anyone found the root cause of why you gain weight?

PCOS,certain medications i had to take,not eating and binge eating

I gained weight due to depression and not loving myself enough to take care of myself. I maintained that weight gain because I was lazy and kinda hedonistic and didn't pay attention to what I was eating. It's funny, once I really accepted and loved who I, with a little exercise and paying attention to what I eat I am slowly losing.

The obvious answer is I ate too much.

The root of the problem would be that I wasn't knowledgeable about my intake. I figured 3 meals a day wasn't too much no matter how many calories were in them.

I wasn't moving enough while eating tons of calories in high carb, high calorie desserts.

I don't have a general food addiction. I don't "love" food. But I did have a super unhealthy relationship with sweets, a "last hurrah/start Monday" mentality that had me woofing down tons of sweets because, in my mind, I would be "perfect" tomorrow. And that "perfect" day never arrived, so I eventually ended up pretty much spending years where each day was a "last hurrah" calorie blast, failed "perfect" days, rinse and repeat. I just really, really loved the taste of cake and ice cream.

Once I finally kicked that and put my relationship with sweets into a perspective that worked for me, the root issues disappeared. I'm grateful that I don't have any larger issues with overeating, hunger, binging, or food in general. Once I dealt with the sweets the rest of the stuff just fell into place.

I spend too much time eating for fun, and not enough time moving for fun . And almost all of my favorite foods involve some combination of cheese + starch (loaded potato skins, cheese fries, fettucine alfredo, mac & cheese, pizza, nachos, grilled cheese sandwiches... about the only exception would be brownies, lol), and I can eat those things in outlandish quantities without even thinking. And I tend to eat treats as though every day is a special occasion.

Sure, I am also hypothyroid and have some other health problems that have exascerbated my weight gain over the years, but really the biggest cause is that I eat crap and I don't exercise enough.

I like to eat food while I play video games all day. Kind of a recipe for disaster, really.

So now I play video games, but rarely eat while doing so (Which sometimes makes me not eat all day, which is another issue) and make myself move around a lot. A. Lot. Because I still want to eat all the food.

I have a high cookie drive.

I gained weight because of stress. I also had this medical condition that started when I was 8 years old, which, at that age, causes a bunch of confusion and stressed out the little kid me. Later in life, finances started stressing me out. I had one "toxic person" in my life that I kicked to the curb before you could say Quidditch once I found out that she was causing me even more stress.

Poor eating habits from parents, boredom eating, generally preferring fried foods and sweets to everything else. In our house, a standard meal is something like a plate of chicken and a big helping of white rice. Normally I'd get seconds too, since I'd still be hungry. I generally have to beg for salads and lower calorie foods or I won't get them. For the longest time, my brother was the only one not overweight simply because he eats the least. I still remember my parents trying to convince me that there's nothing wrong with fried foods when I was close to being a hundred pounds overweight. Of course, everything in moderation, but still. You can lose weight by only eating Chicken McNuggets, but it's also a hell of a lot harder than if you eat the right foods (imagine surviving an entire day on 32 nuggets [1520 calories]). I've also led a sedentary life style for the past ten years or so. My exercise would consist of walking from one class to another in school. It's been a little of everything.

In decreasing order of siginificance (how much they contributed to my gain) :

- starting to eat equal portions with my husband after we moved in together (yes, I know :embarassed: ...)
- eating for procrastination, i.e. to avoid doing something I hated/was afraid to do
- snacking too much in addition to having full meals - I was capable of having a large snack at 5 pm and a full dinner at 6 pm for example. Now I am not hungry after the snack so just skip the dinner, may be have a lighter snack later. Similar before lunch - if I get hungry early, I just have an early lunch now, but before I had the snack and the lunch after.

Fixed all of the above, thanks to the fact that MFP has made me really mindful of my eating habbits. Before I didn't even notice I did those things. Also I got on top of most of my emotional problems before starting MFP, and am working on the ones that remain.

ETA: I am aware that I am losing due to calorie deficit. But I hope understanding all of the above will help me not regain it all at the end.