I have a lot of reasons for it I think... And weirdly, even when I was thin - like REALLLLLY thin, my uncle said to my Mom, "I think of the kids, Missy will be the one with a weight problem." I don't know if it's by what I liked to eat (carb queen) or my generally sedentary ways even as a kid or what... weird as he was right (though the youngest who was a baby at the time, also has weight problems.

For me it was a lot of things that contributed.

1. I love carby food and they create cravings and cravings I find very hard to resist.

2. When I get sleep deprived I use food to boost my energy and guess what foods? Carby foods which then trigger cravings which then make me over eat.

3. Being very uncomfortable in my skin/my body. I think some part of me used being fat to protect myself from getting attention for my body. I didn't want people looking at my body - so maybe they wouldn't if I was fat?

4. I am a morning eater. I am STARVING the first half of the day and not very hungry later in the day. The American way of eating totally goes against my natural biorhythms. If I eat a hearty breakfast and a hearty lunch and build in snacks inbetween, I don't need dinner. The hunger stops around 4-5 pm. However, that is when most everyone else is thinking about dinner and it's not like I 'can't' eat then, just that I really don't need to.

Nowadays I will often skip dinner, telling my family I have already eaten enough for today. I will prepare their dinner and skip it, or maybe just eat a very small bit of it. If I deny myself all day when I am reallllly hungry, I will binge later in the day and then end up way over eating. And again, what will I binge on? Simple carbs.

So, by staying away from carbs, getting enough sleep and eating when my body seems to be hungry instead of when most people eat their big meals, I feel so much better! And the mental stuff I just worked through over the years.

I am a stress eater and emotional eater. I had a grandmother who used to tell me I was fat and ugly constantly, and I would eat as a way to comfort myself. It's something I started doing at a young age, and haven't been able to stop.
When I get stressed out, I use that as an excuse to eat badly. I tell myself that it's okay for me to have pizza or Chinese food, etc because I can't possibly be expected to deal with the stress AND keep eating on plan. I've been working on that a lot lately, but it's hard.
I am also addicted to food. When I'm eating badly, I eat more for the taste than because I'm hungry. I'll eat until I'm so full I could explode, but it tastes too good to stop at the first sign of being full.
I have been working hard on trying to fix these problems, but it's a struggle.

I am an emotionnal eater. In the past I have used food to "self-medicate" myself when in fact I should have been on anti-depressants and or in therapy. Food = happy...

Also, I have realized that having had a really beautiful mom (think pageant beauty beautiful) has plagued me with a ton of insecurities regarding my looks and I think that being fat gave me a sense of control of what people would think of me...

Issues, issues, issues

My mother was an overeater, and I grew up following her example.

Also, being a victim of child sexual abuse only fuelled my emotional eating.

My weight gain started when I was about 10. I had already been through a lot of tragedy and at 10 my stepfather passed away. He was the only real father I had ever had. My "sperm donor" as I like to call my biological father, took it upon himself on our weekends we had together (every other week) to tell me that I was fat, he was always very abusive. I lost most of the weight during my teenage years and got down to a size 8. He abused me mentally and emotionally and I packed it back on during college and then some. I've finally completely severed ties with him for good (a year and a half now) and am SO much happier and healthier.

I don't binge eat anymore and haven't for a while and I know it's gone for good now. But I do know what turned me from a normal eater into a binger: dieting. Nothing else. Before I had ever dieted I never had a preoccupation with food. Once I dieted, my brain flipped a switch and kept up a bad habit to protect me from starvation (if I did it once, I might do it again, after all). Anyway I quit on my own. I said no more, and I'm done. I don't diet anymore either, I practice intuitive eating so that I naturally stay at the weight my body wants. Hopefully overtime my body will steer me back down to where it was last summer before I binged and ruined it all!

I never had a weight problem until I got pregnant with my twins (only time I was pregnant) Before that I could eat like a large trucker and not gain a pound. My doctor suggested that I have another child to flip my body back to what it was before I had the children. That seemed extreme and a strange way to drop weight, get pregnant. Anyway there is no big thing, I like food, I love food, I love to cook, I love to eat out, both my husband and I love good food. We try, and then fall off the wagon...we are trying again, slowly, a little at a time, so here I am with all you other lovely people.

Like berry, I tend to love carbs and I seem to seek out energy in the form of carbs when I'm tired. So, sleep is essential to me not overeating.

As for when I started overeating, I think it was when I was a young teenager (13-14). Every Friday night, my family would go visit one of my Dad's friends to play cards, and since they had no kids my age, I always asked to stay home. I remember making myself peanut butter sandwiches, as if I was celebrating something (the freedom of being alone??). Anyway, that's my first member of gaining a significant amount of weight. Of course, even then, I wasn't fat. I only became chubby during my second year of college and then fat once I got married. And, of course, I think all the dieting inbetween is what really caused me to continue gaining.

I've been overweight almost my entire life. My mom was a single teenaged mom, she was just a month past 16 when she had me. She barely knew how to care for herself, let alone a kid. We had very little money so we ate alot of cheap processed food. And we never ever ate as a family. I remember every meal being a like bowl of mac and cheese in front of the tv. And when I had dinner with family it was no better. Grandma was old school Ukranian, and her food was FILLED with fat. I remember one meal where she cut the fat off of some kind of meat, and fried just the fat up for us to eat. I honestly dont remember vegetables of any kind being served with our meals. So I guess I never really learned how to eat healthy. The thing is, now I love vegetables and eat them all the time. But, I was still eating all the crappy processed convenience foods because I hate cooking.

This is really the first time I've REALLY tried to lose weight, and I'm trying to change my way of thinking about food. I have a 4 year old now, and I want so badly for her to learn to eat wholesome, quality foods. ANd that has to start with me. I've stopped buying processed crap and go for more whole grains and organics and natural foods. And I try to make sure we have our meals together as a family, something I never got to enjoy.

Another thing that worked against me...I never got into any activities at all. No sports, no music, no dance....nothing. I never had any kind of hobby to keep me busy, except eating of course.

Wow...thanks for the opportunity to get all that out, that was very therapeutic for me!

I really related to what you wrote.

My father was an alcoholic (although not always actively), my my mom was an overeater with mental health issues, and I was sexually abused and generally didn't have healthy boundaries. My big body made me feel a bit safer and invisible. As for habits, I saw them both deal with their stress/problems by eating, and then the insecurity/invalidation/etc. that they did to me, I tried to eat away. Food and books became the only two real friends I had, and since we were poor/working class, I tended to binge when we had either of those things.(Digression: I once had a cousin who told me Sara Lee was my best friend. Ouch!) Family atmosphere was compounded by clinical depression that came on at an early age, which only fueled my need to chemically change my brain with food. I also *TRIGGER WARNING* used to be a cutter, but food was my first real mind-alter-er (Thankfully I never went to drugs, but some days I feel like food is worse, ya know?)

Anyway, I see myself in a lot of you who wrote here.

I'm not really sure? My mom always made healthy food, we never had soda in the house and I think we ate fast food maybe once a year when my grandma was in town. We're all sortof chunky anyway but I've become the biggest by far in the last few years.

We would have sweet stuff in the house but although it was within reach I was always told never, ever, to touch it so it became a bit of a forbidden fruit kinda thing. Then as I got older there were some family issues in the home and although I'm never sure if I'm an *emotional* eater or not I sure did enjoy the taste of yummy things when times were bad. With my first job came money and that's when the bingeing really started and I'd hide away in my room with a grocery bag full of cookies or candy.

Really though I don't remember a time when I didn't crave sweet things and as far as I can remember I've never had an 'off' switch when it came to eating.

Well...I've always LOVED food....addicted to it, really.

That, and I was always an introverted loner, so I didn't have that constant feedback from my peers about my eating habits and weight. I never really cared about how I looked until relatively recently.

Unfortunately I don't think my food addiction will ever be "cured"....the most I can do is try to get it under control.

Well, i first started overeating at a young age. It was all based around depression. I had no friends, went to catholic school with only 18 kids in my class, so I was the odd one out. Being too young to get it, I started eating, giving them more ammunition to make me miserable (my weight). By the time I was in 5th grade I was cutting myself (which continued until I was almost 17). I later developed an eating disorder which was just a different form of the same thing. Then a drug addiction until 2yrs ago. It was all depression and anxiety, I realize that now. Hence why I am here, I stopped all the bad habits, but never the eating so much. I was bulimic, so the binging never stopped though the purging did, so I'm here to handle that.

Did you guys see the bit on the Today show this morning? It was about the hormones secreted related to the digestive system. I'm not going to pretend to remember the cause/effect exactly, you can look it up, but high frutose foods inhibit the secretion of a hormone that staves hunger. Lack of sleep does the same.

It was amazing to me how scientific and quite simple it all is.

For me it was going through infertility treatment that ultimately never worked. I hated my body for betraying me and I quit taking care of it. Add in depression that led to binge eating (who knew a whole apple pie wasn't a single serving?) and eating fast food due to lack of time...

I need to find the "old" me: the one who was athletic and skinny and happy. I know my weight is all tied up with the depression, etc. I have to find "me" under all this fat.