Why did you gain the weight?

2stepz
2stepz Posts: 814 Member
edited October 3 in Motivation and Support
A big part of losing weight and KEEPING it off is determining why you gained the weight to begin with... have you figured it out?

I'm struggling myself. I know WHY, I just haven't figured out how to fix the psychological damage.
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Replies

  • Elizabeth_C34
    Elizabeth_C34 Posts: 6,376 Member
    Combination of laziness, depression, and stress.

    I just decided not to live that way anymore. Life is too damn short to not be who you want to be.
  • Glam0809
    Glam0809 Posts: 31
    Right after pregnancy, I was eating as if I was still pregnant. :-/
  • chevy88grl
    chevy88grl Posts: 3,937 Member
    Well, I gained it during pregnancy and after I had the kids? Well, I was stressed out, lazy and just didn't care really. I wanted to eat whatever I wanted to eat and I didn't give a crap how it affected me. As time went on, I was very unhappy in my marriage and turned to food for comfort.

    I've learned what are my triggers and I'm working on controlling them and focusing on other things when something triggers my desire to eat away my feelings. I vow that I won't ever gain the weight back. No way. No how.
  • Tonnina
    Tonnina Posts: 979 Member
    Laziness and love of cake and cheetoes....

    I literally would buy a box of my favorite cake (rainbow chip!) and the frosting to go with, come home, bake it, cool it, frost it and eat the WHOLE THING BY MYSELF in 4 days or less. Also I'd eat a whole bag of cheetoes in a day. Not good. I've not bought cake since I started using MFP and the gym. I just had cheetoes for the first time in months this week, and they were not as good as I remember so it's as though I'm not missing anything.

    I tend to sit on my *kitten* in front of the tv and/or computer for HOURS. I'm still not that big on getting off my butt, but I do go to the gym 3 days a week and I've lost 21lbs so I'm doing something right!

    I'm still missing the cake though...
  • catherine4211
    catherine4211 Posts: 944 Member
    The stress of my divorce..........this time. This is the 3rd time since I had my son 13 years ago that I let myself go. And no - I have not figured out a way for it to not happen again. I am telling myself I'm in no rush - I need to eat pretty decent for the rest of my life. I can't go back to my fast food days. I'm hoping this time is the last. Best of luck to you.
  • Jorra
    Jorra Posts: 3,338 Member
    I always had it? I'm not sure how to answer that, I've been big since early childhood.
  • stevenleagle
    stevenleagle Posts: 293 Member
    Comfort eating for sure. High stress job + the usual daily stressors don't help. Not prioritising (in fact not scheduling) exercise didn't help. Hitting over 40 and "fat" genes certainly don't help but I know that these are "cop out" excuses!
  • mrslaw85
    mrslaw85 Posts: 34 Member
    Just plain laziness, ignoring the mirror, and pretending it didn't matter. Now I am fat, motivated, and realizing my health is going to heck because I ignored it to long!
  • michedarnd
    michedarnd Posts: 207 Member
    Twin pregnancy -- bed rest -- and a generalization of my expected caloric (while pregnant) intake without taking my size into account -- then, premature menopause, shaky thyroid, mild insulin-resistance (think I've had that since the gestational diabetes), and a body determined to fight every pound I tried to lose. :-P
  • AngelikaLumiere
    AngelikaLumiere Posts: 862 Member
    Half of my weight was due to medical issues I hope never to repeat. The other half was ignoring a 3-5 pound weight gain over the winter, for twenty + years. In the future I am going to be more proactive about my health and I will not ignore weight gain no matter how small it is.
  • tritepoet
    tritepoet Posts: 119 Member
    I dated a guy who loved to cook super delicious, heavy food and I lost control of myself!
  • shiransom
    shiransom Posts: 83 Member
    Eating late while watching tv with my hubby. Then came the need to eat every time we watched tv.
  • djkshdfd
    djkshdfd Posts: 443 Member
    Depression, stress, habit. It's funny because when I changed my eating habits, my depression went away which caused me to be less stressed. Amazing how life is so cyclic!
  • knjantz
    knjantz Posts: 40 Member
    It started when I was pregnant, I always had to watch what I ate and worked out very hard but when I got pregnant I had this mindset of 'well I am pregnant I am allowed to eat like a pig....' we ended up with a stillborn birth and after that the depression was awful. My husband was away with the Army so I had to go at it alone and my best comfort? FOOD! On top of that I rarely ever wanted to cook so it was a LOT of carry out! I am ready to move on, get healthy, get in shape, and have a healthy baby- we are trying again, but first I need to lose weight. It is all on me for now!
  • Elizabeth_C34
    Elizabeth_C34 Posts: 6,376 Member
    Depression, stress, habit. It's funny because when I changed my eating habits, my depression went away which caused me to be less stressed. Amazing how life is so cyclic!

    Same here! I am happier than I've been in a long time.
  • acasey0123
    acasey0123 Posts: 640 Member
    in high school I did gymnastics all except for senior year but when i was a senior I kept eating like I was still doing gymnastics
  • GregT44
    GregT44 Posts: 28
    Started working Fire dept and EMS about 24 years ago... after years of sitting at the stations making huge meals for the guys and snacks in between. take a call, come back to station grab a snack and sit around talking about the call or sleep until next one. Soon I would have one huge meal a day to get me through my 24 hrs shifts. 24 years of it added up.
    Now I am changing everything. quit smoking, have dietition guiding me through eating differently. And as soon as I'm cleared for my injury to start exercising again.... I'll be loosing even more.
  • Gigi_licious
    Gigi_licious Posts: 1,185 Member
    Because its always been my dream to be morbidly obese with low self esteem so I thought to myself "I'm going to give up the diet pills, HCG, shakeology, fat flush diet, cabbage soup diet, milk & banana day diet and water fast diet and eat real food." I knew this would work because real food is what makes people fat! I succeeded! Yay me! I won the prize. Now I can happily become a recluse. Woohoo.
  • jb_2011
    jb_2011 Posts: 1,029 Member
    Plain and simple, I was a bottomless pit and I loved to cook. Still do, but now I know when to stop.
  • Deathwithab
    Deathwithab Posts: 462 Member
    i hit puberty at 11 and my body decided to store every calorie i ate untill i hit 180.. i get down to 160 after highschool then this last winter i just stayed inside and didnt move hardly and gained 50 pounds
  • michedarnd
    michedarnd Posts: 207 Member
    Twin pregnancy -- bed rest -- and a generalization of my expected caloric (while pregnant) intake without taking my size into account -- then, premature menopause, shaky thyroid, mild insulin-resistance (think I've had that since the gestational diabetes), and a body determined to fight every pound I tried to lose. :-P

    Of course, after going prematurely menopausal (while still single), it was pretty hard to care about much. Being "past-usefulness" at that young an age decimated my self-esteem, destroyed my physical comfort and any hopes of a future, and since it takes an act of God for me to lose weight, finding the motivation to remove it was a bit of a challenge.
  • Saruman_w
    Saruman_w Posts: 1,531 Member
    Well, I would always turn to food in the face of boredom. Nothing to do? Snacktime. And having an enormous appetite certainly didn't help, my dinners were usually huge and I'd tend to eat till I was FULL. It's amazing how I wasn't fatter than I was. I didn't bother to check the calories of anything, if it looked good I'd chow down. I'm ashamed of myself really. But that was then, this is now. My lifestyle change has been made. No more pigging out. Now it's time to stick to it.
  • manvsfood
    manvsfood Posts: 175 Member
    I usually blame it on the taste on the foods I eat, but I know it's comfort eating; I was very depressed for two years and my coping mechanism was food. I love food, but the way I use to eat was plain ol' excessive.

    I remember going to McDonalds ordering a large fries, large drink, two to three burgers, and a parfait... smh. I needed a wake up call, and I'm glad I'm on the right track.
  • Dreamer1311
    Dreamer1311 Posts: 203 Member
    Food always tastes better having company :laugh: and moving over here didn't help either with fast food chains on every single corner
  • maryd523
    maryd523 Posts: 661 Member
    I've never been a breakfast eater, but last fall I started eating a big breakfast every day. Eggs on toast with mayo and cheese, or dutch babies, pancakes, crepes, whatever. I had never had to worry about what I ate before, so I didn't think twice about it. Also, I continued to eat like normal throughout the rest of the day.

    Lo and behold, the pounds slowly crept on. Since I didn't own a scale and never weighed myself, it was only when my clothes started getting tighter that I noticed. I was shocked to find that I had put on 17 pounds!


    That weight and more is gone now, and I am back to my normal adult habit of rarely eating breakfast.

    I've never thought about it this way before, but putting on those 17 pounds was actually a blessing in disguise. It prompted me to really get serious about health and fitness. Now I exercise all the time and I love it, whereas before I rarely worked out and would eat processed food quite a bit. I am slimmer, fitter, and feel wonderful!
  • JoDeeD
    JoDeeD Posts: 391
    Laziness and lack of planning! Also I have a picky eater and sometimes it is easier to make stuff she likes. I used to be underweight and actually had to gain weight to get pregnant with my first child. I left the hospital with him in Pre-pregnancy clothes. Then I was teaching him to share and he loved to share food. Then I had another really large baby 4 years later who was breech so I had a c-section and never bounced back from that. Followed by another c-section after another 2 years. I am 2 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight for my second child. I am actually what I was at the 6 week post partum checkup with her.
  • Samerah12
    Samerah12 Posts: 610 Member
    Stress/comforting eating- mostly school related. Feeling like I had no time for proper sit-down mealtimes so I did a lot of mindless eating while doing other things. And I didn't prioritize the way I looked (and never felt like my health was suffering) for yeaaars! Really didn't care. More pressing things going on.
  • mznisaelaine
    mznisaelaine Posts: 2,262 Member
    I blamed school.... But nope it was all my ex-boyfriend's fault....
  • Ireshgurl
    Ireshgurl Posts: 559
    I moved and my lifestyle changed. I went from going out and dancing 3 nights a week and working a job that had me moving all day to never going out, and a job where I sat on my behind all day. I also got very depressed. I have once again moved and live in a much warmer climate. Not so depressed and I move around at my new job. Now I just need to get out of my habit of doing nothing but sittin on my behind on my days off and either before or after I get off of work, lol.
  • Carri1
    Carri1 Posts: 82 Member
    I'm finding out that I wasn't eating very many calories. I must of been in Starvation Mode. I eat at least 1200 now and more if I exercise...I was probably eating half of that. :( I would kayak for a couple of hrs, ride my bike, swim and of course it just wouldn't come off...it came on. Go figure. My last bf yelled at me for eating Twinkies on the sly. OMG I haven't had a Twinkie in yrs! It has been a challenge to make sure I eat the calories...but wow MFP is a big help!!! I just didn't realize what it was!
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