Why do/did you overeat?

It used to be hunger combined with psychological heeby-jeebies for me. The overwhelming feeling like if I don't eat this its the last time I will be able to eat it. That too and yes, the tastebuds are fierce thing. That sort of deprivation.
Now I guess its highly emotional. I will suddenly crave some sweet/savoury dish or junk food and obsess and obsess over it. When I buy it....I end up losing interest, not being hungry (losing appetite) or not being able to eat much of it. It becomes I guess...almost a twisted coping mechanism of conflicted cognitive dissonance.

I'm also a massive foodie...so that is deprivation to the power of ten.

I reckon some massive factors to overeating is:

- Lack of balance. (Diet is too constrained, too deprived - entire food groups are cut out and demonised and increases the craving/likelihood of overeating)
- Lack of consistency and structure (habits take time to build and if you're always dropping in and out of a lifestyle/diet plan you will not have built enough to form a habit, thus always having to go uphill in restarting and restarting)
- Fear (Fear of change. "I want to change, but I'm scared. (for various reasons)" so the sub-conscious compels them to eat more, overeat, to sabotage their own efforts.)

I am hungry all the time and also bored due to my unemployment due to mental health issues. I am also a bit of emotional eater because I had a severely abused childhood. I was orthorexic at 17 and also had exercise bulimia till I was 20. But then years and years of abuse caught up and I slipped into depression and lost control of my eating. But thanks to mfp, I am improving myself and cleaning up my diet.

I was always overweight as a child, and looking back, I completely blame my parents for that. Every other aspect of my childhood was amazing, but there was no kind of nutritional education. Food was a reward, an activity and a cure-all.

Its like my parents had laid this shoddy foundation, and everything I knew about building I got from them, so when I start working on it myself, the whole structure is corrupt. Does that make sense?

So I become an adult (barely), and can buy whatever junk I want, whenever I want. I just go nuts - the weight piles on. I eat normal meals, I eat to celebrate, I eat when I'm bored and I especially eat when I feel down.

I get heavier and feel worse and worse about myself. I'm spending so much money on food and booze I have little left over for any other activity. It gets to a point where the only moments of my day when I am happy are when I eat something I like.

Now I'm daydreaming about losing weight almost constantly - "the diet will start today!" etc, but when it comes time for a meal, it's almost inconceivable to deny myself that little bit of happiness in an otherwise miserable day. That was what made it so difficult to begin a change of lifestyle.

Also I think one of the reasons I kept failing is because even when I successfully started a diet, I was still very embarrassed of my size. So I would stew at home, alone, thinking "when I'm thin I can go out and do all those physical things, I just have to power through this first period". But until then I had nothing, really, and usually went back to eating.

Those two things, and I believe an addiction to high sugar / fat foods, are what caused me to overeat.

^^^ Nah didn't get it......

Eat to celebrate, eat to commiserate, eat because it tastes good, must stop eating late at night and start eating breakfast (which means eating BOTH breakfast and late at night). The belief that weight loss can only happen with great sacrifice and dietary restriction, and since it will all be regained within a few months of relaxing the restriction, why bother to try and stop over-eating?

-My TDEE was REALLY low.
-Goldfish. And pretzels.

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I suppose I just didn't really think about the calories. The fat was so gradual that there just wasn't any "OMG" moment for a while. Plus, since I'm tall, even a freakish amount of weight gets spread around so that I didn't necessarily look as heavy as I was.

I never really changed my eating habits. My problem was a career change. I was in the industrial maintenance fields for 17 years, and decided to go to school for computer programming. Once I got my first programming job, I went from working on big heavy things using big heavy tools to sitting on my butt in an office all day.

I never changed my eating habits, so over the years my weight just kept going up.

Maybe that is why what I am doing now seems to be working so well. I am set to lose a pound a week so it takes about 500 calories a day off. I have increased my activity lever through walking and bike riding to get at least 500 active calories a day. So I am still eating the same, but being more active to make up for it.

Alone, and sad when multiple things went wrong in my life. Cheap, garbage food became my crutch. Then the vicious cycle of "I eat like a fat *kitten* because I am sad, and I am sad because I eat like a fat *kitten*" happens, until I manage to force myself out of that constant orbit. I do suffer from depression from time to time, and it mostly revolves around my financial situation. They say money can't buy happiness, but the people who say that should try being a single dad who can barely afford to rent an apartment and pay bills on time.

I became more sedentary but just ate the same as when I was more active. I didn't know how many calories I was eating or how much I needed.

I used to be extremely active as a child/teenager and than 6 months after my graduation, I rolled my car and broke my knee, shoulder and ribs. I was laid up for a while and gained a bunch of weight, but the relationship I was in, my boyfriend never said anything about it, so I just let it go. I started to not really care about anything and cared about making him happy (yes, that was the beginning of a horrible relationship) I found out he cheated on me five years later, and I was done. I lost about 60 pounds through MFP then. I ended up getting a desk job and messed up my shoulder yet again, and had a shift 12-930, which resulted in no exercise and bad eating habits. Gained about 35 pounds of it back. About a month ago, I decided enough was enough, so i'm back and trying to control my overeating. Not letting my horrible schedule or anything stop me this time! Good luck to everyone!

The first time I gained weight, in my late 20s, it was probably: (1) Didn't really think about calories or food choices or portions, and (2) lack of knowledge about food/cooking, plus (3) became more sedentary than I had been.

More specifically, I'd always been an okay weight without thinking about it before then, so never bothered learning about how many calories were in things or how to cut calories. I mean, I knew stuff like cake or cheesy pasta dishes were generally higher cal, but it wasn't something I'd ever had to think about. In my mid-20s I started working a high stress/long hours job that had as a perk lots of expensive restaurant meals (including delivery to the firm when one was working late) and a decent amount of travel, that would always involve going out. (I recall that everyone would joke about how free food must not have any calories too.) I also adapted poorly to the stress by not fitting in workouts and became much less active. In that I'm only 5'3, I gained weight pretty rapidly over the next few years.

When I realized how much I'd gained and how out of control I felt, I decided to apply my skills that made me reasonably successful at school in the past and at my job and understand why I was gaining weight and it seemed super obvious once I did. So I figured out a way to add in exercise and prioritized cooking for myself, and simply exercised more sense at restaurants/with restaurant meals.

Kept that weight off for about 5 years and regained more for emotional eating reasons (which I think was part of it the first time too, but never really acknowledged), as well as because I again became sedentary. Basically, I was drinking way too much (although I didn't really gain weight as a result of that) and then got pretty depressed (related) and stopped being active at all. When I quit drinking I was kind of eating more to compensate and although I knew I was doing it I was scared that being too strict with myself would interfere with my sobriety which didn't feel secure at all yet. Once I started feeling more comfortable and maybe ready to get back to more healthy habits, like paying attention to what I ate and not using food as comfort, I entered into a 2 year period of extreme stress and crazy hours at my job and just let myself not worry about food or exercise (which was a mistake, but I'm not sure I was ready to do anything else). Once I was ready I couldn't believe how fat I'd gotten and vowed never to stop paying attention (or weighing) for that long again and got back to my old healthy habits.

The first time I lost I didn't focus on calories, so it was interesting to learn this time that apparently when I'm at or around my goal weight and sedentary my maintenance is only 1500 or so. I never would have suspected it was that low, and that explains why I can gain weight when I'm sedentary without really eating huge amounts, especially if am careless at restaurants and so on. Having this information now is helpful for me, and also an incentive not to get sedentary again if I can avoid it.

Because..food tastes good. Really good. Mmmmmmmmmmfooood lolololol.