What made you fat?
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Like others have said: years of eating just a few hundred more calories than I burn a day. Letting my activity dwindle down slowly to nothing. Creeping alcohol - from one drink every now and then, up to a couple of beers/glasses of wine after work daily. Not taking care of myself emotionally - and physically - until the numbers on the scale got too uncomfortable to live with, and the wake up call of borderline HBP at my last doctor's visit. Down almost 20 pounds from my highest weight (which I never recorded here...too embarrassing). Just that small loss led to lower BP, the uncomfortable reflux is gone, and my mood/sleep is starting to improve. Mindful eating, cutting out most sugar, and forgiving myself for days that I don't eat the "right" way are slowly leading me to a healthy relationship with food. Exercise was never the problem, just laziness from that side of the equation.0
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I had a call-center job where I talked with the sick, suffering and dying and had to adhere to strict reporting and call-times. I had to drive an hour each way and worked a lot of overtime (it was a recession and the best job I could get). My employer kindly recognized the stress of all the extra hours and hour-long hold times and a few other things brought on by administrative decisions. So, to compensate they walked by with buckets of giant candy bars, ice cream cones, sodas, you name it, several times a day. I was literally tethered to my desk and because I didn't want to leave these people hanging, I had to wait hours before even going to the bathroom. I never turned down the hand-outs and with all the extra food and inability to move out of a seat for 70+ hours a week I gained 60 pounds in 4 months and just kept gaining. I changed jobs as soon as I could.11
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I ate a lot more than my body needed to maintain a healthy weight. An obscene amount more than I needed.6
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Prioritizing the fun instead of what I should be doing (happy hour, going out to eat ALL of the time, fast food for hangovers).
Also having an ex who LOVED to cook and because he was skinny, he didn't think about the calories in the food he was making and tried to show his love for me with food. After we broke up, I had ZERO skills in the kitchen so I turned to easy delivery or freezer meals. After 3 years of singledom, I'm finally figuring what seriously works for my new life...4 -
Depression and stress, but mostly depression. I was dealing with very difficult circumstances in my life that I didn't know how to properly handle and as a result, I used to food as a coping mechanism to self-medicate. I ballooned up to 355 pounds. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt, and I knew I'd have to confront the problem eventually. That's how these issues work- either you quit "it", or "it" quits you. So one day I tried on a pair of pants in the store only to find I'd gone up TWO sizes in a matter of four months. Entirely too much weight, something had to finally be done about it. And so I did. Today I am now down a grand total of 125 pounds and happier than ever before in my life.6
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I changed jobs about a year and a half ago and I got more sedentary. At my last job at least I was able to walk around a little bit and even walk to lunch. Now I'm in the middle of a business park where I can't even walk anywhere, so I got a little less active and started eating a little bit more. The weight creeped up slowly.1
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Too much booze and baked goods. I am a good baker and enjoy it. What I have learned to do is to continue baking, but share the majority of what I bake with others. That, and I was inconstant about working out. Still working on that last part.1
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I love food, I find it pleasurable, so I ate a lot because I enjoyed it. I'm also lazy, so I didn't move enough to burn all the food I was enjoying. I still find pleasure in food, but I have to make certain sacrifices and be more mindful to be able to enjoy it without the drawbacks. That includes increasing my activity level to be able to eat more, and being wiser with my calories by not wasting them on things I don't like much.2
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Nothing made me fat. I chose to eat more than I was burning routinely, for several decades, including the most recent (pre-weight-loss) decade in which I out-ate substantial amounts of exercise calories.
Why? Food tastes good, mostly.
It was a dumb choice, in retrospect. I didn't realize how straightforward it would be to lose weight. I wish I'd done it decades ago. Maybe I could've avoided some bad health consequences, like breast cancer, gallbladder adenomyomatosis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol triglycerides, bad knees.5 -
I wasn't paying attention to my body. I had a job I hated and then I got really sick so I got distracted. But, those are the underlying issues. I really just ate more than my body was burning.0
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Being couch potato .. ate too many sugar filled stuff.1
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Eating too much, not being active at all. What led me to eat so much is a combination of compulsive overeating, always going for fast food instead of cooking, stress eating, a bunch of other factors. I started gaining almost immediately after high school, which is when my habits changed.1
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Not what but who... ME. I just plain ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.6
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I made me fat, my choices.6
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Childhood eating issues that were the result of being an extremely picky eater and having family that didn't understand I wasn't just being stubborn. Their pressure taught me to eat as much as I possibly could when there was food I liked, because I didn't know when the next meal I could eat would come. Take that to adulthood, when I could eat whatever I wanted, and it ain't pretty.6
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I was eating cake and cold stone a lot during a 2 month period and put on 15lbs as a result making me 70lbs overweight. It doesnt take much of lousy eating to get up there.1
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Pop, the lack of portion control, too much grazing or eating out of boredom, alcohol, laziness.1
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Depression and eating my emotions... Happy day/celebration? EAT! Sad day/bad news? EAT! I knew what I was doing and just didn't care.4
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Things that contributed:
I walked to work and lived in a 5 story house and I worked 2 jobs. When I moved from that house to a one story condo I gained some weight. Then I left my second job, gained a bit more. I finally quit all my jobs and moved out of state and became essentially a housewife. I am also disabled and about when I moved here my ankles failed on me and I had to have surgery so I went from being active to totally sedentary.
Now I am trying to reverse all the damage done. I'm about 82 pounds down so far with 40 to go8 -
eating more calories than my body burned1
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Happy marriage - my husband introduced the concept of breakfast lunch dinner evening and night snack. Before I only used to have a small lunch and dinner!4
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I'm not sure about when I was a kid but I was permanently cemented to my couch/computer desk in adulthood (except when doing the social *kitten* thing when I was on bbses) and eating lots of delivery food where whatever they brought was one serving. Whole pizzas, containers of chicken fried rice and ribs, some kind of pasta dish...not to mention all the yummy crispy chicken sandwiches and fries I'd get at select fast food restaurants. All in the same day.
I knew I was overweight but it wasn't something I really cared about.1 -
A LOT of different things, all boiling down to eating my calories than I burned. More specifically, though:
- thinking of some foods as “forbidden,” then binging on them later. Lots of binging. Classifying foods as “good” and “bad.”
- Eating out of boredom, emotional eating, etc.
- eating scraps of food off my kids’ plates because I didn’t want to waste food.
- Being brought up to clean your plate, eat foods I don’t like, etc.
- Not keeping track of what I ate1 -
1) Loving food made me about 5 pounds over weight
2) Going through depression the last year made me 15 pounds over weight
About 15 more pounds to get to my goal weight of 118. I know I can do it if I keep at it!1 -
I was slightly underweight until I got type 1 diabetes (age 9). Immediately after diagnosis and treatment began, I gained 20 lbs. in the first month, doubled my weight in the first year, and tripled my weight within a few years. Granted, I was still young and growing, but it was much more growth outward than upward.
It's a night and day difference and the cause of being overweight is very clear to me.2 -
Food3
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I was bitten by a radioactive adipocyte.14
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booze
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Active social life with too much booze and Happy Hour junk. I do fine when I stay at home! LOL Also, we love brunch. Oops.2
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A lifetime of bad decisions. Consistently eating WAY too much of the wrong (read: high calorie, low nutritional value) foods and not moving enough. I was super morbidly obese. Make that super DUPER morbidly obese. I also ate my feelings. Something to celebrate? Food and booze! Sad? Lonely? Depressed? Angry? Meh? Food and/or booze! Bored? Hey! There's your old friend food!5
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