What caused you to become overweight (apart from eating)

DarrelBirkett

Beer
Love of danish pastries & full fat milky coffee
Desk job
Being lazy
Chocolates
More beer.

I still have the odd pint, drink black coffee, still sit on my *kitten* all day at work but now go to the gym most mornings beforehand, still have the odd chocolate or odd danish but these things are infrequent instead of the norm. Was really just about breaking habits and creating new ones.

mygrl4meee

I ate out of boredom and a lot of emotional eating to feel better when I was sad or mad about something. Also just not a lot of planning meals when I went to work. Way too much fast food.

_SABOTEUR_

My love affair with takeout food and inability to apply moderation.

CFAITH_WARD

Well I moved back home to WV from CA where the way of life is very different...Don't get me I love WV but we are just not outside as much as I was in CA and I think I need non-lazy friends. I lost 40 lbs a couple years ago but through change in job schedule and also depression from a miscarriage.... I gained it all back and then some....I am now ready to FIGHT FOR MY SELF!

Azexas

I played a lot of sports in high school and stayed very active. I got to college and stopped sports because I couldn't find balance between practice and studying. I also found nursing school to be extremely stressful. So my weight shot up... instead of the freshamn 15 I gained the freshman 30.:grumble:

HotrodsGirl0107

Apart from eating I would say I became obese because I was a lazy couch potato with a rather inactive lifestyle. There were no medical reasons or prescriptions that would have caused it.

patty1138

Bump

jrbb03092

Dieting.

I had such a messed up opinion of my weight and body when I was in my teens/early 20s that I thought I was fat when I wasn't (5'8" and 120 pounds) and every time I dieted to get lower, I'd end up binging and gaining a few pounds when I went off the diet. Add to that, going from being a fairly active athlete to a desk job in a office and a few pounds each year became 90 (from that original weight) over 20 years.

Gah. I look back now and I could just kick myself. That said, I never had a very healthy relationship with food - my mum was always dieting - and although I'm still heavy and working on working out my own issues, at least I have managed not to pass this on to my daughter. She's a normal weight with a very good sense of self. She's vegetarian, very adventurous food-wise and has no problems with portion control. Yay!

llkilgore

I think I came into this world in the late 50's and grew up in a time when all the modern conveniences were just starting to come into our lifes. TV, TV Dinners, foods from space that have long storage lifes, you name it, it was the rage.

You missed the big one for those of us who grew up in the South: air conditioning. When I was a young child we spent a lot of time outside during the summer, even in the hottest of weather. But it was a time when air conditioning was still rare enough that local businesses that had it thought that fact was worth featuring in their advertising. For some reason, my parents quickly got out of the habit of taking us to the swimming pool just about every afternoon after having central air installed when I was around 12. By the time I reached adulthood it had well and truly crossed the line between luxury and necessity and you din't see a lot of kids playing outside anymore.

About the TV dinners: I can date the beginning of my weight gain in part to the day I realized that some of the modern equivalents to the TV dinners we baby boomers ate as kids now contain grown up things like artichoke hearts.

afia233

Ive never been overweight (thank god) although its fascinating reading this thread....

majope

For me, it was eating. I love food. I grew up very active, walked everywhere, swam and hiked in the summer, skated and skied in the winter. As long as I didn't have a car or live in a place that had good public transportation, I was good.

But all those years of eating to fuel a lot of activity gave me a false sense of eating "normally." When I did get a sedentary job, did get a car (in my 30s), stopped walking, didn't get exercise for the fun of it...and still ate like I'd learned was normal, I gained a lot of weight.

Things have been much better since I started running, but I still didn't lose much weight until I also controlled my eating. Tracking calories has given me a new sense of normal, and running gives me the calories to indulge my love of food without going haywire.

nondomesticgoddess

It's strange....I was thinking about this too. I was one of 7 children, and my parents owned farm land in addition to our suburban home. We spent evenings and weekends "at the farm" working. We had a massive garden, cattle, chickens....We ate mostly beef, drank milk from our dairy cow, and had veggies all year round because my mother canned and froze from the garden. I was almost underweight as a child and teen. Partly because we ate healthy and lean, but partly because we ONLY ate what we grew...I was very bored with food. My parents couldn't afford eating out, or extras. When I left home I was 5'6" and weighed 112 pounds.

Then I left for college and was introduced to the wonderful world of food variety. I had never eaten Chinese, or Thai, or Mexican or most Italian. There were salad bars with cheese, ham, bacon and hard boiled eggs - and this wonderful dressing called Thousand Island! I had never tried processed foods aside from the occasional frozen pizza or macaroni added to chili. I was in food heaven....so many new tastes and textures! So, when I was forming my own cooking and shopping habits....well, I wasn't too worried about nutrition. It was all about taste and convenience - breading, sauces, cheeses, rices and pastas. The reward for a long day at work followed by raising children was a decadant, flavorful meal.

Fast forward 30 years and 110 pounds. I have to find new "treats" for myself other than food. New "comfort" for myself other than food. I have to learn to balance what is good for me, along with what tastes good to me. I need to realize the whole world is a wonderland to explore - not just the things I put in my mouth.

sillyjeepgirl

I grew up in a family where food was always the center of every gathering. I'd say how I was raised as well.

Then it became depression and stress that kept me lazy and consuming, and then I formed a relationship with food where it made me happy but my weight made me sad.

DekkaTwoOneWizzy

Became romantically entangled with a gorgeous women who was high propensity obese under that skin....borrowed all her eating habits and behaviours because the sex was amazing. Ended up fat and single when that came to its sickening end. Have been a stud ever since.

teresab46970

Mine started right after I had breast cancer, I over came that but I then went thru an abusive relationship, very and I became depressed and I gave up. I didnt care how I looked, what I wore, nothing. And even tho I am losing some weight and trying hard to take off 30 pounds, I still look in the mirror and see a person that is still being abused. All I can do is take it one day at a time. And each day that goes by and each pound I lose and for every inch that comes off, I am one step closer to getting "me" back.

WendyTerry420

I am pretty sure that over-eating is the only reason that I gained weight.

NikiMorgan27

My gain started when I had to begin taking medication for an overactive thyroid. It slowed my metabolism and the weight began to creep up. I soon found this site and it has helped with keeping me on track with eating healthy (most of the time) and exercise. I love MFP!!

SmileyFaceGuy

Just overeating. I was overweight even before I started playing video games 5+ hours a day instead of backyard football and skateboarding. Of course, the gaming made me gain even more weight because I was overeating AND not being very active. Then I started playing videos on a PC and got addicted (not literally) to the Internet and basically never left the house.

sunforme3

For me my weight issues began after I got married and started having children. It wasn't so much that I let myself go, I simply lost myself, caring for everyone else left little time for me and the weight just crept on until one day I realized OMG I'm fat, lol, of course this realization hit when I had to go buy a dress for an event and couldn't believe that NOTHING fit. Leggings and oversized tees made running after 3 little ones easy, and made it even easier for the weight to come on without much notice, I mean who had time to look in the mirror. high expectations and ridiculous goals, and I was off on that vicious cycle of dieting.............and now here I am looking to have a lifestyle change without dieting..............really DIETING should be banned, lolol!!!

Francl27

I was always overweight, so bad eating habits growing up that took a long time to go away. Then starting a new job and having to eat out all the time. Then moving and not having any reason to walk anymore (I used to commute to work and walk 1-2 hours a day).

And fertility hormones and steroids that didn't help either (a few rounds of steroids, and a steroid inhaler I use every day, although it's not proven that everyone gains weight from that).

tashiaberman

My journey into obesity began when I found myself pregnant at age 40. My normal weight before that was 120 lbs, even after having two children. After the last one, I developed a heart problem that made me be a couch potato for 6 - 8 weeks, on medication for a year and unable to breast feed. Instead of going back to my 120 lb. weight, I was only able to get down to 140 lbs.

Fast forward 10 years and with the onset of peri-menopause I had put on about 10 lbs, up to 150, and started exercising. That 10 lbs fell off with no problem. I thought it would be easy to lose the rest of the overweight with continued exercise, but I let my husband talk me into quitting smoking and the weight just piled on. No matter how much I dieted or exercised, the weight just kept piling on.

Here I am today, in or maybe past menopause, and weighing 200 lbs. If I diet an exercise, I don't gain any more, but neither do I lose any. I have been on thyroid medicine for about a month and have not seen any weight loss from that either. I do have a bit more energy though and less inflammation and tiredness.

Now I have gone back to college -- distance learning from home -- and work full time, so I have almost no time to exercise. If I can eek out 1 night per week to go to karate class, I'm lucky. I tried getting up an hour earlier to exercise, but by Wednesday or Thursday I'm so exhausted from the early rising that I can't do my evening studies and end up going to bed early for two or three days to catch up on the lost sleep.

I do cook at home from scratch mostly. I spent a year or more on a 1500 cal/day diabetic diet that my doctor gave me -- gained weight. I tried the low carb, low glycemic-index diet, watching my fat intake and eating mostly fish, chicken and fresh veggies for about a year -- gained weight. I was on a 1200 cal/day low-carb diet tracked through this site, but still gain weight if I go off the diet for even a short time. I rarely eat beef or pork, eating mostly chicken and fish, mostly baked, boiled, broiled, sometimes fried. I eat a variety of vegetables prepared from scratch, squash, beets, spinach, beans, lettuce, celery, peppers, onions, tomatoes and some occasional potatoes, pasta or rice, a lot of quinoa. I try to avoid bread a much as possible, but do have an occasional chicken salad sandwich or turkey-burger, or a bagel for breakfast once in a while. I've mostly been having slim-fast shakes for breakfast.

Now with this thyroid medicine, I find I'm not supposed to eat cruciferous veggies, such as spinach, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, which were my mainstay veggies of choice before. This seriously cuts down on my green veggie varieties and I am getting to the point that I don't eve know what to eat anymore. It seems that everything is off limits and makes me fat or interferes with my medicine, so I don't know what to do anymore.