Why did you let yourself go?...

I stopped believing in myself.

This is going to sound crazy...but it was Cancer. I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. The chemo actually caused me to gain weight and go thru menopause. I had multiple surgeries, and finally feel like a woman again. When I finished all that, I made goals for myself. 1. Get my MBA- Done! 2. Run a 5K- Done 3. Lose this weight- Working on it. 4. Run a 1/2 marathon - signed up for November race. And many more goals

If I can get thru 19 months of chemo, multiple surgeries, get my MBA and run 5K's.....I know I have the stuff to make this stick and lose this weight. I just need some friends to help me along the way.

It was a process. I was 135 after losing the freshman 15, and I loved the way I looked. Then a year later I was at 145. Then 150. Then 155 at graduation. Then 170 a year later. Then 205 last Christmas. Each time I told myself, ok, this is it. I'll accept this weight, but it won't get any higher. And then it would, because I didn't change what I was eating or doing. I was clueless about just how much I ate and how little I burned. I'm still not the best with exercise, but I know how many calories I need, and how many calories I'm getting. I've said to myself, this weight is not acceptable and I will change it, and I'm acting on that.

Well,
Lots of reasons, really.
I have always had **** metabolism and can be pretty GD lazy when I want to be.
I grew up in an extremely low income household. So the food we could afford wasn't always the best, just something to fill bellies it not always with nutrition. This didn't really help with being the fat kid.
As I grew into my early teens I developed a pretty gnarly eating disorder (as in I didn't) which kept me dangerously underweight for close to 10 years.
Enter pregnancy at 19. I gave up the not eating and ate everything. I had a lot of problems with weak joints and bones (from being malnourished) and was ordered on bed rest for a decent chunk of it and gained about 100lbs.
The first was born and I was lazy, I ate better but didn't step up the exercise for the first couple of years and I still didn't eat that much better. Then there is the regular depression coupled with the post partum that almost make it impossible to get out of bed some days, let alone find the motivation to even clean the house. Forget about exercise.
I started dropping down a bit after she hit her second birthday then about 6 months later, found out I was pregnant again. This time I ate better, moved more but still had hip displacement and couldn't get as much exercise as I wanted or needed to.
Now, my second is 2, I find it extremely hard to lose any weight while breast feeding but I'm still sitting at damn near 200lbs and am fairly and doughy. I can't stand it. My kids deserve better than this and so do I.

So I guess the short answer would be: Lack of self moderation. I go too far into extremes. Either I don't eat anything or I eat all the things.

I never learned how to take care of myself properly in the first place.

Not to say that my choices over the course of my life have been anyone's but my own, but I didn't have a very good foundation.

My family are social eaters. Someone has a baby, we eat. Someone drops by to say hello, out come the tables of food. Someone gets married, we eat. Familiy supper - restaurant! Get the idea? Everything positive in my life revolved around food. So, naturally I easily associate eating with good feelings. Add on top of that being busy in activities etc. and it leads to a lot of convenience foods.

So, I was always heavy. It was the year I got engaged that I decided to do something about it. Went on a ridiculous low cal diet (think 800-100 calories a day) and lost about 60 pounds in about 5 months. You can bet that weight didn't stay off. . .when I got married the following year, I was 15-20 pounds heavier, but still not as heavy as I had been. I gained a lot while pregnant, and joined weight watchers after my first to lose it all plus the extra 20 pounds I'd been carrying around for the last 3 years. Repeat after baby #2 was born, only without weight watchers this time.

Through all of that I have learned very real, very healthy, very good habits in my eating. Yes, I'm still trying to drop some of the weight, and yes I don't always make the best choices, but this is a lifelong change, not a quick fix and then boom, I'll be cured from ever being fat again.

So, I don't think I let myself go because I didn't know how to control myself in the first place and how to properly make good choices for me and my body.

I let myself go so I could join MFP and meet great and beautiful people!!!

I just didn't care enough about myself

this I didn't care enough about my body. I hated myself. And I eat away all the hate and pain.

Well, because I greatly enjoy

Soda
Fast Food
Pizza
Candy
Salty Snacks
Fried Chicken
etc

and BEER

My main issue was Emotional/Verbal abuse....food became my "safe haven". The weight gain turned into shame, self hate, and not giving two sh#ts about anything.

At the end of the day, I had given up on myself. Plain and simple.

Never again.

I never did. I'm a constant yo-yo dieter with a history of disordered eating. I'm just trying to focus on losing weight in a sane and manageable way now. Oh and focusing on getting strong and fast and awesome rather than skinny and weak and tired.

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.

Isn't that the truth, I am actuallyl osing weight to hae a baby lol

That's why I'm losing too!! But I just pretty much became lazy...I got a desk job where I sat for 12 hours and on top of that continued to eat junk and fast food...plain and simple, put bad stuff in your body on top of being lazy you're going to get big!

I kept eating like I was playing and training for high school football, but I was neither training nor in possession of a high schooler's metabolism. Once the weight gain started, it was easier to go with it than to try and go healthy, particularly given the stress and poverty of college.

Depression, self loathing, and excussives like I am to busy to work out. Life is complicated and it is so easy to give up or loose sight of what is important. I know I did for a long time.

I had severe depression and a mental disorder and was on a lot of medication as treatment, one of which was a major appetite increaser but I don't blame my weight gain on that, though it sure as hell didn't help.
I ate food to try and fill the void and had no self control, nor any desire to work out. I didn't care about myself or my appearance.
I first gained extra weight when I was 10/11 but lost it by the time I was 13. I was a little chunky but not overweight, I was an active kid.
I gained a lot when I was 16/17 and later I also developed bulimia. I've been in recovery for a year but you gain a helluva lot of weight when you start eating healthily again, your body just latches onto any calories it can get and stores them as fat.
Now, I'm trying to lose weight and keep it off, and get my dream body while fixing my attitude towards food.
I've never been massively over weight, my highest weight was about 190lbs and I'm 5'8", but I used to maintain at around 140lbs before I gained weight. I'm 161lbs now and aiming for 135.

Good question. When I was younger I was the skinnny kid. No matter what I did I could not gain weight. I always thought that if I could put on ten or fifteen pounds I would look better. I would order double meals and eat every bite and never gain a pound. Well eventually as you get a little older your metabolism slows down. I started to put on a pew pounds and thought it was great. So I just continued what I was doing. I got a little heavier and a little heavier. At some point I realized that I was out of shape. Then I was preocupied with life. It wasn't until I was in my late thirties that I decided to do anything about it. In a couple of months I will be 42 and I am still fighting the battle.

This is the last time. I am going to destroy all of my demons. By the end of 2013 I will be living a healthy life.No more being overweight and no more smoking. I will have an active lifestyle and a healthy diet. No surrender!