Why did you gain weight?

For me the reasons just all blend into each other - it's hard to unpack without being so boring :-P Some of it was poor eating habits gone awry - my home life as a teen f'ed me up, then a few bad relationships accepted as an alternative to loneliness, then a divorce, being broke and not eating enough and going into starvation mode, a failed fad diet (*cough* Atkins) I walked almost 2 miles a day but I didn't realize then that I was in starvation mode so much that I wasn't going lose weight until I ate right. then I found love - and he loved my cooking and I his devotion. I was heavy - like 275 but I didn't get the exercise I used to - when I moved in, I would take the bus to work since it was impractical to walk 10 miles twice a day . He and I ate and I got depressed after holding up so long, collapsed on the inside and laid in bed for hours on end for 2 or three years when I wasn't working I got heavier than I have ever been.

But there are a few different stakes I found that created a physical prison for me, I decided this year I wouldn't put up with being in a prison anymore. I want to live life and be happy , to be a master of my fate and to be active. I am going to find support any way I can! Now I am looking to let my family support me as we all have grown up, I am much happier and I want to get healthy, maybe I won't look like a swimsuit model but I will feel like a million bucks. Now that I am taking care of myself, I feel so much better

I think I got to about 12/13 and realised i was bigger than all my friends, and since then I guess it was just laziness really! No excuses or reasoning. I want to lose weight now though, yes because I want to be healthy and all that, but honestly, I'm sick of being the fat chick!

I had my daughter, didn't care much after that, thought it was hopeless I guess. Ate out all the time, drank too much.

from being pregnant and gaining 50lbs! Also before pregnancy I had gained like 10-15lbs, so from not eating healthy or exercising. I have since lost all that weight, and of course I'm pregnant now so I will have to redo everything. LOL.

Eating to much and being lazy

I was in a mentally abusive relationship and I bartended so all we did in our free time was get wasted. Depression and alcohol were a horrible mix. I went from around 160 to 255 in a year. I didn't eat too horrifically different but when I did eat it was tons and I drank ALL MY CALORIES just to make myself feel better.

Totally consumed with work, children, husband, and house. Lack of knowledge in the way food effects our bodies (balancing carbs, fat, and protein) and no excercise. All this adds up to bad health.

Myfitnesspal should get a nobel peace prize in their contribution to fight obesity. This website is designed is so well if you use it everyday faithfully, you are guarenteed to understand food and the importance of everyday excercise and lose weight. I will be using it for maintence as long as I can. You also get great support from other members.

I've always been a little on the chubby side -- but I still felt attractive, and being a little soft (still within military standards) was a perfectly acceptable trade off for me to be able to eat anything I wanted and not have to work out much (just the mandatory running a few times a week for PT). The last 25 lbs are courtesy of PTSD (which i'm still working on figuring out, but I've got some help now) -- I can't even blame pregnancy, as I was overweight before I got pregnant, and left the hospital 10 lbs heavier than I was when I got pregnant.
Calories in - calories out is truth, but if we don't figure out WHY we have such an imbalance between the two, it's pretty hard to overcome.

Ive been overweight since i was young.. but strangely i was extremely thin from birth to around 6-7. my parents would be extremely worried about my weight and (being in an asian family what im about to say is kinda normal!) my dad burnt my fingertips with a lighter and told me to EAT! and as far as I can remember that was it, in all my pictures from that point im a tubby kid! i dont ever remember over eating or any of that, but i do remember bits and bobs from the age of around 13+ where i used to get teasted at school, but i would always be eating crap!

I honestly dont know if this is the reason i went from skinny to fat.. but its the only thing i can probably pin it down to!

Um - well I guess in my mind I was ALWAYS like this. Fat, I mean. Even when I was 7 I remember believing myself to be fat. And I was fatter than some kids my age, but skinnier than many. I danced and did gymnastics, was strong and could walk miles. Come cross-country though I was ALWAYS at the end, never a good runner, and I guess I kinda decided at that point that I was no good at sports. No one ever managed to convince me otherwise and so I guess what I believed became a reality, although looking at photos, it seems it was much later that I actually became overweight... I think it must have been about year 10 - when I was 14.

Since then I've been overweight, obese or morbidly obese at various stages, but mostly the larger end of that scale. Never a healthy weight.

What all of that means now is that this journey has a mystery destination! I have no idea what my ideal weight is. No idea what I look like as a fit person. All of this is waiting for me at the other end of my journey to GAIN health. Once I'm there, of course, the journey to MAINTAIN health begins in earnest, and I will have to learn to keep what I have truly earned.