Why You Became so BIG?

Mt. Dew and complete lack of willpower! that is all. no excuses here!

Isn't it funny how your story is based on your family and how they encouraged you to eat lots of food which made your story.

My family (I love) but were defineatly a helping hand in my weight problems but at the complete other end of the scale, here goes:

Growing up my parent and brother were super healthy. My parents ran marathons, ate healthy it was a HUGE treat to have take aways or even a packet of biscuits or fizzy drink in the house.

Therefore as soon as I got my hands on money (my first job at 14) I started to eat all the foods I'd never had before (or hardly ever) takeaways, big bags of chips, lollies, pies, cakes.

To make it worse I had always prided myself on being different from my family I was a social party animal who as I got older smoked, drank and did drugs (nothing hard just weed, which resulted in munchies) they were introverted happy to sit at home in their own company.

Finally it all came to a halt after my 21st and years of drinking and partying which resulted in a deep dark depression, OCD and anxiety took hold and I out of habit turned to food to make me feel better.

Luckily I found my husband who supported me with my various problems but who also had no problems with me being fat.

Finally last year (just before my 28th birthday) when the OCD got to a point where I couldnt do my job anymore and was inhibiting my everyday life I admitted to my doctor everything.

He arranged for me to have therapy, following that I learnt to love myself again (or maybe for the first time) and now today I'm happier than ive ever been. I still have my moments now and again when I just want to sit in bed and eat. But i'm getting there. I know my triggers and how to prevent it happening again.

I'm a long way from my goal weight but i'll get there. For now it feels wonderful to be truly happy.

Thank you for sharing your story so I could share mine

Helen

I was a skinny kid with fat parents and both my grandmothers were overweight. My mom made sure that her family was fed right. We ate healthy foods. She always made sure we had breakfast ... usually oatmeal, or cheerios .... bacon and eggs were a special treat on a Sunday about once every other month. Same thing with pancakes. Oh those were especially special! Lunch was usually a sandwich with water to drink. In the summer time, she might give us a Popsicle after lunch because it was hot. A special treat for lunch might be speghetti-o's, But because she only had enough for one can, my brother and I would share it. Sometimes she might grill a cheese sandwich and make some tomato soup for us. That was a fun lunch. Dinner was always a meat (or protein), which was either steak, chicken or pork... she mixed them up nicely so we weren't always eating the same thing .... a green vegetable and a yellow vegetable or a starch, like mashed potatoes or noodles or rice. The only time we were allowed seconds were if there was enough food left over after my father was done eating. There usually wasn't. Later, when I became a teenager, and my dad was making better money, we would eat out once a week... usually a call in place that was, but wasn't, fast food. Either pizza, or hamburgers, or chinese food, or pastrami sandwiches. This was always a Friday, or payday. These became special days because my mother didn't have to cook and she loved being able to take a day off. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, my mom was a stay-at-home mom.)

I was an active kid. I rode my bike or my skates or went to the park all the time. My brother and I were not allowed to just "sit around" on the weekends and especially not during the summer. We would drive my mom crazy if we did and she would literally throw us out of the house. So we did things. When I was in 6th grade, I was weighed and deemed "overweight" and was sent to a "special" P.E. class were I was weighed and given special exercises to do, three days a week. At the end of the 6th grade, I remember my teacher, Mr. Harvey, asking me why I was still gaining weight. I told him I didn't know. Because I didn't. I wasn't allowed to eat chips and cookies and candies. These were special treats that we got for special occasions. I know I gained about 10 pounds over the whole year and I was bigger than all my classmates. When I graduated 6th grade, I weighed in at 117 pounds. I was about 5'2" and 12 years old. The summer was no different than any other. I played at the park most days. My brother and I would walk the 1/2 mile to the park and then run around the playground, playing chase or climbing up the slide or hiking the hill at the back of the park that led to the freeway and watch the cars whiz by us, or run around the river bed (where we weren't supposed to go) climbing up and down the concrete hills, chasing each other. Or we would ride out bikes to our friends' houses and play over there. Or we would skate up and own the street for a couple of hours. We did not lay around the house all summer. When I began 7th grade, because I had been in that "special" P.E. class, I was called out of my homeroom class to the nurses office where I was weighed to see if I had lost any weight over the summer. I weighed 125 pounds. I had gained 8 pounds. During that year, I gained 2" and at least another 8 to 10 pounds.

When I was about 14 years old, my father decided he was going to join the jogging craze that was sweeping the nation (this would be back in the early '80s) and I decided I would join him. Over the course of a year, we jogged three or four times a week, in the evening. When we began, I could barely walk/jog around the track twice before it was time to go home. By the time we quit running, he and I were running 3 to 4 miles a day, 3 or 4 days a week. Then he was in an accident that took out his knee and his running days were over. I ran to spend time with my dad. Since he couldn't anymore, I quit too. But when we began running, I weighed about 130 pounds. When we finished running, I weighed about 160 pounds. How does a person gain weight when they are physically active and eating properly?? We hadn't begun eating out on Friday nights yet. Needless to say, when we did begin eating out every Friday night, I was not as active as I had been. I was now a teenager who had a lot of homework and read a lot books. I was overweight, so I didn't go out for any sports teams. The only exercise I got every day was at P.E., and walking 1 mile to and from school 5 days a week (for a total of 2 miles each day). Back then, we had P.E. every single day for nearly an hour. And for the entire school year! By the time I graduated high school, I weighed 175 pounds, was 5'7" and was fairly active. Not yet sedentary.

Then I moved with my parents out of the city. We moved, literally, to the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, no friends to visit. I sat at home, eating and watching TV. For the first time in my life, I watched TV all day! I had never been allowed to that before! I went from 175 to 250 pounds in less than 6 months. I've been there ever since.

Now, can anyone reading this explain to me how a person stays active and continues to gain weight so much so that she is overweight and called fat her whole life???

I finally decided that I was meant to be fat. God made me this way for a reason, and I relished my fat for a long time. But I have always been what you call a "healthy" fat. I've always stayed mostly active, often with short periods of laziness. Yes, when I left my parent's home and was no longer told what I could and could not eat, I went overboard. I would eat whole bags of chips or whole quarts of ice cream all by myself because there was no one to tell me I couldn't. But I've always walked and played sports and danced and other active things. I am 45 years old, still under 300 pounds (tho not by much, granted), with normal blood pressure and normal blood sugars... and believe me, those two things are watched closely because of my obese family. Every adult on both sides of the family have been obese for as long as I can remember, with few exceptions. My mother's father and his relatives were all thin. I have 1 cousin who is not overweight, but I'm told she doesn't eat because she doesn't want to look like her parents, both of whom are obese. I would say obesity runs in my family... but no one runs in my family... we all waddle!! LOL

Warning...this is going to be long :blushing:

This is a HARD question to answer for me (this is my 2nd post here--I just started), because I have two reasons. My first reason is perfectly acceptable, understandable, reasonable and what I clung on to until last month (when I got a "wake-up" call by seeing the word OBESE on my doctors report). My reason...I felt perfectly justified in being "so big" because I was a SAHM , with a bunch of kids and my husband would never complain about my weight and I just had told myself I'm so busy, I don't have time to cook and chose good foods, because I'm taking care of all these little children all day long and had excuses that I don't like to cook, so let's just eat out or eat prepackaged foods for convenience sake...because I'm so busy being a homemaker and mom.

I felt so sorry for myself that I was missing out on so many things in life by being a SAHM, that I would "treat" myself "good" and eat any and everything I want (sweets, goodies, junk) and since my husband doesn't complain, it must be okay.

I'd zone out on the computer and any and everything to keep me busy on the off-times from my "thankless never ending job' of being a sahm. I grew from a size 4 to a size 20 in about 15 years. Then i REALLY started feeling sorry for myself and just became a couch potato and just grew and grew.

Now to the other "REAL" reason I became so BIG...


A lack of LOVE! Love for God, for myself, for my family for my friends...just loveless--again A CHOICE--I chose to accuse, excuse and do everything but LOVE!!!! Sounds simple doesn't it, because it is. In this short time period I hve completely given up so many things, things I chose to believe I didn't have a choice in. I've been living and believing a lie about Love and Life and the "spell" has been broken FOREVER! I know it with ALL that is in me. I'm seeing changing daily, right before my eyes and it's Awesome and Powerful and GOOD!!!

Instead of being grateful to have a wonderful husband and beautiful family--I grumbled and complained and blamed everyone but myself

Instead of taking the love and time to care for myself (and my family) I CHOSE to become sedentary (a.k.a. in my case LAZY nd just plain slothful ) .

Instead of making healthy choices of meals, I chose the so-called "easy" way of restaurants, junk foods and convenient and quick (but fattening and unhealthy) meals--not just for me, but for my family too (

Instead of surrounding myself with positive things, I Chose to listen to depressing news story, negativity in general, taking about others so as to not put the focus on myself--just plain ole laziness, foolishness, excuses, and more excuses.

Long story short, for me, my reasons for becoming so "BIG" is:

#1 being SELFISH

2.) Being Ungrateful/Unthankful for the truly blessed life I have
3.) Being slothful and lazy
4.) BEING GREEDY/gluttonous
5.) Choosing and "petting" excuses and having pity-parties instead of getting off my BIG BUTT and seeing the truth and instead of blaming my "woes" on everyone but me, choosing to do what it takes to be a good wife, good mom and good friend.

When I saw that diagnosis of OBESE from my Doctor's Report (I went to the doctor, because I started getting these hideous rashes, that looked as gross as I felt--and of course, the doctor(s) didn't have a reason--but I KNEW...it was my:

1.) Bad/poor Attitude about others even more than myself--but myself too
2.) Bad/poor Food Choices
3.) Bad/poor lifestyle choices

I started a whole NEW lifestyle last month and I've lost 12 pounds, but more important I've lost:

1.) my BAD attitude
2.) my attraction to gossip, negativity watching, listening, reading negative crap
3.) my desire to eat poor (I actually LOVE organic fruits, veggies and foods)
4.) my despising my fabulous postion of being a SAHM wife and mom
5.) my dread of exercise ( I actually LOVE exercise now)

I really have a NEW ATTITUDE about not just my life, but life in general and I'm on my way--I haven't arrived (where I'm headed) but I've permanently LEFT where I was and I AINT looking back!!

SAHM mom is indeed a fabulous position! I was a single mother for a decade, married the man of my dreams a couple of years ago, and have taken a hiatus from work; actually I start back part time tomorrow. but I had 8 glorious months at home and I was so grateful for it after so many years of never feeling like I had a moment to take a deep breath!
It's such a key thing to realize that so many things in life (including weight/health/exercise, or lack of) is all about ATTITUDE! You have figured that out-the key to success right there!

i never had any concept of portion control, or awareness of how many calories are in what.

i drank coca cola like crazy, and ate tons of carbs.

I've been trying to lose some amount of weight since I was about 14 or 15. Each year on my birthday I would say "by my next birthday I will lose "x" amount. And each year it would go up. First 30, then 50, then 60 and up and up as I would add to my weight instead of take it off.

I know that I used food as a friend, and yes that is very sad to admit. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and even if you don't know much about that religion, you probably know that they are pretty strange. And I really don't want to get into all of the doctrinal stuff now, I just want to concentrate on how I dealt with every thing growing up.

JW's believe in staying seperate from "the world", so a person doesn't get side tracked from serving God. So they are pretty sheltered. Plus I was taken out of public school at 4th grade to start homeschool (a pretty common practice among JW's, which I have nothing against homeschooling as long as it doesn't alienate the child). So I was the sheltered among the sheltered. I only had a few close friends, and my only sibling is 10 years older than I am, so I spent alot of time alone, not really knowing how to fit in with people, how to interact with them.

I was very lonely. And I was very confused. JW's are taught that to doubt the elders and the direction from them is to doubt God, and anyone who has questions that aren't immediately "corrected in their thinking" is branded an apostate and disfellowshipped from the congregation. So any doubt I ever had I buried deep with in myself so no one would doubt my love for God.

Along with not being able to freely ask questions without fear, I was always taught by my parents to hide your true feelings. I'm not really sure how or why they do this, what has made them live this way, if its the religion or personal choice. But they have been in a strained marriage for 36 years because they rarely ever communicate about how they truely feel. They wait til all the bottled up feelings explode out of them in a rush and put blame on each other for the problems they go through.

So I was raised to hide true feelings, and not talk about what was wrong when I had problems with someone, and to never question any direction from people older in life. Needless to say I was a mess inside, but I thought something was wrong with me because I should'nt feel this way, but I can't talk to anyone about this since it will show weakness in my faith and mean that I don't love God, I'll be labled as an outsider and the few friends I do have will no longer talk to me.

I was a messed up kid, but not in the traditional messed up way you'd normally think.

I never knew how to deal with anything. I always felt like I just went through the motions of life, not really experiancing anything. I felt like the only thing I had control over was food.

No one was going to tell me not to eat, when I could eat, what I could or couldn't eat, that was my companion. When I got my license I would always stop by a fast food drive through and get something, because I could. It was my choice.

I loved knowing that I could sit in my car and eat and it was the one thing I had to myself. No one else had any say in it. It was pure freedom from the robotic exsistance I led. I was active, not much, or strict, but I would walk the lake, or do palates dvd, so I sort of kept my weight gain at a slow increase. It never got "out of hand".

Then I was diagnosed at 19 with Grave's disease, had a total thyroidectomy at 20, and immediatly I shot up from 170 to 200. At 22 I finally faced all the doubts I had about the region I grew up in and left it. I got married to a wonderful man, who though he tried to be patient and supportive, was not very understanding about what I was going through with leaving the cult of JW's. Anyone who has ever been in a cult and got out knows the emotional and mental turmoil that goes on, and how tight of a grip they have on your mind and emotions.

For the past three years I have worked through alot of my issuses, and I feel much more balanced and stable. My husband is my best friend, we have the relationship that I never knew was possible to attain. He is my rock and my wings. However, due to meds and thyroid levels I have ballooned to 260. I feel miserable physically, hate looking in the mirror, despise myself for being so far out of shape that I get winded walking into the next room, and yet no matter how much desire I have to get healthy, how much research I do for healthy living, I can't keep the motivation within my grasp. I'm not sure what the mental block is. I *want* to break through and be the person I want to be, the active, healthy, beautiful person I know I have somewhere inside, I'm just not sure how to get to her.

My unwillingness to change my habits... After injuring my ankle in volleyball, I had 4 years of surgeries...but ate the same as when I was playing volleyball 6 hours a day... then I found out that I had PCOS, had to have an ovary removed because of a tumor...stayed inactive, kept eating... and now I'm 22 with high cholesterol and almost 150lbs of excess weight... I've often tried blaming my problems on others...on life... but the only person to blame is myself. I need to make a change, and that's why I'm here.

bump to catch up on later:flowerforyou:

unfortunately i have weight issues because my body can only tolerate fruits, vegetables, carbs, and small amounts of protein.

I have a difficult time losing weight because, unlike 99% of the rest of the world...i have to strictly monitor my protein intake (no more than 25-30 grams). I can't just drink a protein shake, or eat "lean meats" (im obviously a vegetarian) or high protein meals.

I was also diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis at 18 (though who knows what age i actually got it at...i suspect around 12-13) so any chance i had of losing weight was basically shot to hell.

It becomes a lot harder to diet when your body works against you - and i've always felt very defeated...as if i am destined to fail.

My mother tried to make up for my medical disorder by giving me extra of the food that i liked and would always make the excuse that "cece is so limited in life, she cant have anything" [this of course wasnt helpful, ill admit that]

my father would ridicule me until i cried....for as long as i can remember. He knew all about my conditions, but he chose to use words like "fat ape" "gorilla" "chunky monkey" "tubby" "tub of lard" etc.

It got to the point about 6 years ago, where I just stopped eating. I limited my food intake to 1 large boston market mashed potatoes or half of a 6 inch subway sandwich, per day... along with lots and lots of Motts apple juice. I did that for nearly a year and lost 50lbs (huge for me). I came out of it very malnourished and was losing hair. thats why i stopped...my hair. But up until now, that is the only way i ever lost any weight.

I don't think i was ever a big eater. I get full pretty quickly and it can take me 2 hours to finish a meal (its suspected i have some sort of "slow emptying" gastro-issues). I won't call myself a victim, but i don't necessarily feel like i was given a fair shot, at all.

I loved Dunkin Donuts Ice Coffee's and Coffee Rolls.

Well, I definitely blame myself for becoming overweight. However, I've had no 'bad past' or anything stressful happen in my life for me to gain weight. I'm probably the happiest girl in the world, always smiling, always laughing. Just can't help it. So the reason I became bigger shouldn't matter. What matters is i've lost a LOT of weight, and i'm happy as can be! still have a ways to go, though

I was a very promising footballer (Soccer person) so I was very fit and in good shape. Unfortunately when I was 15 I was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis and was on treatment for 8 month. Once I came off treatment I thought I was okay but over the next year slowly the mental effects of having something so serious really hit me hard. So I found solace in food and sitting playing games online to take my mind off things. Lost my chance for being a professional footballer because of the injury and just sitting thinking about the Deep Vein Thrombosis I got very paranoid that every pain in my leg was the DVT returning. Over the next couple of years I was diagnosed with Hypochondria, so I became almost a zombie just sitting having panic attacks and once more finding solace and comfort in food. I then met a girl as stories often go! At this point it had been 4 years since I had the DVT, I had gained 7 stone in that time becoming 19 stone at 19 years old. At 20 years old I was 20 stone and stayed that until 22. Then my girlfriend became my fiance and I saw a picture of us together. She is 5 ft 10 I am 6ft, she is size 10 I wore a 50 waist in trousers. She is 9 stone, I was 20 stone. I hated how I looked stood next to her and I also hated how I was watching such average footballers playing for big teams and I knew I was much better so I was determined to get in shape and show my fiance that the stories of football and me being good were true, so I started to try lose weight. 3 months into doing so nothing happened then I found My Fitness Pal.

It has been 14 months since I started on fitness pal and I am very happy with how I am doing.

I have lost near 6 stone. My trousers are now size 36 from size 50. I was an XXXL T-shirt I am now a Large.

Got about 2 stone to go till I reach my target but thats my story!

Binge eating made me gain tonnes in a short amount of time.
Still struggling with it. Haven't in 6 days, but I usually struggle at day 11. Hopefully I stay strong, because I stopped for a month and lost stacks of weight, only to pile it back on again -.-

I was always that weight <

---

until a few years ago when I got a car, and became lazy! I could always eat whatever I wanted and never put on weight, but I used to walk everywhere at that time and obviously that kept my metabolism up. Fast forward a few years and here I am, 21 lbs down and 50 to go! xx

Mine started when I was about 15-16 I suppose.

Although I'd never been one of those incredibly skinny teens, I wasn't fat. I weighed 60kg up until 16, which is acceptable, even though it might be a *little* out of the norm for skinny kids.

Then I did an exchange year abroad and stayed with an elderly lady who had an extremely obese family. I ate like crap every day, and after 10 months with her I weighed 80kg. I looked terrible, but I had no idea myself. Then, six months after I moved back home I realised I was ginormous.

Over the next 6 months I lost 15kg, and my diet was basically "don't eat more than your skinny friends do".

Now I'm down to 57kg, and I want to tone and just.. feel good. I still feel fat. It's weird.

Anyway, I gained the weight because I was lazy and complacent with what I ate. I would get chocolate bars and Danishes every day at school, and eat tons of pasta and deep fried stuff for dinner. I even freakin' walked the family DOG to a bakery. Way to counter the walk itself, moron.

I'm an emotional eater at times. So I need to watch myself carefully. I only recently started up here and I'd love to weigh about 52 kg... But the actual kg's in themselves aren't important.

I just want to look in a mirror and feel skinny.