ha ha ha ha this is sooo easy! simply because i have no self control YET (i'm working on it), so i eat whenever i'm emotional, bored, happy, basically i graze all the time.....i actually dont know what 'hunger' feels like. and when i do get those hunger pangs before dinner i end up grazing when i'm cooking and ruining my dinner!!!! so then i feel guilty about eating more than i should and say what the heck today is ruined i may aswell continue and start again tomorrow. i'm trying to break the circle!!!

Dessert and fast food. I've always noticed that when I quit eating so much dessert, the scale goes down easier. I used to eat dessert twice a day and have fast food at least once or twice a week, and since I've kept dessert down to maybe once or twice a week and hardly any fast food ever, the weight has definitely come off.

Not getting enough sleep makes the scale bounce even when my eating is perfect. No particular food packs on the weight for me, per se, but some make me feel cruddy and others create massive cravings. Sugar and starch that quickly converts to sugar in my body are the big ones, yeast (bread and brewer) also kick up inflammation like nobody's business in me, the same as sugar.

Unsoaked nuts make my mouth itch.

But the worst of all? Eating when I am not hungry! This is why controlling my cravings with fairly low starch and no sugar is so important, because then I can control my impulses and listen to my hunger cues much better when my body isn't screaming for junk.

What makes me GAIN weight?

Having babies. Gained 10 pounds ish for each of my 3, which I didn't take off any of those 3 times.

I'm actually good at maintaining. Other than having my 3 kids, I have never really gained weight in my adult life... (oh wait, I guess I have since I lost 30lbs twice in 20 years and regained it each time...). But I'm not one to go up up up over time - I'm very stable.

So what makes me poor at losing weight?? I think - alcohol too. I love a glass of wine (sometimes 2 ) a day as a way to manage stress. Those cals add up, and I bet my portion sizes are not as on the mark with dinner as they are for breakfast and lunch. I don't snack in the evenings, so yeah - I think I blow it daily in the late afternoon/dinnertime - aka happy hour.

1) Eating out at restaurants if it's part of the calendar for the week. I'm not good at making good choices there. 1 meal, I'm okay. 2, I'm sunk. 2) Those times of the year when it's really hard to get out to exercise (about 3 of 12 mos) because work is super busy.

It's usually a combination of factors, such as:

Eating too much of the wrong/junk foods and not accounting for it in my calories (and I did this many times before I started actually counting calories).

Eating too many lollies/candies/sweets on top of my regular diet and doing ZERO exercise. This I now identify as my comfort eating.

In the past some medications I took increased my appetite and I was HUNGRY all the time so I gave into the hunger and ate whatever, whenever I wanted it.

I 2nd this!!

I had three glasses of wine the other night, on an empty stomach no less! -and I'm such a light-weight drinker, all my willpower out the window PLUS the fact that I knew I had to eat to help soak up all that alcohol!... I had Chinese food... not TOO bad, BUT... 6 pieces of buttered bread, too. WHOOPSIE!

I do a lot of stress eating and I like fast food (well all food really).

I go out a lot for lunch during the week just because I have to get out of the office. Ideally I would go home for lunch because we generally have much healthier food at home, but so many days tacos or cheeseburgers or ice cream sound so much better. I also visit the vending machine too often as well.

When I was at my heaviest I would have a bad habit of eating to try to make myself feel better/happier and then continue to eat even though I was stuffed. I have gotten better at that but I still need to make better choices.

Pasta. I avoid that stuff like the plague since the late 90's and then I got thin. I started having weight issues again after having my son.

Stress, not enough sleep and fast food... Can't really do away with the first 2 because of shift work. I try to eat at home and cook for the family as much as I can and I slowly lost the weight. Hubby improved his cholesterol level too!

Sitting on the couch in front of the tv, stuffing my face and binging made me gain weight over a course of doing it for 25-ish years.

A dislike of excercising or will to move in general. I'm just lazy, and I'd rather be sitting at home than running around town most of the time unless I'm really in the mood to shop. And it's so hard to get the motivation to exercise, grr. But I need to learn to love it.

Dieting? Every time I start a plan, and then go off it, I gain back everything I lost PLUS 10 MORE POUNDS before I stop rapidly gaining. It's the main way I've gained so much weight, because 5 failed attempts = 50 pounds. It's more incentive to stay on track, because I know if I go off plan I'm going to end up bigger than when I started.

Minus the ribs and the cereal from the binge foods, this is me to a T!

For me it was comfort eating! I would eat when I was sad, happy, bored... the list goes on! Luckily I've realised it in time and am trying to reign it in.

My main reason of overeating was stress and depression.

These two psychological conditions are getting linked with obesity more and more every day..