What caused you to become overweight (apart from eating)

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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!!!

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.