How bad were your eating habits?

When I started my active weight loss phase I continued to eat the same foods I was already eating before-a very SAD diet, with lots of 'processed' convenience foods, fast food a few times a week etc. I didn't change what I ate to lose weight, but I learned what CICO was and lowered my calorie intake to match my weight loss goals. Lost the extra weight (around 50lbs), improved all my health markers and corrected a health issue.

Fast forward to now-my 6 year maintenance anniversary is in April. Throughout that time I've experimented quite a bit with different ways of eating. Currently I'm doing the DASH protocol, along with a mostly plant based diet.

How I eat now is completely different than how I used to eat, but I have years of blood-work/health panels (twice a year, going on 7 years now), that shows that it doesn't matter what I eat-my weight controls my health markers and keeps my glucose number normalized.

As I get older I'm starting to think of long term health, and how nutrition may play a role in that (I'm very interested in the Blue Zones etc), but I also have no problem going out to eat once in a while or eating the occasional cookie, because I know in the scheme of things it's not a big deal

ive lost 120 pounds and maintained that for 3 years (now working on losing the rest). my biggest issues were not so much what I ate, but how MUCH.

i still eat the same things i always have for the most part, just much less of it. and, nothing is off limits. learning how to do that, is what made it easy for me to maintain without tracking calories (other than the occasional spot check on things).

We ate out a lot when I was a child, and the habit continued into adulthood. I teetered between overweight and obese for pretty much my entire life until I moved away from home and didn't realize my parents were naturally regulating my portion sizes. I gained a good 30 pounds in a year just from eating what I normally ate, but more of it and more often, because I had messed with the regular meal schedule my parents had set (even if those meals were fast food).

Terrible. Just awful. When it came to meals I ate appropriate portions and mostly "healthy" foods. But then on top of that I ate large portions of random...stuff...because I was stress/bored/comfort eating. Grabbing a stick of butter and sleeve of saltines to mow through while my daughter napped was not uncommon. Saltines are still a huge temptation for me so I don't keep them in the house.

Mine were never terribly bad. I've always cooked most of my meals from scratch at home. I'd say the biggest issues with my diet were that I never got close to the recommended veg and fruit amounts (I do now) and I drank too much soda.

My weight gain was largely attributable to going from being a very active college student to a sedentary desk job when I was 30 and I put on around 40-50 Lbs from 30-38...pretty much 5-6 Lbs per year, so I wasn't going crazy with food by any means.

They weren't especially bad so much as I baked at least once, sometimes twice, a week (for one person) and I wasn't working out consistently for various reasons. I exercise more now and typically at a higher intensity and I eat less, but typically the same type of food. My soda habit came and went well before I decided to try to lose weight (it was very situational) and I haven't eaten fast food since I was probably 14, with a few exceptions when there weren't any other options.

I make the same proportion of my meals from scratch

I ate very little fruit and veg, so was filling up on all the other high caloric density kind of foods.