How did you gain weight in the first place

I was very skinny all my life (weighed 96 lbs when I got married!) and I could always eat what I wanted and didn't gain weight. I was a picky eater and food wasn't important. When I met my husband, he got me to try new foods and then my love affair with food started. I slowly started to put on weight. I had my first child and developed postpartum depression and was medicated with antidepressants. I never lost the 50 lbs I gained during pregnancy. Had 2 more babies and gained with them too. I just continued to eat what I wanted thinking eventually the weight would come off. I also hated exercise. I developed pre-diabetes and was put on medications and changed my antidepressants to Wellbutrin and the weight started to come off. I got down to a 135 (I'm 5"2') and stayed there for years. In the last year I decided I wanted to get back down to my pre pregnancy weight and started running. I'm now down to 112lbs, size 0 and feel so much better. I still love food. I just don't eat as much!!

We always had a ton of junk food in the house when I was a kid. When I was in high school I weighed 135 and was 5'5" and was told by all my friends I was fat. Then when I moved out on my own I ate out 3 meals a day and ate a lot of junk food in between. I didn't care - I liked food. I ate a lot. I never ate vegetables and rarely ate fruit. It was all fast food and restaurant meals and pizza.

I was a skinny kid and teenager, so I ate whatever I wanted to and didn't gain weight. I had my kids young (at age 18 and 20) and lost the baby weight quickly, so I thought I was ok. It kind of just snuck up on me. I didn't change my eating habits and suddenly at age 25 I was 20 pounds heavier. Then at age 30 I was 35 pounds heavier. Now I'm 35 and need to lose about 50 pounds. It also could be stress eating because my kids are teenagers now.

Pregnancies, mostly. I did gain some in my 20s as I had never had to worry about gaining weight before, so didn't really think about what I was eating and drinking until I had gained a good 25 lbs in that decade! I was still in decent shape at that point, and probably a healthier weight than I had been before. But then I had babies, and while I got down to my pre-pregnancy weight each time, I stopped paying attention to my eating and drinking again a couple years after having my youngest, and packed on 20lbs. I lost it all in 2013, but now I'm slowly gaining it back again because I haven't been diligent about eating and drinking properly!

STRESS. I've never been "thin," but my over eating is all due to stress.

3 pregnancies and... food.

The only time I ever weighed what I was supposed to was the day I was born and it was downhill from then on. I was a chubby baby, chubby toddler and chubby child. At age 8 my mom put me on extreme weight loss programs which did not work. And she was also very abusive and said "sorry" with cookies. Thus began my effed up journey with food. Feel sad? eat! Feel depressed? eat! I finally am taking control of the little kid that lives inside of me and I am no longer emotional eating and I am trying to like myself again....

I used to be skinny and was always a big eater. I work in an office, but had side jobs cutting grass and firewood, so that helped. Over the years the side jobs fell away, and I didn't try to replace them. Then for four years I sat in front of a keyboard writing novels. I got up to 250 pounds, lost down to 218, then went back up to 240. Last year I decided I had had enough of it. I started losing in September, and 65 pounds later, I have leveled off at 175. I have been this weight for a little over a month now. I still sit at a keyboard far too much, but I eat healthier and do 600-1000 calorie worth of exercise a day.

Under-active thyroid

Complete lack of regard to my body's nutritional needs. AKA, stuffing my face with high calorie foods.

Just eating WAY too much food all my life.

I go to school during the day and work at night. Sometimes all I have time to eat are the quick things, and those aren't always the best things. Plus, I just learned that I inherited PCOS from my mom. Yay...

I was always pretty thin/in shape during my teenage and young adult years, then I think a few things happened:

1. I moved from the boonies into a city where I could get fast food and food delivery, and I felt the need to eat fast food like EVERY MEAL to make up for all the years I'd been deprived. LOL

2. I got married and felt like I needed to be a "good wife" by making my husband food covered in gravy and cheese for every meal, followed up by some sort of rich homemade dessert, and of course Southern style sweet tea to wash it all down!! (Of course, he never complained about my cooking, but it definitely packed the weight on both of us... LOL)

3. I got a job at Starbucks, where you can get as many free drinks as you want while you're on the clock, and I had waaaaaaay too many mochas and sweet teas.

But basically all those things boil down to the same thing, which is I was consuming way more calories that I could burn in a day.

I've cut back on restaurants, and if I do go out to eat, I try to check out the nutrition counts first so I can get the healthier items. Definitely not gonna cut out restaurants all together, sometimes I just don't feel like cooking or I want to go out for a special occasion. But I try to make better choices when I do go out. I also have learned to cook healthier meals at home. I no longer work for Starbucks, so I guess that solved that problem. LOL

Reading some of these responses reminds me how crazy the human body can be. There are so many conditions and things that have to be in balance or whooom - weight gain!

And yet the overwhelming majority of people's bodies are perfectly in balance to avoid weight gain if they simply control their caloric intake.

It's incredibly disingenuous for people to continue bringing up RARE disorders and situations that make maintaining a "normal" weight more difficult (not impossible) while failing to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of people just don't have these issues.

I make excuses and I say "I'll start eating healthy tomorrow" a lot!

I wasn't big as a kid but I thought I was. I thought it didn't really matter what I ate because I was big anyway. I loved chips and as I developed I didn't really realize how big I was. I finished school at 200 pounds or so. Boobs and hips sort of appeared when they were supposed to and I didn't think much of it.
Moved out of home, started an awful job, they didn't pay me much and I worked a long day and had a hour long commute. I would smash fruit loops in the morning, not eat all day then find a drive thru on the way home, order 2 or 3 meals and gorge all the way home, go to bed and repeat. Moved home, ate somewhat normal again and the weight dropped off... or so I thought. When I weighed in 2 months later I was 230 still. I was likely up around 250-260 before. I really knuckled down, dropped 40 pounds, picked it up again, dropped it again, picked it up. Every time something stressful happens I pick up those pounds... I eat. This time around I'm trying the "not making excuses" route.