How did you gain the weight?

I was at a healthy weight back in July 2012, was exercising (just finished the first month of Insanity), and was feeling amazing. On July 9th, my grand nephew, was visiting his grandpa and somehow snuck out the back door and fell into the decorative Koi fish pond. He was rescued, revived, and taken to the hospital. Two days later, July 11th, we were told that he would not make it and that we had to say our goodbyes. How do you say goodbye to an almost 2 year old? He was an incredible boy and the sadness was (and still is) unbearable. My hubby and I would babysit him all the time and he was just a great little man. My heart and spirit were broken. I stopped insanity and ate my feelings for a year. I got to the heaviest I had even been (without being pregnant) at 184 and was sick of looking at myself. In July 2013, I decided to honor his memory by taking care of myself instead of slowing killing myself with food. I am down to 169 pounds now and think of him whenever I am out walking...he loved the outdoors, cars, motorcycles, the ocean, running fast, and the wind in his hair.

Plan and simple - sitting on my backside and eating too much.

My weight gain started as a child. My mother would just feed my sister and I junk food, McDonald's, etc. Basically she didn't really encourage a healthy lifestyle for all of us. Then as I got old enough to where I was living on my own I started gaining more weight. I totally felt at complete loss of what to do. Everything felt so complicating to achieve. I bought a few diet books, bought health magazines which made things feel more impossible to achieve for myself. I was also in a bad long distance relationship with someone.
Negativity pretty much led me to a downward spiral. Eventually something clicked and I realized I was making it to hard on myself. I was over thinking things. And weight loss isn't as complicated as it seems. Just small changes can make for great results. But I realized I had to be patient because it won't always come off as fast as I thought it would.

I actually was still in the weight range for my height but my body fat had gone up. I knew it when I could no longer sleep on my side comfortably. The lump of fat on my stomach would shift & hang off like a giant weight.

I got there by eating portions too large even though the food choices were good. My exercise program of a half hour each day was no longer adequate as I got older.

It also was caused by doing contract work where there were no breaks for food or bathroom & no washroom or break room for staff even if there had of been breaks. No eating was allowed on the job.

I played high school year round up until I graduated from high school so I was always in pretty good shape. After that I went from doing exercise from 2 hours a day to none at all. I gained about 20 pounds in 2 years. Then I met my husband and I guess I stopped even remotely trying and gained another 40 lbs in 4-5 years. I think I had developed mentality in high school that my body would always just be the way it was then because I certainly didn't watch what I ate. So when I got to college I kept the same thought process and ballooned because I wasn't exercising to counteract what I ate.

A number of things, I was an obese child, over weight teenager, and morbidly obese adult. I ate huge portions, ate crap food, and was depressed, hated myself to not care about myself, was in a car accident in 2007, was told I'd never have full function back in my right arm, was told I'd be lucky to see 40% back but the doc said he don't expect me to get more than 20% back, I have 80% back because one thing I enjoy is drawing and I need my right arm to draw, so I wanted to get it back bad enough. Doctor told me I wouldn't ever be able to do anything that put a lot of pressure on my arm, like a cart wheel, push up, pull up, plank, thinks like that.

Food was always my comfort, lots and lots of fried foods. By time 2009 hit, I was at my heaviest, my dad had a heart attack and found out in the same day he was a diabetic. I had been showing signs of diabetes. April of 2010 I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. First trimester, found out I had diabetes. So now I had a choice to make, learn to love myself enough to have a healthy pregnancy, which meant putting my daughter before me, and control the diabetes and not let it control me, or give up and let the diabetes win.

Dropped 70 lbs while pregnant, which put me down to 180 lbs. I'm 5'1.5 so that's still obese for me. Had my daughter, gained 25.5 back, 205.5 lbs. I was angry at myself, I was depressed, I was at my breaking point, and realized only I could fix this. Jumped on here and haven't stopped.

Now I'm doing planks, push up's, cat wheels and back bends. I was told I'd never stick with this life style change, but 132 lbs later, I'm still going strong. Almost logged in for 700 day's.

Back in 2009 that Christmas, I asked my husband for a bike, he got me a bike, pretty pink bike. I remember riding the bike and thinking it was so much easier as a child lol. My tires kept going flat, my husband told me there was a 200 lb weight limit on the bike, and asked me how much I weighed, I got very offensive that he thought I was bigger than 200 lbs. But truth was I was 50 lbs over the weight limit.

Sure has been a ride.

I stopped exercising but continued eating the same amount and then I discovered the wonderful art of excuses!

This for me. Then I started uni, and ate more - justifying it because I was exercising (even though I didn't decrease the first time). Finished that and joined band - easier to have fast food when rehearsing or performing, after that became pregnant - I had severe sickness throughout, but my body let me eat takeout.
All of these things were used as excuses when I could have just listened to my body in the first place.

Pfft, tons of reasons. My mother was a sugar addict and attempted to restrict our intake as kids, saying she didn't want us to "be fat like her". Unfortunately she then involved us in her secret binges, and sweets and chocolate in cohorts with mum became our escape from an overbearing and Victorian stepfather. And so two more sugar addicts were born.

The moment I had my own pocket money I was hoarding sugar-laden crap and eating it secretly, hiding the wrappers. When I left home at 19 I ate whatever I wanted, loving the freedom, and got chubby. It's basically been a spiral of dieting and emotional bingeing ever since.

Interestingly my brother also got quite fat, and then lost 40 lbs in his mid-30's existing purely on black coffee and dry toast (and some cocaine, I believe). Now he runs every day, starves during the week and eats normally at weekends. He has kept it off and sneers at me for still being fat.

Mum is now 75 and has shrunk to 5ft and 140 lbs. She still talks about dieting and restricting calories because she's fat.....

I got up to 316 and beyond but wasn't weighing after hitting
that number. I got huge by eating anything I wanted, every
chance I had. Drinking a lot of of soda and/or booze. Being
sedatary made it all worse.

I got pregnant and ate everything and anything I wanted too, not realizing that all the oreos I ate were going to MY middle - not my daughter's.. lol It's been 2 years since I had her, I joined MFP 8/30, and I've lost 4 lbs so far.