Why did you let yourself gain so much weight?

noobletmcnugget
noobletmcnugget Posts: 518 Member
edited December 2015 in Health and Weight Loss
Really don't mean for this question to be offensive, and am aware that in some cases weight gain is exacerbated by medical conditions. I'm genuinely interested in why people let themselves become very overweight (especially to the point of it being detrimental to your health and quality of life), so would be interested to hear from anyone willing to share!
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Replies

  • juggernaut1974
    juggernaut1974 Posts: 6,212 Member
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.
  • strong_curves
    strong_curves Posts: 2,229 Member
    Food is my first love.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    I love food and I like doing things that make me happy, and eating food makes me happy. Also my 'I'm satisfied' threshold is very high and it's always been hard for me to feel satisfied by a 'normal' amount of food.

    Also moved and stopped being as active and didn't change my eating habits.

    That pretty much sums it up.
  • dhimaan
    dhimaan Posts: 774 Member
    Depression and didn't care about my appearance. Ironically when I was my heaviest two girls were very interested in me, but my mind wasn't right. Now that I am much more fitter it is getting a little more challenging.
  • tara_means_star
    tara_means_star Posts: 957 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    Lol thats me exactly.
  • Zoltansbeard
    Zoltansbeard Posts: 27 Member
    For me it was a mix of eating out of sadness(kinda numbs the pain) when i was a kid and often boredom later. Also to be quite frankly... i had problems really loving myself until recently.
  • Dreysander
    Dreysander Posts: 294 Member
    edited December 2015
    I was a normal sized kid but my mother has always had an eating disorder and basically told me that I was the fattest thing ever. She heavily restricted what I ate. When I left her house I went absolutely crazy with eating everything and anything I wasn't allowed to eat as a kid.

    Then I had 3 kids which didn't help matters.

    It took me this long to realize what my problem was and stop it.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    taracan25 wrote: »
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    Lol thats me exactly.

    Me three!
  • ew_david
    ew_david Posts: 3,473 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

  • crabbybrianna
    crabbybrianna Posts: 344 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    Yep. This exactly.

    But also, when I was a kid my parents restricted food that they thought wasn't healthy, so when I was around food like cookies and candy and all the things that I wasn't allowed to have I would eat as much as I possibly could. I remember sleeping over at a friend's house when I was around 8, and I kept sneaking upstairs to eat cookies that they had. I polished off an entire box plus more when no one was paying attention. That kind of thing happened a lot.
  • Vcorz
    Vcorz Posts: 75 Member
    I had always been very thin, almost underweight....then as I approached 40, I started gaining weight rapidly and didn't know how to stop it, never having had to watch before. Gained 12 inches round my waist I haven't been able to lose.
  • icemaiden37
    icemaiden37 Posts: 238 Member
    Francl27 wrote: »
    I love food and I like doing things that make me happy, and eating food makes me happy. Also my 'I'm satisfied' threshold is very high and it's always been hard for me to feel satisfied by a 'normal' amount of food.

    Also moved and stopped being as active and didn't change my eating habits.

    That pretty much sums it up.

    Yes - that's me too!

    I'd add to that the fact my best friends are all bigger than me so that made my getting fatter more acceptable and normal than perhaps it should be.
  • MommyL2015
    MommyL2015 Posts: 1,411 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    This and I had myself convinced that "I didn't look that bad." Because lots of people are overweight, right? But that's because I was lazy and didn't want to take responsibility for my actions.
  • dramaqueen45
    dramaqueen45 Posts: 1,009 Member
    I actually think it's because I grew up very thin- and could eat whatever I liked and stay thin. High metabolism? Probably. And I'm no athlete so I can't even chalk it up to sports. In my early 30s I found out I have an overactive thyroid, which was probably why I could continue to eat a lot a stay thin, but at the same time my thyroid was killing itself, so I went through radioactive iodine treatment and it took a while to adjust the meds. I was on a lot of diets off and on. But I think the real thing is just me growing up thin and having a mental image of myself being thin. I didn't realize how heavy I had become. I would see myself in the mirror and think "I look good" but if I saw myself on film either video or pictures I would be like "who is that?" I knew it was time when I got to 180 on my small frame of 5'4". I had to do something because I just kept gaining, slowly, but gaining a bit every year.

    And also I agree with the above- food is delicious. I would like to add- life gets busy with teenagers and fast food is easy and inexpensive and you can eat a sandwich in the car while driving a lot easier than a salad. It was a lot of food on the run during those years which didn't help either.
  • StellaRose227
    StellaRose227 Posts: 43 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    Pretty much this. Then I got pregnant and ate all the things.

    Actually, for me a big part of it was failure to plan. I love cooking, so while we ate fast food a couple of times a month, it wasn't an every day thing. That doesn't mean that I was eating healthy home-cooked meals either. It was nothing for me to come in from work and make a chicken pot pie from scratch because that was the first thing that came to mind when I opened the freezer and saw chicken and frozen vegetables.
  • ki4eld
    ki4eld Posts: 1,213 Member
    I deleted my entire reply to this question.

    I'll just ditto @juggernaut1974 instead of speaking my mind.
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    When I was young, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. At first, the treatment was to eat specific amounts and types of food consistently each day at certain times, and to take the same amount of insulin each day at the same times.

    Within a month, I had gained 20 lbs. Within a year, I had doubled my weight. Within 3 years, I was almost triple my original weight. At that point, I was obese and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The endocrinologist said I was only the 2nd patient she had ever seen with both type 1 and type 2 (it is much more common now and is called "double diabetes").

    For years, I didn't believe it was even possible to lose fat. I feared that a deficit would cause low BG, which would require me to eat and eliminate the deficit. When I finally got serious using MFP, that is exactly what happened. I even had a scary day early on where for 12 hours, I took no bolus insulin and even cut back my basal insulin during part of that time... still, I ended up eating more than 600g of carbs just to treat low BG. It would just keep dipping low. I was so scared because I knew if I fell asleep, I would stop eating and might not wake up again.

    Also, my appetite is enormous.
  • hellotohealthy
    hellotohealthy Posts: 7 Member
    Food tastes delicious and I am too lazy/injured to exercise. I got injured during marathon training and became depressed. Instead of moving on and rehabing my bum hip I ate until I gained 20 pounds. I've started "dieting" so many times and I always give up within a week. The all or nothing mentality is what gets me.
  • lulalacroix
    lulalacroix Posts: 1,082 Member
    I had always been the size I preferred until the past few years. My son was involved in a terrible accident and I ended up basically broken. I stopped doing everything I usually did and just didn't care about myself anymore. The weight came on very fast. I have spent the past three years trying to lose the weight, in different ways, and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe this time it will stick.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    edited December 2015
    The last two times I gained weight was after getting into relationships - when I'm single I spend a lot more time in the gym and I cook differently. That was just 20 pounds, though.

    I've also gained weight when I went from active jobs to desk jobs. And I've self-medicated with food.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    i was always pretty active growing up and in my 20s...when i graduated college at 30 i took a desk job at a CPA firm and was pretty much working 10-12 hour days 6 days per week. i also bought a car, so i wasn't walking or riding my bike everywhere anymore. i didn't really make time for exercise, because other than playing sports when i was growing up, i never really "worked out"...i was just active. i put on 40-50 Lbs pretty easily over 8 years or so due to being way less active with no change in my dietary habits.
  • smotheredincheese
    smotheredincheese Posts: 559 Member
    I never really became fat - I just always was fat. A chubby kid turned in to a fat teenager and I thought I would never be able to change. A few people have mentioned having parents with restrictive attitudes to food, and I think that contributed to my weight problem hugely. I wasn't allowed treats at home very often so when they were available I would gorge myself, and when I got older would spend my lunch money on chocolate every day.
    I was very unhappy with my weight but bought in to the myth that it's near impossible for obese children to ever be a healthy weight, so let myself get bigger and bigger.
  • ald783
    ald783 Posts: 688 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.

    Samesies
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    Eating all day/night feels good, in a bad way, and too little excercise makes me lazy, and as my weight goes up I become more and more indifferent, and all I want/manage to do is eat. I got used to the new normal really fast. It's easy, and pleasant, if I don't think too much about it.

    Keeping the weight off and being active every day takes a conscious effort, planning, and sometimes telling myself NO. Saying no to things I want and can have is really difficult sometimes. But it can also feel good.
  • jkal1979
    jkal1979 Posts: 1,896 Member
    I won't go into detail, but I dealt with my emotions by stuffing my face and gaining 36 pounds.
  • Shanel0916
    Shanel0916 Posts: 586 Member
    I eat out of boredom, with no "real" friends and a not so exciting life boredom was the norm. I also binge from time to time not sure why. I would come home everyday after school and eat just about everything in sight plus dinner.
  • 13bbird13
    13bbird13 Posts: 425 Member
    I embraced what I call my "frat boy diet" many years ago... pizza, burgers, tacos... and I also sit on the couch watching TV with a glass of wine in my hand whenever possible. I was pretty much raised on processed food like take-out and TV dinners and I got used to the convenience, so I kept eating that way as an adult. I was skinny as a rail in high school (and I walked to school all 13 years of public education) and in fact was once turned away when I tried to give blood because I didn't weigh at least 110 pounds. Not a problem these days; two months ago I was 60 pounds over that!!
  • WickedPineapple
    WickedPineapple Posts: 698 Member
    I was always overweight as a teen and an adult. I slipped into obesity in my early 20s without even noticing (depression + stress eating).
  • abatonfan
    abatonfan Posts: 1,120 Member
    juggernaut1974 wrote: »
    Because food is delicious and I was lazy.
    Same here. I was also the person to eat a family-sized bag of baked potato chips, nuts, or grapes because they're "healthy" (not knowing that I just ate 1000+ calories in my "snack").

    I don't want to put the blame on my parents (I got fat because I was a pig with no portion control), but I wish my parents spent some time teaching and demonstrating good nutrition and portion control. I saw them eat straight out of the bag of potato chips and not give a fat rat's behind about their diet, and I modeled their behavior. I feel like the entire family's dynamics about food is a swinging pendulum -my grandmother placed such a big emphasis on weight and "skinniness" (what mother would send her 12-13 year old daughter to Weight Watchers?) that it ultimately backfired with my mother. My mother didn't want to force my sisters and me down the same path she went on, so she didn't spend much attention on nutrition and healthy eating. If I decide to have kids, I hope that I will be able to strike a balance between emphasizing healthy eating and portion control but not shoving "skinniness" down their throats.
  • etebbetts
    etebbetts Posts: 9 Member
    My mom got sick when I was 9, and family dinners didn't happen often. I was a super picky eater, so my parents told me that if I didn't want whatever they were making, I could cook my own dinner, haha. So, I always made what I liked to eat without any regard to health.. Usually pasta. I was SO active as a kid and up until college, I could literally eat whatever I wanted and still had a great body.

    Food became a crutch for me for sure, and I was also super picky, used to seeing food as a reward, are crazy big portions, etc. I'm a stress eater for sure. So my mom died when I was a sophomore in college, and I gained around 15lbs. Later that year, I got super in shape and lost that weight. I was in the best shape and health of my life. Because I was so active, I think my mentality was that I could continue eating a decent amount of food while maintaining. But I moved in with my long time boyfriend, winter came in Boston, and I felt uncomfortable doing the programs (like insanity, p90x, etc) in our tiny apartment on the second floor., so I became much less active, even though it didn't really register in my mind. I started gaining back weight pretty quickly.

    Since then, I've been gaining weight and constantly thinking that I need to stop and lose it. I even managed to gain weight instead of lose it for my wedding. But my (now husband) truly does make me feel beautiful and loved at every size, and I've been so stressed and busy the last few years... Working full time while also running a biz full time, getting engaged, buying a house, quitting the 9-5 and being self employed full time, building my biz, getting married, etc... I just haven't been active and kept stress eating. I was ashamed of how I looked, but very little in my life revolves around how I look, so I wasn't mortified enough to not let myself get to this weight.

    I finally reached 199.6lbs and did NOT want to see that 200 number. It's about to be my off season, and I feel my adult brain actually starting to take over my adolescent one, which has been helpful in me deciding to once and for all make a serious effort to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. I convinced my husband to do this with me, and it's so so helpful. It's a whole different mentality than before.

    I hope this time sticks. I hate feeling so fat, feeling ashamed about how I look, feeling so unhealthy, and worrying about the effects on my health. I love the way I feel when I'm getting regular exercise and eating relatively well. I want to hold onto that feeling forever, please!

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