How did you gain the weight?

College, being poor, eating lots of ramen, $5 pizzas for lunch, daily binge drinking, inactivity, soda, stress, poor sleep, avoiding the scale... I've pretty much changed all those those things and have lost 10lbs... 15 more to go!

had to do with being unhappy in several areas in my life including marriage...

Life from the course of 2 years caught up and I didn't handle it very well when everything finally set it. It was horrible to watch all the hard work I had done last year just diminish.

I have always been overweight, since I was 7 years old and in 1st grade. I was always one of the biggest kids (tallest girl for many years) and I didn't like much outdoor activity, was into reading and drawing and schoolwork. Also a crazy perfectionist, so I didn't like trying sports or athletic activities because I didn't know them inside-out from Day 1 and have mad skills ;-)

My parents had what I'd call a pretty typical middle class 1980's American household of Lunchables, Pizza Hut, candy, and the occasional salad thrown in for "good measure" (which obviously was not). Almost everything we ate was heavily processed. I'm not a religiously clean eater now, but I was well into my 20's before I even knew what the majority of raw/fresh veggies tasted like!

In my teens, my diet was strictly junk food, but not much of it. So I wondered why I stayed fat on few calories and figured I was just cursed to a lifetime of obesity. I had a spider bite treated with steroids which packed on more weight.

I learned to cook for myself right after college, and lost most of the weight, getting to an all-time adult low.

Then I married a man who was a big eater (also obese) and a huge fan of restaurant meals and alcohol. We lived quite indulgently, and although I always considered my indulgences minor compared to HIS...the amount of calories I consumed was pretty erratic. I look back and think that most weeks I had 3-4 days of under 1,000 cals and then 3 days of over 3,000 cals. I thought that was normal but I'm pretty sure that's how I kept so much weight on!!!

By my 30's, I was topping out at 300 lb. I started to get worried about my health, but again my competitive and perfectionist side reared its ugly head and I stubbornly refused to make a real effort at getting healthy and eating better because all of the people I knew who were doing so, with any rate of success, were trying to get from 160 to 125. Not 300 to 225.

Finally I started exercising RELIGIOUSLY (just long speedy walks, but daily)...and got down by about 35 lb. Plateaued for a very long time, then stopped eating beef, pork or chicken and added more veggies and other lean protein sources. Only lost 9-10 lb. Joined MFP in March and now have beat my previous all-time adult low of 227 and working down toward 200 and beyond.

by getting knocked up

Beats me... I walked outside an average of 5 miles per day, since forever. I used a stationary bike, averaging 30 mins per day whenever the weather was inclement. I consulted a dietitian. And followed the prescribed diet. Years ago, I even did the self-injections spiel. I joined Weight Watchers, later left. I started tracking everything, and reading blogs on this site. Then, I joined a local gym. Nowadays, I average 60 minutes at the gym, 6 days per week. And? Still gaining weight! Hormones? Age? Genes? Who knows? Who cares? (I do.) Any ideas out there?

I sat on my butt and ate junk, simple.

Hmmm, I don't want it sound like a bunch of excuses, but I guess it's going to.

First, it was comfort eating, and I was always about 25-30 lbs overweight as a teen.

Then it was depression after my mom died and my family life turned upside down.

Then it was PCOS going out of control when I stopped birth control pills because birth control pills + college stress was making me throw up every morning and every evening. The 10+ years of untreated PCOS did the rest with continuous gains, and I could not drop weight for anything until I was finally diagnosed and properly treated.

I love food....

I hated cooking after working in hospitality so I was living off all the bad foods. Takeaway, potatoes, toast etc. Ate way too much of the bad stuff and was doing less and less walking in my life.

I have now moved away from all the bad foods, and am living in a small town where i really cant justify driving anywhere.