Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - Who were the fat kids?

Ok, who among us were fat kids? I read a lot of stories on this forum along the lines of "I gained 1XX pounds once I got married/got injured/left high school/left college/left the Marines/Air Force/Army/Navy/bowling league/Mennonite Bible Study Group/ etc....". Am I the only one who was fat, seriously fat, since childhood?

In my own case, I was pushing "husky" sizes hard even before my voice changed. When I hit 242 pounds back in the summer of 2007, I was almost exactly the weight I'd been when I graduated high school 23 years before. Except I had more muscle in 2007 than in 1984.

Am I the only 'lifer' here?

Count me in on that one.Lost a ton of weight in the late 70's with the "Stillman quick weght loss diet" .Gained it back and then some over the years

I was overweight since the day I was born. Day 1 of my life started at 14lbs, 7 oz.

The only time of the year I was ever close to being fit was soccer season, but I would gain it all back after the season.

I don't remember how much I weighed when I graduated, but I think I might weigh less now than I did my senior year.

I was a fat kid too. I lost most of it in high school. Wieghed about 190 when I graduated (6' tall). Got married at 23 and about 215. Gained steadily since then. Last year I turned 41 and broke 280. That is what brought me here and to biking.

I gained weight the summer I turned 12 and never looked back... oh wait, that's not good. I broke my ankle early in the summer and stayed indoors eating cookies, watching soap operas for the rest of the summer. It was a very slippery slope down and I kept gaining weight each year.

I was only fat in school when I was injured. I was always riding a bicycle or playing sports of some kind. I wish I would have been the book worm and had the memory that others have.

I was only fat in school when I was injured. I was always riding a bicycle or playing sports of some kind. I wish I would have been the book worm and had the memory that others have.

Hmm, I was the bookworm who should have been riding a bike or playing sports. :(

I have always been bigger myself!!! Always active and always big... some of us are just lucky! LOL

Hmm, I was the bookworm who should have been riding a bike or playing sports. :(

I think I should have been working harder on my education and using more of my brain. I wish I had the memory that some people have. My wife is very good with details, and that is where I am usually lacking.

I was average build as a kid. I wasn't athletic, wasn't completely skinny, either. When I was in college, I did a lot of walking. Then got out of college, started work at a desk, and put on the weight. It's been a challenge every since. I think the heaviest I've been was maybe 285 or so.

Sorry ... skinny kid here. Couldn't gain a pound if I wanted to.

Was that way through college, then ... something switched off!

Now I'm working off the extra pounds like everyone else.

I weighted 260 when I graduated high school. Went off to college and realized I couldn't afford to eat. That in addition to having a kidney stone and being in too much pain to eat for a good month I got down to 160. Once I started making money and was able to eat again I got back up to 210. I've been steadily working it off again. I'm back down to 185ish. Lost it since christmas.

Never played sports at all, my father discouraged it.

I weighed in at 225 lbs when I graduated high school... 255 after my first year of college. That "used" to be my high weight, now I'm 276 lbs after the military and marriage.

V

Funny, I was a tall skinny kid. My grandmothers were always telling me I was too darn thin and pushing food at me. When I discovered BEER in college, is when I started putting weight on. 6'-4" 210 lbs the day I joined the Army. Same height, but 175 lbs when I shipped out to the 25th Infantry Division in 1975 after basic and AIT. Steady weight gain after leaving the military in 1981, lots of diets since then, finally hit a high of 290 some years ago when I was living away from the wife and family. Got down to 246 after a summer with TOPS and some careful diets. Now back to 284, and on a no carb, low fat, high protein diet and hoping to see 240 again. Would certainly help my cycling if I could lose 45 lbs!

Tractor Tom in Okeechobee, FL

I was born fat.

Not me, in my case I did gain weight after I got out of the service. I was super active and played all sports in school and was always doing something. Some days, I might have football and swim practice the same day or baseball and tennis. My Mom never had to worry about me getting into trouble, although I did, cause she new I was always at some type of practice or a game. We had a huge board for my brother and me to post game day or event day items for my Mom to pick and choose what she was going to attend.

yes i was fat at birth fat at school and a purty big ol boy now. i also wore big coke bottle glasses and wore hand me down thrift store clothes. as you can imagine i was not the most popular kid growing up.......

I always thought I was fat, but looking at pictures now, I was almost too skinny. I guess that's what you get for growing up in the "Twiggy" era. When I graduated high school I was about 123. I remember specifically because I wanted to join the air force and they told me I had to get to 112 before they would sign me up. I gained all this weight married to my first husband., lost it after the divorce then gained it all back with husband 2.0. Hmm... I think I'm seeing a trend here! :eek: Husbands are fattening! Who knew? :roflmao2:

Yeah, I was born 10#9oz and was a "chubby" kid. I liked being active but couldn't run worth ****. I remember being on a diet in 4th grade and being one of the first girls > 100#. I had several times where I lost a significant amount of weight:
* 9th grade lost 30# on the IceCream-Sandwich-Lunch diet (pocketing the leftover 30c school lunch money)
* Age 35 lost 100# as a Masters swimmer / low-fat, high-carb diet, achieved ideal weight lifetime first age 36.
* Age 50 lost 100# as a Masters swimmer / low-fat, high-carb diet plus health problems
Obviously some serious relapses in between. I am still working on the Age 50 streak.

I was chubby as a young kid, but I was a skinny teenager. I bulked up some muscle mass at 16 through 18, then started gaining weight (fat) in my early 20s. My weight settled at around 300 lbs when I was in my mid-30s. I started losing weight October 2007, bought a bicycle in April 2008, and I have been weighing in at just under 210 for the last few days.

I was 270, my freshman year of HS, but it was A SOLID 270. Then, I was benching 350, and playing football. Tossing hay bales and other farm work all through the Summer will build the muscle, I can guarantee ya! Especially if you're working for an Amish farmer.

Cool aspect about it: At 14 and 15, I was getting a bucket of beer with lunch, just like the other men. If you do a mans work, you got a mans drink, and Amish Hombrewed beer is spectacular!

Cool aspect about it: At 14 and 15, I was getting a bucket of beer with lunch, just like the other men. If you do a mans work, you got a mans drink, and Amish Hombrewed beer is spectacular!

That is awesome!

I wasn't really born fat, but I did steadily gain weight from about 3rd grade on... It was tough being a fat kid. I remember the first time I was called a fat kid like it was yesterday - where I was, what I was doing and who said it...one of those traumatizing memories you just never forget.

That was the past though....I studied hard in school and didn't really do much for sports, dating, all the good stuff. It wasn't until I was about 25 when I decided to change. Now, I feel better, more confidence, great job, and decent looks to boot. Just reliving all that I missed over those years, except this time I'm not missing out.

To anyone out there reading this who is on the cusp of changing their life....do it!

I'm not real proud of the story I'm about to tell but here it goes. Now don't bad mouth my parents, there great and the best parents anyone could ask for great role models and very loving. When I was 12 years old they got in a very bad accident and I went to live with my aunt and uncle both of whom smoked like chimney's as well as both my cousins who were 1 and 3 years older than I. Well I just followed suit and was smoking full time by the time I was 12.5 years old. Did a great job of hiding that from my parents when I finally came home, at my peak I was at two packs a day, that's 25 in a pack in Canada plus a few cigars. My sisters lived with my grandparents during this time, 4 months, and they we're both very christian and no smoking there. My parents didn't even know I smoked till I was like 15 and by then I had graduated to pot as well. Up till then I had remained fairly active although slightly over wieght, then I just said screw it and stopped doing everything for like 6 years. 305lbs at age 21. Finally got off the drugs then but smoked till I was 35. As said before my parents were great I was just an idiot. After drugs I went to booze, you could say I have an addictive personality. I was always a big guy and kinda used all th evices to hide from it. Now I'm pretty happy with life, sure I still have the odd drink, like 2 or 3 a month but cycling is my new drug of choice!

I think I should have been working harder on my education and using more of my brain. I wish I had the memory that some people have. My wife is very good with details, and that is where I am usually lacking.

I have a friend with two doctorates who has one of the worst short-term memories I've come across in a healthy fellow. He's also one of the most detailed note-takes I've ever met. There's only so much you can do with what you are given. You need to develop ways to work around what you don't have.

I'm heartened by the fact posters to this thread are NOT blaming their parents. Contemporary American society, and to a lesser degree Western society in general, likes to pass the buck to the folks who raised them.

It's terribly easy to do - witness 'celebrity' Star Jones blaming her mom's cooking when she went public with her gastric bypass. I've had the opportunity to play the blame game as well, since I could easily claim I was deliberately encouraged to be bookish because folks thought engaging in sports or physical activity would hurt me. I don't, however, because it was always my choice.

I was only fat in school when I was injured. I was always riding a bicycle or playing sports of some kind. I wish I would have been the book worm and had the memory that others have.

It's interesting how the world of children divides itself into jocks and bookworms. It's clear which camp I fell into, and unfortunately I kept that childish thinking through much of my adult life. It took my meeting a genuine athlete/intellectual, Bike Forum's "Uncadan", to finally dispel the last remnants of that erroneous mindset.

I have a friend with two doctorates who has one of the worst short-term memories I've come across in a healthy fellow. He's also one of the most detailed note-takes I've ever met. There's only so much you can do with what you are given. You need to develop ways to work around what you don't have.


I must have been fat and got dropped a lot when I was a baby. Yeah, that's it!!:):):)

I was not, until we moved to the south. Long hot summer days with nothing to do lead to a very sedentary lifstyle. 12 years old, 6th grade, 155pounds. Steady linear increase from that point on. Reached adulthood, leveled off, and been up and down ever since.

yup I got to buy my clothes in the "husky" department... was never fat but was always a big kid... played outside a lot, played a few sports but always had the fat rolls/gut/pudge/whatever (jr high gym class locker room time was miserable... but I wasn't bad out on the feild/court whatever where where doing)

sr yr in HS i dropped a lot of weight and got pretty low BF%... working full time in a warehouse between jr/sr year (and few months into sr year, marching band (lot more work then you'd think espeicaly in 100*+ weather of FL) + weight tranning class + me biking every free chance i could got right at or maybe a tad under 200# (6'4)... in words of others at the time i looked sickly...

come winter i got a GF and started working at a restraunt... it was all down hill from there... 10 years later i'm 100# up (was 135# up earlier last year) and working on getting near my HS days (lower 1/3 of 200's would be ok with me haha)... idealy with a little more muscle...

I was overweight through most of my childhood. Ironicly, I was very active _and_ chubby. I'd walk or cycle to the 'lake' with all my gear to fish and crab all day with a bit of swimming thrown in. Climb trees, cycle for 15 or more miles, play games that involved running around with friends. I must have been packing away the food to keep from being a svelt tomboy. :rolleyes:

Had a brief period when I was 13 where I got to a good weight. By 14, it was back up and I didn't lose it again until 16. Back up at 17, down again at 19 where it stayed for a long while. Then gained the pounds back with friends when I hit 30 and been yo-yo-ing.

Many of you have seen my old posts on this topic. I was overweight through elementary and middle school. I was tormented and I took it badly. I still have some trouble forgiving some of the more notorious offenders. (Sad, I know.) Worst part is I believed the jocks who derided me for my weight as if it were a stain upon my character.

About the 9th or 10th grade, I skinnied up physically over a summer, but didn't mentally. I clearly remember the first time one of my classmates commented that I was looking good, but didn't believe them.

In my sophomore year of college, a doctor commented that I was 30-40 pounds overweight and I told her I had been about 200 when I left high school. She shocked me when she said I'd been about right! Now, 240 is about my goal weight.

I was only 3 pounds and 4 ounce when I was born four months premature! That didn't last long!

I started packing on weight when I was around the fourth grade. I became very self concouis around the sixth grade. Family life sucked, dad left to drink and run around. Mom had to work OT to keep us fed, clothed, and housed. We also didn't have the money for sports, not that there was much when I was young. Lived on the outskirts of a rural town.

I got down to 190 to join the Air Force. I left at 180. Very fit. Was up around 230 when I got married a year later. And hit my high of 330 the end of this year due to ankle surgery and depression.

Currently at 288 with help from family and Weight Watchers. Hoping to get down to 250 by the end of the year. A new 2008 Giant OCR 2 should help me! DW bought it for me as anniversary present. Well, at least $550 was. I had to sell my soul and promise myself into indenture servent status for the rest!

I'm trying to get down to 190 in the next three years. Slow and low!

Jerry

Weight Watchers is a big help!
I has always heavy. Slipped a grouth plate in 8th grade(#210)"7 monthson crutches" it was the femur bone which was bolted back together with 5" bolts"which are still there today" and was told to never play football again and it also kept me out of the militaryafter graduating! 10th grade playing my only sport basketball @ #250ish came down from a rebound and broke one ankle then everybody else came down to break the other one!! Got a job installing bathrooms and did so good made me a manager @ 20 behind a desk with high stress blah blah!! 2 years ago maxed out @ #420! weighed in saturday @ #339 and dropping also @ this weight I have never been stronger. Must be from installing the granite but some days my ankles kill me and this is why I dont run but I havent even bought my bike yet!!! I plan on starting to commute 9.2 miles each way on top of everything I currently do and I am wanting to hit the trails on the weekends. Man I need that tax return ASAP!!!

Many of you have seen my old posts on this topic. I was overweight through elementary and middle school. I was tormented and I took it badly. I still have some trouble forgiving some of the more notorious offenders. (Sad, I know.) Worst part is I believed the jocks who derided me for my weight as if it were a stain upon my character.


That was my childhood as well. Plus, besides being fat, I had - and have - gynecomastia (enlarged male breasts), so you can imagine the abuse I took from other children and adolescents. It's taken me a long time to get over the past, and I still carry fragments of it with me. It's hard at times for me to accept that folks might enjoy riding with me, or perhaps even my company. I've spoken to other folks who have lost large amounts of weight, and they often have similar feelings.

I dont remember ever having a waist size smaller than 36 I maybe had a 35 in gap jeans... but ever since middle school I was big... at my biggest I had a size 40 waist. Right now Im trying to break that 36... since I moved to NYC I walked off a huge chunk of weight bringing me back down, but Im still somewhere around 235 and I wanna shrink even further now that I'm single...Im just waiting for my recent lung infection to slow down to start training a bit more seriously.

About the 9th or 10th grade, I skinnied up physically over a summer, but didn't mentally. I clearly remember the first time one of my classmates commented that I was looking good, but didn't believe them.


It's amazing how distrusting you become as a fat person. It's a defense mechanism that some of us formerly super-obese folks fight against all the time.

I wore "Toughskins" Husky jeans throughout Elementary school. Was a pudgy kid until 7th grade, when my height outgrew my waist. Then that caught up around my freshman year of high school, and I steadily put on weight after that. I was probably around 200 when I graduated high school. At 40, I hit an all-time high of 320. The only real quick weight gains were after my first hernia surgery (40 pounds) and when I quit smoking in July (45 pounds).

I'm sitting at 301 at the moment, and that "1" refuses to budge. Once it gets warm, it'll drop off quickly; along with about 40 of its friends.

I was a skinny kid till age 6, and then I just sort of ballooned out. By the time I was 8, my doc was telling me I was very overweight and needed to do something about it. I didn't even bother thinking about doing anything till I was 14 or so, and by then I was already pushing 230 (but I was also fairly tall, about 5'10 and thus able to hide it)

The rest, as they say, is history. Still here and well into the clyde range, but fitter than I've ever been and dropping at a steady rate.


I'm heartened by the fact posters to this thread are NOT blaming their parents. Contemporary American society, and to a lesser degree Western society in general, likes to pass the buck to the folks who raised them. In my case, there's nobody to blame but me; I'd always sneak food outside of meals. My mom was a single working mom, so she didn't have time to be always checking on me, though she did buy healthy food and insist on me eating proper healthy meals. Like many kids, I did league basketball as a younger kid, but dropped out quickly, soon becoming sedentary. I also got a job at age 14, and had more expendable money than I knew what to do with; eating out with friends many days a week was the norm.

I was a "big kid" -- overweight and generally taller than everyone else in my class. I was always the first picked for basketball, until they actually saw me play. I have absolutely zero talent for that sport.

At the end of my junior year in high school I was about 6'3" and 220 pounds. That summer, I rode my bike (a 1974 Schwin Varsity 10-speed) a ton -- I probably averaged about 20 miles every day. Also that summer I ate much less, and what I did eat was not junk food.

By the time I graduated high school, I weight about 185 pounds and had a 34" waist.

One month after graduation, I got my first job as a computer programmer. Getting paid to program was like smoking crack -- I couldn't get enough. I worked endless hours, and I couldn't believe a company was actually paying me to do it. Often I was too busy to eat a real lunch (or dinner, or breakfast) so I'd just grab something from the nearby vending machine.

Too much work (and no time for exercise) + sedentary sit-at-a-computer-all-day job + horrible diet = predicable results.

At my peak I was about 275 pounds. I'm now about 245. I hope to get down to 220 (100 kilos) by this summer, and maybe even back down to 200 by the end of the year.

Husky certainly rings a bell.

I was always a head taller and a dozen pounds heavier than my mates. Even now, it is a rare day when I come into contact with someone who is taller (and I only stand 6'3"). However, it is no longer unusual to meet someone heavier -- often much heavier.

By 5th grade was wrestling in the 132 lb class (more like mat mop, truth be told). Graduated high school at 210. High weight was 275 when laid up for 6 months with a broken foot. Usually the weight runs around 250. Got down to 225 last summer with an increase sweat output. Looking forward to this summer as my new apartment is 10 miles from work and on a very nice MUP most of the way. Didn't get much verbal abuse to my face, but my classmates made sure that I knew I was an outsider by their actions.
The only time I was selected for playground sports was when there was a need for a big guy for smear (rugby type game with less rules) or "touch" football. Wasn't a fat kid, but I had plenty of polar insulation.
Justin

Yeah, "Husky". That's the sizes I wore. I was 201# on my 14th birthday, that much I remember. Haven't been below it since. 38 down in 2008 and 40 to go to get below 200 if it ever happens, and if it does, it will be because of my commitment to and enjoyment of cycling.

I'm heartened by the fact posters to this thread are NOT blaming their parents. Contemporary American society, and to a lesser degree Western society in general, likes to pass the buck to the folks who raised them.

I was a heavy kid. I don't "blame" my parents, because I was one of those kids that plump right up every single winter like clock-work (was VERY active in the summer playing outside, and sat around and moped around while I ate the same amount in the winter). So I guess that me battling weight issues as an adult was just built into my genes and personality-type.

It is curious, however, that my weight did not become a year-round issue until around the time that my parents suddenly started getting loud, explosive, and semi-violent (breaking and destroying things around the house during arguments, etc.); and the divorce drama that came after that that drug all of us kids and both parents into court, court-imposed counseling, etc.

I think that I was going to have weight issues as an adult no matter what. The above situations may have sped the process up a few years. We were all doing the best that we could. No blame to go around.

OK I was a fat kid too. I thought I was fatter than I was as a real little kid - and when I was 12 6th grade - I thoguht I was huge...but realy not all that big... by High School though - I was in the 180s and graduated in the 200's. Went to a boarding schsool and had to wear an all white dress for my High School graduation! Think of the gorgoeus debutantes and me. VERY PAINFUL.


Now I have lost a bunch of weight - still weigh alot but feel sexy....took a long time to get to this point. Hopefully I will lose more weight too - but finally am happy at this weight.

I'm not quite a lifer:

I was tiny as a baby due to health, larger as a kid trending toward Husky by the end of Jr. High, drop pounds radically as a high school wrestler (5" 135 to 5"7 and 117 in 1 wrestling season). But I never lost my belly fat during that time. I became a national level whitewater kayak slalom racer through my first year in college so that kept my weight below 160. IT crept up slowly from there over time until I hit 240 in 2001. I've been up and down from there to 195 twice and 203 this past year. Now at 230. My weight fluctuates in direct relation to my workload and stress levels, and in inverse relationship to my outside activity/sports level.

When I played Freshman HS football I weighed in under 115 but they rounded up for the roster. I was 6'2" and the starting offensive/defensive linemane. In the trenches with the big boys and yeah they were big boys. 10 years of practicing judo with adults gave me just enough skills to be able to hold me own most of the time.
By the end of football season and the beginning of wrestling I was up to maybe 120. I had to wrestle in 145 though because the team captains and other folks had the lower weight classes.

So when I was a kid I never weighed alot. Everyone's parents thought I was starving and I ate a ton of food which I guess reinforced that but I rode my bike everywhere, skipped class to play a game of pickup and generally was always active.

Injuries and futher developments over that summer ended my physical activities for many years and I slowly but surely increased in weight to almost 300 then I started commuting in 02 and got down to 260 or so. Move to Texas and stopped commuting and up over 300 in 07.

When I played Freshman HS football I weighed in under 115 but they rounded up for the roster. I was 6'2" and the starting offensive/defensive linemane. In the trenches with the big boys and yeah they were big boys. 10 years of practicing judo with adults gave me just enough skills to be able to hold me own most of the time.
By the end of football season and the beginning of wrestling I was up to maybe 120. I had to wrestle in 145 though because the team captains and other folks had the lower weight classes.



I took Judo from about the age of 13. In my first year of high school my Sensei and some other adult members of the class gave a demonstration for my school. The Sensei was an ex-marine, about 6'4", 250# of muscle. He had me get up in front of the whole school and "assisted" my throwing him to the mat, ending with a tremendous WHAM when he broke his fall. You could see the wide eyes in the gym. It's hilarious looking back on it, but I NEVER was made fun of for being fat or approached threateningly by another student after that. Guys went way out of their way to keep from fighting with me, even the great big bruisers on the football team. Ha!

I was a skinny kid till age 6, and then I just sort of ballooned out. By the time I was 8, my doc was telling me I was very overweight and needed to do something about it. I didn't even bother thinking about doing anything till I was 14 or so, and by then I was already pushing 230 (but I was also fairly tall, about 5'10 and thus able to hide it)

The rest, as they say, is history. Still here and well into the clyde range, but fitter than I've ever been and dropping at a steady rate.

In my case, there's nobody to blame but me; I'd always sneak food outside of meals. My mom was a single working mom, so she didn't have time to be always checking on me, though she did buy healthy food and insist on me eating proper healthy meals. Like many kids, I did league basketball as a younger kid, but dropped out quickly, soon becoming sedentary. I also got a job at age 14, and had more expendable money than I knew what to do with; eating out with friends many days a week was the norm.

Crast, your story is similar to mine, with a weight increase of 80 lbs at age 7.

It was only relatively recently that I realized, with a shock, that my parents ARE to blame for the weight gain that happened at age 7. My own oldest child is 6 now, and now that I see the parent/child dynamic when it comes to food I realize that my parents could have done more to prevent this weight gain.

I've subsequently lost/regained significant amounts of weight, and I accept the responsibility for those situations.

I'm not predisposed to blame others for events, and so I'm still trying to come to grips with my realization that my parents are to blame. I love my parents, as frustrating as they are, and so i'm quite bothered by all of this.

Actually fairly scrawny until puberty, then gained. More stocky than fat, on a large frame. Held pretty steady until perimenopause and then quitting smoking, and skyrocketed up to pushing 300. Slowly but surely, it's coming down, with lots of annoying plateaus.