Why did you let yourself go?...

MelStren

Because our society allows mothers to use pregnancy and having children as a valid excuse to get fat and stay that way. Pure and simple. I used my children as an excuse to not work out.

This^^^^^. and then I just got lazy. It was too easy to just sit and eat. Still is but I refuse to go back there.

karagreeves

Because our society allows mothers to use pregnancy and having children as a valid excuse to get fat and stay that way. Pure and simple. I used my children as an excuse to not work out.

I love this!!

When I complain about my weight people say, 'you have had 2 kids' but I know deep down that the weight is there because i have eaten too much and moved to little for the last few years!

amanda_newell

Me too!

amanda_newell

I dint even know what is in style now! That is how long its been since i went shopping. Ive been hiding behind my glasses and ponytail/bun for YEARS!

deacs5one

Youth!!!

With a sedentary lifestyle with a family and at work, getting older has definitely caught up with me, but I'm fighting back now with a lifestyle change.

amanda_newell

I avoid the camera too..... It is jarring sometimes to see myself how i am instead of how i was before...in my head im still not soo fat

Morninglory81

My mother hit menopause and gained a little weight(she has never been heavy). She made a comment about how good I looked and that I need to keep it up because eventually your body revolts. I knew she was unhappy with her weight and that is a trigger for me. I began to eat and gain(so she felt better in comparison). I reached 198 lbs more than I weighed 9 months pregnant! My mother pulled me aside and told me I needed to get control of my weight for her health! Turns out she has the same trigger as I do. Now we are sharing our victories and not our failures pushing each other to be healthy if not for ourselves than tor the health of each other.

Lesa_Sass

Because drinking was my priority. I did not realize I was letting myself go until I got sober. I did not realize what horrible things I was doing to my body. I loved drinking and I did it a few nights a week. I never intended to drink the whole bottle of wine, just a glass, but before you knew it, I justified drinking the whole thing, then a few beers after that.

So then bad food choices are made, which we justify as okay because I was never going to drink like that again. Of course exercise on a consistent basis was out of the question. And the cycle continued and it was okay, after all, I was only hurting me.

One day I woke up and realized it was not okay for anyone else to hurt me, why was it okay for me to hurt me?

I stopped drinking and started making one change in my life at a time. After I started getting better with the food, I added in a little bit of exercise, 2 miles a day, then 3, then 5 then I started running.

<<<<< 5 years and 35 weeks later, (actually 34 weeks because I took this pic last week) this is what is happening.

VickiDiane22

I was getting older and my eating and exercise habits didn't change and the weight just gradually sneaked up on me. It didn't help that I had health issues that put me on 7 different kinds of meds with the side affect of weight gain. Then one day the Dr. said I had Type 2 diabetes and told me to get on MFP and change my life style. So here I am and it's working slowly but surely.

shannongoneau

Physically: I wasn't paying attention to how much I was eating and how little I was moving and the ever loving freshman 15 *cough* 30 *cough*. Psychologically: When I was smaller it put me into a lot of awkward situations that I wasn't ready to deal with, maybe wasn't equiped to deal with. It was easier to blend in being bigger. I went from a size 2 to a size 18 in six years.

Alexandra289

As a teenager there were several occasions where boys bullied me for being ugly. Mixing that with being a pretty unhappy teenager I just piled on weight over a year or two. Looking back, it was almost liberating - like, yes now I'm fat and really ugly, I know and you don't have to tell me.

I decided to lose the weight when my Dad sent me and my mum to a spa as a well done to me for completing my exams. I spent half the day crying when I got in my swimming costume because I just felt so huge. Other than that, I was a lot happier and had overcome other problems and I realised my weight was one of the last things I really needed to fix.

pet1127

Complacency and denial.

^^^^
that in a nut shell

CalypsoNi

Well, mine started mentally. From age 11-18 I was with a guy who was.. well, abusive. He would hit me, down my artistic skill and tell me I couldn't draw, and would mentally just plain out abuse me. Weirdly enough he never went verbally, but he never so much as called me "pretty" either. It was always "eh". Once I got away from him it was the best thing ever! However mentally I still felt like crap. I would look in the mirror and.. well, I thought I looked like the ugliest thing in the world, so why try to look pretty? I was constantly called ugly in school because I have chicken pox scars all over my face from a bad outbreak when I was little.
I put all my focus in to either MMO's for a while or art, which had me on my bottom drinking soda all the time, just to keep myself from thinking about some things.(I still do both, but that suppression method to it is gone, now it's mostly art. It's my job after all.)

However now, 60lbs heavier and with a companion who adores me regardless, I think it's time that I give myself the body that i've always wanted(20lbs+ lighter than my original weight). I want to be able to look good in my eyes, as well as others and not be ashamed to show myself in public.

animelose2012

I moved out of my parents house for the first time in 30 years. I moved in with my boyfriend and his roommate to a city i have never lived in . So moving in one week, getting used to a different routine, eating the boyfriends cooking (bacon fat to cook eggs) . Also around the time of the move it was the holidays so of course there was the company food and the gift of food the clients like to bring. Not exercising . So it was a perfect storm and stress lots of stress.

owlets1401

I suffer from chronic hip pain and for the last for years I wasn't allowed to exercise, nor did I want to with all the pain, in case in was my bones. So I was put on a strict diet of 1200 calories a day and had many meal plans and such until the doctors could figure out my medical issues. Then from the start of my restricted calorie intake I put on weight. I weigh 15kg more than what I should have for my height and build. So when I was referred to physio because they couldn't think of anything else to do. It was one of the best days of my life because I'm now allowed to be active again. At the moment its only light stuff because it's going to take awhile before I am normal again. But I am getting there and have lost inches off my body

CudyBug

Because our society allows mothers to use pregnancy and having children as a valid excuse to get fat and stay that way. Pure and simple. I used my children as an excuse to not work out.

really? I feel the opposite I think society puts an unrealistic and expectation on mothers to lose their baby weight. Victoria Beckham, Gwen Stefani, Heidi Klum, etc. I was pregnant while Britney Spears was.....I was in a race to lose that baby weight!!

to the original question.....I never really felt like I let myself go, just have to try harder to stay toned as I get older....

Exactly! Honestly I do think saying anyone pregnant is getting fat is wrong. Honestly, I know people who have gotten pregnant and were so worried about "getting fat" that they starved themselves BUT still got extremely large. It happens.

Anyway back to the question. I never "let myself go" persay. I never was a girly girl or anything. Never really was overweight untill I got pregnant with my first and just kept eating like I had been (teenager diet ha) and gained a ton of weight. I had her and my world just revolved around this little baby. Appearance was never important to me and since I was still pretty healthy, I didn't care. My world was her. Then 2 years later I had another baby which I actually lost a bunch of weight while pregnant but again had him and was so focused on two children under three that I ended up gaining some weight and keeping it. Throw on a year later my husband losing his job and struggling untill we lost everything and had to move in with my mother in law. The dynamics at that house put me into a depression which wasn't the cause of the poor eating but eating out because of other factors. Gained quite a bit but then 9 months later moved and soon lost 50 lbs felt great but decided another baby would be a great idea. I really did try to not gain but pregnancy is unpredictable and I gained back that 50 lbs and kept it on now 18 months after he was born. Of course my home life is crazier with two children, homeschooling and all that stuff so yes I am put on the back burner for now. My children are more important then I am and I refuse to take time away from them leaving at the daycare at the gym. Not to mention my third child has proven to be quite the difficult child.

smithcentral

Food was my drug of choice. It was delicious, legal, and readily available. Every time I was depressed, happy, stressed, or celebrating an event, I over-ate.

Rennie13

I was unhappy and ate to fill a void in my heart. I poured my time into a career and outside activities and did not care enough about my self to schedule "me" time to exercise and eat right. I had been taught that "real women" did not do that....they gave their time to others and that I was not important enough to do that. I still struggle with these issues but know that I need to give myself the gift of time in order to take care of myself and my kids. It is still a struggle.

ozigal

I never understood or even wanted to understand nutrition. I used to enjoy sports when I was young but I ate whatever I wanted when I wanted and then was too fat to participate in any sport. That spiralled downwards unfortunately.

My attitude was that life was too short to be not be happy and that eating what I wanted, not caring about how I looked or how healthy I was made me happy.

Reality is that life gets much shorter if you don't look after yourself and that it's difficult to participate in things if you are too fat to do them and I only realised that last year. I suppose 44 years late is better than never

KittyViolet

Because when you're dating a guy who has no interest in pursuing anything (including you!) but peak levels on MMOs all day AND night, it's pretty f@$#ing easy to drown yourself in more poor choices. -____- Every attempt I made to regain control crashed and burned because he was too lazy to even feign support, let alone try it with me.

So, new, fit boyfriend. New, healthy choices. New, rockin' life.