How did you gain weight in the first place

I gained a little weight after getting married. I gained a little more having 4 babies in 4 1/2 years. After the last baby, I ate my way through post-partum depression, gained about 40 pounds in 4 months. I've kept it on for 6 years by eating through the stress of a special needs/medically complex child. With every diagnosis, every realization that the future is so very unsure for him, food was my comfort.

I say "food WAS my comfort", because it no longer is. I wish I had realized, years ago, that there are other ways of dealing with my emotional pain and stress. The stress will never go away, but this extra weight will be gone forever.

Eating more than I burned (snacking, frozen pizza, 3-5 cans of pop a day) and never exercising, following my obese parents who did little to encourage me to be healthier as a child/teen

The first time?

A mother who fed us the "normal" American diet. She struggled with weight and had an enormous sweet tooth, so she worked to control our sweats. But we had a steady stream of near endless access to all the sugary breakfast cereals we wanted, delicious home cooked meals that were drowning in margarin, white bread, potato chips, the whole nine yards. We weren't devoid of veggies and always had fruit, but overall our diet had way too many calorie laden dishes and packaged food. We also weren't completely sedentary, but we were far from the most active kids.

Then lost most of the weight in my late teens and kept most of it off until I was 23. In my senior year at NYU I fell into a bad habit of eating a pint of Haagen Dazs dulce de leche ice cream almost every night, paired with a jumbo slice of iced lemon pound cake. I had been fighting my own sweet tooth for years and just fell into the sumptuousness of it all. I wasn't an over eater on anything else during the day, but a nightly infusion of an additional nearly 2000 calories lead, of course, to me gaining back everything I lost...and then some.

Eventually, over the next 8 years, I fluctuated but stayed well within the obese range. I finally topped off at 320lbs, mostly from overindulging in cookies, cakes, and ice cream.

I've never been a "eat everything in sight" person. Only a very small handful of sweet desserts were my major undoing after I lost weight the first time.

I don't usually give up any accountability for my weight,
however, I was always far outside the normal weight range, even as a child. Our family ate almost all fast food, all the time, big portions, and I drank lots of Coke and played on the computer all the time. Considering I drank like a 2 liter a day and ate only fast food until around 16 when I started cooking and dieting, it's no wonder the weight I got to, which I am ashamed of and won't usually admit even today.

At age 18, I got muscular dystrophy, which completely stole any fitness or strength I had. I could barely walk and fell down all the time from lack of strength. I did lose my appetite and had no energy for cooking. So I ate sometimes like 2 yogurts in a day. It was hell for a long time. It was like becoming super obese all at one time, that's how hard it was to lift my own body weight.

However, I started realizing the only way for me to be normal was to lose the excess fat. I knew my muscles were atrophied and somewhat destroyed, so I did what I could with my diet. Once I started getting better, my appetite came way back and I started cooking and exercising again.

I've now lost a lot of weight and most people think I'm normal now. I can do a lot more physically, although I still am way behind most average people who exercise regularly or are just naturally healthy in strength and fitness. Now I have to do modifications of most exercises to work up to a level of strength that approaches normal. After I am completely better, which I still hope I can be, I can get really serious about fitness!

Re: smoking. I never smoked till 1996. I had spent 29 years constantly having to go on a diet, constantly starving. After I started smoking, I went for 14 years hardly ever having to diet! I had taken prescription diet pills in the past, but cigarettes cut my appetite even better! The only reason I had to return to dieting in 2010 is that menopause redistributed my weight and now I have to weigh less in order to have a waist. Menopause didn't change my weight, nor make it harder to lose weight. But it deleted all the weight from my hips/butt and pasted it onto my waist! Also, I knew someone who quit smoking in his late 20s. He was naturally thin, 5' 10" and 130 pounds. In fact, when I met him he was only 116 pounds at that same height. Never had a weight problem.After quitting smoking, his weight soared quickly to 190. He then had to diet to drop down to 150-something, and wasn't thrilled that he could no longer eat whatever he wanted and remain thin.

Being in a relationship. We have both gained about 60lbs together in 7 years. When we met he was underweight and I was only around 10 lbs over weight.... Now he is overweight and I am considered obese :sad:

I was born fat... literally... 9lb babies were not all that common 59 years ago. I remember my mother telling me stories on how I was a colic baby... to "soothe the colic" she'd prepare home made baby formula with bottles of white Karo syrup... guess that did the trick and from that point on, was rewarded with candy. I was 60 lbs when i started first grade at the age of 5... entered 4th grade at 99 lbs.... what the heck.. I was a kid.. I didn't know better. I relied on my mom and dad to provide me with food and I guess they did!!!

Is it wrong of me to blame my parents for my lifelong weight issues? No, I do not believe so.. they set the pace for me when I was an infant... as a young kid I didn't know better... granted, as I got older, they weren't the ones force feeding me junk food... and yes, I figured out what the difference was between good food and bad food... unfortunately years of not having a solid nutritional base wreaked havoc with my body and I spent the first 58 years of my life fat. I finally figured it out, though... and for the very first time in my life, I celebrated my 59th birthday yesterday as a healthy, happy, size 4 woman and truthfully... I feel like I've just been born! The past is the past and I can only go forward from here...

And, while I do blame my parents for instilling bad habits in me at an early early age, I also realize that they didn't know any better and once I became an adult I was responsible for my own health and well being...

My mum died when I was four, so I sort of tried to replace her with food. When I was seven, I contracted alopecia and lost all my hair. For a young girl, this was extremely distressing and unsurprisingly I was bullied, and ate a lot to try to make myself feel better - leading to being overweight, leading to more bullying and more eating. This cycle went all the way through childhood into teenhood and I just kept up the bad eating habits even when the bullying stopped - due to depression and anxiety. Things got worse for me about four months ago when I got ITP (where the immune system attacks blood platelets) and was put on steroid medication. This led to me being a 15st 1lb (211lbs) 18 year old! (Although to be fair I'm very top heavy with a cup size of F) I'm going to university in september though, and I'm determined to get myself sorted out and start a new life!

two words....high school!

I was severely depressed and ate my sorrows. I was 135lbs and size 4/6 jeans when I was going into my freshman year (13 years old) by my junior year (16 years old) I was up to a size 20 prom dress and unsure of my weight.

Eating to much. As a child we all belonged to "The Clean Plate Club" and I took the lesson too much to heart.

Me too. Mom went through the Depression with little food, and love was a plate piled high, seconds were OK.

I just loved all food, ever since I was a kid. I snuck food, and ate weird things that others wouldn't:
pasta with plain tomato sauce.
grapefruit with salt.
cake mix/water
chopped carrots with lemon juice and Buttermilk Hidden Valley dressing

who eats that way!!
I'd eat all the Dole Spinach off my friend's cafeteria plates in grade school.

Ate to deal with my brother molesting me and my other siblings generally treating me like garbage. All I got was fat and still being treated like *kitten*.

Because food is f*cking delicious. :laugh:

I started gaining when I was in college. I was tall and had terrific body tone, so I enjoyed the late night pizza and beer without hesitation. I gained the usual "Freshman 15." I was not as concerned about that, but....

Once I started freelancing, it became a bigger problem. I was committed to working in my home office, attended to clients via online calls and sometimes I didn't leave my house for days!

I kept eating junk and got little to no exercise. So, that 15 lb. challenge morphed into a 100+ weight loss journey, but I am ready now!

BOOZE
It's always the booze. lol