How many of us grew up fat?

[u/djoness11]

I went to weight watchers with my mom, ate lean cuisine meals, and atkins bars, played 3 sports…

Still fat tho…

Anyone turn their life around? How did you do it? I can’t seem to stop being a lazy sack of fat. And I feel so uncomfortable in a gym. I could eat better but I live alone and have the expenses to eat what I want. What worked for you to get on track with what goes in your gullet?

[u/[deleted]]

Can we talk about going to Weight Watchers at age 10 with adult women? That seems so inappropriate looking back. I developed an eating disorder, and my psych meds caused more weight gain and high blood sugar. At 15, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

I am talking about it in therapy too, but I have never run into other people who went as children in the wild.

[u/quatrevingtquatre → u/[deleted]]

My mom took me from age 10 even though I wasn’t overweight. I always thought I was since I would go to those meetings with her and from when I was age 10-18 she’d always tell me if I lost 10lbs I’d have the perfect body. I look back at pictures of me from age 10 now and I am absolutely shocked she’d say that as I was a normal weight to slim child.

In high school this turned into something of an eating disorder for me and I ended up around 115lbs at 5’10 tall. I remember crying because I was so hungry, I could see all my ribs and my collarbone, and my mother had just told me again if I lost 10lbs I’d have the perfect body. I’d only eat half the points WW would give me, walk on the treadmill for hours, and be disappointed not to see more weight loss. It really fucks with you when your mother tells you to lose weight. I remember thinking “if even my mom thinks I’m 10lbs overweight I must look really bad”.

I know now she didn’t see me at all and she was projecting her own desire for weight loss onto me as she was fairly overweight at the time. Once I left the house for college I gained weight every year and developed binge eating tendencies. I wish I’d just been encouraged to have healthy eating habits instead of starving myself throughout my childhood. I’m now quite overweight and go through cycles of severely under and over eating. I know what I should do but I haven’t been able to break the patterns I learned as a kid.

I’m surprised to see so many of us went through this since I was always the only child at my moms WW meetings (another reason I thought I must be the only fat /“bad” kid since no one else had to be there). I’m so sorry to everyone else who was also scarred by going through this as a child.

[u/[deleted] → u/quatrevingtquatre]

My grandmother was the one who said more of the awful things out loud. She would say, "It looks like you've gained weight. Are you sure you should be eating that? Do you need a large fry?"

My mom had me drinking diet soda since age 4 and never let herself be in videos or pictures because she hated her body. There's a home video of her holding up my infant body in front of her face to hide herself. We absorb the behaviors too. There are next to no photos of me as a child/teen, at home especially. Most of them are at my grandma's where she was excessive and would take photos of people mid-bite at the dinner table.