No Wonder I Wasn’t Skinny!

[JessieBear2005 5]

lots of fried foods, hamburger helper, everything drowned in condensed Soups, gravy on everything that wasn't drowned in the condensed soups, veggies swimming in margarine, and dessert every day. I need a nap just thinking about it!

[Chrystee 838]

I love my Mom, but growing up, she was always on a fad diet.. cabbage Soup diet.. the B12 shots diet.. phen/fen.. As a toddler, my Grandmother made me sit at the table with an adult size plate and I rmemeber sitting there until it was very dark outside, forcing me to eat my plate until I was done, before I could get up.. then later in life, my stepfather fixing very cheap/unhealthy foods.. hamburger helper was one I remember. Canned veggies like corn and peas..

With my kids, there is always a fresh veggie with our meals, we don't fry foods, we eat a lot of chicken and fish, and I allow them to eat until they are done. As toddlers, I NEVER force them to eat. They'll eat when hungry. If they don't want it, then they don't have to eat.

[JustWatchMe 7,117]

Hi-C in my lunch bag instead of Fritos. I traded anyway.

Margarine on canned veggies.

Diet soda.

Smartest thing I ever did was listen to my kids' pediatrician who said no juices. Their dentist said no Gummy candies or fruit roll ups. My kids never developed a taste for soda.

[4MRB4PHOTO 3,899]

As a child money was a little tight, so we ate a lot of carbs (rice, Pasta, bread, etc).

Rarely did we go to a restaurant and far and few between we would have some fast food and minimal commercially produced junk food for the same reason, but ate homemade brownies Cookies and cakes.

I was overweight or obese a good portion of my life.

Living on my own, I never craved junk food nor did I go to fast food restaurants. I didn't miss what I didn't have, also I worked very hard to waste money on fast food when I could splurge and blow it on rent, electric, phone, etc. bills.

I cooked and ate fairly healthy and was in good shape.

Getting married and having children, well that led me to my downfall of eating less healthy, overeating and making poor choices. No one to blame but myself for eating as much as I did (especially as a crutch to stress), although a little more support from my significant other when I tried multiple attempts at dieting would have been helpful.

That led up to the present, having a VSG procedure performed last year and getting my life back on track.

[reree6898 1,164]

Everything in our house was processed. My mom didn't really cook per say she more or less opened and heated dinner from all the many prepackaged processed food from the store. Thursday's were grocery day and we would go to the store then get fast food to eat in the car then we would get these giant doughnuts with frosting that was pure sugar piled 3 inches high on top of them. There was never a limit on sugary drinks or treats and I really don't remember ever being told to drink Water. Now water is all I drink. I have really worked hard as an adult to teach myself to cook and to make things that are more healthy for my kids.

[The Candidate 3,215]

While my mom is/was a terrific cook, she very rarely displayed her talents. Nor did she teach any of us. I grew up in the 60's/70's, and I must have been at least 15 before I even realized we owned a dining room table. It was just a space to collect junk as far as I knew.

My siblings and I were early bloomer latch key kids, home alone the majority of the time. We had to scramble our own meals out of whatever we could find, and make our own school lunches. And of course this was pre microwave era. I don't recall there ever being anything fresh available. It was all canned, boxed, freeze dried, or frozen. My favorite food groups!

When I started making my own money babysitting, I spent almost all of it on my faithful friends: Chef Boy Ardee, Hostess, Frito Lay, Nestle, and Hershey's, just to name a few. But my biggest vice has always been soda pop. I really only remember one time that my parents intervened and tried to break us of our bad eating habits.

My father decreed one day that the land shall be free of all things carbonated. It did not go over well, and we had numbers on our side, as there were four of us. So he compromised, and said that on Fridays we would be allowed to drink a limited amount of soda. And that's how Fridays became known as "Pepsi Day" in our household. I distinctly remember nearly salivating as I stepped off the school bus on Fridays, in sweet sugar rush anticipation. Which is really sad now that I look back on it.

Of course, it didn't last very long, as Pepsi Day just slowly faded out of existence. That's because we were resourceful little buggers, and somehow always found a way to sneak in our own stashes, that we'd hide in our rooms, like the clever little sugar crack addicts we'd become.

Ah, nostalgia.

[recordsmom 52]

My mom was a great cook, she learned how to cook from her mom and in turn taught me to cook the same way. She made a balanced dinner every night, a meat or Protein, a vegetable or two and a starch. Very balanced, but cooked with full fats and with no thought to limiting sugar or salt when it was called for...

chicken Fried Steak

Mashed Potatoes

Meatloaf

macaroni & cheese with Meatsauce

Fried chicken

Hamburger (salisbury) steak

Fish Sticks

Pea salad

Potato salad

tuna Salad Sandwiches on White bread

chips

Cakes, Pies, Cookies

Turkey & Dressing with all the sides and fixings at Thanksgiving and Christmas

Ham & Scalloped Potatoes for Easter

I don't blame any of my weight issues on my Mom, most of the people in our country cooked the way she did in the 50's and 60's. I blame myself for not changing what I ate when I learned better.

[gowalking 10,790]

The story is that I wasn't much of an eater as a toddler so my mother asked the doctor what to feed me to put some weight on me and he said spaghetti, potatoes, etc. So..she did and I turned into a full blown carbaholic. I'll take a bowl of Pasta over a piece of cake anytime. I don't blame mom, I'm sure I'd have found carbs eventually but it started my road to obesity for sure.

[rgodfrey09 98]

Being from Texas, our household consisted of a lot of southern food and of course Tex-Mex was a staple. For those that do not know, Tex-Mex is a version of Mexican food that consists of a delicious flavors with full fat cheese, gravies, sour cream, and of course fluffy flour tortillas. As a family, we ate Mexican every Sunday afternoon after church as that was the thing to do in my town as well as at least one other time per week. With three kids all running in different directions, fast food happened at least once or twice a week for my mom's sanity. The rest of the time was southern food with full fat butter, cheese, delicious gravies, fried foods, bacon, and all other kinds of culinary sins that would scintillate the taste buds and add inches to your waist.

Am I surprised I ended up finishing high-school at 250lbs and then topped out 10 years later at just over 400? Not at all, because I didn't know anything about healthy eating until I took a Nutrition course my senior year. I saw all these people eating the same things as me and maintaining their trim figures and I always wondered how they did it, but I was pretty confident for being the 400lb guy in the room. After taking that Nutrition course and learning all about the macros and what our bodies need, I started really taking a look at making changes to myself.

Now I have been sleeved some years later and have very few regrets so far! I am 4 weeks out tomorrow, and have been stalled for about a week and a half after losing 30 lbs in the first 2.5 weeks. I'm keeping my Protein over 60G a day and net carbs under 30 which were my NUTs instructions, so hopefully we will break through this stall soon!

[geelynn 72]

My mother was a diabetic, wore a size 4 clothing and weighed within 10 lbs. of her high school weight all of her life until her death. She forbid sugar and fast food of any kind (which is what made it so attractive to us kids, so we gorged whenever we could), but she had an embroidered pillow (I kid you not) on her bed that read "one can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much cheese popcorn". I think she thought she was doing her best, but years of therapy have taught me otherwise.

[Kushka 36]

I had the mumps when I was four, nearly died, and was very, very skinny. At that point, it became my mother's mission to fatten me up, and she was successful.

food meant love.

Even as I kid, I was eating "Farmer's Breakfasts" with eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast. Sandwiches always had a ton of Hellman's mayo, cheese, and salami. We had homemade potato salad with lots of mayo in it. We even had a side of mayo with our homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers. Mayo. That is one quick way to add some serious calories. My whole family was large.

Also, my father used to say, "eat up kids, you don't know when the next meal will be." That mantra stuck with me for a long time, despite acknowleging it and rationally observing it has no basis in truth.

[Shustar 395]

I was the oldest of 5 kids. My mom was a very good cook and even though it was the fifties she really did make pretty balanced meals - as long as you consider Jello one of the major food groups! I was chubby from age 3. At meals we were taught to always take the serving closest to you when a dish was passed. It was always arranged that the littlest piece would conveniently be right in front of me. I started "sneaking". Would snitch whatever I could get my fat little fingers on and hopefully not get caught. Unfortunately, I would often get caught. I would be ashamed and then punished. I started buying candy from the local "dime store" if you have ever heard of those. My whole food life was about hiding, getting caught and felling embarrased and ashamed. When I was 12, my dad made the comment (out of frustration) "what man will ever want you!" Of course it stuck! When I would hit Patches of thinness from whatever new diet was current- I would go to great lengths to "prove Daddy wrong". In the end, it was safer to stay fat. Lots of work to shed this baggage!

[Miss Mac 6,261]

Kraft macaroni and cheese

Bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread

Banquet pot pies

Swanson frozen dinners

Pop Tarts

Spam

Breyers Ice Cream with fudge sauce and brownie

Mashed potatoes with homemade chicken and noodles for gravy

[LivingFree! 478]

Love this post, Alex! It is something I think about often, and is one of the main tenents of my overwhelming gratitude for WLS.

I grew up in the '50's/60's, so, of course, much of what we know today about nutrition we did not know then. When I first started my 3-month mandatory pre-op nutrition/general WLS classes through my healthcare provider, I could not take in learning all this stuff about Protein, carbs, fats, etc. I lived my whole life not knowing about all this (yes, "no wonder I wasn't skinny."). I even went back to college at age 59 and obtained a degree in Nutrition because I was so blown away that we CAN have control over our bodies by what we feed them! Knowing I could live my eating lifestyle SO DIFFERENTLY was a MAJOR, MAJOR milestone for me. And, I believe has been a significant factor in my being able to maintain my weight loss in four years since WLS.

What really is kind of ironic is during my childhood my mother was severely diabetic and died at age 37 from it. If any family should have been eating healthfully it probably should have been mine. --But I guess it also is quite a statement on the progress we as a nation have made on the prevention and treatment of diabetes...

[roundisashape 712]

My mom went hungry a lot as a kid and it resulted in her viewing food, regardless of what it is, as healthy. There were 5 kids in our family and we all ate the same amount of the same food, and only two of us were fat kids. Now we're all grown and heavy, but it's funny how that works.