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What was your “reason” for gaining the weight?
Replies
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4 kids in 5 years. All single births. I was never able to lose all the baby weight before getting prego again. And 3 of the pregnancies I gained more than the 25/30 pounds reccomended.
I did lose some of it after my last was weaned, but then hubby quite trucking. And now was home at night eating ice cream and wanting to eat out. I like eating ice cream and eating out. Gained all I lost back.
I am more committed now, and can refuse food when he eats his junk (I eat mine earlier in the day if I want ice cream). Right now I am watching him eat pizza rolls.4 -
Initially? To deal with emotional issues tied to childhood trauma. And from then forward, I had learned to use food as an emotional crutch. I will probably always have a somewhat problematic relationship with it, because the issues are so deep and go back so far.8
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Mix of things - I gained weight in highschool when I got more depressed and socially isolated. My parents both have issues with their weight and went through a lot of self-loathing and various fad diets attempts, but also maintained a big culture of lots of food, lots of eating in the house (although usually fairly healthy - no fast food or soda, plenty of salads and protein, but large portions and no common sense about calories.) Which they'd sometimes avoid themselves while putting it on for me and my sister, but also making comments about our weight and out eating.
As an adult I've gained and lost, and its been exacerbated by my own issues, but the roots are at home, I think. This is the first time I've lived in a different city, (even when I was living on my own, I'd be home a few evening a week at least) and its really making a difference for my relationship with food (though its still like the only thing my mom asks about when we talk.) My parents are smart people, but come from a *kitten* up food culture, both in each of their families and more widely, I think - they're kids of the 50's and 60's in the Ukraine, so they grew up with food shortages and restrictions (which got even worse in the 80s, if I recall correctly) and memories of starvation in my grandparents generation, but also both of them with weight issues and stuff that sounds like borderline eating disorders at various points in their lives.
I mean, I definitely have bad food habits, and use food as a comfort and eat for boredom and stress binge, etc - that's on me and I'm working on changing it, but there's not a particular inflection point, just something I grew up with.5 -
Mindless grazing while watching TV in the evenings.2
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I wasn't paying attention to what was on the end of my fork.
That's it. Bad choices. No one to blame but myself.1 -
Could list any number of things i.e. childhood, always was "chubby", babies, work, cancer, knee surgery, LIFE. But basically I am lazy, like to snack and hate to exercise, and I eat the most when I "sneak it" (definitely a childhood thing!). All those LIFE things were just excuses not to take control of my emotional eating. Everyone has their demons. I will always struggle, but just keep working on it. The successes are motivational.3
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For me I think it began when I stopped doing heavier and harder work and didn't change my eating habits.
But the main reason is probably years of dealing with depression and some other mental challenges.1 -
I gained a little bit when I quit my retail job and got stuck at a desk doing a PhD. What really screwed me tho was the stress, I have anxiety issues at the best of times and with not liking the project, feeling constantly out of my depth, not getting on with my supervisors, getting further and further behind, I started drinking too much and eating too much. Then I quit (before I was made to) and was unemployed and basically drunk all the time for over a year. I only left the house for booze and cigarettes and food. I was depressed as hell. Ballooned. I still can't rewatch Greys Anatomy because it just reminds me of feeling like a total waste of space watching 14 hours of TV a day.
I also have ceoliac so I was basically constantly malnourished as a child before I was diagnosed which has also given me some lifelong anxiety since I was always hungry. I need to know where my next meal is coming from, I need to eat enough now so that I can last until my next meal, I need to feel full. It's normally manageable but when other things make me anxious it all just piles on top of eachother.8 -
I self medicated, with food, my postpartum depression. Also breastfed for 2 years and it made me crazy hungry, so that didn't help. Tis why I always harumph when people say nursing will help you lose weight. (p.s. My "baby" is 17 now
) 3 -
It was a stressful job I got last year. I was so miserable I quit after eight months. I gained almost 10 pounds the first month from not having time to eat healthy meals for breakfast or the energy to work out. The company said most people that work there gain about 20 pounds the first year. I knew it wasn't for me.3
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I was always a heavier kid. Tallest in my class and bigger than all the other girls. As I got older, I thinned out but was always 'Big". Graduated high school at 167, which obviously didn't make me the biggest person in the world, but... When I was 16, my childhood friend was found murdered and I was there when he took his last breath before they pulled him off life support. It was awful. I went on anti-depressants sometime in college, maybe when I was 20? Unfortunately, me being overweight prior and then taking this medication, did not help me. I gained like 50 lbs in a year. I got diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and started some other medications and gained enough weight to put me at 280 lbs by the time I was 25. I started WW and lost 50 lbs. Got off all medication. Then maintained that for a time until I lost 15 more pounds and maintained that for 6 years. Had three children, 4 pregnancies. I gained baby weight and lost baby weight. I never got back to 280 or even close, thankfully.
Since the birth of my last child, (6 years) I have been making exercise and eating better a priority and have gotten down to 160 lbs. Still have 6 lbs to go to be "normal". Definitely a process.4 -
I had a stroke at 30 years old and didn't know yet it was due to an autoimmune disorder. I was on the couch for weeks nearly monthly with infections and pain. My electrolytes also kept randomly dropping dangerously low. Still does sometimes. Now I'm on a blood thinner and feeling better than I did although I still have my bad months. I gained almost 30lbs in 1 1/2 years 😣. No more excuses for me.5
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bump0
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I ate when I was sad, angry, or stressed. During my undergrad of college and my first year of grad school, that happened to be 99% of the time.2
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For me my why was falling in love. When my wife and I started dating over 7 years ago, we were both in skinny and in good shape. She did cross fit and was a regular at my gym and did martial arts training. But once we started living together and getting comfortable, we started to lose some of the motivation to stay in shape. Life started to get in the way, and we were always supportive of each other and loved each other as we were, but that probably made it easy for us to take it easy on keeping in shape. That combined with us not being homemakers and big eaters led to a lot of dining out at high calorie restaurants.
Over the years, in addition to the weight gain, it caused some health problems in my wife, which made it harder for both of us to get back on track. Over the last 7 years, we've both added about 70 pounds each.
We are trying now to use our love for each other as a motivation to get it together and get healthy, as we want to protect our future together.9 -
FutureMrsCarver89 wrote: »I lost my sons. They died a day apart from each other. I dealt with my grief through food and drugs. I'm currently 4, almost 5 years clean of heroin, but my weight kept going up and up as I wasn't dealing with their deaths properly.
So sorry for your loss ❤️ You are amazing to have stayed heroin free. All the best for your future and I hope you get the help you need.2 -
It started out when I was a teen with a stupid overconfidence. I was convinced that my weight wouldn't change because, despite my horrid eating habits at the time, the scale never went over 75kg (approx 165). Naturally, that didn't last, but the pisspoor eating habits did. Emotional eating added to the problem, and when puberty hit with all the force of a cosmic time-space rupture, things went straight to hell. Although I count myself blessed to not be dealing with PCOS, I do have PCO, which doesn't help matters, and hypothyroidism.
Basically, Me + Laziness + Food + No Longer Giving Any Fricks = Match made in Luci's cooking pot.
It got to the point where I wouldn't bother buying groceries. It was too easy to buy a nice big Wimpy breakfast with extras, buy some snacks, buy a double lunch, and then throw on some large pizza with extra toppings for dinner. Naturally, being unhappy with how I looked, I consoled myself with chocolate - because that fixes everything. I look back and I call myself an *kitten*. Now I'm just trying to fix the mess I got myself into. Better late than never!3 -
- laziness
- sedentary job/lifestyle with no exercise
- Had two kids and didn't try to lose the weight from the first baby because I knew I was going to do it all over again (do I ever regret that! I might not have all the loose skin if I had worked on lowering my weight before my second pregnancy).
- breastfeeding. I used that as such an excuse. It made me crave sweets, but it's not like I tried to be reasonable about it.2 -
When younger, there was a component of emotional eating involved; I used food to celebrate, ease pain, out of boredom, you get the drift. Sure didn't help that I enjoyed cooking and feeding others. But I was never severely overweight and always healthy. Never had a doctor call me out on it. I felt good and looked good to myself and others.
I managed later in life to get past the eating just to eat reasons but I never was one to exercise other than taking walks, so that was certainly part of the problem.
The major main reason over the last decade or so was more than several physical injuries that kept setting me back physically for long periods of time as they rendered me fairly immobile. Add in long days working, getting older and totally not realizing pounds would eventually pack on because of age, bad food choices and inactivity. The usual deluding oneself many of us go through.
I've realized my biggest roadblock has been making poor choices for dinners due to being too exhausted end of day to cook. I eat really well the rest of the day while at my office so I'm finding alternatives for supper that are healthy, easy and fast to prepare that don't involve much time standing around in the kitchen. So far, this seems to be a major help to staying on track.
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shadow2soul wrote: »I became lazy, but continued to eat like an active person.
Me too. Blamed inactivity on painful hips and didn't actually do the research needed to resolve the problem. Just used the excuse.2
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