks Mom!!!

I myself was overweight as a child, my highest weight in school was 180 and through the years I've gained weight by eating the wrong foods, my highest weight was 250, it gradually went down to 235 and that is when I started the Atkins diet last May 2004 and to this day I am down now to 181 and still losing, this is a lifetime change for me now and I will be doing a Low Carb diet for the rest of my life, I am very pleased with myself losing all this weight, Atkins is the only diet that has really helped me lose the weight.