What was your main downfall when it came to packing on the pounds?

Age, wine, contentment, wine, winter, wine, pizza, wine, computer games, and probably wine.

Food, sedentary life style + genetics. I came from a family where everyone is obese or overweight and the lucky ones are skinny fat (what I know now is that it's all just due to disastrous eating habits not really genetics). I used to go days surviving only on chips and french fries, I would buy 6 bags of chips to eat throughout the day (sometimes I ate chips in bread) and when I get bored, I go fry myself some potatos! Other days, I would survive only on fast food, I used to really eat a lot of that crap, as in A LOT, all kinds of it, all day every day. And I am not even going to start on the bread, rice or pasta; I will just say that I used to eat crazy amounts of it. Looking at the bright side, I never liked sweet things, so I didn't particularly crave them but when someone brought them home, well Duh! I would easily eat 2000-3000 calories in one sitting. Staying late at night didn't help either, I used to eat anything I could get my hands on, better yet, I used to buy pizza or some burgers, chips, chocolate, pepsi...etc and keep them to eat at 2am-3am when I am watching my favorite show. What I used to do to myself..... but that's all behind me now, so all's good I guess.

Eating without consciousness of nutrition content. I love grains and dairy, and had a lot of both, every day. Now I have both much more selectively and more mindfully. Also, a lack of produce.

becoming a vegetarian.

eta: mostly what Sabine_Stroehm says.

Snacking, anxiety eating, cycles where I would starve myself--followed by eating anything I wanted always lead to more weight gain. All that and Hypothyroidism, PCOS, and I hate exercise didn't help. lol I've found that snacking only makes me hungrier, so I cut that out.

Need2Exerc1se wrote: »

Age, wine, contentment, wine, winter, wine, pizza, wine, computer games, and probably wine.

This, minus computer games, plus beer.

BFDeal wrote: »

Eating out. I'm convinced I could suffer through the 1800 calories a day my body seems to require in order to inch down at a snails pace. But seriously, what's the point of weighing every ounce every single day and working your butt off in the gym if you can't go out to dinner one friggin' day of the week? Oops. Here comes the weigh again for no reason because of one stupid meal. I know. "Box up half." Lame.

This is exactly why I try to stay below 1300 during the week (I don't always succeed, but I try). So I can live it up on the weekends and still average out at a deficit.

Bah double post

Pizza...lots of pizza. Sometimes dipped in Ranch, lol. And sweets. I could eat an entire pan of brownies in one night.

I also spent several years trying to get by on 4-6 hours of sleep (or 2 hours on bad days) and ate much more than I would if I had gotten 8 hours of sleep and felt really rested. So trying to replace lost sleep with food was not helpful.