Why do YOU have a weight problem?

Too lazy to exercise

I love to eat. I love on the biggest loser when people have to make excuses for loving food,eating too much, and being lazy. nope, i just love food.

After watching shows like The Biggest Loser and others I've really tried to figure out how I allowed myself to get over 200 pounds at only 5'4". I have realized that I don't like to be alone and have a compulsion to head to the kitchen and eat during lonely times, which I have now managed to get over, but I have never found anything that was an "event" in my life that lead me to let myself get so out of shape.
The only thing I have managed to figure is that I just followed my parents example, overeating and eating the wrong things, putting my family and work ahead of myself . . . the "typical" stuff . . . not sure if there is anything deeper but just happy that I have now found my footing and am making progress with my health.

Hello I'm Brenda,

I used to be at my ideal weight at 16, then I had my son and I began gaining but during those years I thought I was fat, and maybe I wasn't now that I look back at those pictures. I worked F/T and went to school P/T, and picked up fast food on the go. I finally fuinished in 2008, but I had gained alot of weight which I have been at now. I kept trying South Beach Diet, did ok, but when I would introduce the starches (bread, pasta etc. even if it was whole wheat) I would gain it back.


I attribute my weight gain to my educational career distress, it took me almost 10 yrs to finish my Bachelor's. We went to Hawaii for vacation in July, and looking at myself and seeing how bad I look was the turning point.


Lisa thanks for sharing, and for your encouragement.

Well I too felt fat when I for damn sure wasn't. 135, muscular and athletic. Perfect body. Then had two kids and let myself go. I'd try to lose weight and get scared that I could finish what I started so I quit "on my own terms". So this time I start my weight loss journey and plan not to get scared and stick to it. I started at 168.5. Hope to get to 140-145.
Don't really know what made me think I was fat when I was younger. Maybe having to get bigger clothes than everyone else I was around. But now I realize that was because I was covered in healthy lean muscle and not a stick. I hope to regain that look and be appreciative of it this time.

I love food, almost all food. Sweet, salty, spicy, cheesy, all of it. Potatoes are my favorite food group. I was diagonsed with asthma as a child and my mother is (even now) rather over protective. I have impulse control issues. I started smoking as a teenager (my quit day is Monday, October 4th- yes that's next week). Massive post-partum depression complicated by a very ill baby (who is now a perfectly healthy 2nd grader). I've been having a torrid love affair with my couch for several years.

Food + asthma + impulsivity + smoker + PPD + LAZY = I'm lucky I've not gained more weight than I have!!

Wow. That sounds borderline obsessive. lol I ran obsessively when I was 16. 3-4 miles a day, and didn't feel complete without running that day. I didn't think I was fat(125 pounds), but I knew I could be in better shape. Well, I got pregnant the spring after turning 16, and fell out of running and being fit. I have never eaten healthy before. I didn't think I needed to, cuz I had a fast metabolism and with running and lifting weights during gym class, I could burn the bad cals away. So, the shape I'm in now is all down to my eating habits, and I'm here to start running again, and tightening my abs. Would you recommend tying 2 lb weights to your ankles today? I think that would help tone my legs. What do you think?

Weight has been an issue my entire life. I am the youngest of four, my parents had me later in life and my mom always blames herself because she thinks they didn't do enough activities with me. The only thing I can think that she could have improved was healthier meals but otherwise it is all me. I grew p in a fat family and we didn't think anything of it. Even though I am large I easily make friends and I was very outgoing in high school. Despite my weight I did Tae Kwon Do for 10 years and earned my Brown belt. Now looking back i see that if I had eaten healthier then I wouldn't weigh what I do now but the past is in the past. I guess a love of food and poor coping habits would be why I'm fat. I also have bi-polar disorder and PMDD, so my mood is always changing and I end up giving up on dieting, have a really crappy week and ten feel guilty and give up. At 256lbs at the age of 23, I'm tired of this and I want to be able to play with my daughter especially now that she is walking and I know running is just around the corner. Good luck everyone!

Well, besides the obvious of eating too much and exercising too little. For me, I can remember a cousin of mine exercising to extreme and not eating at all. We both weighed about 110lbs and she kept saying "We are SOOOOOOOO fat" and I believed her. I was about 16. Then when I was 21 I remember getting on the scale and thinking that 115lbs at 5'4 was HUGE. I kept thinking back to my cousin Amy's comments about how fat and huge we were. I would literally jog for miles with 2lb weights on my ankles and then we would throw our food out or give it to the dog. We did this for days. I hated it but I believed her. I really think this is the start of my fight with food. I no longer speak to Amy. Last I heard she was living in Florida and is a raging alcoholic at 39 years of age. I also heard she's anorexic and can easily consume a case of beer a night. Yes, I said a case.

So I am trying to "forgive" her for telling me for years how fat and huge I was. I am trying to look in the mirror and see myself how I did when I was 22. I was thin but didn't accept it. So I'd eat to cover my guilt and the vicious cycle started. I am the only fat person in my entire family. My mom is a size 4 and my dad and brothers are all thin.

Thank God I have my mom in my life. She is my biggest supporter of my weight loss journey. I just recently told her about how Amy would badger me and constantly criticize me and she was sad and shocked by it. She wishes I would've told her. No matter how many times I fail or how many lbs I gain my mom is right there beside me to cheer me on and give me encouragement.

So I was just wondering if there is something in your life that caused you to make bad choices. All the weight loss experts say that it's more than a food thing. People eat to cover something emotionally. Please share if you feel like it and if you don't then that's fine too. I wish all of you the very best of luck on your weight loss journey and we're all in this together!!

Lisa

I too was sexually abused, by my moms boyfriend at 3, and then by her husband (a different man) at 6 and then molested by my own father from 13-18. --- I don't really think that had much to do with my weight but defiantly had a lot to do with why i put up with my ex's bs for all those years. Also my mom didn't believe me either, my aunt made her take me to the doctor to be checked out when her husband raped me, the doctor confirmed it was true. After her doing drugs and being a crappy mother I moved in with my father ( who I had not seen since I was 2) when I was 12, things were great for about a year and then he started having me sleep in his room, and cuddle, and spoon with him, no one in the house said anything, my grandma, aunt and uncle all also lived in the house and they all pretended like nothing was going on. i joined the navy and haven't looked back. As fate or God would have it, they have all passed away due to obeseity related illnesses.

I have no traumas to report - I'm fat because I love food and I allowed myself to eat too much and exercise too little!

Wow where do I start? I have a lot of traumas in my life. Most of my weight gain was caused by turning to food for comfort and an overeating/emotional eating problem. My weight has been a ever-lasting battle. It didn’t help that my grandmother and grandfather hassled me about my weight as well.

My parents got divorced when I was a child and when we moved, I got tossed into a new school where everyone had known each other since they were in their mother’s wombs. Since I was the new kid, I got picked on. As we got older, the kids who picked on me became teenagers who picked on me.

I changed schools after the 8th grade and started going to a private school. In high school is when I really started gaining weight. In 9th grade, I went from a size 12 to a size 16 by the beginning of my junior year. That lightened the teasing up some but I was still the outsider because I hadn’t been born into private school. During 10th grade, I was put on anti-depressants.

After the start of my junior year at OLA, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. My mother and I decided to stay for the storm, along with my grandparents around the corner. My dad was frantic and came down from North Mississippi and helped us. On August 29, the flood waters came in and changed our lives forever. My house got 8 ft of water and we were trapped in the attic of our home for 8 hours. After leaving our home and taking refuge in the local church I didn’t have time to think about what I had lost. A week after the storm, my uncle came and took us to Baton Rouge. I was picked up by a friend of mine and his family and was enrolled in the same school he and his sister attended. While there I made some friends but otherwise didn’t really make myself known. When the local public school opened back home, my dad came and uprooted me again and enrolled me in that school, which also put me back into the presence of the teenagers who teased me in middle school…except they had just gotten older and crueler. During this time my weight gain just got worse and I went from a size 16 in junior year to a size 24 by the time I graduated in May 2007. At the end of senior year, I looked into the LapBand surgery and my therapist did not give me the psych evaluation so I wasn’t cleared to have it done. She convinced me that I’d be able to lose the weight on my own.

That summer and around the time I went to college I stayed the same size, but within months of moving to college I shot up to over 300 pounds. I got very depressed and really kept to myself. I got involved with church and it was my saving grace. I withdrew from my sisters in the sorority I was a member of and the only two people I really hung around with were my big sis and one of my friends through her. I went to parties with them and was introduced to alcohol and drank as much as possible. I got placed on academic probation following the fall semester and had to petition to be allowed back for the spring semester, which I was. I ended up terminating my membership in the sorority because I was bullied by several of my “sisters” and was told to quit or they would find a reason to throw me out.

During the middle of the semester, I was diagnosed with diabetes and put on medication. My blood sugar was over 900 points and my doctor said that I should’ve been in a coma, so I missed a week of classes (mid-term week) to have saline drips to bring my blood sugar to a normal level. The medication started to help me with my weight problem and I started dating one of my best friends. By the time I moved home in May, I had dropped from 300 pounds to about 240. Things were going good with me and the guy I was dating, I had found a job, and I was happy.

In July, I was down to 220 pounds but that was also the month my father committed suicide and I almost lost my boyfriend. That week I was also diagnosed with Depressive Bipolar Disorder, which explained my chronic depression for the 7 years prior to my diagnosis. Things started getting rocky with me and the guy I was dating and I could feel him pulling away from me. In November, I was at my lowest weight, 210 pounds, which was a number I hadn’t seen since in 3 or 4 years and my doctor said that I was no longer considered a diabetic so he took me off the medication. I found out a few days before my birthday (November 28) that my boyfriend had been cheating on me. He told me it had only been a month, but I later found out it had been since the very beginning. That depressed me to the lowest I had been in years. I was in school but it didn’t have an effect on my grades, thank goodness.

I started gaining weight again in February or March of 2009. It came on gradually and by July, I was at 250 pounds. I tried diet pills, but didn’t do well with my diet or exercise and gave up on the medication. After my grandmother passed away in January, I finally felt free because she had always harassed me about my weight and even would call me a fat-*kitten* and a worthless pig…things of that sort. I started looking into medical weight loss treatments and exercise programs.

In May 2010, at 265 pounds, I started the Aspen Clinic and the doctor there put me on Phentermine and that started helping me lose weight immediately. In July, I was introduced to CrossFit by one of my friends, whose boyfriend was a certified CF trainer. I am hooked and I love what I am doing. To date I have lost almost 21 pounds (12 of that has been since July) and now weigh 245 pounds. I am hoping to be 230 by mid-December. By July of next year, I am hoping to be between 180 and 200 pounds and then I’ll start maintaining. I don’t want to have to worry about my weight problems ever again.

Same here there was a time i didnt buy anything that you couldn't fry

STRESS STRESS STRESS... That what I think. I had terrible trauma over the last couple years. First My daughter was disabled and passed 6 month old. Then I broke my ankle and was incapcitated for about 3 months. While I was in cast my husband cheated with someone from a chat room. Left me and my son on Christmas to do something so SICK !!! didnt even see his own son open his X-MAS... Not to mention the fact that since all this happen he verbally abuses, blames, critisizes and complains about everything now. No love or affection or help of any kind anymore. Its like living with a ZOMBIE!!!....

I read alot about Cortisol levels and stress. They are in overdrive, its like no matter if I literally starve and work out like a Maniac nothing shifts. Its like I'm in survival mode and my body won't LET GO of the weight....

I don't know :ohwell: