Why did you all put on weight in the first place?

I started comfort eating and drinking too much when my dad got diagnosed with cancer, which got worse after he passed away. I gained 2 stone which I'm aiming to now lose again

During college - alcohol and drunk munchies.

After college I had the "well, at least I'm not drinking" mentality. I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for a while (1.5 years), and the people I met there reinforced that attitude and then some. In my experience, AA culture generally promotes unhealthy lifestyles, where the social scene revolves around cigarettes and eating at Denny's. I don't blame AA for my weight game, and I'm sure the program is great for some people, but AA rhetoric and group-think helped me justify my unhealthy habits.

I think for me, realizing that abstaining from alcohol didn't have to be such a defining feature of my identity and social life allowed me to focus on other problems that I had been ignoring.

Elle_Bronwyn15 wrote: »

Pituitary Adenoma and PCOS, paired with on and off poor eating habits/eating disorders and lack of motivation to work out.

I've always had minor metabolic problems, but I was only ever slightly overweight. I was always very active and had good eating habits.

Then I had a brain aneurysm, followed by pituitary failure. I was barely able to get out of bed for several years. It took a LONG time to get a diagnosis and even longer to get treatment.

I ate my feelings

All of them

Only when I dealt with some inner demons was I able to fully take responsibility for my life and my habits and change both

I put on weight as a child. I was a happy, active, involved, and very social kid, and my family didn't have any serious weight problems (adult family members were up to maybe 30 lbs overweight at most?). I just went to a lot of celebrations and gatherings, it was common for my parents and for my friends parents to treat the kids and their friends to McDonald's and Chuck E. Cheese and things like that. I'd buy ice cream and donuts and Big Gulps and Slurpees from the 7-11 nearby with my allowance. My dad had a store which sold movie sized candy bars and other impulse buy-like items near the registers, and his employees would let me take candy bars because they weren't supposed to charge their boss' family for anything, and I definitely took advantage of that perk. Stuff like that just added up. And the heavier I got, the less active I wanted to be.
My family falsely believed my weight would just normalize on its own when my dance instructors would bring up my weight to them and costume problems that would arise due to my size in productions I was involved in, and things like that. They never expected I would become as heavy as I eventually did. By the time they recognized it was a problem that needed addressing, I was about 12, adolescence had begun and had become very awkward and withdrawn, and they just didn't know how to handle me after I had an uber adolescent freakout when they tried to problem-solve with me about my weight. My dad made another attempt when I was 14 or so, and that didn't go too well for him either.
I was quite stubborn and aggressive in adolescence, and knowing that my family believed I had a weight problem that needed to be managed, I dug in my heels out of spite. Heh, I sure showed them...derp.

Family habits of overeating to self-medicate boredom/stress and celebratory eating. The only way I lose weight is to stay busy and prioritize my health over others' whims (like my ex-husband being so picky about dinner that we would always just end up at Taco Bell or Burgerking!). Finding healthy friends and visiting juice bars and walking/running parks with my kids is inspiring

I was severely depressed for multiple personal reasons and started to self medicate, the tablets were causing indigestion so I started drinking a lot of chocolate milk and eating ice cream to sooth the pain, and things snowballed from there, I ended up gaining over 60kg, had a fatty liver and a continual period for more than 6 months. After my mother passed I knew I need to do something about my health or I would be joining her sooner rather than later.

I have always been a fat person. I mean, I was a normal sized baby and toddler, but once I hit 4 or 5 I got fat. My family is full of great Southern cooks, but all of us had no idea how to 'eat healthy' and had no real desire to start. No *kitten* were given, tbh. Especially when you add in we're all emotional eaters. My mom has a (now dormant) eating disorder, so I did grow up seeing her purge. I knew at a very young age that that's not something I wanted for myself -- so maybe that contributed to my feelings about food? And, frankly, looking back, it's a little disheartening to remember being at the dinner table and seeing the looks my aunt would give my grandmother as my mother would excuse herself from the family meal to go throw up the food she'd just gorged on. No one knew how to discuss their feelings unless it was around a mouthful of cake.

While I have a knee-jerk dislike for bulimia and anorexia, I have the other one. Emotional eating, binging. It's gotten better, but mostly because I'm restricting intake of fast food and I can actually see when I'm headed towards a binging episode. Fast food is bad because it's 'a treat' and instead of just choosing one thing, I'll get multiple things. Popeye's is a favorite and I've been known to order the 8 piece meal for two and eat all of it myself - rationalizing that legs and wings only have a LITTLE BIT of meat on each piece. I have to relearn how to eat fast food now that I'm an adult (I never ordered multiple meals when I lived with other people) because holy *kitten*, you guys, I'm a glutton. "It's cheaper to get the bigger portion!" has also been an excuse of mine.

That's the other big part of it: Portion sizes was HUGE for me. I cut out 99% of soda/sweet tea. I'll only have soda at a special occasion (a holiday or out to eat) and it'll be 1 serving size. No free refills for this chick anymore. And I effing hate it, you guys. If I keep soda in the house, I'll drink it till it's gone. Sweet tea is regulated to 8-16 oz at dinner only and only if I have the calories I can spare. Other than that, portion sizes for food itself was eye opening. I started weighing everything. I'd only eat the serving size -- or I'd change it accordingly. (Cereal is normally 1 cup, instead of the 3/4 cup.)

MFP has been great because I'm holding myself responsible for what I eat. I don't stick my head under the sand anymore. I don't restrict myself -- but I do my best to keep things in my dailies.

I am journaling my weight loss and shedding the shame and weight. I was abused as a child, then by now ex husbund. My son was diagnosed with a rare disorder when he was a toddler and without God I never would have survived. I just finished the rough draft of my novel that chronicles my life to this point.