Reasons for sudden weight gain?

pounci

Everyone in my family is thin. I've always been thin. I've never, ever worried about my body.

Fast-forward to March 2012. I was on some medication for depression/anxiety that really messed up my brain. I then suffered an incredibly stressful month of hospitalization and treatment due to a suicide attempt. That summer, I moved to a different state.

Since then, I have been ballooning in weight. At 5', I weighed 98 in 2006, then 104 in 2010, then got up to 110 by 2012. Today, I am around 120, sometimes 119, sometimes over 120. I can't fit in the majority of my clothes, and I look awful. I never, ever in my entire life would have expected I'd be this heavy.

Eating cleaner and exercising isn't making any difference. I am still gaining weight.

Could there be an underlying cause for this? Sudden onset thyroid issues? I am no longer taking medication, so it isn't that.

I just don't know where to start. I feel like I went to bed skinny and woke up fat.

STC1188

While I hate to say this, that is not sudden weight gain: that is the creep of steady weight gain that, if no extra resistance training has been taken up, is most likely fat.

The trouble is not the type of food you are eating, but rather that you are eating too much or exercising too little. True, you could have a sudden onset problem physiologically, but more than likely that is not the case. You've been depressed (or have been before), so it would not surprise me if you engaged in comfort eating that ends up taking many by surprise.

The good news is you recognized the problem before it became a terrible one. Start logging everything and try and bring your calories down to a number that allows you to watch the scale slowly tick down. If you do cardio, continue that. If you don't do resistance training, start that too (note that you will have some weight gain associated with water if you are new to resistance training).

Good luck--the most important thing is to recognize you need to change something, and luckily you have done that. Now you just need to make it happen. And you can.

tonynguyen75

While I hate to say this, that is not sudden weight gain: that is the creep of steady weight gain that, if no extra resistance training has been taken up, is most likely fat.

The trouble is not the type of food you are eating, but rather that you are eating too much or exercising too little. True, you could have a sudden onset problem physiologically, but more than likely that is not the case. You've been depressed (or have been before), so it would not surprise me if you engaged in comfort eating that ends up taking many by surprise.

The good news is you recognized the problem before it became a terrible one. Start logging everything and try and bring your calories down to a number that allows you to watch the scale slowly tick down. If you do cardio, continue that. If you don't do resistance training, start that too (note that you will have some weight gain associated with water if you are new to resistance training).

Good luck--the most important thing is to recognize you need to change something, and luckily you have done that. Now you just need to make it happen. And you can.

Great reply.

Start tracking how much you actually eat. Things that are considered "healthy" can still make you put on fat if eaten at a surplus.

pounci

Thanks for the replies. It really does make sense.

I do overeat, and it's really hard not to. I'll make something healthy, like I'll bake squash in the oven with a little garlic salt, and I'll end up eating two squashes worth followed by two tomatoes and then something else because I still feel hungry. The 'satiated' feeling doesn't feel any different from hunger, and I only feel satisfied when I eat until I feel sick.

I used to be really, really active, and then I suddenly stopped 11 years ago. I figured the best way to get back into being active is to find a dance class or something, that way I'm paying for it so I have to go, but those are not in my budget right now.

The exercise I've been doing is 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3.5 on an incline of 1. If I run, I get very out of breath and my lungs hurt, so I'm starting slow.

I miss living in Japan because then I had an hour commute by foot to and from university, part of which was uphill. I had killer calves back then. Now, it's just so easy to get right in bed after work.