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'.

Not understanding your point. The original remark didn’t sound like a friendly or positive one, instead rather sarcastic. 🤷‍♀️

In my case, lots of stress due to undiagnosed autism and ADHD. I used to self-medicate with chocolate. Later on, domestic abuse,

I'm now in a better place - split up from my ex and I'm in ADHD medication. I have lost 5 stone in the last few months. Another stone or two to go.

Also, with age, I think all of our body functions tend to deteriorate. So a worsening metabolic function I would argue is fairly common, though other factors may also influence this (genes, poor diet, stress, PCOS, inflammation, yo-yo dieting etc). Mounjaro as a medication it seems can help with this. Much like inserting eye drops daily for my dry eye problem, when I think about it.

I had always been underweight - 5'6 and 7.5 stone. When I became pregnant (38 years) I went up to 16 stone as eating was the only thing that stopped me being sick. Got back down to 9 stone with exercise, hit 55 years and then whizzed up to over 14 stone. Play tennis a few hours every day and have a reasonably healthy diet and very little alcohol (but no gall bladder, if that makes a difference). Mounjaro has got me back down to under 12 stone in 3 months and I am going to stay on it until I am nearer 9 stone again. No idea what I will do then. Stay on it or gain weight again, I guess. So, to answer one of the reasons you feel you are overweight as an adult, being underweight as a child does not mean you don't get fat when you get older.

You put on more than 8 stone in pregnancy @m00rfarm ?

My paternal aunt was a very large lady (think Hattie Jacques size), so was her daughter throughout childhood. I think i got the fat gene!

I am fed up with my weight at 13.5st being 5ft2 but at least I didn't get that large, so think of that as a positive when feeling unhappy. I also don't burn enough calories throughout the week, that bit is 100% on me.

Yes. I did not stop eating for 9 months. I thought I’d just shrink back once the baby was born. I didn’t. I think I’ve got photos somewhere.

8 stone in 9 months…. I can’t get my head around that. You must have dreaded your midwife appointments!

I'm from a very 'trim' and sporty family, so don't have any excuses genetically. Mum has very disordered eating - I think sadly standard for a lot of her boomer generation, thin-is-best, tiny portions, shaming if you ate dessert or even anything more than a miniscule amount of food. I reacted very strongly against that, didn't really have an off-switch or understanding of portion sizes and just wanted to eat sugar and fat and giant meals constantly when I left home. Add to that comfort/misery eating to stave off some pretty bad anxiety and depression, and then honestly the misery of never being able to lose weight so I guess I'll just eat more? Plus the family narrative applied to me that I was the 'clever' one whilst my brother was the 'sporty' one, so I never felt that sports or exercise was for me.

Incredibly strange to see myself emerge now as a hyper-sporty getting-buff woman in my late 40s who cares about protein and electrolytes.

Possibly not as much as she did ... It was weird - my BP was going through the roof, I was in and out of hospital, and no one mentioned my weight increase! I had one dress that I could get on (no trousers or tops would fit) and just wore it during the day and washed it over night. It was the most miserable experience. When he was born, I honestly thought that I would lose the weight that second. It had not really dawned on me that I was actually fat - and an 8 pound baby was not going to make much difference.

Not one single HCP mentioned you putting on 8 stone in 9 months? And your BP was through the roof?

Yes. It was 25 years ago. It was only years later I realised how strange it was.

Laziness, and greediness. I could exercise more, I could eat less. But I don’t.

I can trace mine riiiight back. Irish grandmother who was almost certainly genetically affected by the hunger. Was big in her younger days, but had massive food issues and became unhealthily thin. These issues were passed on to my mother who was (like me) a perfectly healthy weight in her teens but called 'fat.' She became obese and I remember her being so for my entire childhood - this lead to very poor modelling of food choices for me, from the extreme of constant failed dieting but also no proper portion control or balanced diet.

As a teen, my metabolism was still great, so I could eat freely - and did - but was called greedy and fat constantly by my stepfather (DM, to her credit, has never ever commented on my eating or weight). I developed a secret eating habit and associated foods such as chocolate or sweets with both rebellion and comfort.

I had my older children young, in my teens, and bounced back whilst eating normally. Then had two more children in my twenties, when the weight very much did not drop off easily. I never lost all the baby weight. Then Covid happened and food was the only enjoyment I could find.

Now I'm massively obese and beginning MJ because I am done with feeling like my body is cumbersome and in constant pain.

At no point has 'eat less, move more' worked for me. Believe me, I have tried. But I am constantly hunger. Actual hunger, not boredom or emotion. MJ has turned it off and I'm staggered. I'd forgotten what it was like to not want food.

Fingers crossed this is the turning point for me and I can get healthy before I'm 40, so my kids can keep me for longer.

Trauma, shaming in childhood, poor cook mother whose food I actively did not like so I ate anything I could get my hands on so I wasn’t hungry, disordered eating as a teen got down to very low weight, worked split shifts ate and then slept like a sumo wrestler, lost the weight due to an active job kept it off until after uni, started job ate badly, went abroad very active drastic change in diet lost a lot of weight, got pregnant put on 4 stone, lost some of it, got pregnant, lost some of it, got pregnant, gained weight slowly, covid gained an extra 2 stone, now over 4 stone overweight. Started MJ recently because I’m falling apart at the seams with inflammation and I have the start of arthritis so I must improve things for my joints and significant exercise and diet for 4 years since covid did not make a dent.

I know, it’s absolutely insane the amount of crap that we were free to buy! I hope it’s different in secondary schools nowadays but no idea if it is or not? My kids are in primary and don’t have a tuck shop thing or anywhere to buy snacks.

i think I was embarrassed cos I was aware it was a ridiculous amount of food (and yes probably a lot more than the other kids were getting) but I was skinny so I never felt the need to limit it (until I did a few years later…)

I definitely remember at our Scottish secondary school, early 1990s, the only snack options were crisps, and chocolate bars such as twix, laid our on a table to choose. Lunch was from the local chip shop or bakery which was usually a pasty heated up in the microwave, and more chocolate / sweets from the newsagent next door.

I have always been fat and don't ever have any memory of being a normal size.

It was always put towards baby fat or that I'd grow out of it, so there was never actively anything done.

Dad had a big appetite. I was always asked to take more food, and told to finish my plate. whether or not I was hungry. I was taught from a young age to ignore my hunger/fullness cues and eat because I'm being told to. I have a lot of memories crying at the dinner table because I didn't want to eat of didn't like the food. But forced to finish my plate.

Mum was obsessed with how she and other people looked. Everyone was described by their weight (not hair colour, height or any other quality). She could see me gaining weight but she didn't, and still doesn't know how to eat healthily. She eats small portions of unhealthy food.

I went to a health visitor at 8 years old, a dietitian at 12 years old. But those visits didn't do anything because I wasn't in charge of my food, my parents were.

I was a size 12 at 9 years old, size 18 at 14 years old. And it was a constant battle of my parents telling me to finish my plate on one side, lose weight on another side, that everyone else was too skinny and I was normal and school kids would pick on me because I was fat. It was just an array of mixed messages for years. There was never a clear solution.

My wedding dress was a size 22 and I was a size 28 by my son's 1st birthday and I looked awful.

I knew I needed to change because I have a child and I didn't want him to have the fat mother at school.

MJ is solving a lot of issues whilst I teach myself what a normal portion of food is, what it feels like to feel full, what it feels like to be hungry etc. It's like I'm starting from the beginning.

So far, 72lbs lost and I just squeezed into size 18 jeans this morning!

Well, your point is contradictory. WLI will raise insulin and make you lose weight whereas Fung's theory is that insulin causes weight gain.
The success of WLI completely destroys the insulin and low carb theory.

I'm a binger and am addicted to sugar. I can trace right back to where this started to happen - in my teenage years at round about the time my father turned abusive. I suspect it has its roots in trauma: my brother is an alcoholic (thankfully now in recovery) for probably the same reason.

I've taken control of it many times in the past but it's kept creeping back. I've used the Harcombe diet successfully in the past - the cold turkey with all products containing sugar and caffeine gave me horrendous withdrawal symptoms to begin with. Then I had a riding accident and restricted mobility for some years caused by the spinal metalwork (now gone). But I'm not kidding myself that either the accident or my father are the reason I really do struggle with my weight.

I know exactly what's brought me here and no one is to blame but myself. It's the binging.

Well yes and no, i get what you're saying. On the surface it does seem contradictory. WLI's do raise insulin, but not all the time. They just help your body release the right amount after meals, especially if your blood sugar is high. Over time they improve insulin resistance because you lose weight and your body stops overproducing insulin. So WLI's end up doing what Dr Fung talks about (lowering chronically high insulin levels) but just by a different method to low carb, fasting, calories in/out etc.

Food represented love and comfort.

I am trying to work on remembering that I now have love and comfort outside of food and I don't need that crutch anymore.

Also think genetics play a part. Mounjaro has worked really well for me so I think I just be short to the active hormones involved.