When did you start gaining weight?

I was about 24. I was engaged and happy, with a fabulous chef who loves to cook for me as a fiance, and thought I was immune to the laws of thermogenetics and calories in/calories out. Then I got pregnant at 25 and things REALLY got out of hand, with the whole fallacious "eating for two" mentality.

I think I started (at 57kg - age 22) when I was living with a violent guy. Not so much with the weight gain, but the thought processes. If I weighed more he 'couldn't push me around.' I also started smoking weed at the time, which didn't help, and the guy (a chronic user) would get junk food late at night, which I ate.

Got rid of him and moved away, weighing about 15, 20 kilos more than when he moved in, 5 years earlier. (72-77kg, age 27)

Due to other things, I went from running around after 6 kids to being suicidal and barely doing anything.

By 2003 (age 31) I was considering birth control and working out that 5% of 80 kilos was 'only 4kg' and I could cope with that. Insert a period of very low income and eating whatever was cheap to survive.

Then of course, the $2 'meals' of junk ended up being a staple part of the diet. I still believe I was more active than others, since I would walk to the shop for things and not park the car outside of stores. But walking 1.3 km a week doesn't offset the calorie intake. At this time I was also put on meds for depression. Those ones made me very lethargic. Sleep til 10am, wake up, eat, go back to bed. So I was given MORE meds to fix that, and when both did things to my stomach, more meds to deal with THAT.

Finally grew a brain through the fog and decided I did NOT want to live like this. Three meds to feel normal-ish. Changed meds, ended up back on a single anti depressant.

Then my eldest daughter came to stay. I was about 90kgs by now, at 36. With the extra person, an adult in her own right, I had someone to cook for, and also talk me into buying junk for tea. Because I was 'the mum' I somehow thought I should eat more than my 'child.'

Having someone and starting to follow the Tai bo video of a morning got me off the [then] current anti depressants. The scales were about 97 now.

She moved out. Then my BIL, younger than me, died of a heart attack. I think that galvanised me into action, as did the scales at the pet store - they said I was in triple digits. My home scales were broken, since daughter was too heavy for them. I was 38/39

So I told a friend who was also wanting to lose weight (he has a family history of heart disease) and he sent me a text the first two mornings to get me out of bed. In the last 33 months, I've lost 37kilos of the gained weight. I am not in the 'normal' weight range for my height, but I can cope with that.

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.

The moment i was born. Seriously. The doctor told mom to put me on a diet as an infant because I was gaining weight too fast.

As soon as I graduated high school.

I stopped smoking a year ago and that's when I put on this weight. I am 53 so am going through menopause as well so my hormones are all over the place! I put on 30 1b over the year but I was pretty skinny to start with so I don't look too bad - but from a health point of view I need to get this weight off. I've just started my diet - day 11 I think.

3.30pm December 27th 1992.... yeah I can be THAT exact in when I started gaining.

i thought i was crazy when i figured my birth control was doing this to me. seems i am not alone. i am now definately getting off it.

I was never thin.

Middle school and High school were not kind to me. My highest weight was around 150. (No obese, but I definitely never felt comfortable at that weight)

Since I was 7-8. Was always overweight, and then I started working at McDonald's when I was 21, and I ate and drank through 4 years and put on a lot of weight, then got a desk job so it's been a very slippery slope!

I realised 4 years ago that it was an issue, and lost 25kg, but then fell into old habits and stopped exercising and put it all back on.

I have now realised that exercise is my key. I can calorie count all I want but lose very small amounts, but if I add in exercise I kick butt.

I was always a skinny fit kid. I didn't exercise a day in my life and I had beautiful natural abs and a slim body. I joined the Air Force after high school. No matter what workouts or exercises I did, I didn't change. No extra muscle, no weight lost; I didn't change at all. My body just knew where it wanted to be and stayed there.

Of course, that worked against me. After a deployment to Iraq in 2007, I lost my abs. I didn't get fat, I just got enough chub to lose my ab definition. I didn't even gain weight. I was the same 175 lbs I'd been since I was 15 years old. But I didn't look as fit anymore.

2 years ago, when I was 28, I noticed that I was now 185 lbs. Again, no matter how much exercise I did, I didn't lose weight. I was scoring in the 90s on my physical fitness tests and I was still gaining weight and inches around my waist for some reason. At the worst, I got to 207 lbs and 36 inches (just in the past 6 months). My belly started to noticeably protrude and I got love handles. Also, my thighs started to touch for the first time ever.

My body seemed resistant to change, until I broke my ankle on a motorcyle accident. I spent a month bed-ridden with my leg elevated, only able to eat whatever people brought me, and I lost 17 lbs. So now I'm trying to keep up that trend and get back down to my 175 or so weight. MyFitnessPal is helping me to stay on track with my food intake/exercise and when I'm back on both feet, I hope to be back in decent shape. Then I'm going to try even harder and hopefully bulk up a little bit.