[Air81]

Most of you will say you ate junk and didn't control your eating, but my story is different and I just wondered if there were any other people out there like me.

I gained all my weight pre-freshman year of college (10years ago). Growing up I wasn't a big eater that I remember, but your typical eater that didn't pay attention to what I ate, but not in huge quantities as it was the same that my peers were eating, but I kept gaining. In junior high and high school I played volleyball and basketball and still kept gaining weight.

Freshman year I gained post atckins weight back and my freshman 15. Then, I quit gaining. I haven't gained or lost more than the continual +-15lbs in 10 years!!!

SO why doesn't the weight come off when now in my adult life I am a healthy eater and active? Doing some soul searching on this, so comments are welcome.

[chubychika]

i gradually gained weight as a child and weighed over 200 by the time i got to high school . i ate what everyone else ate which got me averaging 240 .and now as an adult i try to eat healthier. turkey burger, chicken only once in a long while ill have red meat-veggies at every meal , fruit during the day. i rarely snack. i dont eat chips candy or soda and rarely drink juice. i seem to be stuck at this weight of 263. i lost weight very slowly after pregnancy from 302.
i just started an exercise routine and hopefully it will help shed the pounds,.
I totally understand you.i see other overweight people that are smaller than me (friends/family)eating everything u would think a "fat person"would eat-ice cream quarts,big bags of chips,candy bars, 2 big macs large fries and a side of nuggets for lunch . I feel like i eat healthy but still seem to be this unhealthy weight.it doesnt make sense to me - i guess i just eat TOO much good food.

[skinnyfatskin]

Hi Air81
My weight gain was caused by medication.

I know exactly how you feel with exercising and leading an active lifestyle, and eating healthy, yet still the weight won't shed.

During uni in my early twenties I was size 12, at one stage size 10, and size 14 at my heaviest. I got away with eating fast foods and consuming less than your recommended daily nutritional intake of healthy food. Now I eat small portions of seven different organic veggies a day, 2 organic fruits, palm size of lean meat, gluten free museli, low fat milk, everything pretty much healthy for about a yr, but nothing, combined with about an hrs exercise a day, for the past yr as well.

Im at the point where I think alcohol must be eliminated entirely from my life, and currently I only drink 2 glasses once a month. Must I give this luxury up too!

I exercise aerobically about an hour a day. It might possibly need to be increased to 2 hrs, which I've been doing for the past week but no results yet.

I'm only 29 and I don't like being a size 18! it feels unnatural in my case, because I've always been lean my whole life. Never been overweight before. Only in the past 2 -3 years, when I started my medication.

Its embarrasing because my mind thinks im still lean, and i still act lean, because its what ive been used to all my life. Its funny how ppl look at you differently when ur overweight, they must be looking at me and going, hey, that angle doesn't look too good on u, or, stop bending over, u should know better!

-JT

[bonnnie]

I do wish I could be in a scientific controlled study, where I eat the exact amount as someone who is my height and 30lbs lighter. I could follow them around the whole day, do the same activities.

That has always been a dream of mine!

Because I know I do not eat excessively. I know I eat moderately, but I am still 20lbs too heavy.

I remember seeing a Dateline special (or 20/20) a LONG time ago on fat cells. Basically, if I remember correctly, some people are born with more of them and can naturally store more fat. Also, one can increase their number of fat cells by gaining weight - which makes maintenance so darn difficult, because the potential is always there.

Which means: weighing a lot is very very easy.

I don't know how correct the "fat cells theory" is, I'll have to do more research.

RESEARCH UPDATE: Apparently it is quite easy to increase your number of fat cells until you are approx. 16 years old. It is also possible to increase your number of fat cells if you have a prolonged period of being very overweight.

[Sanna Maria]

Bonnnie, why don't you just spend a few days with a slim friend I'm living with a very fit, healthy and active person, and have been very slim myself, so it's not about not knowing what's good for me, it's a question of willpower to just do it. My naturally very slender friend (120lb, which I think is too little and so does her mother) who is your height usually eats a normal bowl of muesli with milk in the morning with a small glass of juice, a chicken or ham sandwich for lunch and a normal dinner, but a fairly small portion, some days her dinner is a stuffed mushroom which can't contain many calories. She snacks on maybe two rye crackers, crudites and hummus and sometimes avocado. When she goes to a restaurant she always picks soup or the lightest option available, and no she doesn't have an eating disorder she just likes lighter foods.

I have gained my weight due to consuming too many calories, simple as that. I have a strange obsession with fruit juice, for months I drank about 1.5 litres a day, and that's hundreds and hundreds of calories. So I switched to lower calorie juice that tasted just as good, and finally my insane weight gain stopped. Also I've cut down portion sizes and always try to eat as many vegetables as possible instead of fresh pasta and pizza which seems to help.

[Bridezilla]

I've been heavier my entire life... but always ate less than my siblings. I was always hyper aware that I was a little bigger than them and would pass on brownies etc, things that other kids didn't think twice about. As I got older, I developed a "Who cares" attitude and ate what my friends were eating. I gained weight pretty rapidly. I went through ups and downs, but this last year has been the WORST. I am going through a divorce, lost my job, was practically homeless until I met someone new, and I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism in addition to PCOS. Did I also mention I have mono at the moment? Talk about being super tired. This year I sleep more than I am awake and I'll be honest, ate a lot of crap. I put on 80 lbs. That's right, just this year. I was really big to begin with... so now I am here. I'm just starting out, but I'm determined to turn things around. I'm only 25 years old...

[MindiV]

I gained weight by stopping activity. Oh, and puberty. I was a skinny kid growing up. Tall and skinny. I could eat anything I wanted. I was one of those annoying people who ate all the time and never gained a pound, which was nice because my mom didn't cook for us. She worked all day in jobs in restaurants and school cafeterias, so when she came home it was take-out and leftovers she was able to smuggle home (we were kinda broke). But I was also active...growing up I played basketball in the fall and spring and softball during the summer. I was always riding bikes and playing outside, running around and being goofy.

Then we moved at the start of third grade. That's about the point I started "maturing." I had to wear a bra by the end of third grade and got my first TOM in the fourth. I was still active, but the new town didn't have as many opportunities for sports as the old one. I'd left all my friends behind and was pretty shy in the new town, so I became more introverted. There weren't as many kids to play with because we lived in the country with my grandma. I got around enough to keep off most of the weight gain 'til 5th grade.

At that point I got scale conscious. I remember watching my weight hit 120, 130, 140...then I stopped stepping on the scale. All the while my mom's coming in with leftover barbecue, Pizza Hut pizzas, etc., for dinner. I could put away an entire medium pan crust pepperoni lover's pizza alone in 7th grade. And Little Debbies...they were always in the house and I really remember eating four or five a day. We'd go through a box a day between my sister and I.

So for me it was eating too much and not moving enough.

[maenad]

I put on a lot of weigh when i was in 8th and 9th grade. I stopped playing sports and would come home to an empty house every afternoon and would just eat. I would eat all this crap i made, like mixing sugar and butter together and eat it. sometimes i would buy 3 or 4 mini pizzas and eat them. i would binge for hours until my parents came home, then I would eat a normal sized diner with them. They didn't understand why i was gaining so much weight. By the time i was in 10th and 11th i was going out for fast food every lunch with my friends, then going home and binging.

My senior year i got my act together and lost 50 pounds (from 155 to 105). I managed to keep that off until i finished college (stayed around 110-115). I keep going through spurts where i gain weight, then lose it (stress at work, change of jobs, travel, moving to different countries). this last addition came from a trip to Italy. I just stuffed my face for 3 weeks.

[forestroad]

I am the classic yo-yo dieter. I think dining halls contributed a lot to my weight gain, but obv not everyone who has access to a dining hall gets fat.

I was a chubby kid; at age 12 in 6th grade and maybe 5 feet tall I was 130 pounds, which is a lot on a pre-pubescent frame.

At the beginning of 7th grade, I developed an eating disorder and lost about 30lbs as I was also getting taller and having my growth spurt. My school counselor tried to notify my parents but they didn't believe (and still deny that) there was a problem.

Over the course of the following 6 years, I gained steadily from year to year, and was also getting taller. My max weight senior year of high school was about 145, maybe a little less. My school had breakfast/lunch included in tuition. I would eat a bagel and/or donut and hot chocolate for breakfast, and then hit the hot food line for lunch, usually getting 3 courses and seconds. I was also a three season athlete--not very cardio-oriented sports, but I had to do conditioning for all of them (volleyball, softball, and diving). It wasn't enough to offset the overeating in the cafeteria.

In college, I stayed thin first semester, having lost maybe 5lbs over the summer. Then I packed on the freshman 15-20. Again, I was at a school that included full board (all you can eat dining halls) in tuition. I was also barely exercising. I lost it over the summer, but then packed on the sophomore 20. I lost that weight, too, and headed abroad my junior year back at about 140lbs. Then back at school I gained it all back again...at this point I had stopped weighing myself. I figured I'd put it off again over the summer like I usually did, but that summer I got a stress fracture in my foot and couldn't exercise much. Senior year it just got worse and I graduated at 180lbs.

I should mention that my first two summers I was also on a dining hall meal plan, but I substituted an hour at the gym for lunch or dinner. It's no surprise that that weight loss was short lived. The summer of my stress fracture, I was not on a meal plan, and instead eating mostly stuff I could cook in a microwave in my room.

I know how you feel about feeling like you eat like skinnier ppl and yet are not slender. After graduating from college, I lived with a vegetarian with a bmi of about 19 and we cooked together and ate the same things, and I was going to the gym 3x/wk and biking a lot. I did lose a bit of weight, but it took me a year to get 15lbs off. Then I gained 10 back when I went on birth control. A health scare back in March, back at 175 lbs, coupled with my best friend losing 40lbs, kicked my butt into gear. I lost 15 lbs by June without a plan, then started counting calories and increasing my exercise to 4-6x/wk, and took of the next 30--bringing me to where I am today, 130lbs. The last time I was this weight was probably sophomore year of high school.

This time is different because I feel like a different person. I don't know if I'll always have my eating under control, but I know I will always have my fitness under control for as long as I am able-bodied. I love the feeling of being active and knowing I can do anything physically that I put my mind too. If I gain a little back, so be it, but if it starts to impede my fitness, I know that is too big a sacrifice for me to let slide, and I know I have the tools to shed the pounds. Right now it's all about my level of fitness.

So that's my story of how I gained the weight and how it came off this time Eating normally and healthfully with some activity worked, but very slowly--to see results it really took watching my calories and upping my exercise. That's how I gained the weight--I wasn't eating junk food, but I was not watching the quantity in which I was taking food from the dining halls.

[Lori Bell]

Originally Posted by Air81

SO why doesn't the weight come off when now in my adult life I am a healthy eater and active? Doing some soul searching on this, so comments are welcome.

How many calories are you consuming a day? A person can eat all the right foods, eat only 100% healthy organic "clean" foods, and still consume more calories than they burn. Especially if they over do it on nuts, and other calorie dense foods. The formula is very simple. Calories in vs. calories out. I'm sure you have read or heard that 1000 times. Some people just need less calories than others. All the excercise in the world won't help if you eat more calories than you burn. Exercise doesn't really "burn" that many calories, unless you do it biggest loser style and work out hours and hours a day. Which isn't practical for the majority.

I have a friend who was walking up to 12 miles a day and was really upset that she wasn't losing any weight. In the mean time she had changed her eating habits to include more healthy foods but she also continued to drink alcohol daily, and eat her coveted chocolate and other goodies several times a week. Granted she stopped GAINING, but she didn't lose but a few pounds after weeks of walking 8-12 miles per day. I suggested that she start watching her calories, or counting her points, (as she had done WW in the past and successfully lost). Walla, within a few weeks of counting her points she was down 10 pounds.

Typically Shorter people need less calories, inactive people need less calories, the elderly, the very young, people with funky metabolic disorders...all need less calories than the "norm." If you eat less calories than you burn you will lose weight. There is only one disease that I have ever heard of where you can basically starve and not lose weight, and it is very rare pituitary disorder and is treatable.

ETA: I gained weight from eating massive amounts of high calorie foods, sitting most of the day and drinking like a fish. I lost weight by cutting calories, not sitting most of the day and by giving up alcohol.

I heard an interesting comment last night on TV from a seasoned Bariatric surgeon. He said that in his practice, after some research and counselling, they found that his morbidly obese patients ate 75% MORE calories than they reported in their original consultation. I can believe it....I know now that I ate 1000's more than I "thought" I did before counting calories.

[Thighs Be Gone]

I gained weight when I got married, became more focused on everybody and everything else instead of putting myself at the top. I also became lazy in many respects. The bigger I got, the lazier I became and the more hopeless I felt. I do love food but I really do not feel my obesity had THAT much to do with the food.

[HaleyisLove]

I dont ever remember not being fat... I asked my mom the other day and she said I had always been a big kid... but I wasnt fat... I was really tall for my age and I wasnt boney thin but I wasnt fat... I played sports my whole life and I was always active...I didnt live in a house where I could eat cookies and cake and chips everyday... I liked real food and I ate large portions... my sister grew up in the same house and is a good 110 pounds on her tiny 5 foot frame... I just always knew I was the fat one.

I lost weight once... the summer before I started 7th grade and I gained it all back very quickly...this was the only time I even tried to diet... I have no clue how much I weighed along the way because I never weighed myself and it was the one thing I hated about going to the doctors...

This is the first time I have really commited to losing weight and although I had a huge slip up where I gained 19 pounds back... I know I didnt wake up one day and almost weigh 300 pounds... I did it to myself... eating and being lazy... the way most of us do... I never cared about myself and now I do...and thats a wonderful feeling and I still have a way to go but I know I will get there

[Ashbee]

I was very slim as a child ... I did put on a little weight around puberty but then that came back off ... I spent most of HS between a size 8-10 (except for a sz 12 period Junior Year ??) ...

The thing that kills me is that I spent all that time (in HS once I had a job and my own money ... my parents always taught me to eat moderately, etc) ... eating ice-cream straight out of the carton or 3000 calorie meals here ... my friends and I ate like pigs and yet stayed in our sz 8-10 jeans??

My Freshman year of college I had already been losing a little weight (I was a sz 10 when I graduated HS) ... I think I became terrified of the Freshman 15 and decided I was growing up and it was time to take control. I found a plan of moderation where I just ate smaller portions and didn't eat junk food except on special days etc ... I got down to a sz 6/8 then and kept it for a year ...

The big gain came when I became super stressed out second half of my sophomore year of college ... I am a people pleaser and their was a lot of chaos going on in my life during that time. I realized later that I developed (is that the right word??) BED (Binge Eating Disorder). I ate huge portions, usually secretly. I would eat until it made me nearly sick. It was so emberrassing and I felt captured by my lack of control. I also went from a healthy 145-155 lbs (I fluctuated between the two) to 212 lbs in a little over a year! I went from a sz.6/8 to a sz. 14!

I think everyone has different reasons for gaining weight wether gradually or slowly. Some good counseling (about other things not weight) with a pastor helped me realize that I was eating to try and stuff my feelings. It made me realize that I was dishonoring my body and hurting myself. I also came to realize that there were so many people, and most importantly God who love me unconditionally. I think when I began to love myself again, I was able to overcome BED ... It took several months after that before I became serious about weight loss.

[smisen]

For me, it all crept on really slowly. I was always a bit larger as a kid - not hugely overweight, but not as skinny as some of my friends growing up. I remember weighing 144 in middle school, but I'm not sure of much after that.

In college, I fluctuated between the 160s and 170s, gaining a little bit thanks to the dorm cafeteria and losing some during my year in a co-op house (aka - my year amongst the vegans). I successfully lost about 15 pounds during my second year, but put all of it back on before I graduated.

My first real job was in a school, where we always celebrated with food - we did birthdays, holidays and even made up holidays like Pi Day (celebrated on 3/14 with actual pies...). There was another 10 pounds in about a year and a half...

Then, in the summer of 2008, my fiance and I decided to move out of state (and away from all of our family members) for the first time in our lives. We were also dealing with money stress brought on my the job situation in Michigan, so things were pretty tough for awhile. And instead of responding to stress the positive way - with exercise and lots of sleep - I responded with cake. And cookies. And fast food. By the time we made it to Wisconsin, I'd added another 10 pounds. Getting adjusted to a new city made it another 5, until I was close to 200 pounds.

In some ways, the slow creeping on of pounds makes it harder to get rid of. I've always had a pretty good body image and that never changed when I got heavier - I still saw the same old me in the mirror. It wasn't until I noticed that my size 16 pants were fitting a little too tightly that I actually realized that there was a problem. I know there's going to be a lot of mindset changes to go through throughout this whole process!

[InControl2Day]

I ate too much and lead a sedentary lifestyle.

I graduated high school at ~132 lbs and every year in college lead to 15-20 lb gain..

I would lose a bit during the summer when I had less stress and work load then gain it all back during the school year.

I actually don't drink alcohol very much. 1-2 drinks a month at most so it wasn't due to alcohol.
I did overindulge in calorie dense foods =) I would eat multiple meals with different friends throughout the day.

Now that I've graduated, I wanted to pinpoint the problems with my lifestyle and end this pattern of distruction.

It really came down to calories in vs calories out. I track all my intake and increased my activity level. I removed junk foods from my kitchen replacing it with healthier alternatives. I only drink diet-soda when I go to the movies (1-2x a month) or steal sips from my bf when he orders it. When I need a bad snack, I include that into my daily calorie allowance and I find I don't gain weight even when I ate pizza, ice cream, chips... as LONG as I stay within my calorie allowance. I lose.