How did you gain the weight?

tm82001

I was at a healthy weight back in July 2012, was exercising (just finished the first month of Insanity), and was feeling amazing. On July 9th, my grand nephew, was visiting his grandpa and somehow snuck out the back door and fell into the decorative Koi fish pond. He was rescued, revived, and taken to the hospital. Two days later, July 11th, we were told that he would not make it and that we had to say our goodbyes. How do you say goodbye to an almost 2 year old? He was an incredible boy and the sadness was (and still is) unbearable. My hubby and I would babysit him all the time and he was just a great little man. My heart and spirit were broken. I stopped insanity and ate my feelings for a year. I got to the heaviest I had even been (without being pregnant) at 184 and was sick of looking at myself. In July 2013, I decided to honor his memory by taking care of myself instead of slowing killing myself with food. I am down to 169 pounds now and think of him whenever I am out walking...he loved the outdoors, cars, motorcycles, the ocean, running fast, and the wind in his hair.

Ninkyou

I started gaining weight in high school. I remember clearly, it was the first day of freshman year, walking back to class from the library when this skinny minnie girl called out to me and said, "Hey, why don't you lose some weight!" and proceeded to giggle with her equally skinny minnie girlfriends. Until this point, I had never even THOUGHT about my weight. I was a kid. But that little smidgen of bullying pretty much set the stage for the past 17 years for me. Since then, it's ALWAYS been in the back of my head. It depressed me and drove my self-esteem way down. Luckily I met a man who doesn't care how I look, he just cares that I'm happy. So for 17 years since that moment, it's been a mixture of depression, eating fast food everyday, taking comfort in sweets at ridiculous portions, etc. I gained weight from my pregnancy with my daughter 5 years ago, and after that I packed on another 25 lbs in the following 5 years. I've obviously known I should/need to lose weight for many years, but I just was not *ready* to face the challenge. Now I am. I'm 1.4 lbs away from being my post-partum weight from 5 years ago. I'm making progress. My self-esteem has gotten much better too. Also, now that I'm exercising (outdoors and such) I don't feel depressed like I used to. It's been a great.

SmallMimi

Plan and simple - sitting on my backside and eating too much.

louisegibbs85

Got comfortable in a relationship, didn't go out so our nights together consisted of films, take always and munchies .... didn't exercise, got pregnant .... ate everything in sight even more , before I knew it I was 17 and a half stone

marshxomellow

My weight gain started as a child. My mother would just feed my sister and I junk food, McDonald's, etc. Basically she didn't really encourage a healthy lifestyle for all of us. Then as I got old enough to where I was living on my own I started gaining more weight. I totally felt at complete loss of what to do. Everything felt so complicating to achieve. I bought a few diet books, bought health magazines which made things feel more impossible to achieve for myself. I was also in a bad long distance relationship with someone.
Negativity pretty much led me to a downward spiral. Eventually something clicked and I realized I was making it to hard on myself. I was over thinking things. And weight loss isn't as complicated as it seems. Just small changes can make for great results. But I realized I had to be patient because it won't always come off as fast as I thought it would.

Mocking0jay

It started as a child, after my parents divorced. I kind of lost it in junior high, but my younger sister constantly called me fat and I believed it. I ate more to deal with emotions. Seems like every school year starting after junior high I gained a size. I also had large breasts so was insecure about my body. I kept eating, quit looking at myself in the mirror, and winded up at 215 lbs at 4 foot 11 inches tall.

last year, right before college graduation, i'd lost 65 pounds, gotten down to 150. then with a new job working overnight, depression, pregnancy/loss of pregnancy, i got back up to 200. i'm now about 188-190. struggling again.

i eat emotionally. eat and eat and eat. i've gotten away from eating until i'm stuffed and hurting and uncomfortable, but i still struggle with wanting to constantly snack and eat everything in sight.

i had cut out carbs and sugar which helped, but i'm struggling with carbs again.

LiftHeavyWeights

I actually was still in the weight range for my height but my body fat had gone up. I knew it when I could no longer sleep on my side comfortably. The lump of fat on my stomach would shift & hang off like a giant weight.

I got there by eating portions too large even though the food choices were good. My exercise program of a half hour each day was no longer adequate as I got older.

It also was caused by doing contract work where there were no breaks for food or bathroom & no washroom or break room for staff even if there had of been breaks. No eating was allowed on the job.

action_figure

Terrible food habits from infancy on, pretty much. Then throw in eating for emotional reasons and that pretty much covers it.

DorothyR87

I played high school year round up until I graduated from high school so I was always in pretty good shape. After that I went from doing exercise from 2 hours a day to none at all. I gained about 20 pounds in 2 years. Then I met my husband and I guess I stopped even remotely trying and gained another 40 lbs in 4-5 years. I think I had developed mentality in high school that my body would always just be the way it was then because I certainly didn't watch what I ate. So when I got to college I kept the same thought process and ballooned because I wasn't exercising to counteract what I ate.

Beckilovespizza

I also got comfortable in a relationship. Seems to be a really common reason for a lot of people in this thread. Maybe we should all be single and skinny lol! Seriously though if my lovely bf was not supportive i wouldn't stand a chance to loose weight, bless him xx

TheFitHooker

A number of things, I was an obese child, over weight teenager, and morbidly obese adult. I ate huge portions, ate crap food, and was depressed, hated myself to not care about myself, was in a car accident in 2007, was told I'd never have full function back in my right arm, was told I'd be lucky to see 40% back but the doc said he don't expect me to get more than 20% back, I have 80% back because one thing I enjoy is drawing and I need my right arm to draw, so I wanted to get it back bad enough. Doctor told me I wouldn't ever be able to do anything that put a lot of pressure on my arm, like a cart wheel, push up, pull up, plank, thinks like that.

Food was always my comfort, lots and lots of fried foods. By time 2009 hit, I was at my heaviest, my dad had a heart attack and found out in the same day he was a diabetic. I had been showing signs of diabetes. April of 2010 I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. First trimester, found out I had diabetes. So now I had a choice to make, learn to love myself enough to have a healthy pregnancy, which meant putting my daughter before me, and control the diabetes and not let it control me, or give up and let the diabetes win.

Dropped 70 lbs while pregnant, which put me down to 180 lbs. I'm 5'1.5 so that's still obese for me. Had my daughter, gained 25.5 back, 205.5 lbs. I was angry at myself, I was depressed, I was at my breaking point, and realized only I could fix this. Jumped on here and haven't stopped.

Now I'm doing planks, push up's, cat wheels and back bends. I was told I'd never stick with this life style change, but 132 lbs later, I'm still going strong. Almost logged in for 700 day's.

Back in 2009 that Christmas, I asked my husband for a bike, he got me a bike, pretty pink bike. I remember riding the bike and thinking it was so much easier as a child lol. My tires kept going flat, my husband told me there was a 200 lb weight limit on the bike, and asked me how much I weighed, I got very offensive that he thought I was bigger than 200 lbs. But truth was I was 50 lbs over the weight limit.

Sure has been a ride.

NonnyMary

I ate like anything and everything I wanted.. no regard for calories, nutrition, or how fattening it was. If i wanted a light salad I'd eat it, but not as i do now.

had 2 kids so i gained some weight there.

in 2000 - 2005 i was a dancing queen, loved to go to the nightclub and dance all night, and after going to the gym 3 times a week, and i was about 230 - 260 pounds in that time. i was very active actually, walked to work 4 miles a lot of times rather than take the bus.

then i got into some pretty heavy depressing stressful things with my kids and ex husband,,, i then ate to deal with the stress, eating 3 brownies or eclairs did me a lot of de-stressing.. of course it put on wieght.. then i started to not go out dancing, just being a boring person, then i got involved with church, since it was so strict they didn't encourage anything like weight loss, dancing, or whatever that was keeping me healthy. so then life became kinda blah, and so that was the only pleasure i had - eating.. working coming home, watching tv, being a couch potato, and so i dind't care.. and enjoyed food a lot.

SairahRose

I stopped exercising but continued eating the same amount and then I discovered the wonderful art of excuses!

This for me. Then I started uni, and ate more - justifying it because I was exercising (even though I didn't decrease the first time). Finished that and joined band - easier to have fast food when rehearsing or performing, after that became pregnant - I had severe sickness throughout, but my body let me eat takeout.
All of these things were used as excuses when I could have just listened to my body in the first place.

morticia16

I just stopped taking care of myself. I've been active all my life but then some 8 yrs ago, I don't know, changes in my life, change of too many jobs, moving all over the place, stress etc etc etc Somewhere inbetween I stopped moving, stopped checking my weight and started blaming the "impossible situation" and "stress" for everything bad in my life, including my weight that started creeping up. So there, some 4 months ago I made a decision to take control. To become active. To start moving. To eat better. To live better. And yes, I started checking my weight regularly too. And voila.

Gwibbertronii

Pfft, tons of reasons. My mother was a sugar addict and attempted to restrict our intake as kids, saying she didn't want us to "be fat like her". Unfortunately she then involved us in her secret binges, and sweets and chocolate in cohorts with mum became our escape from an overbearing and Victorian stepfather. And so two more sugar addicts were born.

The moment I had my own pocket money I was hoarding sugar-laden crap and eating it secretly, hiding the wrappers. When I left home at 19 I ate whatever I wanted, loving the freedom, and got chubby. It's basically been a spiral of dieting and emotional bingeing ever since.

Interestingly my brother also got quite fat, and then lost 40 lbs in his mid-30's existing purely on black coffee and dry toast (and some cocaine, I believe). Now he runs every day, starves during the week and eats normally at weekends. He has kept it off and sneers at me for still being fat.

Mum is now 75 and has shrunk to 5ft and 140 lbs. She still talks about dieting and restricting calories because she's fat.....

herestoanewme03

For me it was three babies, bed rest during pregnancies, a divorce when my children where under the age of 2. Food became my reward at the end of a rough day as a single Mom. It then became by comforter when I was weary.

I went from a size 4 to a size 18 but, I was so focused on the kids that I had no energy for me. It became an issue this year for me when the woman who loved to get dressed despised it as NOTHING fit or looked right. Unfortunately, I do not live in ancient Rome where just a sheet would do- can anyone say Toga?!?!

So, here I am on the road to finding that smaller, healthy, vibrant me: :flowerforyou:

43932452

I got up to 316 and beyond but wasn't weighing after hitting
that number. I got huge by eating anything I wanted, every
chance I had. Drinking a lot of of soda and/or booze. Being
sedatary made it all worse.

laineybz

I ate what i wanted, without checking how bad it was. I passed my driving test and stopped walking to and from work.

lisa4748

I got pregnant and ate everything and anything I wanted too, not realizing that all the oreos I ate were going to MY middle - not my daughter's.. lol It's been 2 years since I had her, I joined MFP 8/30, and I've lost 4 lbs so far.

rstanfield5

I gained weight after I quit martial arts. I was very competitive and things fell apart, so I ended up sitting at home all of the time, not exercising. I ate all kinds of stuff that wasn't good for me. I didn't even realize how large I had gotten until I saw pictures that other people have taken of me. So I just started my official diet a month ago because I don't want to feel the way I felt when I saw those pictures ever again.

tatianna68

Three heriated disks, hysterectomy, menopause, desk job, it all added up. Once I realized none of these were good excuses I got off my butt and got back into shape.

Ed98043

It was a slow process for me, gaining 5 or 10 lbs a year from age 35ish to 46ish. I just didn't put a stop to it when I should have...instead I floated along denial ("not just a river in Egypt!") thinking I wasn't that big. When the scale hit 220 and my size 16s were getting too tight, I had to face reality.

swaistle

Same as OP! Too comfy with relationship unfortunately i did become obese also i think it was the transition from teenager to young adult where i had to feed myself and since i never got much treats as chip shops and pizza, i went overboard and had them loads

matchbox_girl

Same here, I got comfortable in my relationship. It stopped becoming all about trying to look good for guys, because I finally had one. Gained almost 40 pounds. So did my fiance.

neffeybaby

i've been fat most of my life

TheBaileyHunter

Stress coupled with poor eating habits (no food all day then binging at night) and no activity levels, then add some real joy of cooking in there and BOOM BABY!

I find when the stress level goes down, I lose weight, unless it was severe emotional stress in which case the reverse happens.

I've had weight issues pretty much all my life. Food was a demon and a reward in my house growing up, and I carried that along with me into adult hood.

Bottom line, too much in, not enough paying attention, and not moving for my body's sake.

JL2513

It was a very gradual weight gain through a number of years. I was always chubby, but the more rapid gain came about halfway through high school. Five pounds this year, five pounds another year....it was so gradual and I always tried to not think too much about it. I always thought I'd work it off later when I had more time and more motivation. Thankfully, I snapped out of it this year

jollyjoe321

Mhm, gained it as I just like eating, best way to describe it

holagatita

I gained weight when I got pregnant with my first kid. I gained 60lbs and after i had him had a hard time getting rid of it. I just had my second 5mos ago and Im working on getting down to a "normal" range not really what i was in the beginning (I have hips and boobs now).

loveiskind1025

It was my mistake but I fell for a guy who constantly whistled at other girls when I was in the car. It really brought down my confidence. Add to that a mix of antpsychotics that I took for a weeks that made me overweight within a week. I have quit all medication I was taking and am down to 137. I still feel like why should I bother.. But I want to get down to 120. My ultimate goal.