Although my story of weight gain isn't awful as the one above, I think we all gain weight for different reasons and sometimes because of different people...our stories are all relative to ourselves, ie. whilst one situation could be worse, it depends on how we deal with and how we see the situation ourselves.
I cannot blame my immediate family. Simple as. A large part of my immediate family are overweight and have been for different reasons (I know these and it is not my place to speak about them here). But they never encouraged me to be, it was always drilled into me that I eat my vegetables, I eat plenty of fruit and I don't eat too many crisps or sweets.
I think the main time that I became conscious of my weight was when I was at my biggest as a child, this was in primary school. All the other children could run, jump and liked exercise. I couldn't. I would get out of breath quickly and just had too much weight to carry to be able to do the sports properly. Again, my mum gave me a healthy breakfast in the morning and a healthy dinner at night, but it was school dinners. Full of fat, salt, sugar and just general crap, I would eat and eat to hide myself from all the other kids, truth is I had no friends. I was always the weird kid who was an outsider to everybody else, of course now I recognise that the reason I felt like such an outsider was probably because I was different- I was gay even if i didn't realize it yet.
Being an outsider turns you to things you find true comfort in, at that age I didn't understand the concept of fat and calories, and food made me happy. It tasted good, made me feel comforted, and again gave me a reason to still be inside, alone- I was just eating my lunch, I didn't need to talk to people whilst eating so I didn't feel as lonely as I would when I sat outside along, playing by myself.
Naturally as I moved through Primary School I made friends, but it was too late to pull me away from my addiction to food. I could now have friends but over-eat at the same time. As mum and dad worked later and when getting back from school I would have an hour to myself, I would eat and eat before they got back, before I had dinner. I would eat dinner. Then before bedtime secretly hide food and take it upstairs to eat when nobody was around. I knew it was wrong and I felt guilty, god did I feel guilty, but I ate to hide my guilt.
I ate and ate to hide my pain. The pain of moving up to high school, sticking out like a sore thumb. I was bullied, oh yes. Bullied not just for now being fat but for being camper than Christmas! Everyday I would have the taunts and the beatings, things thrown at me. On one occasion when things got really bad I was threatened with a knife (the boy later got thrown out of the school)....all this time instead of making a positive step at dealing with all this pain I would continue to take negative ones and keep eating. Eating until I would be sick, sick but content and happy.
So I guess my reasons for being fat was down to old fashioned school bullying, and old fashioned school dinners didn't help much either!
I know I am nowhere near the size I was back then and I am eternally grateful that I managed to turn that around, but I still have a long way to go until I am happy, and I guess when I am happy I can finally stop looking at food as a comfort mechanism, stop being addicted to it and be free to experience a longer, healthier life.
Andy x
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Oh, how I recognise the story! With just a few small changes, mine was the same.
ReplyDeleteExcept that for secondary school I was sent off to board and as I couldn't afford the extra bits and pieces, I was limited to three square meals a day plus a couple of snacks. And one of the ways the bullies got to ME was simply not to let me eat my full portion at meal times, so apart from being beaten and spat at, I was hungry most of the time, too.
On the plus side, by my late teens I was actually at my (medically) optimum weight for a couple of months a year while not at home.
In the long run it didn't do me much good as my sweet tooth remained in place, just unsatisfied. So when I was finally self-sufficient and living on my own in my mid-twenties, my weight ballooned and the sedentary lifestyle that comes with a modern life meant I wasn't burning it off.
So last year, at the age of 46, I was very close to hitting 20st (I'm 6ft2 so I hide most of the excess fairly well most of the time) and I had to do something about it. I managed to bring it down to 16.5st within a few months but I've pretty much stayed in the same place since. I still have about 3st to lose to be happy (or, more importantly, 4 inches of waistline) but I've just re-signed to the gym after a 2-month break imposed by circumstances, and with any luck we're still gonna get a bit of summer so I can live off salads (which I actually like).
I'm not going to try to persuade you that you're not overweight - that's for you to decide - but from your photo you certainly don't have a chubby face, so you have one up on me when I was your age! I also wish I still had the metabolism of a 20-something rather than a 40-something cos it's bloody hard to lose those extra pounds!
In any case, all the best with your efforts and I hope you get to where you want to be very soon!