# Fat Families



## eightyseven (Aug 24, 2007)

I was out getting some ice cream last evening and noticed a family, a father with his two daughters, who were also in line. He happened to be a very large man and his daughters (my best guess was that they looked about 11 and 14 years old) would most definitely have been considered supersized for their ages and heights. This got me wondering... do many of you come from families where being big is pretty much normal, or are you the anomaly? How has either instance positively or negatively affected your life or family relations?


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## willamena31 (Aug 24, 2007)

My family... well, they're not skinnny, at least most aren't, but I'm definately the biggest out of the bunch and always have been. On both sides most everyone is over weight to some degree. It's never really affected my relations with them though. My mom's side at least has always been very close and loving. We get together a lot and weight is never an issue with any of us. I feel more comfortable with them than with anyone else in this world. 

Now, as I stated in the mother relationship thread, while my mom never actually came out and said I was fat and needed to lose weight, she was always going on some fad diet and suggesting that we do it together. They never lasted long though, my family just simply loves food too much. LOL

Go to any one of our family gatherings and you will see that for yourself. There's soooo much food it would make your eyes pop out. LOL After my reception all the girls I work with kept commenting on how much food was there, I said, "that is a typical get together for us!! Why do you think I look the way I do??" LOL

Hope this answers your question. I tend to go around in circles sometimes 

Hugggsss!!
Billie Jo


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## Rowan (Aug 24, 2007)

My whole family is big. I wasnt big til i had bad stuff happen to me when i was younger and none of my younger brothers are big...so of course i wonder if it is the genetic thing or just im a fatty cuz of my life thing..

so who knows...


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## Tooz (Aug 24, 2007)

Well, on my father's side, the women are quite short and skinny-- classically Italian, I guess. On my mother's side, I wouldn't say people are very fat, but they're not skinny, either. Most of the people in the family are at least somewhat pudgy and framed densely.


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## Pink (Aug 25, 2007)

My mom was very skinny as I was growing up. She weighed between 85 and 120pounds. More a normal size now. My dad is a big guy always has been and of my siblings my sister is plus sized/ brother was heavy but recently lost alot of weight. 
My mom is always on a diet. She constantly is griping about her "fat". I just roll my eyes at her. It' s pointless to argue with her but she really made all of us kids and my dad feel bad about our weight at one point or another. Even today she will comment on how much better I would look if I lost some weight. My cousin is heavy. We laugh about how our moms made us fat by being so nagging about it. We both love to cook and I think that is from eating so much tuna,cottage cheese and jello as kids. lol


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## TallFatSue (Aug 25, 2007)

Pink said:


> We laugh about how our moms made us fat by being so nagging about it.


Yep, I laugh about that too. It horrifies my mother whenever I mention it, but she contributed to my being so fat because her nagging backfired.

I'm the anomaly in my family, everyone else is thin to average. My grandmothers probably laid the groundwork for me being so big because they tried to outdo each other spoiling me with their goodies. Then my mother had to try to spoil me too, but at the same time nagging about my weight. Talk about mixed messages! I don't know if my mother ever really said things like "Here's a big yummy cake I just baked for you! You're not going to eat it, are you?" but it sure seemed like it. Finally I recognized that the more I ate, and the more I revelled in my growing size, the more it bugged the hell out of my mother. It became a teenage power play for me, and I have carried the big curvy jiggly effects of this fat all my life.


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## squurp (Aug 25, 2007)

Take a look at this thread:

http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27472

And, have a look at my comment in response to this article:

http://www.bigfatblog.com/denver-post-blames-everyone-mostly-parents-alleged-epidemic#comments


Incidentally, I am more on the thin side of my family at 5'10" and 225 lbs.


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## TheSadeianLinguist (Aug 25, 2007)

My mother? Always been slim. She's a size 10 now and approaching her 60's. Her family has a mix of fat and thin people.

My father was fat in his childhood, lost the weight, and is now regaining despite efforts to stave it off.

Out of three siblings, two of us are thin, and one of us is fat.


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## Jennygirl (Aug 25, 2007)

In my family all the women are big and the men are super tall and thin. We have big thighs, generous boobs and are definitely belly girls. My one sister is gettting WLS soon so she will be the anomaly now...but it's pretty much normal. My grandmother who raised me was a total feeder LOL I was anorexic as a kid and she had me fattened up within a year of living with her LOL From there i was heavy most of my life and always turn to food for emotional reasons as that was the way I was raised. I can remember getting off the bus after a day of kids making fun of me at school and smelling fresh baked bread, pies, cakes or cookies every day and instantly feeling better knowing I was coming home to them. Snacking and overeating were the norm. It always amazed me that the men in the family ate the same way but stayed so skinny. I have one brother that has issues with his weight but he has a thyroid condition and as soon as it was medicated he lost weight. Used to bug me but now it doesn't bother me...just how we are  Oh and the funny thing is my mother is 5 feet tall and weighs about 100 lbs with size 5 feet. She's a tiny woman...guess I take after my father's side


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## tinkerbell (Aug 25, 2007)

My dad's family - all the women are short and slim.

My mom's family - are Mexican, so everyone, even the slim ones, are curvy. Right now, I am probably the biggest one, but my mom, grandma, aunt and cousin are plus sized too.


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## IdahoCynth (Aug 25, 2007)

My mothers side of the family is all short and fat, with a few supersized in the group. On my fathers side they are mostly on the tallish side and about a quarter of them are fat, the rest are thin.

My mother was 4'10 (but always claimed to be 5'2) and about 220 - 250 (but always a constant dieter. Pills, those nasty "aids" cubes ect) for most of her adult life. My dad was 6'3 and about 320 - 340 pounds for most of his adult life. Though both of them in their childhood and into their early 20's were not fat, however they grew up during the depression and came from poor families.

I and all of my siblings are fat to various degrees. We were chunky children who got fatter with age. My oldest sister was supersized and her adult children are both supersized. My other sister has 1 supersized and 2 "fat" adult children. Both of my children are fat. My younger brothers daughter is heavy going on fat (she is a teenager). My older brother has no children.

We ate good as children, my mothers growth was actually stunted by lack of food as a child, so she made sure we were fed.

We ate mostly wild game and home grown rabbits, later on when we moved to the country we raised chickens, turkeys, a few cows and pigs ect...potatoes, pasta and veggies. We had home canned fruits and jams and jellies. 

We didn't eat a lot of sweets or junk food, takeout food was maybe a few times a year and it was something like kentucky fried chicken. I don't remember eating a pizza until I was probably 10 or 12 and we went to Shakey's. We had cakes on birthdays and special occasions, we were always rationed to 3 cookies when they were offered. Snacking between meals was frowned on because mom wanted us to be hungry for dinner.


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## chicagosecretagent (Aug 25, 2007)

I am, by far, the biggest person in my family. My parents are both fit and thin. They probably work out at least 300 days of the year. My brother is a nutritionist, bike messenger and triathlete with about 3% bodfat. His entire existence revolves around being fit. I know that they love me no matter what I weight, but I think I would feel more comfortable about my weight/body if I didn't look so dramatically different than my family members.


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## willamena31 (Aug 25, 2007)

chicagosecretagent said:


> I am, by far, the biggest person in my family. My parents are both fit and thin. They probably work out at least 300 days of the year. My brother is a nutritionist, bike messenger and triathlete with about 3% bodfat. His entire existence revolves around being fit. I know that they love me no matter what I weight, but I think I would feel more comfortable about my weight/body if I didn't look so dramatically different than my family members.



Wow!! That would be kind of hard to deal with for me too. I'm definatley the biggest in my family as I said previously, but I can't imagine what my self image would be like if they were are all fit and thin!! Hope being here can help you to be more comfortable with your weight and body. I know it's helped me greatly.

Hugggsss!!
Billie Jo


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## HottiMegan (Aug 25, 2007)

My mom has always been fat. My dad has always been slim. I have one brother that was a stick until he hit his 30's and now struggles with weight. I have another brother that was pretty fat throughout childhood and slimmed down as he approached adult hood. i have been fat since i was about 9. (My mom put me on my first diet at about 8.. hmm correlations?)

My son is a skinny mini. He actually has to have a high calorie diet to maintain normal growth so i have a feeling he'll be one of those butt heads who can eat all they want and stay slim. My husband used to be a bhm but worked at losing weight over the last year. Now he's not skinny but not fat either


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## Sandie_Zitkus (Aug 25, 2007)

My mom is fat. My dad was fat - now thin. My sister was fat but is now thin. Most of my family on both sides was and is thin. I have always been the biggest one.


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## MsGreenLantern (Aug 26, 2007)

My father is thin, he was only slightly chubby as a child. I only have one sibling, and she's been dieting to keep from getting chubby as long as I can remember. Mom... she was a size 6 most of her life until babies, now she is getting up to around 18, and is NOT pleased. I've tried to explain to her that two kids and menopause can give your metabolism a run for its money, but oh well! I've always been the token fat person in my family besides my one grandfather. (who I look a lot like in general) All my cousins aunts and uncles are pretty svelt.


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## fatgirlflyin (Aug 26, 2007)

eightyseven said:


> I was out getting some ice cream last evening and noticed a family, a father with his two daughters, who were also in line. He happened to be a very large man and his daughters (my best guess was that they looked about 11 and 14 years old) would most definitely have been considered supersized for their ages and heights. This got me wondering... do many of you come from families where being big is pretty much normal, or are you the anomaly? How has either instance positively or negatively affected your life or family relations?




My family (parents and siblings) were all fat growing up. Now, I'm fat, my fiance is fat, but both of my children and thin and all his children are thin. 

For me, growing up though, being big was the norm.


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## deedee28x (Aug 26, 2007)

I'm definitly the only big one in my family. My mothers tiny, my brothers tall and thin. My dad has a little bit of a belly but he was thin his entire life. All of my cousins are extremely thin. I have one cousin that was big growing up but he lost tons of weight from playing football and now hes all muscle. It doesnt bother me tho because no1 in my family cares or makes an issue of it. My parents never drilled it into my head that I needed to lose weight. As long as I was happy then they fully support me in my choices to lose or to stay at my present weight.


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## Miss Vickie (Aug 26, 2007)

We're definitely a plus size family, although my kids are all of "normal" weight. Not so strange, though, since the majority of my family members didn't gain weight until adolescence and adulthood.

My mom, who died in her 40's, was about 450 pounds; she was pretty big her whole life, starting in adolescence when her mother locked their refrigerator so she couldn't eat.  (An eating disorder in the making, but she actually had an amazingly positive body image and relationship with food -- far better than mine). She died of complications from cervical cancer (not obesity) when I was 12. 

My father was about 250-300, and you'd call him "portly" or "stocky" if you saw him. He led a very active lifestyle, ate healthily, but died when he was 52 (again, when I was 12), of heart disease, no doubt complicated by his diabetes. His brothers also had a similar body type and they also all died in their 50's of heart disease. His father died in his 40's from diabetes. They've got it BAAAAD in that family. 

For my sibs and I, my oldest brother is 6'2", 280 now I think, is 59 and has had all kinds of problems with his diabetes and heart disease. Like my dad, he has always been a good eater and been active, but landed on the sad end of the gene pool. He's hanging in there, though. My other brother is 49 years old, is 6'4" and was 600 pounds, then had WLS, lost down to about 200 pounds, gained it back, and has now lost some again. He's horribly ill with diabetes, but he's always had a crappy diet on top of his unfortunate genetics. I've watched him consume scary amounts of food and spoke vehemently against him getting WLS because he's got an uncontrolled eating disorder. In my own case, I was up to about 320 at my heaviest before WLS and now hover right about 175-180. At 5'2" (and a titch) it's a good weight for me.

Like I said before, my kids are relatively thin. My son is 20 with a great build, though he works out. My middle one is starting to put weight on and since she's very short it's more evident. My youngest is tall and willowy, just like her dad (until his metabolism stopped dead when he was in his mid-20's).


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## steely (Aug 26, 2007)

My sisters are all large except one who has become thin.She is probably 5'6" weighs about 150,her husband is 5'5" weighs about 160.Their two sons are enormous.They have always placed off the growth chart.Not only in weight but height as well.Her youngest started 6th grade this year.He was in the cafeteria and one of the teachers told him he was with the wrong group,he needed to be with the 8th graders.Go figure?


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## BigCutieSasha (Aug 27, 2007)

My grandma on my Moms side was a bigger woman. And my Grandfather on my Dads side was bigger guy. But both my Mom and Dad were and still are thinner. They were very thin and athletic in their 20's. But both me and my brother are big. Maybe it just skips a generation.


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## SocialbFly (Aug 27, 2007)

hmm, mom and dad fat...dads mom and dad...fat...
granparents on moms side...fat then gma got thin...
my twin is fat, and her twins (18) are fat (their dad is fat too)

yup, fat is rampant in our family...


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## Tad (Aug 27, 2007)

My parents and siblings are all thin. My sister used to have trouble finding professional work clothes in a size small enough (after two kids and now being in her forties, she's gone way up to a size 4). My brother was a track star in high school and university, and went on to do triathlons and marathons. Recently hip problems have stopped his running, but now he's biking very hard.

The only remotely heavy person in my family was my mom's father, but as he was a farmer a certain amount of fat was balanced by impressive amounts of muscle.

-Ed


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## ToniTails (Aug 27, 2007)

the chicks in my family are big... the dudes are thing, excepting my dad...


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## ScreamingChicken (Aug 27, 2007)

Let's see :

-Dad WAS thin until he discovered my mom 's cooking.  His parents are/were thin. No fat people on that side .

-Mom is fat . She even worked at Catherine's back in the 70's. She's also 5'9", so I picked up my build from her. As for mom's biological relatives, there are quite a few large people spread throughout the tree.

-Brother is tall and as beefed up quite a bit in the last 7 years. His son is skinny to average in size. His daughter is fat. Their mom is a tall SSBBW.Lots of fat folks in her family.

-My sisters are twins but once they got to their 20's they diverged in sizes. The older one is thin and athletic. She works out on a regular basis and is a very athletic eater. The younger one is above average and ate one point was plus sized. Her son is average in size.

-My kids are both tall. Katie is thin. Wesley is fat. He has not only the genetic disposition, but also has been on steroids numerous times for his asthma and eczema, which has played havoc with his metabolsim. Stacy is a short BBW and there are quite few women in her family who have struggled with their weight.


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## Tracy (Aug 27, 2007)

On my fathers side of the family my grandmother was a large lady. All of my aunts are taller and slim and my father is tall and slim. My mother is a large woman and her sister is very thin. All of my uncles on my mothers side of the family are very slim. I would say that 95% of my cousins are slim. I would have to say that I am the largest member of our family. I think that there are a few of my cousins that have a problem with me being a larger lady but I let them deal with their own insecurities. As far as the rest of my family they love me just the way that I am as they know that I have a beautiful heart which makes me beautiful on the outside. My height of 5"9 and my weight of 290 lbs. makes me who I am. Wouldn't know how to act any other way.


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## EtobicokeFA (Aug 27, 2007)

Well, I can say that being fat is a big part of my family as well! At least to the member that I am directly related to!


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## ashmamma84 (Aug 27, 2007)

My Mother is a big woman...she is actually smaller now than she was when I was younger, and my Father is average, I guess. My paternal side is chock full of fat folk -- my Grandmother, aunts, cousins are all big women and my neices are definitely bigger girls who will probably grow up to be gorgeous fat women. I'd say my uncles (with the exception of 2) are fat as well...

So, there's a range of chubby to supersize on my Father's side.

My Mother's side isn't really that fat -- my aunts and my Mother all gained weight late in life, but they were average or slim when they were young. And my cousins on this side aren't fat at all, with me and one of the older cousins as an exception. They are all tall and shapely/or thin.


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## Canonista (Aug 27, 2007)

At 13 I had a "six pack".

At 23 I had a keg.

I was always self conscious about my size until after I got married and met my biological mother. Surrounded by my adopted family I was always the lone fat person surrounded by athletic skinny people. Meeting my biological mother I learned that I come from fat people. Mom is fat. My aunts and uncles are fat. My grandparents are fat. Fat is who I am.

I understand "fat hate", and because I don't want to offend the majority of people I won't take my shirt off in public, but I don't look in the mirror and get depressed anymore.


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## Blue_Rainbow3 (Aug 28, 2007)

My immediate family ranges from chubby to supersized. My brother and I are probably the biggest of our generation and probably a few back. The women on my dad's side tend to be bigger, while the men tend to be average to chubby. Now on my mom's side the men tend to be tall and thin and most of the woman are average sized. 

My family comes from the Caribbean. I remember walking down the street as a child and having people come out of their homes and stop what they were doing to stare at my brother and I. A few people even came up, fascinated, and asked, with all seriousness, how we got that big and how they could get big too. As a nine year old, I answered eat more. I used to wonder what size I would be if I grew up there.


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## TallFatSue (Sep 14, 2007)

Sayyyy, on a related note, how do you compare in height to your siblings? Women are shorter than men on average, so I've always wondered why I'm a couple inches taller than my brother. I don't have a sister to directly compare myself to, but my mother is shorter than my brother and my father is about the same height as my brother. My standard joke is that I'm 6ft tall because I was born the year Sputnik was launched, so there was rocket fuel in my baby formula. My brother is 2 years younger and has a different theory: his big sister ate most of the food at dinner time before he had a chance at it. :eat2: 

Maybe my little brother wasn't joking after all. 

BBC News: How older siblings stunt growth
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6992852.stm


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## TraciJo67 (Sep 14, 2007)

SocialbFly said:


> hmm, mom and dad fat...dads mom and dad...fat...
> granparents on moms side...fat then gma got thin...
> my twin is fat, and her twins (18) are fat (their dad is fat too)
> 
> yup, fat is rampant in our family...



... and so is beautiful. Just sayin'.


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## Lovelyone (Sep 14, 2007)

I have 3 sisters. My oldest sister had a different biological father. She is about 140 lbs. The rest of us are ssbbw's. Hereditary....maybe, who knows?


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## fatterisbetter (Sep 14, 2007)

Both my wife and I come from families that were at least chunky. My wife's parents are defintely fat, mine not quite as much. But neither one of us has parents or aunts and uncles who are skinny. Now both my wife and i are probably a lot fatter than our parents were at the same age. This holds mostly true for my wife's two sisters and my brother as well. I guess we just lead a more sedentary lifestyle and eat more fast food and snacks than our parent generation. It is also interesting that when I look at pictures of my childhood or my wife's our kids look bigger than we were at the same age. So I guess our family's supersize tendencies are both genetic as well as behavioral, because we definitely tend to swing by the icecream parlor after a nice filling fast food dinner. So next time you see dad with a huge gut, a mome with a wideload ass and four chunky preteens and teens getting the triple scoops of icecream it could us :eat1:


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## Zandoz (Sep 15, 2007)

Kind of a mixed bag here. If you look at the prior generations of women on both sides of my family, all except my grandmother on my dad's side, and my mom & her sister on her side were BBWs...most would have been considered SSBBWs. The men were all slender, to slightly chubby...except for my dad. Frequently called "little big man", he was only 5'5", but in his pro boxing days he fought in the light heavyweight class. Later in life he would have definitely been considered a BHM....most of my memories would put him in the 250-300lb range. The last few years of his life were the only post boxing years where he was closer to 200. 

My generation is a mixed bag...two sisters, one a BBW, the other slender...countless cousins, some big, some not.

In my wife's family, big women and slender men were the absolute rule...daughter Sherry is definitely a BBW.

The pic below is of wife, her daughter ( my step daughter), wife's grandfather, and I. For some reason, most folks who do not know better assume that daughter Sherry is my biological daughter...I assume because of her size. 

View attachment Gramps Pam Sherry and Bill.JPG


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## ScreamingChicken (Sep 15, 2007)

TallFatSue said:


> Sayyyy, on a related note, how do you compare in height to your siblings?


My parents are both 5'9''. My brother and I are 6'2" and our twin sisters are 5'3".


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## Teddy Bear (Sep 15, 2007)

My father was about 5 ft 10 and of average weight, maybe about 10 pounds overweight but that is still average.

My mother was of average weight for her height until she was in her 40s and 50s then at 5 ft 2 in she was about 150 pounds at the most, which is a little overweight, but she was never really fat, just a little bit chubby, then when she was in her 60s and 70s she became thin.

I'm the oldest of three kids in my family. My sister who is the youngest was fat when she was little but in the second grade she became thin, then in her 20's she was of normal weight, about 5 ft 5 in and 135 pounds, but she was always saying she was too fat and she was always on some kind of diet. I haven't seen her in years so I have no idea what she looks like now

My younger brother is tall and thin, about 5 ft 11 and 180 pounds. He is 1 year and 3 months younger than I am, but he looks much older. I'm now 55 going on 56 and I'm 5 ft 6 in and presently weigh 395 pounds.

Although I'm the oldest of three, my mother would always say, "this is my oldest son, but he's the baby of the family!" she would always say that because I was the only one in the immediate family who was so very fat. Also, my younger brother and sister were both more active and physically stronger than I was, because I was the one who was so soft and weak.

My grandmother on my father's side of the family was fat, about 5 ft 2 in and well over 250 pounds and she lived to be over 80 years old despite being diabetic, while my mother's second cousins Ester and Grace were were also fat. Ester was about 5 ft 2 in and over 270 pounds, while Grace was only 5 feet tall and weighed well over 300 pounds. Both lived into their 80s.

I think I'm the only male member of our family who became really obese, and I'm the heaviest one in my entire family, only 5 pounds away from the great big four-double-oh!

When I was growing up, it was kind of lonely being the only fat kid in my family, but my Mom would always say that I was her favorite.

I was her baby, even as an adult, she still called me her baby!


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## Aurora (Sep 15, 2007)

There's a lot of bigness in my family history on both sides, but my parents were relatively average when they were my age where I've been big all my life. I weigh the most out of all my family as well, and that used to make me a little uncomfortable but I've accepted it now.


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## Teddy Bear (Sep 16, 2007)

Aurora said:


> There's a lot of bigness in my family history on both sides, but my parents were relatively average when they were my age where I've been big all my life. I weigh the most out of all my family as well, and that used to make me a little uncomfortable but I've accepted it now.



I didn't mind being fat, because I not only accept being fat, but I actually like being fat.

But it was kind of lonely being the only fat one in my family, and being the heaviest among all of my fat relatives.

I'm just glad that my mother loved me, and I liked it when she would say I was the "baby of the family" even though I was the oldest child.

I'm just glad I was my mother's favorite, and I liked being her baby.


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## liz (di-va) (Sep 16, 2007)

I'm definitely the biggest one in my immediate family. There's a lot of tall skinniness on one side of my family, and on the other...tallness + latent bigness, but I'm still the biggest. I stand out.


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## Aurora (Sep 16, 2007)

Teddy Bear said:


> I didn't mind being fat, because I not only accept being fat, but I actually like being fat.



Oh don't get me wrong, I love being fat (and growing)! I just mean I no longer feel uncomfortable being the largest of my family, and that's at age 21. It's probably mostly due to my fat love too.


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