I never struggled with being overweight though. Maybe because I was really athletic. I was a bit of a tomboy and always super active too. Or maybe it's just genetics. My brother has always been really thin and even at 35, he eats absolute shit and plays video games all day and still a stick.
Yeah, I was largely the opposite. It's not like I just sat around the house all day back then, but I wasn't what you'd call athletic either. I might've been if I weren't such an anxiety riddled wreck, which itself heavily disinclined me from participating in any group activities (like sports and such), but I still got out on occasion to play with my brother and his friends. My mother's struggled with being overweight for a long time now. Even to this day, she's still trying to get that under control. However, when she was my age, she was by all accounts pretty fit and lean. My father's always been pretty average as well. Not exactly thin, but certainly not fat either. Just kind of in the middle. And then, of course, there's my brother who's pretty much always been in great shape. Genetically, I'm not sure whether my metabolism is fucked or not, but I don't know. It does seem like that's the case frankly, even despite not really having a similar example of it in my immediate family. I mean, everyone in my brother's girlfriend's family is like 5 feet tall or less and very thin. Meanwhile her aunt is apparently something like 6' 2" and weighs close to 400 pounds. My point being that there's random quirks in everything. Outlying bits of faulty genetic code that somehow, against the odds, push their way to the surface. All to ruin our lives and make them that much harder to live.
Like I said, I guess I must've just been the genetic runoff from both my parents. Personally speaking, I used to weigh close to 300 pounds, until a few years back when I finally managed to drop myself down to a relatively healthy weight. The lowest I got to was 167, but I've since risen back up a little to 185/190. The biggest problem I still struggle with is my calorie intake. My metabolism isn't fast enough to burn off excess calories, so they can slowly keep adding up over time. A fruit and fiber muffin here a Starbucks chilean tuna wrap over there, and suddenly the numbers on the weight scale start going up again. Like I said, I really ought to do another round of fasting. Ideally, I'd like to drop myself down to as low as 160 or even 155. Either that, or I should start going to the gym with my mom and really begin working out hard on a consistent and daily basis. One of the two, at least.
Looking back at pictures, at that point she wasn't even really that "fat" just more developed for her age.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I thought I was "fat" when I was a young kid, but I actually looked pretty normal. If anything, my brother looked a bit fatter than me at times. It wasn't really until my late teenage years, after becoming a complete recluse, when I really started to pack on the pounds.
My mother got called "fat" by her parents as well, even though she wasn't. In her case, it was a huge blow to her self-esteem that often left her in tears, which later led to unhealthy habits developing, which then led to her tragically becoming overweight as a result. Through their cruelty, they basically turned from thin to fat. In her case, I wonder if it was this cruelty that was shown to her by her own parents which then gave her the unwise conclusion that her children should be able to eat whatever it is they want and to not judge them for their eating habits. It's unfortunate how one thing can lead to another, in a sense that all end up suffering as a result.
It's weird that your mom thought you would just magically change your diet one day.
Near as I can tell, it was basically just her desperate hope that I'd somehow sort myself out, disguised as "motherly intuition". My mother has always believed herself to be a bit of a "psychic", so for her when she gets these otherwise wishful feelings, she then treats them as if they were premonitions. Of course, the fact that I did actually lose weight and begin eating a healthy diet only encouraged her on this front, but thankfully she largely just keeps that sort of thing to herself these days.
I wouldn't say I scolded her, but I did kind of lecture her once. I was telling her how I felt dumbed down by our diets growing up.
I bet that neither did my uncle. At least not as badly as my mother claims. She just has a way of over stressing what people say sometimes, to the point of occasionally blowing out of proportion what was otherwise a passing/trivial comment. Having said that, my uncle, whether knowingly or not, can indeed be very opinionated and judgemental. It's true at least that the influence of processed sugar can have disastrous effects on our bodies. Not everyone's bodies I suppose, but not every smoker develops lung cancer either. It's still a huge health risk. It's a shame that neither your sister now, nor my mother in the past, managed to realize this crucial piece of information and could've therefore acted accordingly. My poor diet may not have caused all my problems, but it certainly didn't help stymie them either. The way it might have negatively effected me on a cognitive level, such as not being able to preform as well in school as I otherwise could have or just not being able think through my issues more clearly, can't ever be discounted.
Most of the "food" that's out there can barely even be defined as such. The term "food desert" didn't come out of nowhere, after all. And you're correct that sugar is a drug that is, in its own way, just as insidious as any other. There was even a "big sugar lobby" that knowingly misdirected people towards thinking fat was what they needed to watch out for, at a massive cost to public health. At the end of the day, sugar is money. Keeps people coming back more, which means more profits for big Ag and fast food chains. The parallels to former pro-smoking lobbies are striking.
It's a shame that people overfeed their pets as well. A cat doesn't know any better and will simply eat itself to obesity in no time at all if you let it. Our first cat was so fat that my mother used to be embarrassed bringing her into the vet, since other people in the waiting room couldn't help, but whisper to themselves about how shocking/sad it was that our cat was so overweight. Sadly, my mother just doubled down and ignored potential wake-up calls like that and just kept on overfeeding our cats, and thereby maintaining their obesity as a result. It was only near the end that our cats finally lost weight, but only on account of their health problems. One being on account of a head tumor, and the other on account of hyperthyroidism.
These days I eat much better. I think once people notice the difference a healthy diet makes, they actually start to crave it.
Sadly, my healthy diet hasn't done much to to improve my overall predicament/disposition, but, even so, I wouldn't trade it for anything else. These days even just looking at some of the stuff that I used to eat makes me downright nauseous. A good, fresh, crunchy apple is pretty much all I crave nowadays.
I'm also largely agoraphobic at this point (I can't leave the house by myself on account of being afraid of the outside world), so it's not often I ever get out of the house. This certainly doesn't do me any favors either, as far as my current health/weight is concerned and to keep trying to improve when possible.
