Curious - what made you overweight in the first place?

MaryJane_8810002

My father never knew what portion control was.

Maryhadley2

I got really sick like intensive care sick during the middle of my divorce, had a boss that was trying to ruin my career for what reason I don't know! honestly, I was so bleak, full of medications that caused weight gain, my heart was breaking physically and emotionally! So, I regained my health, the boss got fired, my career is super solid and I give it my all!


With fitness pals help I've regained my beauty and Im dating. I no longer feel isolated or ugly. Shopping has gone from a nightmare to a joy. I have to exercise at least 4 or more times a week. I NO I have not fallen in love with it, I hate it....but I have to or my weight goes up...quickly. I don't know if a serious relationship is in my future, I got used to being home alone after raising children with a husband. Fitness Pal helped me realize the calorie count of my food....and stop being sad and get off the sofa!

ldrosophila

Multifactorial a combination of physical and psychological

RockinJanie86

Food and laziness.

Chick Fil A's number 1, Pizza Hut pan pizza made me over weight! lol no but seriously, My mom, sister and I used to live with my grandma. My Hispanic grandma who can cook a mean everything. I've always been fat, my weight went up and down tons through middle and high school. The lightest I weighed in high school was about 150ish and that was because I was trying to look good for my now husband.

Food is good. Especially growing up in South Texas.

Booksandbeaches

I love food. My portions were off. I wasn't exercising as often as I could have.

TinaBaily

In a nutshell: calories in exceeded calories burned. But I don't think OP was asking that question.

It took me until April of last year, when I joined MFP, to finally figure out WHY I couldn't keep any weight lost off. I had 5 pregnancies and gained weight with each one, taking the saying "eating for 2" literally almost every time. It seemed with each successive birth I was heavier than before. I also tended to eat when stressed, and my firstborn was a difficult child to raise.

In 1998 I was diagnosed with PCOS and put on Metformin, which helped me drop from 230lbs to about 200lbs but I couldn't ever seem to drop below that for very far or very long. I dropped down to the 150s 5 years ago but the death of my grandmother pushed me back to bad eating habits, and by April of 2012 I was ready to throw in the weight loss towel. I had been slowly changing how I ate and how I fed my family, thanks to a wonderful fruit and vegetable co-op that is quickly spreading across the U.S., and then in the same week two different people I trust told me about MFP. I signed up but didn't really get the ball rolling until May of 2012. I then hit the ground running, literally! I started to peruse the forums here for advice and ideas. I started to document my food as well as my exercise. The weight started to really melt off. Wow!!

Fast forward to winter of this year and a very stressful time hitting my family in the form of a child suffering from life-threatening depression. I put back on a few pounds, but kept at the program. Things are settling down with my child, who is in recovery now, and I'm back to losing again. Time and time again I found myself feeling so proud that the feelings I dealt with during my child's illness didn't send me to the store to grab a dozen donuts and eat myself into oblivion by downing half the package.

Perseverance, persistence, and finally a love of exercise is what makes me sure that I will finally lose all the excess weight and be able to keep it off.

RobynMWilson

Soda, being sedentary, eating way too much for a child, obesity genes...

chelc1105

I have always been the "chubby" girl. My mom did not encourage us to exercise, we had very little money when i was growing up and all we had in the house was junk ..... I thought my mom is skinny and she eats the same crap, i must just be a bigger person, then i found out a few years later it was because she was doing heavy drugs.

I would not eat for a day, and then i would pig out, and then not eat for a day and then pig out (repeat)

Then i met my husband - we only ate out - burgers and french fries every day, which i thought was okay because "i never ate"
I wasn't active because i was too big, my feet hurt, it was too hot ....etc.

Then i got a desk job + eating out every day + going home and sitting on my arsh + stress + anxiety + depression + a very unstable relationship (with my now husband, we worked it out)

Then I thought i was eating healthy when i decided to go vegetarian - uhm...no. I was eating processed crap, all the time, and i wouldnt eat anything all day long and then i would pig out when i got home until it was time to go to bed.

Its all a pile of excuses

ostrichagain

I was thinking about this very thing today and wondering if my level of denial was going to come back and haunt me. I like to downplay the real reasons why I've gained so much weight because I don't like thinking or talking about them.

Basically stress. I have been under an insane amount of stress for 5 years and that is when I started gaining weight. I eat to cope. The stress is not ever going to go away, in fact, I predict it will get worse. I need to figure out effective ways of coping with it if I'm going to maintain my weight loss. I know all the right things to do, the trick is DOING them when I'm overwhelmed and ready to reach for old, bad habits.

I'm self-medicating with food. There. I said it.

Crysiira

I was never really into sports or any physical activity other than camping and hiking. I'm an artist, a reader, a dreamer. Those things don't require lots of movement!
In college I moved in with my aunt to save on rent. She is nearly 400lbs and had snack foods and desserts and candy and treats all over the house. Growing up, my youngest brother had type 1 diabetes and my mother banned sugar from the house so when I realized how readily available it was at my aunt's I started gorging.
Then I moved in with my future husband. He is the type of person who basically just eats one giant meal a day. My metabolism doesn't work that way. When it came to having dinner together he would make huge meals and I would try to match his portions - again, a throwback to youth when my siblings and I would compete for larger portions, seeing as dinners were quite small in a six person family.

It all caught up to me and I've been steadily gaining more and more weight the last 10 years. I'm now re-learning everything I thought I knew about metabolism, portions, exercise, and basically everything. I'm learning to find intellectual stimulation in exercise instead of thinking of it as mindless physical activity. I'm measuring out the serving size of EVERYTHING I put in my mouth. I'm changing the times I eat, and if it means telling my husband I can't eat a huge dinner with him so be it! It's an entire lifestyle change and even my husband has noticed the difference and is working on making some changes too!

angelique_redhead

My thyroid bottomed out after both children. It didn't help that my DH met me when I was doing 2 hours of Tae Kwon Do a day and literally thought I could eat like that when I wasn't exercising all the time. It took MFP to get him off my *** about not eating enough. He's 6'4" and built like an old style Viking with HUGE bones. I'm 5'4" and have small bones. I can eat about half as much as he does. He's finally figured it out and doesn't give me problems about it now. He tends to be of the school of "If you love it feed it!"

adiostrasero

I looooove food and always have. (I used to sneak cookies and other snacks all the time...and I was always the one kid in our family who wanted to know when the next meal was coming!) I was never overweight as a child because I had an active lifestyle and my mom kept my bad habits in check.

My first year of college was pretty stressful/lonely ... that combined with all-you-can-eat buffets at the dining hall led to gaining a freshman 30 rather than freshman 15. Typically when I'd go home for summer I'd lose weight, then gain it all or mostly back throughout the course of the school year. (Drinking followed by drunken late night food cravings did not. help. at. all.)

As a new college grad, my first job stressed the heck out of me, and again, since a lot of my friends had moved away, I was lonely. Stressed + lonely again led to overeating. I can remember looking forward aaaalll morning to my lunch - planning out where I'd go, what I'd order, etc. I almost never brought my lunch, and I almost never made healthy selections at restaurants. I would be so stuffed I was uncomfortable all afternoon.

As adulthood wore on, I became more upset with myself for gaining weight. At one point, I had gained 60-70 pounds from where I'd been in high school - my healthy weight. It seemed such a large amount. The more time that passed between "fat me" and "healthy me", I kind of lost myself. I stopped seeing myself as someone who could even BE healthy. I hadn't really resigned to being fat - I was miserable with myself.

I finally had a breakthrough, where I realized that perfectionism was really behind my mental block. It sounds stupid but what I mean is this: I felt like I couldn't be a "whole" person until I was thin. I was unhappy because I denied myself things that I wanted because I wanted to wait until I was the "real" me - aka thin. For example, I didn't bother with having cute clothes because I thought there was no point.

Being unhappy is no way to live, and no way to lose weight. I realized I would have to be okay with being fat WHILE I got thin. I always felt like if I accepted myself as I was, I'd give up trying to improve. Now, I have learned to stop comparing myself to anyone else except ... myself! And, I've learned to always be positive and, even if I screw up, to simply take a deep breath and move on.

I have learned to be happy with slow progress. In fact, it's my new motto - slow and steady. Eventually I will get there, and in the end, it will be a faster way to my goal than all those years of yo-yoing that got me nowhere! I've lost 15 pounds since October - very slow progress indeed, but I'll take it.

SlinkySpencer

It's really interesting to read these answers. I know on weight loss shows, they tend to believe everyone has a big 'reason' why they're obese, but I don't think that applies to everyone. At least, I'm not sure if it applies to me.

I really don't know the answer to this question. I started gaining weight when I was four. I don't know exactly how much I weighed by the time I was 5/6, but judging from my pictures, I would have been past overweight and going into the obese range then. What I know about my eating habits from that time....have no clue really. But I do know that by the time I was in public school I was already being exposed to 'diet-talk' and getting bullied for the weight by my classmates. As expected, this didn't help me lose weight. I remember really starting to 'eat like a fat kid' when I when I started college. Binging past curfew and all that jazz. Predictably, I gained quite a bit of weight in college. I'm 26 now and just back down to the weight I was halfway through college, after I'd lost weight for a spring break trip. So, for me, it's not about returning to my body's glory days, as much as transforming into the strong, healthy adult I've never been before.

mollyya90

In high school I was fit! I weighed 115 perfect body! Ran every single day. Then right out of high school I had heart surgery...stopped running...started eating. Started working at a mom pop Mexican restaurant and we could eat anything for free I took advantage ( I still work there just make healthier choices!) I started drinking more...led to hangovers...led to burgers and Mexican food. SUCKS

kjwillie

Depression. Emotional/binge eating. Not being raised in an environment to "speak your feelings". Feeling defeated. Quitting. Stopped working out. Big changes in life such as a gazillion moves during childhood and losing friendships. Being homeschooled, then going to high school for a time. It goes on and on.

But this year I am determined to be stronger and to become fit again! I want to do this for my health and wellbeing! There's only one me and I only live once. It's time to make the best of it. :-)

adorable_aly

A combination really- I have or used to have a disorder which basically crippled me for a few months, combined with an abusive ex boyfriend, food became control and comfort. Plus to try and cope we would get high and binge on literally thousands of calories.

It was a really dark time in my life. I'm so glad I got my happiness and health back.

Morninglory81

That entire bag of twirlers pull n peel I would eat in one sitting 3-4 times a week!

brennamathis

Main initial weight gain was my first pregnancy...I was doing really well with very little weight gain until about 28 weeks along when I went into pre-term labor...ended up on steroid shots, oral steroids, hormones, and other meds in order to keep baby in...side effect of all, of course, is weight gain. Not saying that food and pregnancy in general didn't contribute to the massive weight gain during the rest of the pregnancy, but I really do have a hard time believing that at the rate I had been going (prior to meds) that I would have gained 50 lbs in 3 months Lost a very large chunk of that weight pretty quickly after baby was born, went on depo, gained all the weight I had lost back while on depo plus another 20 lbs.

After that, I just plateaued with losing weight in general...my diet choices weren't great, I never consumed enough calories when taking into consideration that I was nursing a baby pretty much nonstop, and I drank a lot of the calories that I *did* manage to get into my body...the fact that I didn't gain MORE is a surprise to me to be honest. Two pregnancies later (with small weight gains that were lost within weeks), I finally decided to really force myself into losing that original weight. Definitely wish I had done it sooner because I'm really really struggling with it now and it's very slow coming off.

lklkl5

I believe mine is a progression of things. Growing up my older sister was always the too skinny gangly kid. I have a much bigger build than her. Her ring size is a 4 mine is a 7, her feet are a 7 while mine are a 10. We just got genes from different sides of the famiy. Anyway, when I hit junior high I had a very cute figure but didn't see it. I couldn't wear her clothes and thought it was because I was fat. I spent my whole jr high and high school years thinking I was overweight when I wasn't. Poor body image.

Next, I went off to college and majored in engineering. At that time there weren't a lot of women. So a lot of my friends were guys. We'd hang out and I'd eat like them. LOL thus the freshmen 15.

I then graduated. Hubby and I were both engineers so right out of school money wasn't a real issue, although I certainly wish I had some of that back now! Anyway, we ate out A LOT and I rarely cooked. Thus the next 20#'s plus.

Then came 2 kids in 17 months, less exercise, and more excuses. Bottom line, a lifetime of poor decisions that added up to a glaring problem. But not anymore!!!

jaycbadass

i love food, and the only reason i work out soo hard i so that I can eat more. I was always a chubby kid, with crappy genetics

techrolle

I was in excellent shape in high school, and my mom was very good about regulating nutrition while I was still in the house. Once I left, the nutrition went out the window in favor of hot dogs and ramen in college. Didn't start to gain weight until senior year of college and there were two main contributors:

1. I am a stress eater and translating four years of the stress of a full load at college on top of a full time job translated into a lot of fat, sugar and processed calories entering my system without restraint.

2. I was in denial about the fact that I was actually gaining weight. I told myself that I was putting on muscle or that my clothes were shrinking in the wash, etc. My ego wouldn't let me accept that I was in less than stellar shape even in the face of growing evidence.

red869

I was slim when I was younger but my elder sister who was extremely skinny was always about a stone lighter than me. I hated being larger than her and from a young age I began dieting. When I first started I dieting I was just 10 years old or thereabouts. I did so many different diets but I couldn't do it for very long and would give up within days. Throughout secondary school I tried different diets and even took weight-loss pills in secret. I lost weight a good few times, but eventually I always regained the weight back. I tried the 'water diet', the 'diet coke diet', the 'cabbage soup diet', the 'cereal diet', the 'fruit diet'... etc. Basically anything that I thought would make me skinny.

All the crash dieting made me gain a tonne of weight when I began eating again, particularly as I'd often binge eat after ending my diet. Also, I was taking steroids for a condition I have and that made it easier for me to gain weight. In school I was still slim, well within the normal weight category, but since leaving school I've just gained so much weight, I now am obese! The cycle of starving myself for months and then binge eating has continued but I'm really hoping that now I'll stop that for good! I'm too old to still be doing this but it's extremely difficult to break this habit it seems.

jklopezfamily

I have lupus and was put on steroids I've gained 80 pounds not to.mention the 20 I was already overweight

robbienjill

Martinis!

lauriem1966

Eating too much, binge eating and eating junk food while binge eating.

Pearsquared

We had fast food quite a bit when I was a kid. I was overweight then, but not overly so. I didn't really put on the weight until I had some mental troubles in college and while starting out working full-time. I developed a somewhat nasty binge eating problem, where I couldn't tolerate eating in front of others, but would eat myself to death at night. Also, cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. I think I could have lost at least some weight on just cutting down on cheese.

jemstone629

Part of it is side effects of certain medications, namely the slowing of my metabolism. Because I take these, it will always be a little more difficult for me to lose weight and keep weight off than others who do not take similar medications. However, poor eating habits (too much soda and fast food!) and a sedentary lifestyle helped really pack on the pounds.

SeaTurtleJenni

I was naturally thin with a fast metabolism. I gained after I turned 30 and started drinking beer. I became sedentary about the same time. I had always been pretty active when my kids were smaller, lifting them up and down, pushing them on swings, relay races, riding bikes, swimming, etc. When they outgrew needing me to play with them so much and joined team sports instead, I took a benchwarmer status and gained weight. Playing with little kids is a pretty good calorie burn. I had abs before even though I never did formal exercise. So it comes down to beer and laziness.

raingirl21

I was skinny when I was a kid, then I hit about 25 and my metabolism slowed down and my calorie intake didn't change. I had a desk job and little exercise. So I became overweight. Then dieted and lost it again. Then started to date my soon-to-be husband and he wined and dined me and then after we got married we entertained a lot. And whenever we'd have friends over we would have a few drinks and good food and those extra calories added up and I became overweight again. Now I'm on my journey to be healthy again.

gypsyrose64

I thought about that the other day. I never had a weight problem until I got pregnant with my son at the age of 29. Before that, food was not how I got pleasure. My mind was full of the weekend plans, trips, guys, going out, work, travel, etc.

Food just was not on my radar. Sure I liked it, but once I had my son, my life as I knew it changed. I no longer had all that excitement going on. Was time to settle down. And then bacon started smelling realllllll good. I became a French fryaholic.

Just what happened for me. Once I settled down, I started deriving quite a bit of pleasure from food. Became my reward, thing to look forward to, carb high, etc. And the problem with dieting is that I sometimes feel like there's nothing in its place. Takes work to get interested in something else when you're almost 50. Who wants to go clubbing anymore?

Been married 20 years. I love my husband. But I'm afraid I got sidetracked!

^^^ What she said.

Never had weight issue until I got pregnant first time and could NOT quit "eating for two".... or possibly three. 50 lbs BAM! and then #2 kiddo added another 50 lbs... and I never really tried to lose it until now. Depression kicked in somewhere along the way and sucked the motivation to move out of me. Twenty years of a desk job hasn't helped.

Now approaching 50 and everything hurts. It's hard to get excited about exercise when it's painful. So I rely more on counting calories to keep me in-line. I lost pretty quick at first, and now I seem to be hovering at this weight. I guess I can say I'm good at 'maintaining' now. Just gotta figure out how to shrink some more.