If, like me, you have always struggled with your weight why do you think that is?

[Movinghouseatlast]

I can't help.but think there has always been something hormonal going on for me.

I was a big child, had puberty at age 10. I think my mum may have over fed me due to a controlling father who made my childhood, ( and her whole life) a bit shit.

I was always a bit overweight at school, not huge but a size 12. I'm only 5 foot 2.

Started dieting at probably age 16. Went up and down over the years.

On my 21st birthday my mum took me out to buy a new dress but said to the shop assistant " she'll never get anything to fit her she's so fat". I was maybe heading for size 14 at that point.

At age 25 I went to weight watchers. I was 11 stone 11 pounds. Got down to 9 stone 4 ( goal) but then couldn't stop losing weight and was 8 stone 2.

Stopped smoking when I was 30. Put it all on again, 11stone 11.

More weight watchers. Got to goal 9 stone 4.

Fell in love, put ot all on again. Weight watchers etc etc

Started going to the gym 5 times a week. This seemed like the Holy Grail!

Then stayed the same until I hit perimenopause at 46. Piled on the weight over 9 years, ended up 14 stone.

Despite the gym, pilates and Zumba and dieting I couldn't lose a single pound.

Until Ozempic sorted me out!

I love food. I cook from scratch every evening, I've never eaten much processed food. I love chocolate but have one or two squares a night. I love cheese and cake and ice cream but never eat it. My whole life is denial and I just feel food is my enemy. But I still don't really know why I 'run to fat'.

That sounds interesting @tofuprincess , thanks.

For me, it’s genetics. I’m the same body type as my parents.

I was the 'fat' middle child. My siblings were both like sticks growing up and I was the softer, rounder one in the middle, literally from baby years. My mum gave me and unfortunately nickname about my appearance which she regrets now.

I was always thinking about food and always ate more then anyone else. In our home videos I have my hand in a massive jar or raisins just eating and eating.

My parents never had weight issues so I don't think they knew what to do with me other then say yes, this was the 90s so the full extent of the obesity epidemic hadn't quite happened yet. We ate home cooked food, I loved vegetables and exercise just ate too much.

I grew into a tall and very athletic teenager, fastest in my year, faster then the boys even until puberty kicked in. But I was always 10-20% bigger then I should have been regardless of age.

I recently saw a picture of myself on holiday at about 6. I remember the beach distinctly and how self conscious I felt at the time. At 6! In the photo, I'm strapping, broad shouldered, tall certainly but no one today would have called me fat, i was upset for my younger self.

The pattern has followed me into adulthood. I was a size 14 or so from 18. Gym helped slightly but the weight gain didn't really stop. I was 13st 3 the day I left university. Then I got desperate and a bit lucky. I discovered keto.

I signed up to a meal delivery plan and lost nearly 3 stone in 3 months.

Did similar 10 years later for my wedding.

Went up to 16 stone at my heaviest during second pregnancy then stabilised at about 14 stone when youngest was 2.

Mj was great. Lost 2 stone combining with keto over 4 months. Unfortunately had to give it up as I'm slightly allergic. Can't afford it now anyway.

Currently going it alone again with keto, currently somewhere around 13 stone at 5ft 7. I have a wedding to attend in November which is acting as my motivation currently. I also started my own business and that's helping as meeting clients is great for wanting to look and feel my best.

I'm hoping the next couple of years will bring a broader range of medication. Pills, alternative ingredients etc that I can try as weight loss clearly isn't sustainable for me and I need some help.

My daughter is a carbon copy of me physically and I'm working very hard to learn from the mistakes that affected me, fortunately she doesn't seem to be as obsessed with food as I was and very different personality.

My mum used to starve us as kids because she thought it was funny to make us suffer. She’d kick off over the slightest thing and send me upstairs without food for the rest of the day. Sometimes she’d relent and say I could come down but as I was stubborn I’d rather have starved. I’m also pretty sure she had an eating disorder.

I’ve always had a bad relationship with food. But I was skinny until meeting my ex husband who introduced me to takeaways. I wasn’t obese until having my children in my 30s. One I’d been pregnant I couldn’t shift any weight at all until taking Mounjaro.

I was a string bean until I was 20, constantly told need to put on some weight. I went on the pill and put on 3st and went from an A to D cup within a few months and had stretch marks from the quick weight gain.

Was too scared to go back to the Dr to ask for another pill as they had given me a lecture on god and waiting for marriage while throwing the prescription at me (which I had to pick up from the floor) - the good old days 🙈

Spent the next 35 years yoyo dieting trying out every fad as it came along. My mum existed off tins of weight watchers soup and 20 fags a day, so was no good for guidance. No one taught us about about nutrition, macros etc, we didn't have easy access to the internet or fancy apps so had to go with what we heard around us or in magazines and looking back there was some awful advice back then.

Not sure when it switched to a compulsive/obsession with food, at least 20 years ago.

I don't think I personally was genetically prone to obesity naturally, but hormones from the pill and the growing UPF environment triggered something.

Ah my people!

You know I have tried to explain this to other people and I just get the side eye of disbelief that beca

My story is similar to yours OP. I believe it’s a combo of learned behaviour and something hormonal too.

My mum was overweight from being a child. Her mum and grandma were too. My mum was bullied for being fat as a child so she was desperate for us to have a ‘normal’ childhood. From the earliest days I remember that Mon to Thurs was for dieting/restricting and then Fri-Sun is when all the treats came out. I was a slim kid but first started gaining weight when I was around 12 (which is also when I started my period) but it was kept under control by the famine/feast approach - strict diet control most of the week, feast at the weekend.

In time that stopped working and over the years since I’ve lost and gained the same 3 stone multiple times. I’ll be ‘good’ on Monday but really I’m spending a lot of mental head space plotting what I’ll eat at the weekend. The only way I knew to lose weight was an extreme diet so I’ve done them all - the so called British heart foundation diet (nothing to do with them!) which involved grapefruit and dry crackers, the Cambridge diet, Atkins, extreme calorie control and so on. Famine and feast, famine and feast!

But also I now know that in order to lose weight, I can only eat very little, something in the region of 1100 cals, preferably 1000. Anything more than that and I get ‘stuck’. That means without MJ, I’m pretty much permanently hungry, desperately trying to fill up on water or black coffee. Totally miserable and of course it just fuels the obsession with all the food I can’t eat.

MJ has radically changed all of that and I’m hoping this prolonged way of eating will cure my famine/feast mindset so that when I’m done I can eat reasonably and maintain using maintenance cals which I think must be around 1400/1500.

It’s a very interesting question and it’s definitely a lot more complex than ‘just eat less, move more stupid’ (a comment I see posted ad nauseam all over socials).

Ultimately it’s my responsibility to feed my body in line with it can handle but it’s true to say that some people do gain weight/store fat much easier than others.

Love this - ‘my people’. 😄

It’s so true. So many of us have been saying for years that ‘something is wrong’ but we just get accused of not taking responsibility.

I absolutely DO accept that my weight issues are caused by what I eat but I gain weight incredibly quickly and find it almost impossible to shift unless I drop to depressingly low levels of calories. And in between times my brain is on fire constantly projecting thoughts/images of what I’d like to eat.

For me it was pregnancy, I gained a lot of weight. Lost a bit by intermittent fasting but put it all back on and more as soon as I stopped due to fasting-related cortisol release making me anxious. Now it's perimenopause - I have very low estrogen and that can cause weight gain / retention. Plus fatigue and burnout making me less likely to go for a run and more likely to snack!

I think it’s interesting that a common theme here seems to be a hormonal change. For me, weight started to creep up aged 12 when I started my period. For others it was pregnancy, starting the pill or peri.

I’m sure this has already been studied/researched but to me it feels like there was a ‘switch’ when I was previously quite lean/never thought about it to almost becoming obsessed.

My weight went on in stages.

Stage 1 - the pill
Stage 2 - the world of work. Very stressful full. First jobs included a lot of travel
Stage 3 - marriage - DH very much a three meals a day person. A habit I have now broken since MJ
Stage 4 - children and family stuff in general, made no time for my regular exercise

stages 1-3 were a stone each
stage 4 - 3 stone

I've always been obsessed with food - even as a very young child, I couldn't get enough. So I think there's definitely a medical cause underlying.

Add to that a very weird family dynamic around food and weight and I'm not sure how much of a chance I stood really.

Up until I was 10ish, we ate fairly normal meals for the 80s: egg and chips etc. Not super healthy, but average portions, plenty of veg included and snacks in moderation but definitely present. Then, my dad went on a health kick and essentially banned all 'unhealthy' food. He started cooking these utterly joyless dishes (think clear broth with veg) and anything like chocolate, chips, etc was really frowned upon. If my mum bought us chocolate he'd comment negatively and make a huge fuss. To go from a fairly normal family food environment to one in which food was assigned moral value must have had an impact.

Added to that, my dad began to show some really disordered thoughts around food, which he wasn't ashamed to share with us. On one occasion, he informed us proudly of an evening that all he had eaten that day was an apple and a banana. On another, he informed 12 year old me that I should always leave the table still a bit hungry as that was what 'top models' did. He also made relentless negative comments about my weight, loaded with real disgust in his voice.

I think I'm an outlier as it's usually the mother who instils disordered eating habits but my poor mum was fine. She backed him up over his changes to the family meals but would definitely relax things left to her own devices.

These days he's calmed down a lot. He's now an excellent self taught cook and is no longer afraid to include a healthy amount of fat in his meals. He has also stopped going on about my weight after I had a serious conversation with him about the impact and explained I'd not be visiting if he continued. He's bizarrely very supportive about me using Mounjaro.

So for me, I guess it's a combination of genetics and nurture.

I think it's a combination of things...

Genetics - I've always been 'solid'...stocky I suppose. I'm naturally muscly so I've always been heavy despite not always necessarily being fat. I have two daughters, my second born is very strong/solid too and it was evident from the moment she was born she was built differently to my first (and she was 2lb heavier!).

Fullness - I never felt full, I generally stopped eating when the food ran out or because social etiquette dictated when to stop. Or because I was dieting in which case I would feel unsatisfied 99% of the time no matter what I told myself.

Hormones - Puberty made me gain weight and that started around 9/10yo. I've always had big carb cravings during PMT too.

Also yo-yo dieting over the years hasn't helped. I haven't dieted AT ALL while on WLI. Haven't counted a single calorie yet lost over 3st so far and only just in the overweight BMi now...goes to show it's not WHAT I was eating but more the sheer quantity of what I was eating!

I hadn't always been overweight, it happened suddenly at menopause, without any change at all in diet, exercise etc. Exactly as it did for my mother and grandmother, so must be very much genetically determined. We were were all short, very small women who got fat at 50!

For me, pure and simple p!$$poor willpower and over eating /drinking. I did start my periods aged just 10 back in the early 80s so maybe there was a hormonal thing but really I can't blame anyone but myself, I am the fattest in my family by a long shot and always have been, my Mum has nagged me about my weight for as long as I can remember, I despise myself, can't abide clothes shopping, avoid the mirror and the camera and my kids call me fat (for context, 5'2", size 14/16 though was a size 10 til my mid20s.

A fucked up mother didn't help me. Im 5'6". I once weighed 8 stone 10 and on my build I looked incredibly lean to the point of unwell. I remember wearing hipster trousers and asking my mother if I had any fat over hang (yes really)
She scoffed telling me at my age how SHE had weighed 8 stone 7.

I look back at pics in my teens and 20s when I was fantastically proportioned, lean and healthy but that twat had drummed it in my head I was fat. I could cry for the wasted years .

So essentially disordered eating. I emotionally eat. I eat for any reason other than hunger hence MJ is really working for me as it's just shut my brain off in that way!

I was obese in primary school, mum took me to weight watchers for the first time when I was 11 and at that point I was over 11 stone, I had breasts and started my period then too.

Diagnosed with PCOS when I was 27 via hormone testing, symptoms and scan of ovaries showing multiple cysts. Very helpfully the Drs refused to put me on Metformin or anything at all and just told me to “eat less, move more”. Took 3 years to get pregnant due to almost non-existent periods. I was able to lose 10% of my body weight by going on strict keto diet but was so hungry for that whole year I would be in tears most days, it was truly miserable. Diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes at 28weeks and unable to control through diet, I was only getting carbs in green veg and dairy and sugars were still high so was put on insulin.

After giving birth I was told that delivering the baby meant I was no longer diabetic and that was that. I asked if I should keep testing or keep taking the meds and was told no but that I should lose some weight by “eating less and moving more”.

Last year I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes and my results were awful, the nurse said it looked like I’d had uncontrolled diabetes for years. Straight on insulin and metformin, Mounjaro added in about 6 weeks after diagnosis.

And hey guess what, when you treat a metabolic condition the patients symptoms get better. Since starting the Mounjaro I’ve lost over 5 stone, my BMI is in healthy range for the first time since I was about 8 years old, I weigh less now than I did when I was 11 and my last blood test has my HbA1C in the normal range.

This has made me sad and angry on your behalf @InfoSecInTheCity
Why are overweight people treated so badly and made to feel like it’s all our fault? I’m sorry you had to suffer so long but am glad you’re feeling much better now.

The same as a lot of others, overweight as a child and shamed for that although looking back, I was only a size 14 as a teen, you would have thought I was enormous from the way my family spoke about me!

I started dieting in school and I’ve been on and off diets ever since. I’ve always craved sweet and snack foods and never really had an off switch. Didn’t each huge quantities, just eating crap and not proper meals.

I have lost the weight before but never kept it off. This is the first time I’ve really focused on sustainable long term dietary changes: increasing protein and vegetable intake and giving up sugar and I’m 3 and a bit stone lighter taking me back to a healthy weight. I’m 51 so it’s been a long time coming! Before it’s always been fad diets, quick fixes and then falling off the wagon spectacularly.

My last successful weight loss was more than 10 years ago so I am hoping the changes I’ve made now stick.

I was a thin child, then came type 1 diabetes that added 10kg to my overall weight. I was still a healthy weight, as before diabetes my bmi was 17 on average.

Then i was diagnosis with hypothyroid which added more weight. I started to need to make healthier choices which was odd. It was all automatic before this.

My childbearing years came, and I put on lot of weight after ds2. He was a very challenging baby and I noticed, carbohydrate helped me stay awake. Which was useful, when I had a baby who didn't sleep. When he turned one, I was overweight. So I created a exercise plan for myself and I was back in healthy weight the following year.

Lock down came and I had my last baby during the first one. At first ex used to say, go wherever you need to go, but don't take baby with you. We in a pandemic. When I finally felt comfortable enough to leave dc3, ex said why are you leaving baby behind. He made things harder for me and I couldn't just take my other dc to other people for babysitting. Ds2 hated masks and he struggled with social distancing. I just ended up staying home. With less movement, I gained a lot of weight. Ds2 got autism diagnosis in 2022.

My relationship came to an end in 2023. I gained more weight as I comfort ate a lot. In 2024 my health went really bad and I cried to gp and asked what is happening to me? Got megoblastic anemia due to b12 deficiency diagnosis. That later on turned into pernicious anemia diagnosis. It is being treated now well.

I first blame my body for letting me get to 100kg. Then, I remember, I made the active choices to survive during troubling times. Now MJ is assisting me and changing survival into something else. My family has helped me a lot and I couldn't do half the things I do, without them.

Genetics and mental health (depression) including meds for that.

I had genetic testing a few years back and it came back with a lot of these bad versions of "Fatso" genes (yes really) meaning 3 X obesity risk for each. linked with higher ghrelin ('hunger hormone') levels

https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/weight-loss-genetics-fto-polymorphisms/

I was a fat child & have some underlying mental health issues that I am struggling to deal with that led to binge eating & low self worth. Food was a comfort but I also had a bottomless stomach with bad cravings to eat naughty food!

I wasn’t overweight as a child, but very much desired to be be thin, as a teenager. It was the early 90s, the Kate Moss era. Just as I hit puberty, a bad uncle tried something… And at the time, and over the years, I thought I’d gotten over it.

But looking back now, it was the beginning of me not wanting to “develop” into a woman. I started smoking at 16, and eating very little. When I moved to Paris, after school, I started to binge. I had bulimia up to age 35. I was slim, not skinny.

After 40, I started to put on weight. Naturally filling out, but I don’t have a big frame. Had a miscarriage, then had DS at 44. Lost the baby weight. Then I had a health crisis… And piled the weight back on quickly. Now perimenopause. I eat well, and exercise, but my bulimia has somehow made a shock return.

Because I am a lazy c*%t.

Always been fat , fat child, fatter teenager, fat adult,.
Combination of childhood traumas and comfort eating .
Have yo yo dieted since I was 14 .
Have two daughters ...one super slim and sporty . One built exactly like me . 6 sisters only myself and one other struggle with our weight .