When did you start gaining weight?

So sorry to hear about your parents... they can be a huge factor in our health and attitudues

My parents did the best they could with the tools they had and were pretty wonderful; I've just known I was fat since I was nine. I appreciate the support, but it's not a wound, just a reality.

When I retired from the Military a couple years ago and took a more sedentary job.

I am curious as to when/why/how everyone started to gain weight. Was there a specific trigger? Were you in your 20s or 40s? And when you realized it was a real problem to your health.

I'm pretty sure I started gaining weight just after conception :laugh: Seriously though, I've never gained enough weight to ever be outside the healthy range for my height and gender. I lost a few vanity pounds as part of my fitness plan, got to ideal weight for me and then down a few pounds from there. I have never had weight related health problems so part of my goal is to ensure I never do.

I just hit my highest weight (outside of pregnancy) a few weeks ago. I was very careful in my last pregnancy not to gain too much weight (only ~15 lbs), since I started out overweight (BMI of ~26). I'm a breastfeeding mama, and though I BF / pumped full-time throughout my daughter's first year, I didn't stop eating at that increased caloric intake when she slowed down on nursing. This, I was up 20 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight when I joined MFP a few weeks ago.

When I bought my first computer.

Hahaha

My first pregnancy. I never had a weight issue until then. I didn't even know how to start to lose weight after I had her, so then my second pregnancy I was even worse off. Add in some depression and drinking a stupid amount of calories a day via soda and coffee and here I am.

I'm 34 and for the first time in my life I'm learning about calories and protein and fat and what my body needs. Kinda sad.

Same here. 4 pregnacies, 4 c-sections,then a tubal. I'd start losing then find out I was pregnant again. I have absolutely 0 muscle tone in my abdomen. Sad is being 50 and just now really learning what a carb is...

I was always underweight as a kid and from age 14 on to age 35, I was a size 5. Then I became disabled at age 35 and gained 200 pounds in the next four years. Loss of mobility, inability to stand and cook, medication, etc. Such a pain.

I started gaining when I was about 8 years. Part of it was that I was severely hypoglycemic/insulin resistant and I learned that food made me feel better. Plus, I grew up on a farm and my mother cooked like a farm wife - hearty meals with lots of starch followed by ample desserts.

I gained weight for the next 25+ years until I hit my high weight of 273 and a doctor told me (basically) "Lose the weight or you're going to be either very sick or dead." It took me quite awhile to figure out how to lose the weight in a way that worked for my body but I finally did and I'm now thinner than I ever remember being (probably since like junior high or so). I still have about 30 pounds I'd like to lose but I feel AMAZING.

I was skinny until about age 3 and then spent the rest of my life overweight

When I started playing World of Warcraft.

When I was in junior year of high school. I went through a lot of depression and also my best friend was an enabler. She was depressed and was very heavy as well. She would buy all my food for me and we'd go out 2-3 times a day, and I started taking after her by ordering the worst meals on the menu. I gained about 60lbs in two years, and 10 years later I am still struggling to get it off.

12 years old due to being beaten up in school everyday. Had to learn to hide from the bullies which meant i usually just took something quick to eat encase i had to run away so chocolate or pasties or crisps. Then i got fabulous (can you tell i'm being sarcastic) borderline personality disorder and ended going from a beautiful size 10, to a size 24 and weighing 21st 9!

I am curious as to when/why/how everyone started to gain weight. Was there a specific trigger? Were you in your 20s or 40s? And when you realized it was a real problem to your health.

Already posted my "when" further up, I just wanted to thank the OP for posting this great topic. This has been one of the most insightful and open threads I've read in a long time. Thanks to everyone for sharing.

I was a little overweight as a small child, but I would say that I started packing on the pounds in my teens, when I spent a lot of time reading and watching TV after school, often snacking. It continued in college. I don't have weight records from back then but I probably weighed 180-190 lb. at my heaviest (for then), around 1991.

I lost about 50-60 lb. in my first few years of grad school by deliberately exercising more, walking as my main form of transportation, and cooking most food from scratch. The exercise was kick-started by trying to jog with a friend; I couldn't go more than a Chicago block without being winded. I got into running regularly, distances up to 25K (but a normal run was 5-10K). When I got married in 1995, I weighed around 137 lb.

In 1997 I started a new job. I needed to drive to get to work, and I didn't make time for exercise, but I kept eating as I had been. Over the next 11 years, I slowly gained about 85 lb.—just a little bit every year, but it added up, until I was 222 lb. From summer 2008 to the end of 2012 I tried to control it by exercising more and trying to eat less but without calorie counting. I lost a little bit and then fluctuated between 205 and 215 for a couple of years. In January 2013, I realized that what had worked in the 1990s was no longer working with a 45-year-old's metabolism, and I discovered MFP. It has worked very well!

I started (mild) binge eating and fat shaming myself at the age of 12. My main trigger was when my kid brother passed away when I was sixteen. All the lasagnas sent to the house, in the weeks following the funeral, put me into a food "coma". It made me feel better because at least I could stop crying to put all that food in my mouth.