I’ve been wondering a lot lately about what may have caused the issues that I have had metabolically over the decades. I am 60.
I’m in relatively good health but fat seems to want to "cling " to me. 5’2 and 169.8 lbs at the moment.
I have reflected on my childhood and how we were fed. Convenience foods had become a thing, and my Mother wasn’t a cook at all. Pop Tarts, sweet cereals and toaster waffles were breakfasts. The only fruits and vegetables I got were canned and I hated them. Canned soups and stews were a staple.
I went even further back and found a recipe for the "formula " I was fed.
Evaporated Canned Milk, Karo Corn Syrup(gross) and Water. I was also fed at 4 hour increments, whether I was hungry or not, I’m guessing.
Please know, I don’t blame my Mother for this. She was a 16 year old child when she gave birth to me. She did as the Pediatrician told her.
I’m just curious to know how you all were fed as infants and children.
I’m trying like heck to repair a lot of Metabolic Damage!
What Were You Fed As An Infant?
My mom was a ‘health nut” for most of my childhood, but that mostly meant whole grain bread, more vegetables, and lots of trendy supplements. AND… she continued to smoke like a chimney throughout. So did my dad. Well, so did every adult I knew. And I joined their ranks far too young. Also drank like my dad and became an alcoholic. Took me years to quit get clean and sober.
But… back to your subject of foods we grew up with…. I would sneak cans of Sweetened condensed milk and I would eat/drink/slurp the whole thing. I think I would keel over if I tried that now!
Robin, congratulations are breaking free from alcohol and smoking!!
My Father smoked and drank also. Because of the behaviors I have chosen to never have alcohol.
I’m guessing you were nursed as a baby?
I remember craving sweet stuff as long ago as I can recall.
Thanks. I have no idea if I was breast fed, but I would bet it was a bottle. I’ll never know. Despite my story about chugging that sweet concoction, my weakness was always salty crispy.
I am 65 at the moment, so I grew up long before the nutritional guidelines were a thing. We ate meat, potatoes, and vegetables. My mother or grandmother always cooked, even though Mom worked full-time. Breakfast was usually eggs and bacon, very rarely cereal. On the other hand, Grandma and Mom were good bakers, so there were always cookies in the cookie jar, and bread and dinner rolls made from Grandma’s bread recipe. But by and large, my fat gain from excessive carb intake didn’t start until my mid-thirties.
ETA: I remember seeing my mother breast-feed my sister, so I presume I was breast-fed as well. I suppose at some point, Mom switched us to formula, since she had to work, but at least we got a good start.
Home cooking makes a difference, in my opinion.
I was always a skinny, underweight person until after my 2nd baby (29). Who knows what happened??
I remember a doctor telling me when I was 18 to drink a milkshake a day to gain weight ( I was 96 lbs)? I wish he could see me now!!
In addition to being breastfed/not breastfed, there’s also whether you were c-section or normal. My wife is convinced c-section babies are more prone to obesity, as she and our first daughter have a tendency to be heavy and were c-section. Meanwhile, her younger sister and our younger daughter were natural birth, and both have a much easier time being thinner.
Oh well it was vastly different for me than for the OP…
My Mom birthed me 2 days before her 40th birthday, I was an only child. Not like she wasn’t a great cook at 16, most probably and she knew how to handle babies too as she worked with 1-3 years olds when the family needed the money - but I don’t want to talk about those interesting years after WWII in Hungary for a peasant family that just got their land taken away.
I came waaaay later.
We didn’t even have pop tarts 
IDK if we have them now, I never saw one… We probably didn’t have cereal, I don’t remember. IDK why people thought cereal is edible, I never thought so (and I tried them after 1989 when Western stuff flooded the country and was curious). We had waffles, I remember buying them with jam and cream sometimes after I had my music lesson, it was on the way. Just once a month of something, we had zillion treats at home.
My memory isn’t the best regarding ancient details but I was always very very addicted to food and treats. We bought some sugary stuff but Mom baked a lot anyway. Expect some years when I had school food, I ate what she cooked and when I was already 13, I could cook for myself but not just anything of course and I could bake until… 40? Except bread, I learned that after 25. Mom never baked bread. My Grandma did and it was great, I heard. We have many baked goods recipes, we learned them from our moms and they are important in the stories about my great-grandparents too (I had an anchestor who was a horrible cook. but she cooked. Mom and Grandma tried to help occasionally but they needed the proud woman out of the house first). Oh well I don’t even know them and don’t wanna make them, flour is such a bad idea for baked goods if you ask me. It’s just cheap. And yeah, it makes the texture a bit different too but all food is a bit different and we don’t need absolutely every texture.
So. I ate a very high-carb (sadly, much sugar though not nearly as much as the average, I was shocked when I learned about that), very high-fat and probably high-protein diet.
Processed food, yep. Lunches and most desserts were home-made. Properly, the pudding used eggs and milk and flour, not pudding powder… We mostly ate bread with something for breakfast and dinner. I was a miserable kid who had to eat breakfast so I needed elevensies (except it’s at 10 for us and the name reflects that), I doubt I needed a 5th meal but I probably snacked sometimes. But I always preferred bigger meals so I was nicely satiated for hours and couldn’t eat. I just can’t eat big before lunch so I had 2 small meals first. Certain things never change. Oh I had an exception, I had huge breakfasts in summer but I went for a looong shopping, walking very much first. I had that breakfast at 11am and only remember the type when I just ate 1 liter of milk, many slices of bread, pork fat and who knows what else. Raw veggies too. I always was a HUGE veggie lover so keto where I only could spend 25g net carbs on vegs were hard on me, it was 1kg vegs at most and that’s below minimal. I can’t eat most green leaves and definitely didn’t give up my higher-carb ones like onions or carrots. But they weren’t a problem as they as so taste only a little was enough. I had to ban fried cauliflowers though.
So. I ate TONS of fresh vegs and fruits as a kid. 1kg of vegs or fruits at once weren’t merely possible, it was sometimes unavoidable. It’s not MUCH of these mostly water things (there are exceptions, I don’t mean them. I only ate 500g dried dates once, well okay I only had that much. and it was like 8 years ago anyway, not as a kid. I surely could have done it, though), I still think so…
I ate much of almost everything. Even I couldn’t eat insane amounts of candies (and I only liked the fatty ones with some exceptions) and we ate very little meat and I became a vegetarian at 17 (it was very much needed, I had to do something to avoid boring chicken every Sunday. the trauma lasted for decades and I am serious. tiiiiny trauma but a trauma nonetheless. no one knows what would have happened if I got fed pork roasts and steaks and salmon. I probably wouldn’t have become a vegetarian. as soon as I moved out so I ate whatever I chose, I dropped it but still didn’t really eat for decades).
I always had a nutritious diet I think. I wasn’t health conscious as a kid as I had no idea it’s a thing and HCHF isn’t the only normal way to eat. Yep, as a Hungarian and being a kid mostly before 1989 I didn’t met this low-fat thing for a long time. But even now that I have heard about it and we have tons of vegans and vegetarians who often focus on carbs and eat low-fat (I did a very high-fat vegetariasm, obviously. I probably ate tons of fat, I only could lower it when I went low-carb so I didn’t need to balance out my excess carbs), it doesn’t seem popular among normal people. We eat fatty pigs here. The supermarket papers advise buying low-fat meat and cooking it with little to no fat while putting all the several popular fatty pork items on sale, so fatty ones that even I wouldn’t eat them gladly as I need more meat. At least 50% meat, thank you. Especially that I need to lose fat and fat tissue don’t satiate me well enough but it’s too easy to eat.
Erm, sorry, can’t keep my thoughts in the right track but things are connected…
School elevensies were the worst. I ate ishler (chocolate, jam, so much added sugar… as if the floury stuff wouldn’t be bad enough) with cocoa… I was an idiot. Who mix these two things… Well the school options were limited. I often ate a sandwich with the cocoa. And often ate food I brought but it was a sandwich too. I never ever understood how anyone can get satiated with it… I managed but I ate much and I could get away without proper food until lunch. If I skipped breakfast, I skipped the elevensies too and had lunch after 2pm. I am a natural IFer and fasting is easier on a carby diet for me (but a big part of that must be that I eat bigger meals there. bigger meals last longer. as long as they have enough protein, that’s important).
I always could go and grab food. I ate when I wanted at home. I always liked to eat when I got hungry, not when Mom made the food and she respected that. But I must admit lil gluttony me usually felt tempted when the food was ready… And I think the timing was good too. I liked that school lasted so long that I ate at 2-3pm. It was my perfect first meal time for decades and I still have days when I get hungry that early.
Sometimes I read about kids who can’t just grab fresh vegs and fruits or 3 eggs or half a liter of milk or as much sour cream as they wish… I didn’t know how very lucky I was. I knew I was lucky that Mom cooks great (even though I have my own taste and I like some dishes a bit differently. I cooked a lot when I was a teen, I only couldn’t bake at all. I did for a while but gave up).
But I didn’t talk about home cooking… The not treats things. Well Mom almost always made vegetarian food except on Sundays and holidays. They were good 
I ate tons of pasta but not as the pasta with something on it, yeah that too (my fav was with poppy seeds. maybe walnuts or cheese. or quark and sour cream. and cabbage, it’s an exceptional green leaf I liked. it’s not very green) but the pasta was very often in soups. Pasta soup is a great thing here, IDK why my SO says it’s not a valid thing. He hates those. Oh well.
Now we have those Italian style eggless inferior pasta here but the traditional pasta has as many eggs as possible, added water isn’t needed. Oh my Mom and Granma made pasta! We even had special tool to make one common type here… I never learned that. But we bought pasta too, Mom was a busy one and pasta was cheap and easy to buy. And I liked it so we ate it a lot. Poor me had no idea carbs just made me hungrier so I needed a TON with lots of fat to make me satiated but I loved to eat so it was no problem. I remember some meals of mine, it’s mildly scary…
Well okay I always was chubby (I think I was only thin in my first year. my lowest was 1750g and I wasn’t in a hurry to eat and grow and fatten up. I heard Mom had no milk, that’s sad. it’s good I inherited very good genes at least) but I needed my skill to be unable to gain fat quickly even if I massively overeat.
But I got used to serious overeating. I often overeat nowadays and I eat so little! I never will get used to it. I still wish I could eat as much fat as I just wanted… And maybe protein… I rarely want carbs. I eat well, I feel okay, I always satiate myself… But I still want more. Maybe it would be bad, it’s just a stupid lingering desire.
I am sure many things hardly can be changed, we got used to them and they linger. I went low-carb about 11 years ago and still feel the effect of my past.
But one can change a lot. Even almost immediately sometimes. Carnivore did that but if I add carbs, many things change back. Long term self training made things permanent. It’s a long journey. I wish my childhood diet was better but it could have been so, so, so much worse. Or I could have been a sugar addict. Nope, I am a food and sweets addict, I don’t even like added sugar. But carnivore helps with all. The least with the first one, I still think about food all the time and love eating… But it’s still loads better.
Well that was the shortest I could do, it brought too many thoughts.
I was a natural birth. And I ate nothing in the first days(? the time is vague) of my life. I refused drinking too. Almost died and stuff. Why people take away the baby from the Mom and don’t bring back until the Mom YELLS? No idea. It’s a quite funny story after one gets used to the horror. I had huge chances to die but I escaped all 3 serious problems.
But my anchestors were hard-working, healthy, strong, not particularly thin ones I suppose… Even now, village women are great at cooking and baking, love to eat, obviously have a HCHF diet, what else? And they are mostly not thin. I was one of the thinnest in the choir and I still have about 40lbs to lose… The others weren’t really fat either (except one), just well, chubby as middle aged and elderly women often are around here. The one with cancer got thin and some people has that type of genetics or they just eat at moderation… But that’s not the norm.
Oh yeah the potatoes! We ate that A LOT. It was one of my huge favorites…
I didn’t like rice, I liked potatoes with my chicken (though I didn’t like the chicken. I loved the gherkins, loved the boiled and nicely fried potatoes… actually liked the crispy chicken skin, I never can do that myself without removing it from the meat…).
But as I wrote, I ate almost everything and a lot of them. Sadly I don’t remember my egg consumption but it was few to several a day I guess…? No one told me not to but I would have ignored it anyway Eggs seemed perfect food to me. Still do. One can’t live on them alone but that’s okay. Still amazing.
Wow. You guys surely had self control. Or the cookies were made by many oven pans at a time. Or there were rules.
Mom put them onto a plate too but they disappeared in no time.
And later I learned not to make much desserts as they won’t last anyway…
I am a bit better now.
High carb, not convenience foods but not nutritionally sound either, lots of pasta & potatoes, and quite often had no food as mother was more than a little deranged… but that’s another story, and I’m thankful that my childhood experiences never led me to see food as a comfort, it’s always just been something necessary for survival.
Both of our children were C section, and I had a terrible time breast feeding. Apparently the process of natural birth triggers the milk production. Breast milk also plants beneficial bacteria in the babies intestines. Neither of our kids (31 and 33) are obese…as of yet.
My mum was a single parent and worked full time so my gran did all the cooking. She was a good cook, swore by her wartime recipes and always cooked fresh. Her food was lovely but we were made to eat the plate clean no matter whether we liked the food or not. Usually it was the veg that was forced down. We always had a pudding to follow. In later years I actually liked all the veg I hated as a child. I have no idea if I was bottle or breast fed but suspect breast cos my mum always said us kids ruined her boobs lol.
I was a skinny kid until I started earning a wage and that just happened to be at the same time as takeaway shops starting emerging and also American diners arrived in Edinburgh where I was living at that time. Oh and of course I was out boozing and disco-ing most nights … that is when I started piling on the weight ! Alcohol abuse and takeways all my own doing!
Well done. As you know quite a few of us in the community got clean through a 12 step program. I find what I learned there is so very applicable here. Just for today I will not “cheat”. When fasting I can go at least another hour without eating. And most importantly carrying the message of metabolic health and giving it away as freely as it was given to me…well that just continues my progress.
Robin, in 2018 after spending the VIP evening of Ketofest on @carl 's back porch and listening to so many wonderful health recovery stories and other’s thinking mine was pretty special too and that friggin @Karen haranguing me about the tin of chew in my pocket…when I got off the plane in Milwaukee I threw out my tin and said “I can still do better” and have.
There are a few of us who meet at conventions to have a meeting prior to festivities.
As to food I’m an old ■■■■■■ . I was raised on sardines and beef liver. T-bones fried in butter and then soak up the fat with rye bread to fill you up. It wasn’t until my teens that I listened to heart healthy doctors and I like all of us just got worse. What is awesome is I like the flavors of many of the foods our community eats naturally. Offal, tinned fish etc.
My German Grandma created in me a weakness for dumplings and pork gravy.
Hi Robin, I am a clean and sober recovering alcoholic, so I know the type of struggles quitting entails. The sweetened condensed milk story reminded me of when I was a kid and would sneak cold hotdogs out the frig at night and eat them cold and raw. Evidently, hotdogs must have tasted a whole lot better back then than they do now!
We were poor but my mom cooked every night. Meat, 2 veg and butter bread.
The meat was tough and discounted, the veg was from a can and cooked to death, the bread was cheap, but we were fed and full. And if we wanted a snack we were allowed to have an apple or a piece of cheese. That woman counted every single morsel of food to get us through to payday.
Poor kids with canned vegs! I can’t even imagine. At least I fried my fresh vegs into oblivion… I ate lots of charcoal in my early times… And later too. It turned out electric things are for me, not old gas ones.
I remember eating sugar with a big spoon a few times. Not my proudest moment. (I was an idiot. Not normally, just sometimes as young folks so often are, intelligence don’t help with that.)
But I think I always loved raw vegs too… We surely always had a pretty nice variety of fresh vegs… Even our garden had many kinds, it was fun. Once I made “luxurious” omelet with vegs and it took forever as I run to the garden many times (I only remember the green peas and clearly I used a ton of onions)… Then I put lots of cheese in it, folded it and pour an insane (or just perfect, it depends on who you ask. it was just right for me) amount of sour cream on it. It was amazing. Oh I didn’t even change much, I just would use sausage instead of vegs and even the cheese. But sometimes a cheesy omelet is fine too.
thanks for chiming in. Thee are many former addicts in here. We know a few things about saying NO MORE, don’t we? We are in good company here.