This entry came from a post I made on the “Fat In the Family” subforum on the My Fat Spouse forum.
My parents have never been hugely obese, but have both been overweight at various points in their lives. My youngest half-sister (whom I simply refer to as sister) and I were both significantly overweight and obese as teenagers, but not as small children. I can see, however, by looking back and combing my memories how they may have made it easier for her and I to put on weight when we were preteens, which made us both balloon when we were each in high school.
My mom and stepdad cooked meals at home most of the time from the time they got married in 1987 to the time I started attending middle school in 1995. The meals weren’t always “healthy,” but I always remember there being a protein item that was usually fairly lean (baked chicken breast and stuff like that), at least 2 cooked veggies, a starch (usually potatoes or rice) and a big salad. Sounds pretty healthy, until I start to remember the other stuff that was involved.
We all had a die-hard soda habit growing up. We all mostly drank soda, juice, or milk instead of water. My stepdad loves iced tea sweetened in the Southern style, which is sickeningly sweet. The condiments for the salad were things like full-fat bleu cheese and ranch dressing. There was always cheese shredded on the salad. Mom used ample butter for mashed potatoes, green beans, peas, etc. Also, if there was just a little something left in one of the pans (say, there was a half a cup left of peas or potatoes for instance), Mom would pile it onto one of our plates and tell us to finish it. Having quite a large appetite as I grew, I often did.
What I gather from that last bit there is that my Grandma grew up during the Great Depression, where it was just a common-sense practice to never waste food. I figure my Grandma had her kids finish the last bit of something with the logic that only a little bit was left, so why bother saving it as leftovers, but it’s a travesty to throw it away! I think she passed that on to my mom, and my mom passed it down to us.
My parents had a rule that when we got home from school, homework got done before anything else, so my sister and I would sit at the dining room table before dinner and do our work. We began the habit of making popcorn (but not healthy popcorn, the nasty microwaved stuff with lots of fat and calories in it), or putting out a bowl of potato chips, or eating cookies while we studied. Then there was dinner. My sister and I also ate snacks before bed, and the folks never told us that we couldn’t.
I noticed the fact that my face got chubby and I was putting on a spare tire on my belly when I was I think 12 or so, but my mom told me not to worry, that it was just puberty, that when I grew I would “even out.” That kind of logic doesn’t work out when one is eating more calories than they take in. Also, I’m very short and my height peaked at 5 feet when I was 13 or 14, and I never got taller. I only got wider. I remember being mortified as a “tween” that I had to wear what they affectionately referred to as “Pretty Plus,” in the JC Penney kids’ clothes section. I gained several pounds every year, and my weight got ridiculous when I was in my senior year of high school. I lost weight with what started out as healthy after I graduated…then it morphed into a very unhealthy fashion by essentially abusing stimulant drugs with a friend of mine. When I look back at photos of myself at that time, my skin is very sallow and pale, and I didn’t look good. I got into my first serious relationship 5 1/2 years ago and put on even more weight because I stopped doing the stim. drugs and continued living an unhealthy lifestyle.
Given all that, I always liked healthy food. I liked ALL food. I somewhere along the way during my early adolescence adopted the habit of eating way too much of everything, healthy and unhealthy. I was upset about my weight, but no adults in my life told me that I was unhealthy or needed to lose. When I’d talk about wanting to lose weight, no one offered anything real. I worked a part-time job starting when I was 15, and I used some of my own money to buy a crackpot weight loss plan called Herbalife. It was basically like an overpriced Slimfast plan with vitamins. Obviously it didn’t work. It just never quite “clicked” when I was a kid. There were soda machines at school, too, so I could feed my caffeine/sugar addiction with a Coke any time in the day that I wanted.
Back to childhood: As far as our activity level, it was enough to maintain a healthy weight if we weren’t eating too much or consuming empty calories with soda. But we were, and we drank soda all the time. As previously mentioned, my middle and high school had soda machines, so I could always satisfy my Coca Cola cravings at school. Some days I didn’t eat a real lunch because the lunch line was too long, so I’d hit up the Coke and candy machines. There were days I’d eat a package of Skittles or a candy bar for lunch with a Coke, and that was lunch. Of course then I’d be hungry after school for real food, but instead I’d reach for another soda and something like a small bag or Doritos or something. Then came dinner at home.
Breakfast was always something quick. I ate a lot of instant oatmeal, but the nutrition in the oats would be cancelled out by the massive amounts of sugar I would dump into it. I’ve since come to find that eating sugar in the morning is BAAAD. But I did then, and a lot of it. We also took to buying these little mini-pizzas and that was often breakfast, zapped in the microwave to eat on the way out the door. Neither one of us was very athletic, and my parents weren’t either. We lived on the highway with a lot of traffic, and in enough of a rural area that there weren’t any sidewalks. We both had bicycles, and essentially nowhere to ride them. Our house was situated on an acre of land, so there was plenty of space to play outside, but as we got older the interest waned.
I have always liked to just go on long walks to have time to myself and clear my head, etc. I had neighbors with a nature trail who were nice enough to let us go walking in the woods growing up. But all the walking in the world can’t counteract too many calories, especially low-quality, sugary stuff.
My parents’ attitudes regarding being overweight were different then than they are now. They are both in their 50’s, and of course with that age comes a variety of health screenings that one needs to go through. Both are smokers who plan to quit soon (thank Gods). My stepdad has type II diabetes and hypertension, and he was ordered to lose weight by his doctor. My mom has a variety of hormonal problems, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and she’s also making changes under a doctor’s supervision. Like I said, neither one of them has ever been obese, but both have been overweight at various points. My mom’s weight fluctuates a lot, but she’s never gotten too big. My stepdad last year was just on the borderline of being considered obese, but his BMI has gone way down due to his change in diet. My mom now has her own workout routine of some resistance exercises and cardio that she does at home. This is the first time that both parents have had an actual health-related routine. They still kind of have the, “well, we aren’t as bad as SOME people,” thing when it comes to health and weight, but I think they’re starting to understand that prevention is the best medicine.
My mom still says things like, “Well, their whole family is big, so that’s normal,” and stuff like that, somewhat attributing weight to genetics. I think she is getting, though, that no one is born destined to be fat by genetics and that it’s a family-wide lifestyle and set of beliefs that gets a whole family fat, not genes. But she still kind of gives people a pass if they’re overweight when they also have overweight family members. My mom recently has said that she remembers all the soda we used to drink as a family when me and my sister were children, and how she wishes that they’d hadn’t always kept that stuff around the house. She’s also strongly against artificial additives in foods. She reads ingredients lists and nutrition labels now.
I honestly wish that my parents had woken up to this stuff decades ago. My sister has polycistic ovarian syndrome, making it more difficult for her to keep her weight down. This is not the half-sister I occasionally refer to from when my father got remarried, who also struggles with her weight for other reasons. This sister is from my mom and stepdad’s marriage. She is way less overweight than the other sister. It’s not impossible for her to keep her weight down, but she is a very picky eater (she basically doesn’t like the texture of so many foods that what she’ll eat is very limited. She basically lives on peanut butter, chicken, bread, and bananas when she’s eating “healthy”). The foods she gets excited about and actually enjoys eating are junk. She is fully aware of her condition and right now is actively choosing not to follow the rules because she wants to eat what she likes. She accepts that she’ll be fat, and somewhat subscribes to the Fat Acceptance rhetoric. She’s not in the danger zone right now, and seems to be more aware of herself than my other sister, who has big-time compulsive eating issues similar to mine. The PCOS having sister doesn’t overeat, just eats nothing but junk. It’s strange. My mom sometimes wishes she’d taken a stricter stance when my sister was younger as far as her picky eating goes…meaning providing only healthy food and not buying junk just to accommodate her tastes (the mentality that if a kid gets hungry enough they will eventually eat the healthy stuff anyway). I suppose that since I’ve never been picky about eating veggies, etc. that they weren’t sure how to deal with a kid who did put up a fight about eating their veggies.
I am learning from my parents’ mistakes for sure. Food is not the answer to every occasion, don’t eat passively while you’re doing some other activity (like studying for instance), don’t drink soda or other empty calorie drinks, don’t put butter on everything, measure your food intake/portions, be more active, and save food like pizza, candy, etc. for special occasions (also be more picky about what a special occasion actually IS). When and if I ever have children, things will be different. Snacks will be fresh fruits and veggies, popcorn will be air popped, soda will not be something we keep in the house regularly, “junk” food will not be something kept around, indulgences will happen, but not often, and my family will exercise together. My kids will play outside for a huge part of their day when school isn’t in session. I will make sure that my kids get a lot of access to safe and fun places to play. Me and my future life partner will both be active people, and will take the kids on family bike rides, to the park to play, and on family hikes and walks. Physical activity will be a huge part of our lives, instead of television. As far as prospective people to date, my hackles are raised and I’m not as attracted to someone who doesn’t take care of their health very well…I mean, it’s one thing to party once in awhile and occasionally eat some junk food, but to be a junk food junkie, hate exercise, and be a big partier is sort of a turn-off to me these days, whereas I used to overlook those things when it came to choosing a partner.
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