How did you get heavy to begin with?

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Replies

  • __TMac__
    __TMac__ Posts: 1,665 Member
    Mindless eating. Celebratory eating. Bored, sad, restless, angry eating. All the eatings. It was mostly nutritionally sound, but at an inappropriate volume.
  • DietVanillaCoke
    DietVanillaCoke Posts: 259 Member
    malibu927 wrote: »
    Parents who didn't teach me about proper portion sizes/nutrition and not caring about those for my first fourteen years of adulthood

    This^ was a big starting point for me too. I remember being very fat when i was 8-12 and i remember having a choice of eating an apple or some carrot cake. I figured the carrot cake was smaller so it would be less fat on me. I thought what you ate would appear on your body as fat unless you did a lot of exercise. So if you ate a whole watermelon, you'd be that fat etc... So I would refuse to eat things i didn't like and I'd just eat things that i thought tasted good. If we had nutrition in primary school, i may have learnt better choices and that may have improved my health, before it got worse.

    I ended up starving myself thinking that it was the only way to be healthy. I lost a lot of weight and then i started swimming and doing gymnastics. from 15 - 17 I was thin but once i started university, i stopped doing sports and started eating out socially with friends. I gained a 50lbs in 1 year. I was depressed and was having issues at home. I was put on anti depressants and anti anxiety medications and diagnosed with PTSD. I gained another 60lbs.

    Prevention through education is the key. If my family and I had been more educated in nutrition, I don't think i would have ever gotten this bad. Now i understand basic nutrition, I even did a unit at uni and I've lost 40lbs.
  • Kullerva
    Kullerva Posts: 1,114 Member
    Childhood trauma. I thought if I was big enough, I'd be invisible and no one would look at me. I was depressingly wrong. I lost weight when I realized I was affecting my health because of some ***hole who'd been dead for ten years.
  • dmwh142
    dmwh142 Posts: 72 Member
    Untreated or under treated hypothyroidism made it easy to gain weight and very difficult to loose. I am thankful to be on natural thyroid medication now and CICO works as it should.
  • ShrinkingViolet1982
    ShrinkingViolet1982 Posts: 919 Member
    I get pulled in by the siren-song of jelly beans. And cake. And, and, and. Too large portions. Eating because I'm bored, anxious, stressed, or sad. Food never upsets me :wink:

    Mostly just because I have little self-control, despite having managed to quit smoking years ago. Replacing sugar and bad food is harder because you still need to eat.
  • JenniferIsLosingIt
    JenniferIsLosingIt Posts: 595 Member
    Food has never said anything mean to me. Food is always there to comfort me. When i felt my voice was silenced (most of my life) I turned to food for comfort. Trying break that cycle.
  • necia_m
    necia_m Posts: 7 Member
    I moved in with a man whom made me feel as if I was starving myself. I used to eat normal portions with lots of fruit and veg. He refused to eat anything wholesome, it was all processed food. We worked different shifts so he made me feel bad for going on a run instead of spending time with him (aka watching tv). After a yr my weight skyrocketed and then I became pregnant. One thing led to another and 4 years later here I am.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
    I have a brother who has always been in the "healthy" BMI. He's 2 years older than I. I have been bigger than him since I was 2. I don't remember things from when I was 2 so I don't know what caused me to become a fat baby, but it sure did persist.
  • choklityum
    choklityum Posts: 35 Member
    I was 28 and weighed 115 when I got married. I wore a size 2 or 0, depending on the item of clothing. My waist was 19". I weighed 125 when I got pregnant with my first son at 32; I gained 50 lbs. I ended up having an emergency C-section. Really limits your ability to do any meaningful exercise for a while. And I had a desk job. I was 37 and weighed about 150 when I got pregnant with my second son; gained about 25 lbs. Another C-section and still had a desk job. Hubs wasn't the help he promised he would be with either boy, so I was exhausted on top of everything else. Whenever I had the chance, I curled up on the couch and napped, watched TV, or read. And ate. Not healthy stuff, either.

    In July of 2008, my younger son died in an accident; he was 5-1/2. I didn't eat for 2 weeks. I lived on coffee, Diet Dew, and cigarettes. My weight dropped to 150. I took 3 months off of work. I alternated between not eating and binge eating. I was about 160 when I went back to work, still a desk job. But my head was still a major mess, and the not-eating/binge-eating cycle continued.

    I then spent the next 5 years in a job (still a desk job) that became increasingly stressful. My weight went up to 205, a number I NEVER thought I'd see and it horrified the hell out of me. I bought a Fitbit, signed up with MFP, and lost 30 pounds. Then the stress really started getting to me. Lunch might be a bag of M&Ms (the larger 11-12 oz size), or Hershey's Kisses, or cookies from the vending machine, and coffee or Diet Dew. Exercise was non-existent. And I didn't give a flying f***. About anything. But my weight's been holding between 170-180. At 5'4" (I've shrunk 2" over the past 2-3 years), I'm jumping back and forth over the overweight/obese line. Not ideal, but since my weight was more or less stable, I figured it's all good.

    A recent visit to the doctor gave me a swift and painful kick in the *kitten*. I have hypothyroidism, so my cholesterol numbers will whack out when my thyroid does. I was put on a statin last time it happened. Only this time, my thyroid was fine. So I'm back here, tracking everything I eat and making sure I get at least 30 minutes of moderate-to-brisk walking in. I did this to myself and I'm the only one who can fix this clusterf***.

    I hope you'll forgive me for this being so long. Up until about 30, I had no issues with my weight. A little slow-down with the metabolism, but I ran, did aerobics, and some weights to keep things under control. Until the first pregnancy. The above is a 24-year "history" of how I let things get away from me and how some things kept me from caring. It's so easy to let it happen.
  • mskimee
    mskimee Posts: 228 Member
    @choklityum is your profile pic Duran Duran?? Thats so cool, I love them!!
  • FelinaDC
    FelinaDC Posts: 32 Member
    Being sedentary not just at work but at home (reading, watching tv i.e. not moving much) and I gained a ton of weight when I stopped walking and taking public transport and started driving but didn't change my late night eating habits....
  • choklityum
    choklityum Posts: 35 Member
    mskimee wrote: »
    @choklityum is your profile pic Duran Duran?? Thats so cool, I love them!!

    It's the "All You Need Is Now" logo, painted on a saw blade. It was a Christmas gift from my mom a few years ago. And yeah, I'm a Duranie. Been one since they started in 1978. (Yeah, I'm getting old! LOL)
  • Ninkyou
    Ninkyou Posts: 6,666 Member
    malibu927 wrote: »
    Parents who didn't teach me about proper portion sizes/nutrition and not caring about those for my first fourteen years of adulthood

    This, and I continued on that way, loving food too much and becoming lazy. Lack of education, a parent that cooks everything in a pound of butter or bacon grease or oil, hardly a vegetable in sight, cakes/brownies frequently made... I really didn't know that's not normal. And sof I kept doing the same things until I was so unhappy with myself and saw how my in-law's eat (muuuuuuch healthier, with their own veggie gardens, etc) that I just couldn't do it anymore and educated myself.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,879 Member
    I was very active for most of my life...I was a track and field sprinter and jumper from about 2nd grade through my senior year in high school. I also played a myriad of other sports...football, one season of wrestling, swim team, gymnastics, I was a life guard, etc. After high school I went to the military where I was again very active. When I returned home, I went back to school...I didn't own a car for much of that time and road my bike and walked most places and while I spent little time doing deliberate workouts, I was an avid hiker in my spare time and played a lot of frisbee golf and ultimate frisbee, etc.

    I graduated when I was 30 and took a desk job working 10-12 hour day basically 6 days per week with about 25 weeks of travel per year...so I went from being highly active to sitting behind a desk most of the day and going home to watch t.v. Most of my prior activity was just general activity and me out going and having fun so it never really occurred to me that I'd need to start doing deliberate exercise to offset a more sedentary life.
  • fattyflamingo
    fattyflamingo Posts: 7 Member
    I quit smoking. I quit cold turkey and used food to fight those cravings. It was November 5 of 2015. Holiday season was gearing up with all the goodies that come with it. By January 1st, I had gained 30 pounds. Over the next year, I gained another 50. In my mind, it was ok to eat anything I wanted and as much of it that I wanted because, I was quitting smoking. It's been over a year smoke free. I will never smoke again. I have balanced out on the overeating. Now, it's time to make better choices and become healthier.
  • laur357
    laur357 Posts: 896 Member
    A serious illness at 10 years old, followed immediately by my grandfather's death as I was recovering. I hadn't been able to eat solid food for 3-4 weeks prior to the funeral. There was an endless supply of food and people trying to get me to eat after losing weight during the illness. I simultaneously learned to comfort eat and binge eat until I felt sick. I was overweight since then.

    Compounded by over a year's worth of severe depression in my early 20s, where I lost a substantial amount of weight when I didn't care enough to make myself eat, then started heavily binging as I was getting better. This is when I became morbidly obese.

    I was pretty good at maintaining between these times, but had no clue how to lose it effectively.
  • Summerberry1012
    Summerberry1012 Posts: 109 Member
    Stress.
  • I've been overweight my whole life. Before I got pregnant with my first daughter, I lost 50 pounds, then gained it all back plus 50 more. I had my 2nd daughter 3 years later and was still where I was when I had my 1st. Finally a year later I started to just worry about me and my girls and that meant first leaving my husband. Then it was like the weight just fell off. Being in an mentally and physically abusive relationship was killing me in more ways then 1. Up until last year I was at the lowest weight I had been since having kids. Then I got with my ex boyfriend, had a baby in October and now starting all over. But I can do this!
  • everher
    everher Posts: 909 Member
    My weight problems began as a preteen. I was making more of my own food choices, not as active as I had been as a young child growing up playing outside in the country, and I just couldn't really tell the difference between hunger and cravings. My mother, for her part, had struggled with an eating disorder most of her life (and had been hospitalized for it before my birth) and didn't want me to have a complex about my weight.

    So while I understood more nutritious foods vs. less nutritious foods, weight was not something that was talked about. I had a vague notion of eating "a lot" would make you fat and eating "less" would make you lose weight, but that was about the limit of my understanding.

    When I had gained enough weight to be obese I took steps myself to lose the weight and began reading books on health, nutrition, and weight loss. I lost the weight, became more active in high school, and maintained my weight loss throughout high school and most of college.

    I began to gain weight again as I became less active, started eating more because I wanted to eat not because I was hungry, and I started using food to comfort myself.

    I tried to get a hold on it a few times, but kept trying to "diet" instead of changing my lifestyle. I also would be super restrictive not allowing myself any added sugars etc. and eventually would cave. After reaching my all time highest adult weight last year and losing my mother to heart failure I decided enough was enough and here we are.
  • Elise4270
    Elise4270 Posts: 8,375 Member
    Great thread.

    So many people experience problems and their weight is more of a symptom of something that needs to be dealt with.

    Good luck everyone one!