Has your weight ever been one of your primary concerns?

It has been a problem for me my entire life and it still is. However, I am still not going to opt for surgery to fix it.

At least I can float well.

Luckily, I’ve got a pretty good metabolism. And, the way that I’m built, when I do gain a bit of weight it’s proportionate. A few years ago, when I was depressed, I lost quite a bit of weight and went down to 95 lbs (I’m 5’2”). Other than that, my weight doesn’t fluctuate all that much.

Yes it was and I just had a weigh-in tonight and after nine months I have lost 50.75 lb.! It was a lot of hard work and determination. I totally changed my diet and started exercising. I joined a local gym and feel better than I have in years, if not my life.

When I was in high school I probably weighed 120 lb. and thought I was fat. I’m 5’7”. That was way too thin. After I had my children is when I put on the weight. I finally decided to do something about it.

I let out a big WHOOP! when I got on the scale. We had had a contest to see who could lose the most in 12 weeks. I didn’t win the contest – but I did win because to make the 50 lb. mark was really, really something I didn’t think I could do.

It never was a major problem but I admit I didn’t have the best body image in high school but now that I’ve gained some pounds, it’s become a health issue because diabetes runs in my family and I’m showing early signs of it. I think it shouldn’t be a cosmetic worry, but there is a time when a person’s health is jeopardized because of weight.

Weight is currently #2 on my list of “Things I freak out about when I’m trying to sleep”. #1 is finishing my thesis. Since starting the pill to help clear up my acne, I’ve gained about 20 pounds, and despite the fact that I eat next to nothing and exercise like a crazy person, I’m continuing to gain weight instead of lose it. I’d like to be off the pill, but I have to wait til I’m not chilling on ice (read: when I get back to the US). Until then, no cookies for me. :-(

One of my primary concers, yes, but not the main concern I had.

I gained 50lbs when pregnant with my son. I got told constantly “Oh my gosh, you’re all belly!” and I guess I believed it. It’s almost like an illusion though. I looked like all belly because my stomach was so large, but other parts of me got large as well..I just didn’t notice. I noticed after I gave birth and my legs were not the legs I had before.
I lost the weight relatively quickly, within a year. The only active working out I did was lots of walks around the mall with my son in a stroller, or around the neighborhood. I also did pilates for a short period.
Weight bothers me when I feel unhealthy or uncomfortable with myself. If I gain a lot with this pregnancy, I’ll work out the same I did to lose the weight I gained with my son.

Yes. Absolutely.

I have never been obese, but I have fluctuated from the very high end of a healthy weight for my height to the very low end.

Every time I shop for clothing, grocery shop, sit down for a meal, open the fridge, get dressed in the morning, get undressed, meet a new person, get nekkid with my guy, see a friend, contemplate a vacation, or exercise my weight is on my mind. When I’m heavier I feel disgusting about myself. When I’m dieting and exercising a lot I never stop thinking about it. I’ve been a serious over-eater and at other times, I have worked to see how few calories I could eat in a month and if I could burn them all off at the gym. I have full wardrobes in every size from 4–12.

I joined Weight Watchers last week, since I am rapidly gaining weight lately. So far, I like how it lets me eat while being aware of what I’m putting in my mouth. Already though, I’ve been tempted to challenge myself to see if I could eat fewer and fewer “points.”

I recognize how mentally unhealthy it is, but I haven’t found a way to make it stop.

I’m tall and thin and it has always been hard for me to gain weight no matter how much I eat. Well, the situation became even worse when I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2006. Now I’m on a restricted diet but I have to incorporate exercise into my daily routines to control my blood sugar levels. The struggle for me is to find the right amount of foods to eat with the right characteristics to give me enough calories to sustain myself on a daily basis without raising my blood sugar counts to unhealthy levels. Along with this, I have to try and eat enough food to prevent weight loss through my regular exercising. It’s a continual and frustrating struggle.

@Bluefreedom: My mom is in the exact same situation. She eats a lot of protein now.

I have always been overweight. Now, I am to the point, where I don’t care what others think. I eat healthy, and I make most of the food I eat from scratch. I exercise on a regular basis. My body has never followed that stuiped height weight scale. It has prevented me from doing what I wanted to do, like joining the military, but mabey it was a sign. It sucks at times, but the thing I really like about my body, is the fact that when you look at me, you can’t tell or give an estimate as to how much I weigh.

Like you, @DominicX, I was super skinny all the way through high school. Almost 5’8” and 125lbs was the most I weighed. Hyperthyroidism will do that to ya! Then, I got Hypo-thyroidism. Yeah. It’s been downhill ever since. Still almost 5’8”, I now weigh 215lbs-ish. The only upside is that I have a body type like @brinibear… it’s all very proportionate, and no one ever guesses I weigh anywhere near that amount. It’s not something that weighs heavily on my mind everyday, but it’s there. I know I’d feel better physically if I lost some of this excess weight, but can’t find the motivation to do so.

I was pretty average in my youth, but I was told I was fat and ugly from a very young age, so I believed it.

As an adult, I gradually put on weight because compulsive overeating was a way I dealt with my depression and self-loathing… and it fed into the cycle. As a single mother, I didn’t have much time or funds to invest in fitness, and was often eating on-the-go, so my weight continued to climb. A couple of times, I was able to lose a bit, but always fell back into old bad habits because I was not really doing it for myself. Fortunately, I have always been healthy despite being overweight.

Now I have done a lot of work to improve my mental and emotional well-being, and I am trying to get my physical presence to better represent the confident, happy person I have become. But shedding decades of physical ‘baggage’ is not easy! I have lost a good amount, but have recently plateaued because I’ve been going out with friends for meals and drinks, and had a very busy summer! So I am not upset… in fact I am pleased that I have maintained pretty well, rather than gaining back.

The difference this time is that I am not dieting and working out as a means to an end. Eating healthier and being more active are becoming incorporated into my lifestyle. It is what I do because I want to be more adventurous and active. Already this year I’ve been hiking, kayaking, in paintball battles, zip-lining, and gotten my motorcycle license. Upcoming adventures are horseback riding (I’ve never been and was always a bit afraid because of an incident I witnessed), and skydiving!!

Because healthier foods and exercise are part of my life, I have no goals… I do not have a weight or pants size in mind. My point is to enjoy this moment and to take care of and live myself so that I can have many more moments to look forward to! I work with many elderly, who tell me (at 43) not to grow old… so I’m taking their advice, and doing whatever I can to keep my body functioning at least as well, if not better, than it was the day before.

A very close friend of mine while growing up was always underweight. Once we got out of High School, he started lifting weights and eating healthy, high-protein diets, and taking some of those muscle-building supplements. He is quite buff now. My brother, on the other hand, is 6’2” and he might weigh 165 soaking wet. You have to decide what is important to you… but I believe that the best reason to work out and eat right is for your health as opposed to how you look.

Yes. Major concern. I’ll leave it at that.

Hi, I’m MacBean, and I’m morbidly obese.

I’ve never been thin—I was even a big baby—but I wasn’t obese until high school. I didn’t change my eating habits or anything like that; I just started gaining weight. In the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I put on about 60 pounds for no reason. Nobody believed me. Everyone assumed I was just eating junk food and lying about it. Eventually, one of my teachers became concerned because she noticed some other health issues I was having. She told my parents in no uncertain terms that they needed to take me to a doctor to get things sorted out. Now that someone was paying attention to my problems, they didn’t want to look like bad parents, so… off to the doctor I went!

As it turned out, I had a tumor on my pituitary gland which was still very small but the doctors thought had probably been growing for 5–7 years. They tried to remove it in November of 2002, but it appears either not to have worked or the tumor has returned, because all of my previous symptoms have come back, along with a few new ones. So now I’m going through all the testing and crap all over again. (Actually, I have to go to the endocrinologist to get some test results and discuss further treatment the day after tomorrow.) Currently, I’m somewhere around 350 pounds (and 5’3”-ish, which means it very nearly takes more tape measure to measure my girth than my height), but that can change by more than ten pounds in either direction from week to week. I keep track of my eating, sleeping, and activity habits, and I still can’t find any kind of rhyme or reason to those fluctuations. It appears to be completely random. Hopefully my doctors will try to fix me again and hopefully it’ll work this time.

are you a guy? then you’ll probably only have to worry about your gut when you get older. If you’re a girl, when you get about fifty or menopause age, you’ll wake up one day wondering what happened. Don’t worry till then .

I wonder why each doctor thinks he or she is the first one to ever tell me to lose weight? The only thing that has ever worked was musical theater (I lost 60 pounds rehearsing for Jesus Christ Superstar) and the weight always came right back. Right now I am in the best physical shape of my life, but the doctor still says all my problems will magically disappear if I lose weight.

I’m naturally muscular and am also extremely likely too be obese. Right now I’m about 145 and a size 6 in pants and a small in tops. The smallest I can be is about 120, whereas with most other women, that’d be their normal weight. I’m pretty self-conscious about my body. I’m heavier than I’d like to be, but I still look damn good haha. I’d like to have a 26” waist and a 39” hip measurement. I’m not far off, I just have to get my ass to the gym. The good thing is, weight comes off me fairly quickly. If I could get back to training 20 hours a week, I’d love that…

edited to say: I went to the gym tonight! It was a huge confidence booster =)

@Darwin I can attest, that thin people do indeed still have health problems ;) I think doctors act like it’s a cure all, when it’s really not…something is usually going on when a person cannot lose the weight.

When I was younger (actually, up until college), I was very insecure about my weight. People spread rumors in middle and high school about me being anorexic, which so not true. I loved to eat, I still love to eat, but I barely put on weight. I hated being teased about it, and based only on my weight, I thought I was horribly unattractive. To combat this, I would wear baggy clothes in an attempt to make myself appear bigger.

When I went to college, all that change. I could a ‘new’ person, and leave that baggage behind. It also helped that I surrounded myself with people who cared more about the inner person, instead the outward appearance. Of course, I still got snarky remarks about my weight in college, but at the point I know longer cared. I used college as my chance to learn to love me. Til this day, I still don’t care what people say about me and weight. I love me and my body – it feels pretty damn good to say that.

I’ve always been 10 or 15 pounds over weight. And yes it does bother me. But I’ve learned to live with it and I love myself enough to not let it ruin my life. Sure, I try to be healthy as much as I can but I just love food and that sometimes beats the desire of being skinny. Overall, I wouldn’t say weight is the main concern in my life. There’s so much more to life then being physically perfect.

I can tell you, compared to many of my thinner friends, I am alot more healthier than they are. I don’t get colds, and I have no physical health problems. I guess because I am bigger, I take better care of myself than they do.

All interesting answers (I read every one). Thanks for posting.

@hearkat I could work out, yes, but I’m really not interested. I’m fine with the way I am. I bike a lot and that’s how I get a lot of my exercise and I’ll be doing plenty of that in college. I haven’t really had any health problems, haven’t had to take any medicine besides Tylenol/Advil since…God knows when…I’m doin’ pretty well.

@trailsillustrated Of course I’m a guy, man, the picture…the whole “Dominic” thing…lol :)

@DominicX: For cycling and some other sports, it is preferable to have a lean build. So as long as you are healthy and happy, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says!

It only took doctors ten years to believe I was hypothyroid. They wouldn’t even run the tests for forever.

I was thin for a while in high school, weighing 140 pounds and being 5’ 8” but that was too thin. I became anemic and bruised easily. In addition, because of my bone structure I still wore a size 14. My daughter at the same height and weight wears a size 6.

So far the only way I have ever been able to stay thin is by drastically reducing my food intake and drastically increasing by exercise quotient. Even when I was in high school sports (soccer, field hockey, cross country and basketball) I was never thin.

My father has the same problem.

Absolutely not.
I’ve always maintained my shape, regardless of how much exercise I do, or how poorly I eat. I figure I’m destined to be dead sexy for life.

If I rubbed a magic lamp and was granted 3 wishes, being skinnier wouldn’t be one of them. If I had 6 wishes, it might be.

Only in the last 10 years. I’m mainly concerned as I’m built like my maternal grandmother, and her lack of concern for her weight did her no favours. When she was the age I am now, her high blood pressure and diabetes kicked in, so I’m grateful that I am not in that place.

I would be nice to be able to wear a bikini and actually look good in it for a few more years, seeing as I never wore one out of modesty as a younger woman.

Yes. I’m 5’4’’,16 years old and I weigh 150. I’m really cury and have a “big” butt. I wear size 7–9 in jeans. I’m planning to lose at most 10 pounds by mid-October. I forgot to mention, I’m a wrestler at my school so weight is a HUGE concern in my life.

I am extremely proportional—at least where it counts.

I’m unlike a lot of body types, in that a lot of my weight is in my legs. Not only are they muscular (I walk a lot!) but large legs run in the family.

I weigh more than I should for my height, but seeing as how nothing really affects my weight (it’s remained constant since I hit puberty and starting taking the pill), I kinda figure this is how I’ll stay. Sure, I’d like to be thinner, but I don’t have issues that overweight people tend to have—my knees don’t hurt, I don’t get sick easily, I eat plenty of fruits and veggies, my back only hurts when I carry a heavy backpack, etc.

So it’s an issue according to my mom. I don’t see it as an issue, because I’m (mostly) comfortable the way I am. (My doctor has never said anything about it. My blood numbers tested as normal every month while I was on Accutane. I think I’m in pretty good shape, just not the ideal ‘skinny flat-bellied’ shape.)

(I don’t lose weight easily: I did band camp for 8 hours a day for two weeks. Out in the heat, we were pretty much constantly moving and doing some form of exercise. I may have lost some water weight, but other than that…nope, no weight loss.)

When I was growing up, all my relatives were concerned because I was so thin. They worried about me. As I got older, many of my co-wokers were jealous of me because I could eat an entire plate of food and never gain an ounce. After the birth of my first child, my doctor told me to add foods to my diet to bring my weight up.

After the birth of my second child, 16 years later, the table has turned. From the age of 35 on, I steadily gained weight for 20 years, to the point where my ankles are swollen and my “gut” is hanging over. I have tried all the “easy” ways to loose, such as cutting out excess fats and doing away with too much bread or all the other simple weight loss suggestions. The only one that works today is to walk, walk, walk.

Yes, i WAS complainting my 26” waist when I was young. And now, that problem had gone away totally. All I want is not to get to 36” waist. Age will take care of your skinny problem in no time. Trust me!

Before I moved to Australia, I played hard tennis (singles) 4 or 5 times a week and could eat anything, although with the exception of a deep and abiding love for Coke, I always ate healthy foods.

When I moved here I discovered very few adults play singles, it’s all doubles and I hate doubles plus you get a fraction of the amount of exercise.

So I gained weight. Never too much because I am pretty obsessive about it, but more than I like to carry. I have recently discovered a new way of eating and I am almost down to my lean mean fighting weight again. I feel so much lighter, I love it.

So if you change your exercise habits without changing your caloric intake, you will probably gain weight!

Before I turned 30, I could see all these 30-somethings working out and eating healthy and they looked so ridiculous. I promised myself I’d never be like that.

Around 30, I had a friend (the same age) who also went into that craze and I used to laugh at him. But a couple of years later I quit smoking, and gained a lot of weight as a result. I then started working out, but had an accident and hurt my knee, leaving me immobile for 5 months. So I gained even more weight. I’ve been trying hard to lose it ever since, and have only gotten half-way there in 4 years.

I think that once your metabolism changes, it becomes a lot easier to put on weight and a lot harder to lose it, and weight does become an issue. I am not willing to go on a strict diet, but I do worry about what I eat and try to keep my calories down if I can.

Yes, I have been overweight all of my life, at one point I weighed close to 400 pounds.

I had a gastric bypass went down to around 250 and slowly gained the wieght back to 320 where I have finally managed to keep it for a couple of years and am slowly going back down.

I have struggled with weight my whole life but have managed to keep it off for the last 5 years. It is still a daily struggle, but I remember how it felt jumping out of bed and having my feet hurt d
from trying to carry so much weight. I don’t want to go back there, so now, when I have those moments when my hunger just doesn’t seem to get satisfied, I pig out on fresh fruits and vegetables instead of chips and cookies. Truth is, thosechips snd cookies never satisfied me anyway, so I might as well just mitigate the damage by eating high volume, low calorie foods. Much better than aching feet.

I have never worried too much about my weight which is very lucky indeed seeing as for the first 20 years of my life my mother was battling anorexia. She used to be a gymnast and when she had to give that up at 18 years old she became fixated on her weight and practically gave up eating basically. As I’m sure you can imagine it was pretty shit living with the worry that mums illness could kill her and she was always in and out of hospital.

For the past 3 years she has improved so much. She even enjoys trying new foods now and cooks for herself, her husband and my brother (who still lives at home). They sit down and eat together and mum doesn’t use every excuse (I’ve heard so many cliches as to why mum won’t eat over the years) so she doesn’t have to eat.

Things are definately better for her but she has been left with permanent health problems due to years of not eating and throwing after eating. She has been left with very brittle bones for example.

There have been times in my life that I have felt guilty about eating because, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to put on weight, but I get over it pretty quickly. I try to eat healthily and only eat “junk foods” as a treat and if I feel a bit heavier than normal I just lay off the treats. I like a lot of food that is good for me anyway (veggies for example) so it’s not too much of a hassle.

I’ve been overweight since the bones in my foot started growing together when I was 9. I’m naturally build like a brick shithouse (you should see my calves! Only like an ounce of fat on ‘em and they’re enough to where I can’t do most boots) and the fact that I have screwed up feet doesn’t help at all. I spent 9 months out of year on crutches and have had 2 foot surgeries… And the third will be a rather extreme step, a fusion to screw the bones together. Obviously I’d rather avoid this, so I have to be very careful with exercise and bracing and everything else that I have to do in order to not screw myself up further. This makes losing weight difficult.

I’ve been working on the same 10 pounds for the past 4 months. I’m down 20 from the point where I stopped counting, but no matter what I do it seems like I’m stuck where I am. Even when I got my tonsils out and didn’t eat a bite of solid food for well over a week, I only dropped 6 pounds where most adults getting theirs out are in the 10–12 pound range. And the minute solid food passed my lips, came right back again. Fuckin’ fat fairy came and hit me with her wand and BAM! Stupid fat fairy…

I need to drop 40 pounds to be at the correct body fat percentage for myself. My body fat percentage, and my actual healthy weight, has NOTHING to do with BMI which would have my “top” weight as being 6 pounds over what my body composition says is the weight of non-fat parts of my body (muscle, organ, bone). Less body fat than female gymnasts and those scary female body builders. In order to get to the weight that I’m supposed to be… I’d have to amputate my leg. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m only 5 feet tall.

I hate that fat fairy.

@avvooooooo, that’s a girl? <shudders>

@evegrimm I got a little scared trying to find a pic to reference.

@Darwin I think we should catch the fat fairy and whack her with her own wand until she’s unable to fly any more.

@avvooooooo – Or turn her over to the tooth fairy but abscond with all the Novacaine.

@Darwin Good idea! We always plot so well together!

clicks @avvooooooo‘s link. GASP! WTF! ::runs away::

Kill the fat fairy! Oh Geezuz Christo! :)
<~~~hides behind the baby dinos.

@aprilsimnel I had to fight the urge to curl into a fetal position while image shopping. But imagine… If I was my “ideal” weight, I’d be less fat than… that.

@cyndihugs LOL!!!

I am not fat. I am well-rounded.

@Darwin I’m fluffy.

I’m a fluffy well-rounded person. :) Ha!

I am me, and that’s that. I am special and unique, and nobody can take that away from me.

Only a few times over the years when I became depressed and gained some but it went away quickly as soon as the depressive element was removed. As a kid and young adult it was an issue of body image- I couldn’t gain weight and people made fun of me thinking I was anorexic or something when I was actually very healthy and desperately wished to fill out and look like “a real woman”. Nowadays I’ve gotten over that insecurity and try to just be happy maintaining my health, turns out plenty of people to go around who think I look like a “real woman”.