I was always a chubby kid, but my parents managed to keep me in the high healthy range for most of school. In middle school, I was a latch key kid for a couple of years and started sneaking snacks. I got FAT. Then in high school, I started to work out and count calories. I went from being the one of the fattest kids in my 8th grade class to running varsity track by 10th grade.
When I was in high school, we lived overseas as my father was in the Army. I walked everywhere, or rode my bike, or ran. There weren't a lot of restaurant options, so I didn't have much fast food exposure at that age.
After I graduated, we moved back to the States. We lived in a non-walkable area, so I went from walking 1-5 miles daily to not walking at all. Nor did I have easy access to a place to run. Joining a gym didn't occur to me, and I'm not sure why not. The decreased activity was OK and I still maintained for a while by decreasing my caloric intake.
Then I found a new boyfriend, who LOVED to eat out. So we did. In the early 2000s, nutrition information for restaurant food was not easy to come by. I did my best, trying to estimate calorie counts based on things I did know. But restaurant food has so much added fat, salt and sugar that it can easily have twice as many calories as a homemade counterpart. And restaurant portions are enormous, and I love to eat. So before I knew it, I'd piled on 10, 30, 50, 100 pounds.
This sank me into a deep depression. I stopped caring at all for my personal appearance or any semblance of femininity because I felt like no matter what I did I was just going to be a fat disgusting slob. I went from being a cute teenager who wore miniskirts and high heels and kept up on fashion to being a slovenly 23 year old who lived in blue jeans and sarcastic T-Shirts from Hot Topic (always 2 sizes too big to help hide myself).
My parents and my brother noticed. They tried their best to do interventions for me. I cried and screamed and didn't want to hear it. My mother tried to help me gently when I was 15 pounds overweight, and less gently when I was 60 pounds overweight. By the time I got to 85 pounds, it had become a taboo subject in our household.
The then-boyfriend was also a manipulative emotional abuser, though he was so gentle and subtle that I didn't realize it at the time. When my parents tried to talk to me about my depression and weight, he told me that if they really loved me as much as he did then they would accept me as I was. When I wanted to watch what I ate, or even tried to put on makeup, he accused me of being vain and commented that I had become snobby. He kept me from dressing cutely by constantly remarking that girls are so much cuter in jeans and tshirts and he didn't like women who seemed like they paid too much attention to their appearance. I thought he being loving and accepting me as I was. I know now that he was keeping me feeling worthless so that I wouldn't find a better boyfriend.
Fast forward another 5 years. I finished school and work a job now that I'm proud of. I've mended fences with my parents and my mother has gone from being my enemy to my best friend. I wear dresses and makeup again. And I have a loving boyfriend who loves me as I am, but who also celebrates every pound I lose with me. He is in this weight loss game with me, and although he loses so much more easily than I do he supports me the whole way without making me feel like I have to lose for him.
Tuscany, like you I often work more than 14 hours in a day. My Crock Pot is now my best friend, so I never have an excuse not to eat at home.
Vex, I love pizza too! And I have at least 8 pizza shops within a mile of my house! Arrggh! We can polish off a whole 12-cut pizza in a sitting between the two of us.
Its amazing to see such common threads in everyone's stories.
Also a kid who was heavy, although in hind sight when I look at photos I did actually slim out around middle school, but once I became a teenager I started my long battle with depression and that resulted in eating too much. My Mum is obese, so in our house food was always used as a reward system, and from the ages of 10+ my parents either managed a youth hostel (with a shop as part of it) or a cafe. So junk food was easy access for me.
I met my now husband when I was 17, I was heavy but not yet obese at that stage. After we moved in together it was good at first, but I worked in a hotel as a bartender and the hotel provided us with dinner and snacks, so our lunch room always had lots of pastries and I would take then home at the end of my shift (we didn't have a lot of money so it seemed ideal). Fast forward a few years, depression combined with just poor choices meant I hit the 100kg (220lb) mark around the age of 19.
We decided about then to go to school, again little money it was actually cheaper to eat food that was nutritionally bad, especially as neither of us really knew how to cook. It got worse when my husband finished school and got a job, more money just meant more takeaways and soda, because that was now our routine.
At the end of grad school I was so heavy I don't know what I weighed because the scales gave me an error I hadn't seen how heavy I had gotten until I saw a pic and was horrified. We'd been together 10 years, were starting to talk about having kids and I knew that I needed to lose weight before babies.
So kids were my catalyst first time around, I got down to just under 200lb, had my first child and ballooned. After my second child my Mum had a heart attack and that was the catalyst for my second weight loss. I was a Mum now and I needed to be there for my kids, so I went from around to 265lb to where I am now, a Mummy-tummy-battler doing it! Its slow, I go up and down (sometimes feels like more up), but I will get there.
For me, it was a lot of emotional work. Realizing I'd been spoiled and indulged most of my life by parents, loved ones, and especially myself. Once I decided to put on some big girl panties and stop eating like a starving frat boy, things changed
I'd fooled myself for a LOT of years thinking I was "addicted" to certain foods. I was -- to the taste, the habit, the taste lol I was a spoiled brat who loved the taste of crap and I gave into it daily!
Favourite lunch on weekends -- McD's Quarter Pounder /w Cheese, Fries, and DIET coke of course ha ha then over to DQ for a medium sized Blizzard with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. I shudder to think of the money and calories I wasted
I'd tried a million times to banish food - as in, I'm NEVER eating chocolate again! I'm NEVER eating chips again!! ha ha but damnit as if they still EXISTED in the world lol I figured it was easier for ME to learn how to deal with them then make 6 billion OTHER people go without them ha ha
The big changes I've made are no more fast food breakfasts (McDs coffee & low fat muffin EVERY DAY for years wow), instead I have a few big spoons of cottage cheese (half the time standing up at the fridge cuz I'm late ha ha) and then some fruit at my desk, and a coffee.
Fast Food is still a part of life, it's unrealistic to think I'm never going to eat it again. But instead of what I used to eat, I get a small kids burger. No fries. Wolf it down if I'm starving and eat some soup or something later at home.
I plan a lot more now. Make some things ahead and freeze for when the day is killing me and I can't take another step LOL
I say, find what works for you, find what you can LIVE WITH FOREVER, and you're good to go
I have never been a normal weight. I was born heavy and I've been considered to be heavy, then overweight, then obese, my entire life. Now, when I look back at pictures of myself when I was very young, I can see that I really wasn't overweight, I was just a big kid with a big frame. Regardless, I've never fit into "normal" size clothing.
Here's a picture of me at 6 years old, the very day my mother, within my hearing, was told that I was a butterball and that she'd better put me on a diet.
Those kinds of comments, of which I was fairly constantly on the receiving end, eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, to the point that at age 48, I stepped on a scale and saw the number 302.
For me, over eating was self medication. I come from a family where food is love. Feel good? Here, have a treat. Feel bad, here, let me make you your favorite food. Feel really bad, here let's both sit down and have a nice binge. Eating mass amounts of food comforted me when I was angry, hurt, anxious, sad and then it just became a habit. I ate huge amounts of food to mask emotional pain. I ate huge amounts of food because when I didn't, I got anxious, felt deprived and vulnerable. Eating was my shelter and my safety and something I could always count on to make me feel better.
Until it didn't.
When it didn't make me feel better anymore, when eating actually made me feel physically and emotionally terrible, I just kept eating. It got worse after my mother died of all the complications of her own struggles with obesity. I ate more and more and more and more. I was committing suicide by food.
The hardest part of this weight loss effort of mine has been dealing with all the negative emotions I used to stuff. I've had to face those emotions and my anxiety disorder head on. I've had to learn other ways to cope rather than falling face first into mass amounts of unhealthy food. I've had to try to forgive myself for all the damage I've done to my body, much of it irreparable.
This has been one of the hardest things I've ever done and I still have quite a long way to go. I've fallen down in this effort more times than I can count. I've faced emotional storms, big life changes and physical constraints.
But it's been worth it.
I now have confidence that I will eventually make my goal. It will take time but I will get there.
Here's a picture of me at 6 years old, the very day my mother, within my hearing, was told that I was a butterball and that she'd better put me on a diet.
So sad, Garnet! You look like a perfectly beautiful, normal little girl in that picture.
My trigger is sugar. Once I get started, I just don't want to stop. I won't say I "can't" stop, because obviously I am physically able, but it is so difficult that I'm learning that I just need to not eat sugary things. If I buy a package of cookies, I will eat and eat until they are gone. Same thing with cake or ice cream or (as I recently learned), breakfast cereal. I will eat it until my stomach hurts from being so full.
So I am cutting it out. I have 1 tsp in my morning tea as a treat and that is IT. No cookies, no candy, no cake at my uncle's birthday party. I haven't had anything other than morning sugar for about a month, except for the other day when I ate candy out of the boss' candy dish without thinking.
I have also stopped eating bread at breakfast--in fact, I'm not eating breakfast at all any more. I know that goes contrary to popular belief, but it works for me. If I don't eat in the morning, I'm fine until lunch. But if I eat in the morning, then all I want to do is eat, eat, eat all morning.
So those are the two things I'm doing right now. Eventually, I will need to start counting calories again but for now, this is working for me.
I hadn't seen how heavy I had gotten until I saw a pic and was horrified. We'd been together 10 years, were starting to talk about having kids and I knew that I needed to lose weight before babies. 
