Janet G.
I come from a family of 7 kids. Now, we all look like poster children for bariatric surgery. I come from a family where we grew up eating meat and potatoes (did I spell that right? Where's Dan Quayle when you need him 
?) Dad worked, Mom stayed home to take care of us. She feed 9 on things that she could stretch the furtherest - usually starchy foods. We weren't encouraged to go out for things in school since that would be hard on Mom to keep track of 7 different schedules.
I was fairly tall for a female (5'8") so I was able to hide my weight through out high school. I wasn't considered overweight, just slightly heavy. I even competed in a Miss Teen competition. Once I hit college, most of my friends were guys. When you start running around with mainly guys, you start behaving like them and eating like them. Here's were I started adding more weight. I got romantically involved with one, that eventually became my husband, and went on birth control, there came more weight.
Through all this, grduation, wedding, two kids (which I never lost weight from child birthing), and multiple moves, I had an underlying case of clininical depression developing that would surface briefly for 3 or 4 bouts until 2003 when it finally surfaced for good. My self-esteem was very low. The couselor commented it was one of the worst she had had to deal with and my weight was one of the big issues that I had to deal with at the time.
