Why are you fat?

I am fat because:

1. I was a swimmer in high school and we would workout 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening. I could, back then, eat whatever I wanted. No one told me when I quit swimming I could not continue to consume that many calories with nothing that was going to burn them off.

2. I struggle with depression and anxiety. I eat when I am anxious or depressed. My meds have made it better, exercise has really been the best though! My depression is better, my anxiety is not however. I am more comfortable making on line friends than going out to meet people face to face. I do love going to Curves though, gets me out of the house and around other people more.

3. I am an emotional eater, growing up it was always it your sad: eat, happy: eat, bored: eat....

4. My portions were out of control. Even though I ate healthy due to IBD, my portions were huge! I know measure, weigh and use a smaller plate. If I have to use a bigger plate, I have learned the plate does NOT need to be full.

5. I LOVE good food! I love to cook, grill, bake....

I was a thin kid, thin teenager, and thin college student. The weight crept on over the years because I went from being an active college student to a sedentary desk worker while eating the same portion sizes, plus I am sure my metabolism has slowed over the years (I am 34). I have always generally eaten healthy, that's not where my struggle lies. My problem is portion sizes. Bottom line is I got fat because I didn't move as much.

I was an average sized kid and teenager and never struggled with my weight. I got married when I was 18 and weighed about 125 lbs. I put on 40 lbs. during the first 2 years of marriage because we ate like crap- tons of restaurant food. I got pregnant and packed on 75 lbs. during my first pregnancy. I didn't have a CLUE about how I should eat while pregnant. I really thought I needed a lot more calories and I also just ate whatever I was craving which was never anything really healthy. I did manage to get down to 190 after I had my first baby but I have not seen that number since the year 2000. :frown: I have been pregnant 4 times since then and each time I just added on more weight and didn't lose any afterwards. I never exercised and just continued to eat bad things.

I've always been overweight, but I really packed on the pounds when I left my parents home and went to University. The reasons are

1) I moved from a small town where I had to walk at least a mile to the shop (public transport was expensive and infrequent) to a city where everything was on my doorstep and if I wanted to go anywhere that wasn't just around the corner I could hop on the ridiculously cheap and frequent public transport

2) I didn't have mother watching what I ate for me (sad but true) and had no clue about calories or nutritional value, just a vague idea that "this is full of fat therefore bad, this is low fat or sugar free, therefore good" and many things I didn't know that they were particularly good or bad

3) I lived on a student budget which favoured frozen chips that lasted forever as opposed to fresh vegetables which went off before I had a chance to use them (student accomodation wasn't great for food storage in general anyway!)

Then I left University and moved in with my now husband and packed on even more weight. Found ourselves in a position where we could afford to indulge ourselves in ways which we couldn't before...takeaways and Ben and Jerry's ice cream...found a desk job but then became unemployed. Emotional eating became a huge factor. I can litterally quote myself on this one..."I don't feel so good today, I got another rejection. I can't be bothered to cook. Let's get a takeout"

We're now well educated on the content of our food and what it does to us. The emotional eating is hard to wean ourselves from but nevertheless we persevere. This is why we're fat, and being aware of this is helping us, bit by bit, to become thin

I'm definitely an emotional eater aka binge eater... whenever I'm bored or sad, I WILL EAT! Thankfully I don't really do it when I'm at school though because I don't keep food in my room and I don't buy anything unhealthy. My weight gain also has a lot to do with my boyfriend. When we met I was a great weight and then once we began official I gained SO much. He eats differently than I do and I think I just ate whatever he wanted because I wanted to spend time with him... yes, we spend time together by eating. Now that we have been together for almost a year I don't feel the need to do whatever he's doing and I'll make my own food or eat before we hang out so he can't drag me to mcdonalds!

I got fat during my pregnancy. I started out working out every day, eating properly and putting very little weight on, and then after getting sick, getting medivac'd out of here and spending 2 weeks in an isolation ICU I kinda asked myself what the point was? Why work out and eat properly if I am going to get sick anyway? And it was my last baby so I figured I might as well enjoy it. So I started eating. I gained alot of weight in the last few months of pregnancy and kept it on for the last 18 months. I had PPD pretty badly and havne't had the motivation to lose the weight. I always told myself, "I'll start tomorrowl" Its finally tomorrow.

I'm fat because I let it happen. I could list a million reasons and a million things that helped the situation along, but at the end of the day....well I knew it was happening, and I didn't do anything to stop it.

I'm fat because I've been using food for comfort or whatever. I need to learn to let Jesus fill my needs and my desires. He's the only One who can truly satisfy.

I get the idea that some of you have posted about life circumstances, etc being excuses but I also think it's important to identify what was behind the weight gain more than just eating too much and moving too little. That's typically the base reason but if you don't figure out what else is behind it, you're never truly going to conquer the weight issues.

I'm definitely an emotional eater but not due to stress - it gives me a nervous stomach so I don't want to eat and feel sick. My triggers are boredom and feeling lonely. I'm also an emotional eater in the sense that I'll use food to comfort someone else in my life and let that be an excuse to overeat right along with them. In fact, my last weight gain was in part due to my husband losing a very close friend and since I knew certain foods were his favorites and he's more of a fan of junky stuff, that's what we ate. It's also part of the reason I gained weight in high school - my brother was home from the service after being in the Gulf War and we ate all kinds of crappy food together because it made him happy and that's all I cared about at the time. It's not my brother's fault or my husband's fault, it's my own for letting it be an excuse to let myself go.

So now I need to keep that little thought in the back of my mind - just because there's something stressful going on in my life or in the life of someone I love, I can't use food as a tool of comfort. I need to help them out in other ways and make sure I don't sacrifice my own priorities/health in the process.

I'm fat because when I hit puberty I gained 100lbs in 1 year and didn't have anyone take me to the doctor to find out wth was going on. I've steadily been 100lbs overweight up until now. I have gained and lost weight, MASSIVE weight (70-90lbs), multiple times but never by trying. It just has happened without me paying much attention at all and all of a sudden people are telling me that I am the incredible shrinking woman. Then slowly but surely it starts going back up again too. So I started to pay attention and come to find out I am pre-menopausal (I'm 25) and my hormones are WAY out of whack (which explains why I LOST weight and felt great while on birth control in the past). So some of the things that I need to do to help control my hormones is cut out carbs. Carbs contribute to hormone imbalances and by lowering my carbs the weight is falling off. When I am on point and drinking my water and keeping my carbs between 70-90g a day I drop 1lb a day. Conversely when I am eating "healthy" carbs through fruit and whole grains I can stay around 1200-1500cal and I don;t lose any weight at all. My dillema??? I eat carbs when I am stressed and I am a stress ball to the max. So truley for me to be healthy I need to stick to a lower carb lifestyle and meditate often to help bring me back to center. I stumble and fall a LOT but I think that is self sabotage. I have never in my life held the key to why I am fat and now that I do I am scared to know what life will be like without the fat. It's become like an extra limb, a protective layer against unwanted attention and I have NO idea what life is like to "normal" people.

Why am i fat? i'm fat because i don't like attention. i'm afraid people will noice me, but darn it, i deserve to be noticed.

i am fat because i am greedy and lazy

I am fat because when I was married I was determined to eat myself to "till death do us part." It started with wedding cake and sort of never stopped.

Loving reading the responses on this thread. I am LOL'ing, I really needed this today! Well since were pointing fingers I would like to say I’m fat cause I’m short. If I were taller I wouldn’t be so fat. I would better proportioned. Sound Good?!….Great, I thought so too!


Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Free Calorie Counter

I'm fat because I've been using food for comfort or whatever. I need to learn to let Jesus fill my needs and my desires. He's the only One who can truly satisfy.

Have you read the book Made to Crave? It talks about turning our cravig's for food, to God