Why are YOU Fat?

ReadySteadyGo · 03-25-2008, 07:45 AM

My mom couldn't cook. She worked full time plus, had three kids in diffrent activities, (my younger brother and sister were twins), and she just didn't have a knack for it.So we ate McDonalds, frozen waffles, pizza...anything but vegtables. I don't think my body was getting the right amount of vitamans because I would be starving by seven, or mabye there is something wrong with my brain, either way I felt like if I didn't get something I would just die. My dad would hit me if I got a snack after supper so I learned to hide bread under my shirt when noone was looking and sneak into my room. I would get in my room and roll the bread into a ball so if anyone walked in I could hide it in my little fist and noone would see it. As I got older It would be more and more peices. Only at night, but night eating is bad for you no matter what age you are. I started to gain weight, not helping that I was held back in kindergarten and went through puberty in third grade so I was already developing curves and breast while all the rest of my class was still stick like. My dad was mentally abusive, sometimes physically, but not too often.(his dad was horrifically physically abusive) I never expressed what was going on at home to anyone at school and after kids started teasing me all the time for being "fat" and because I was kind of wierd (still am). I never expressed at home to anyone what was going on at school. I just ate.

I developed a REAL bread addiction. If I don't have bread I felt like I had eaten nothing. I am an emotional eater. I have a genetic disposition on my mom's side to be bigger but unlike my mom's weight that goes flatteringly on her butt and breast, mine sticks to my belly and hips. I celebrate by eating, I eat to substitue for crying, and I eat to pass time.

Now I try to drink water and go to the gym... I think this is going to be a long journey for me, but I truely am ready. If this fails I don't know what I am going to do with myself.

ReadySteadyGo · 03-25-2008, 11:03 AM

Not that it is anyone else's fault. My enemy is my own addiction with food. Not my childhood. I am so glad we are all taken steps to improve our health and our lives.

nathenag · 03-25-2008, 01:02 PM

I am that emotional eater that no matter the emotion food is the fix. Plus I always felt like I was trapped in chaos. Then I had problems with depression and was put on meds that effected weight. So I had planning problems, eat on the go, shop like my "plump" mother does. I just thought I was destined to be a fatty. A new thing happened to me, I've just been diagnosed with adult ADHD and was put on Strattera. I think that dealing with the ADHD will make my banding more successful since I'll be able to plan and prioritize better.

insubordination · 03-26-2008, 04:34 AM

RSG, Well you certainly picked the right tool to help you with that bread addiction. I've completely gone off it and infinitely prefer crackers.

Nicole, good on you for getting everything in order. Attack this from all angles.

chell1957 · 03-26-2008, 07:52 AM

I was teased as a kid too but my eating I think is not related to that, its a combination of genetics and bad habits. I do O.K. but as the day goes on, I eat more and get out right hungry. Then mid evening the munchies start. I try to fill up on carrots, celery (not banded yet) and such, but being on food stamps the end of the month is tuff, the food thins out, the stamps are gone and so I look to what ever is in the house. I drink water but it goes right through me. I have a best friend and for some reason when I am there on the weekends (girls night) I just get worse! It's like I have no will power! I don't know what to do about it.

oneder_woman · 04-06-2008, 12:53 AM

Mainly, because I love food. I love to eat, I love to cook. I love to invent recipes; I love to learn complicated cooking methods. I love to watch the Food network (I call it food porn). I love to nurture people with food. I love to impress people with my ability to cook good food. In part, I define being a woman with the ability to nurture, please and impress with good food. You don't have to tell me how sick that is.

But, there are other issues too. In 1st grade, my teacher put a height/weight chart on the wall, and though I wasn't the largest kid in the class by a long shot, I weighed the most. Kids are mean. Then, my mother decided I could go on WWatchers with her. My childhood and adolescence was filled with hearing about what I didn't 'need' to eat, being told to 'get out of that,' referring to whatever I was picking at. So, I began sneaking food. Extra desserts, the little debbie cakes that were for my brothers school lunches, even slices of bread - I distinctly remember hiding food under my clothes, trying to get down the hall to my bedroom w/o getting caught.

Still, I wasn't a obese kid, just a little chubby. In high school, I was a normal size, but I never understood that every item of clothing in the store was not meant for every person. I just heard that the miniskirt I wanted made me look 10 lbs heavier, and that meant I was fat. Never mind that I had a tiny waist and great curves - I'd kill to have my teenage body back. I didn't appreciate it - I thought I was fat. I recently read some old journals of mine from high school, and it's page after page of lementing how fat I was, disgusted with myself, determined to 'do something' about my weight. I thought boys didn't like me because I was fat. I was a size 8 or 10 then. Boys didn't like me because I was smart and quiet and they thought I was a snob. Or they just plain didn't know me, because I wouldn't let them.

So, cut to college, drinking, eating whatever I wanted. I was totally in control, so I lost control of my weight. I developed major depression, and got bigger. After my sophomore year, I spent a summer at home losing weight and basically becoming anorexic. I ate almost nothing, and remember telling my mom that if I were thin and eating like that, she would think I had an eating disorder. She agreed. I got down to about 185 that summer, losing 40 lbs in about 3 months.

Then I transferred schools, got into a bad relationship, and basically ate all the time. Control issues continued - I would eat whatever I wanted, dammit. Weight packed on. I tried Jenny Craig, lost a little, gained it back. I felt worse, so I ate more. It felt like I was trying to prove something with all the eating, but I am still not sure what.

Then graduation, the big breakup with the college boyfriend, and the first job, a very stressful one in the news industry. No real friends in a new city, and food became even more for comfort and recreation. And by then I was totally out of control, more than 250 lbs, and after that who cares? I met my husband somewhere between 250 and 275, started grad school and moved away from him and gained more, breaking 300. Since we married, I've gained even more quickly, in part probably due to being so secure that he loves me no matter what.

Since that time, I have done WW four or five times, but it's basically been an uphill climb.

I can't do it alone. I don't need it to be easy, I just need it to be a little easier.

anniedub · 04-06-2008, 04:47 AM

Why am I fat?

Well, for the first time in ten years, I have an answer for this. And it's taken me 5 years of therapy to be able to articulate this answer.

I've got every predisposing factor in the book. You name it, I've got it. An obese parent, and a second parent who used food as a "reward" for every success in childhood, then did a 180 as soon as I started getting fat. She then criticised every thing I put in my mouth, forced me to exercise and started giving me only salad or vegetables for dinner, when the rest of my family were eating roast meats, pasta, take-out. Severe depression and anxiety owing to repeated sexual abuse. Severe Polycystic Ovarian syndrome and insulin resistance. The break-up of an engagement to a wonderful man, for reasons outside of both our control. All of these things and more led to what can only be described as compulsive overeating.

After cycling through the various stages of bulimia in my teenage years, I finally sought psychiatric help. By this point, I had stopped all purging behaviours and was only bingeing. At least once a day.

I was hiding food in every possible hiding place in my bedroom. Stealing money from my parents in order to go out and buy every possible "naughty" or "forbidden" food and eat it all, someplace hidden where no-one could see me. Usually I would eat my ill-gotten food in the toilet - can you get any more disgusting?

Now, due to a huge amount of therapy, I know the reason that I was doing this. After being sexually abused in childhood and adolescence, I subconsciously wanted to make myself unattractive to men - and the best way I knew how to do this was to get fat. My mind thought that if I was fat, no man would ever want to touch me. So my fat became my "security blanket" against the pain I had suffered.

Now, I know that my behaviour and attitudes to food make me a very sick person - and not just in the physical sense. I have worked long and hard to build myself into a person who will never take no s**t from nobody. I will never again let somebody take what I don't want to give them.

So now I feel secure enough to let go of my fat. I've retrained my brain to let go of my maladaptive thought patterns and embrace a new way of thinking. Of course, there will always be times when I can't hack it, but that's why I need a tool to keep me in check - and now, that's what I have.

I have every excuse in the book for being fat -- but I have to stop using excuses, and I have to get my life back.

Starting today.

brandyII · 04-06-2008, 10:55 PM

It's hard to get those bad messages out of your head and you're a true survivor who should be very proud of herself. You do deserve a happy life, good luck to you brandyII!

Kelgirl68 · 04-07-2008, 08:44 AM

Isn't it amazing how our parents think they help but they cause damage that takes years and years to get past? I have a daughter who is 16, she is a little overweight, but this kid can do physical activity that someone skinnier can't keep up with. She competed gymnastics, she's on a dance competition team, captain of the HS cheer squad, HS basketball, rides horses - you name it she does it. I put my kids in sports as soon as they were old enough to be in them. I didn't make them do something they didn't want to do, I let them choose so they enjoyed it. I made a point to start them out active in their lives because obesity runs in my family. I can't name one person on my dad or my mom's side of the family who are thin. I didn't want them to get teased in school and have something like that say with them the rest of their lives like I did. My son is 18, he's a bean pole no matter how much that boy eats!! I think when I had him he took all my motabilism with him!

I never would take food from them - if we all can't eat right then why should just one? God knows it wouldn't hurt any of us to eat better!

Well, that's my morning input - time to get my butt to work!

Kel

justpeachytexas · 04-11-2008, 11:04 PM

I was a small child until the age of nine. I remember during the summer eating my lunch and then going to the neighbors house and eating again, until mom caught me. When I started 9th grade I was over weight and picked on all the time. That is when I found speed. I lost all the weight but picked up a very very bad habit. When it comes to food that tastes very good to me, it is like a switch, I cannot turn off until I have made myself sick by eating to much. When I married my DH became the cook. Carbs lots of Carbs. After letting myself get to this weight that I am right now I knew I had to take control back.

brandyII · 04-11-2008, 11:15 PM

I know this is a dumb question but what does "DH" stand for? I'm assuming the H is husband, thanks, brandyII

kathystrick · 04-12-2008, 09:52 AM

The d is for dear. DH = Dear Husband

sfeiner · 04-12-2008, 10:40 AM

There are plenty of other words that start with D that can describe a husband. LOL With mine it was drunk! There are also dead, dumb, damm, darling, drooling, doopey, deadbeat, and the list goes on...

kathystrick · 04-12-2008, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfeiner

There are plenty of other words that start with D that can describe a husband. LOL With mine it was drunk! There are also dead, dumb, damm, darling, drooling, doopey, deadbeat, and the list goes on...

Too true! In my case, to describe my ex would be deadbeat, but my current is definitely darling.

brandyII · 04-12-2008, 11:40 AM

sfeiner,

You're very funny!!! Thanks for the info, brandyII