Weight, were you raised in a family who encouraged you to eat hearty/overeat maybe, or maybe undereat?

L

LadyEmeraude

Senior Member
As child, I was always served very full meals by my mom, a very amazing cook while
growing up, as were the rest of my family. We were brought up to eat until full, very
full in fact. Second helpings were offered, and so we did. Extra pounds came on our
bodies and so it was. I think that habit of over eating stayed with me for many years.
Then when I was out of the house and on my own, I got ahold of my overeating and
balanced my eating ways to be more healthy. Still though, I was challenged with stopping
at the point of being satisfied in my stomach and thoughts, but still wanting more to be
filled up and full. Over all my years, I have been a bit on the higher side of average for my
height, never the lower side of pounds, at this time in my adult Senior life, I am 25 pounds
over my ideal weight, which is 145, so now I am 165-170. I say all this mostly for a topic about
how we might have been raised in our households, and to do with eating and habits thereof.
I to this day always want mostly to eat until I am full or really full, choices I realize. So anyway
did your upbringing have a large impact on your eating habits over the years, OR none at all?
Far as appearance I am good with how I look, or at least appear to myself.

Now over to you...
 

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We ate well buy I was a tomboy, always running, at the pool, riding bikes. Never had a weight problem. After my son was born, my body changed, I could no longer deal with the Texas heat, less active, gain weight. Still felt fine until the mid 40s then the fat hit the fan!! I kept it under control but my husband got sick, I was stuffing anything in my face when I had the chance to eat. It all went bad from there. Yes, I am fluffy but strange as it sounds I don't feel it, it does not bother me. Too many things have happened for me to spend time being unhappy about my weight. If I had a choice, I would want my hair to be full and thick, like when I was younger. Then I would want the wrinkles to slow down. Being flluffy and gray headed is not a problem.
 
Normal food. I was always finicky. Thin as a child. normal weight now. Not really a "foodie".
I prefer water, tuna, beef, chicken. "protein". My tastes haven't changed much since I was a child.
If I'm involved in something ( like sculpting) I forget all about eating. It's just not important.
 

My mother, quite frankly, was both lazy and a terrible cook. Meals were seldom satisfying, and compensatory overeating occurred after dinner as snacks when one might put away half a bag of pretzels over television. Store-bought junk food was always available, and I was encouraged to consume it. When away at college, my peers would complain about the cafeteria food while I had never eaten better!
 
This is such an important thread IMO. When I was little I was thin as a rake, and I also danced ballet. My Mother was so worried she took me to the doctor because
she felt I was not eating enough.
Doctor told her not to worry, the fact I danced showed, I was getting enough nutrients. However, in order to tempt me to eat a little more, she bought some really cute little bowls and instead of giving me a meal on a plate, I was
allowed to help myself from these little bowls. It worked...I did eat more because I was in essence feeding myself!
 
@LadyEmeraude , my experience was somewhat similar to yours, except we were forced to eat huge meals and second helpings. For some reason, our father thought children should eat as much as adult male laborers. I and one of my siblings would spend about 2 hours every night forcing the food down bit by bit.

After adolescence, eating was easier. I was/am able to eat embarrassingly large amounts. As an adult, I've usually been 20-30 pounds overweight. (Sometimes more, sometimes less.)
 
NorthernLight said:
@LadyEmeraude , my experience was somewhat similar to yours, except we were forced to eat huge meals and second helpings. For some reason, our father thought children should eat as much as adult male laborers. I and one of my siblings would spend about 2 hours every night forcing the food down bit by bit.

After adolescence, eating was easier. I was/am able to eat embarrassingly large amounts. As an adult, I've usually been 20-30 pounds overweight. (Sometimes more, sometimes less.)
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very similar to me and my childhood experience @ NorthernLight *I also still can eat embarrassingly large amounts of food too, ditto.
 
I enjoy food and love to cook. My mother was a fantastic cook, as were my grandmother and my aunts. We had many fabulous meals while I was growing up. I was always slim and encouraged to "put on a few pounds." I had and have no desire to do so, then and now, I'm happy with my weight.

When I was a child, I was always curious about what my grandmother cooked, some of it would be considered exotic. She never forced me to eat anything, but because of her approach, I was willing to try it. She'd put a little dish of it in front of me. I'd look at it and at her. She'd say, "You like it, you eat it, that's fine." "You don't like it, you don't eat it, that's fine, too." :)

Bella✌️
 
Grandma and grandpa were very poor,I never tasted a straight hunk of meat until I was an adult. I determined right then to have steak from time to time. I have to say though that there were meals I wish I had the recipe for. Grandma was a good cook she did a fantastic job with what she had.

I was thin, because we played outside all the time , lots of running. Then when we had kids I became very thin for years. Then when I hit about 50 I gained weight. I'm over weight, but not too bad.
 
I remember going to bed hungry lots of times and getting up in the morning hungry and having something small for breakfast then going to school hungry. To me being hungry was just a way of life. I was with my parents who ran a foster family. There was three of us biological kids and up to five foster kids living with us. Mealtime was just enough food to get by on there was very rarely any leftovers. If you missed a mealtime, you were out of luck, there was nothing left. My father would jump on my case if I would ask for something special. I remember many times when he would in a mean way tell me that I do not get what I wanted. The foster kids were just as important if not more to my father and mother as us biological children. That is a sore subject with us biological children delt with all of our lives. Parents that take care of foster children but do not take special care of their biological children.
 
It was a bland diet. Basic food. Meat, potatoes and a vegetable every night. No junk food in the house. Really, I don’t think there was much junk food in the 50s. In my teens, I began ‘looking healthy’, which was the way of saying you‘re a little overweight. I took a sandwich for lunch and could buy a donut. And I started baking.

There were never any evening snacks and I’m thankful that’s not a habit I ever picked up.
 
LadyEmeraude said:
I to this day always want mostly to eat until I am full or really full, choices I realize. So anyway
did your upbringing have a large impact on your eating habits over the years, OR none at all?
Far as appearance I am good with how I look, or at least appear to myself.

Now over to you...
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Funny you'd post this when I just got back from 7-11 with pizza and beer. Even though I had 4 chicken thighs sitting in a bag in my van all cooked and ready.

Mom was a hell of a cook. Not often steak. But chicken like crazy and rarely a veggie dish. But I was kind of lazy, except for bicycle riding.

Right now I'm packing 300 lbs. Yes, way too much, but well, not too set on losing right now. I posted once about how often food was given here. Few starve and only by choice.

If available, I eat, if I have the cash I buy and eat. I have previously lost weight, by focused on "No, you don't need to eat, it's only 11 am, wait till noon" type and no snacks.

Well, maybe I should start it again.
 
I was overfed by my mother because she was from the South. I was fed fried everything (chicken, okra, liver). I was an overweight kid who had to wear Husky jeans. When I reached puberty I was determined to lose weight so I ate and drank diet drinks/food. When I graduated from high school I was 5'8" and 135 pounds.

IMG_1326.jpg.

Happy to say I'm now a more healthy 162 pounds and eating healthy meals.
 
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Capt Lightning said:
Post war Britain wasn't exactly the place for exciting food and my mother wasn't an imaginative cook. She was an expert at boiling everything until it wasn't recognisable. It was a case of eat what you're given and be grateful.
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I can really relate to that. This reminds me a lot of what I’d hear at home when served boiled to mush vegetables and a dried-out, hardened hamburger without any sauces or gravy. “If those poor starving children in Africa (sometimes China) had this to eat, they’d be so grateful!”

I really wanted to say, “Let’s pack this up, and send it to them then!,” but the consequences of doing so would have been swift and terrible! 😸
 
I'm from a very long line of fantastic cooks and it happens to be one of my favorite things to do, too... especially trying new recipes. My parents always made sure we had the three squares and I never went to bed hungry. There were always plenty of snacky stuff in the house, too, though... and that cupboard with cookies and candy along with the potato chips always available offered a huge temptation to my willpower. It got easier to resist as I got older, fortunately!
 
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Fyrefox said:
“If those poor starving children in Africa (sometimes China) had this to eat, they’d be so grateful!”
I really wanted to say, “Let’s pack this up, and send it to them then!,” but the consequences of doing so would have been swift and terrible! 😸
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I did that once... "let's send these peas to them, Mama, they'll love it!" No swift and terrible consequences, thankfully... she laughed and it never came up again. 🤭
 
My Mum was a great cook. I was never forced to eat, though I was encouraged to eat everything on my plate. That’s been a very hard habit to break.

But my downfall was sweet stuff. My
Mum would bake every Sunday….Apple pie, trifle, rice pudding, custard, rhubarb pie, lemon meringue pie, cream puffs, because my dad loved desserts so we’d have dessert after every meal. To this day controlling my craving for sweets is my downfall.

We would also eat essentially 4 meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then supper, which was a sweet meal of a couple of rounds of toast and homemade jam or buttered crumpets or some such, and a pot of tea.

Interestingly while my dad struggled with his weight and had quadruple bypass surgery in his early 60’s, my mum and I were both very thin, and she remained so till the day she died.
 
We had a good school dinner...proper meat and two veg. and a pudding. What we didn't get is all the extra things...crisps (chips), fizzy drinks (sodas)...take-aways etc. Ice-cream was a treat for Sundays or trips to the cinema...sweets (candy), we were given occasionally not every day.
My mother was over-weight, simply because she ate a lot, but was certainly not obese.
 
seadoug said:
I was overfed by my mother because she was from the South. I was fed fried everything (chicken, okra, liver). I was an overweight kid who had to wear Husky jeans. When I reached puberty I was determined to lose weight so I ate and drank diet drinks/food. When I graduated from high school I was 5'8" and 135 pounds.

View attachment 268577.

Happy to say I'm now a more healthy 162 pounds and eating healthy meals.
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God you're gorgeous! And, such a sweet couple. She's looking at you in admiration!
 
I was never forced to eat. Until age 12 I was "a stick in the landscape" as we say in Germany. Then my tonsils were surgically removed. I gained weight until being a little overweight but I was never chubby. During my 30s once I had reached 90 kilograms (199 lbs), but never more. At the moment my weight fluctuates between 82 and 86 kg (180 to 189 lbs). Being 174 cm (68.5 in.) tall my BMI ranges from 27,1 to 28,4. No reason to worry.
But one of my aunts always said "nimm an" (take it). Her two sons and one daughter are overweight. And one grandson (aged 50) is obese (so is his ex-wife). He is 190 cm (75 in.) tall but weighed 150 kilograms (330 lbs), meanwhile he is at 130 kg (286 lbs). Both of his parents are overweight too, but not to such an extent. He lives at his parents' house and they do nothing to convince him to lose weight. His first action when at home from work is drinking 3 to 4 pints of beer. An ample meal follows.
 

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