What triggered your weight gain?

I was a fat kid too, but dropped it all around age 14, as tends to happen!

I was always active through college, didn't have a car so I walked everywhere. Then I flew the nest and moved overseas, alone. When I was there I also walked everywhere, and despite my sweet tooth, never put on weight.

I then moved back home to my parents for a month before I moved to the USA, waiting for my visa to come through. I hardly budged all month, yet ate like I did when I was active. Plus more treats, as my parents were so excited to have me home! Then I moved to the USA, celebrated with my husband with lots of date nights that we couldn't have when we were apart (cue Cheesecake Factory anyone!?) We also moved down to California for 2 months, drank every Friday night and had Popeyes! Popeyes was my go-to meal in California haha.

THEN, we moved to Germany. Loads of new foods to try, lots of new alcoholic beverages, lots of 'oh let's get that just to try it'. In this whole time frame I haven't been working and have been sitting on my butt all day.

Yep - that's how you put on weight in a short time period - FAST!

I was an athletic kid. The older I got, the less athletic activities I did.

I stopped moving, and I started eating more.

I got depressed. I had three children, and then I just "didn't care," until I saw a picture of myself and COULD NOT BELIEVE it was me!

The thing that motivated me the most was losing my hair to alopecia. I thought, if I'm going to be bald, then I want to be in shape and look good! And I'm working my way towards that!

I was a skinny kid. I weighed 100lbs at high school graduation. I was around 115lbs after my 3rd baby. I had a hysterectomy at age 32. That was the start of my weight gain. I weighed 140 for a long time. Then 10 years ago my youngest daughter passed away and I lost 20lbs from grieving and not eating. About 2 years later I was back up to 140lbs. Then moving to a new state and staying home I put on another 10. I had lived in Colorado and was used to hiking the mountains all summer. I didn't like hiking in my new state, I really didn't even like my new state for that matter. Then last summer I tore my rotator cuff. I was in such pain until I could see a dr and get on pain meds and start PT. That was the end of October when I had gained about 15lbs from doing nothing but sitting at the computer all day and stuffing my face and feeling sorry for myself. I was in too much pain to do anything else. Even moving my good arm, hurt my injured shoulder. Since I was in a new state I was seeing a new dr and she needed the mri to confirm an injury before she would prescribe me pain meds. It was a 3 month ordeal. I weighed 165 at Christmas. I started my weight loss on February 1st of this year. I think the injury helped motivate me to get fit and healthy.

I was a skinny kid and as a teenager I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight because I was very active. I didn't drive so I walked and biked everywhere. Then I got married to a man who was always warning me not to gain weight. I started watching what I was eating more and although I didn't walk or bike as much I tried to exercise a lot. I dieted when I wasn't even overweight. I had never even thought about these things before I met him. So when I finally divorced him 13 years later, at first I lost weight due to stress, then I gained because I felt free to eat what I wanted! It was partially in spite of my ex. I know - stupid!
I met my current husband who has never, ever criticized my weight. He loves food and loves to make me happy so he would buy me chocolate bars and ice cream all the time. He cooks a lot of recipes that have fatty sauces and not many vegetables. Slowly the weight crept up. My knees started hurting. Recently my feet started hurting, too. My mother has been overweight since I was born. She decided to start dieting herself and lost approximately 30-35 pounds. My husband also lost his big belly because of my constant 'nagging' to eat more vegetables. All he had to do is replace fast food a couple of times a week with salad.
So I was inspired to change. And here I am. Ironic how I never gained with my critical ex but did with my supportive husband!

I was skinny until I hit puberty. From then I started to get bigger, but not fat really. I think I was always prone to eventually get overweight though. I didn't watch what I ate really, although I was very active until I got to secondary school (Age 12). At that point I still wasn't overweight or anything, I just wasn't really skinny like the majority of people at school. That's when the bullying started, and that's when I started comfort eating. The more I got bullied, the more I ate, the bigger I got, the more I got bullied. I'm sure you can see the pattern. I also developed PCOS at some point which didn't help with the weight gain, and I'm also pretty sure it's why I have a very deep voice (which I was also bullied over a lot at school and it's left me with severe social anxiety disorder)
I think by age 13 I was classed as overweight, by 14 I was obese, and I've been that way ever since (although I'm very close to getting my BMI down to "overweight" again now)

Pregnancy & post partum depression. I had gestational diabetes & terrible sciatica when I was pregnant. Funny, because I sure look like I'm built to be pregnant. LOL. And then for some crazy reason I waited till my baby was 4 before I decided that I wanted to be ME again.

overeating causing weight gain,causing depression which caused more overeating.

Ignorance about the logistics of an appropriate diet and exercise

I never had a problem with overeating or anything like that. I've always been a healthy weight and had always had pretty much the same lifestyle and ate the same healthy things, the difference was that before MFP I never bothered to track the amounts I was eating.

As I've gotten older I guess my metabolism started slowing, because I noticed that over the past decade I'd slowly crept up a pound or so each year over time. I never got out of the healthy range of BMI, but I was trending toward the top of it.

I like to be proactive, so here I am. I took a few months to shave off the extra weight and I've been here on maintainance ever since. :flowerforyou:

Not really knowing what a portion or a serving is. Not having a food scale. Not measuring. Thinking I was eating about 1500-2000 calories a day and it was probably closer to 3000 maybe more. Running ridiculous amounts of miles than "rewarding myself" . Duh me I now know it doesn't work like that (after 2 years of thinking it did). Educating myself worked miracles. : )

I was never a "skinny minny" or anything. Was 149 pounds when I turned 18 my senior year of high school.

First time I gained: emotional eating due to an abusive relationship (and subsequent marriage) starting junior year of college. By the time I left my ex-husband, was up to 185.

Started working out and eating better, and got down to 154. Maintained that (within 5 pounds) until 2010, when I started gaining weight (despite working out and eating right). Come to find out, I had developed hypothyroidism.

By the time it was all said and done at the end of 2012, when my endo finally got my thyroid meds at the correct level, I had gained almost 50 pounds. I tipped the scales at 202.5. (Thanks to my continued workout efforts during the past 3 years, though, I was wearing the same size as I was when I started at 185). Now, even on meds, I have to workout twice has hard and twice as long, and be hyper vigilant about logging my food to lose less than half as much weight (pre-hypo, doing what I'm doing now would have resulted in a 2 pound a week loss....now, I'm lucky to lose .5 a week). :grumble:

I was always skinny.
I am 5'6" tall and when I got married, I was 95 pounds.

Put on the weight when I went through the change of life, put on 20 pounds fast
Now I have lost 19 pounds, one more pound to go.

What a relief to get some of this fat off

I got really lazy. I didn't care, I used pregnancy (eating for two!) as an excuse and then felt that things were just too much to deal with.

I lost a lot of weight with diet pills and after regaining it, I felt hopeless, like I didn't have what it took. But I do have it and I am making great strides in becoming a healthier and happier me.

Laziness. I stopped exercising regularly but continued to eat as if I were.

Nursing school.

Stressed out all the time, easier to eat out of the vending machines and order out.. that is how I put back on the 40 lbs that i lost.