I think, for the most part, you don't need to know why you gained weight in order to lose weight. Now if you are having issues losing weight, you do need to know why you are having trouble.

For me, I bounced between 330 to 360 probably 10 times. Until I was put on BCP for PCOS. Only at that point was I able to lose weight and break the 330 barrier and then the 300 barrier. Now I'm in a similar position, I bounce between 200 to 215. I'm not sure if PCOS is playing a part but I also recognize that I have eating issues. I also have a mental issue with the 200 barrier since the last time I weighed under 200 lbs, I was probably 10 years old. So I'm working on the eating issues, I'm telling myself that it will be ok to be under 200 lbs. If those things don't work, I'll talk to my gynecologist about other options for birth control/medications.

THIS ^^ is exactly my point. Sure...you can lose weight without knowing "why?", but doing so is like treating the symptoms without treating the disease...it's only a matter of time before the REAL problem resurfaces and your back in the hospital AGAIN dealing with the same symptoms.

I know that everybody's "why" is unique to them. There's more than one variable and many combinations of situations leading to the problem. However, we are all here...which, in effect, shows EFFORT to fix the problem...it's shows "accountability" and in just being here at 3FC shows that we have accepted that it's ok to get help from others.

I had undiagnosed hypothiroidism for 4 or so years. I also have a prolactinoma AND I have other hormonal problems so I am on the birth control pill. I gained about 30 pounds. I am trying to lose them but I still have about 15 pounds to go. It's not easy.
Everybody else in my family has got really fast metabolism and I don't. I never did. I used to eat the same amounts of food that they usually eat (which was not that much, but still), no fast food but we'd bake cakes all the time. Oops.
Now I'm working on exercising more often (I walk roughly 8 miles everyday + jumping rope for 15 minutes + playing the Wii for about half an hour (sports or dancing games) - nothing too exhausting) and speeding up my metabolism. I love my "new" life.

At first my weight gain was because I wasn't watching what I was eating and was on 12 hour shifts and always had take out off. Than I moved out west and was in an abusive relationship so eating helped get rid of those problems and it became a habit. I was upset I'd order out. I was upset I'd eat a whole box of KD, I was upset and ate, ate ate. Once I got out of the relationship I saw the light tho sometimes I really just want to eat, eat and eat because I'm so damn hungry and just want to feel full again haha.

I like food, but I think mine is a combo of not eating when I should, not so much what I should. I probably would have been okay if I would have stuck with the food I eat now and been more active. After college I quit marching band, got a desk job, and stopped leaving the house except for work and that's when things went south for me. I wouldn't eat all day then would eat a big dinner really late at night. That mixed with no exercise makes for one fat Jenny! lol

I really find all the posts here so amazing because I think in my everyday life I've only met two or three overweight people who don't have a really good excuse for being that way. I figured I was really alone in just being lazy and not eating right. Everyone always seems to have a thyroid problem or a gland problem or bad knees or something medical keeping them fat (supposedly). Glad to see I'm not entirely alone in the "no good excuse" category!

Well, I actually do have a thyroid problem--but my thyroid didn't make me curl up with a George R. R. Martin novel and a bag of Cheetos.

You're far from alone, I think. There are a lot of us, I suspect. Once the first domino falls--whether it's because of a thyroid deficiency or a sedentary job or whatever--it becomes so much easier to get more sedentary, to eat more junk, to relax (or sink) into complacency until one day you look down and you're like, "Oh, where'd that *** come from!?"

This is a very interesting thread.

Yes, I am actually shocked how many carb servings (i.e. grain-derived carbs) are being recommended. On Wikipedia, the USDA Food Pyramid recommends 6-11 servings of bread, rice, cereal or pasta. The Canadian Food Pyramid is slightly better (at least the version I saw recently in a newspaper but it could be only because it's a more current version), recommending 5-8 servings.
Heck, most of us don't more than 5 times a day.

I LOVE THIS!

I think the reason I got fat was because I loved food too.

But some will say it's the PCOS that I have.

I think I wouldn't have developed PCOS so severely if I wasn't such a foodie.

I was normal weight throughout my childhood and high school, mostly because my parents fed me relatively well and healthy and I was an active kid. I was never scrawny skinny, but I was never the most overweight girl in class either.

When I went off to college, however, I really hated the cafeteria food. It wasn't good food at all. So, instead of eating crap at the cafeteria, I started eating off-campus. I would order pizza or calzones or chinese or whatever else was available. That food tasted a lot better than anything the cafeteria ever made. I gained about 30 lbs in that first year and set off my PCOS alarms.

I was diagnosed a year later and put on BCP, but I was never told that my diet and weight loss were going to be affected by the PCOS or the BCP. I stabilized at college, I stopped eating out so much (the cafeteria underwent a renovation) and I stopped gaining weight. But I didn't know anything about nutrition, weight loss or diets.

Once I graduated, I gained back some more weight because I was living on my own. I was cooking for a family (which is what I learned how to cook at home) rather than cooking for a single woman. I gained another 20 lbs and it was terrible.

I had no idea what was going on in my body. I didn't know why I had been normal weight in high school and suddenly I had gained all this weight. There was no correlation between food and calories and exercise.

I joined my first weight loss program, at work. Weight Watchers, of course. I didn't learn anything there either, except that foods had points and I had to limit the amount of points I ate per day. But I didn't know WHY. I did lose some weight and I did begin to understand that the food I put in my mouth had an impact on my weight. I stopped gaining.

Since then, it's been a very slooooooooooooow journey to understand that my weight gain is in part affected by my love of eating. I've struggled with eating healthy meals because I didn't like to cook, especially because I associating cooking with 20 lbs weight gain! But I could never join a program like Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem because I like food too much to enjoy the taste of those meals.

In the last three or four years, I've finally been able to put all the puzzle pieces together. I learned how nutrition works. I learned how to cook meals that would not lead me to gain weight. I've learned about PCOS and how it impacts my body. I've learned about macronutrients and how they affect my body.

I could easily say it was PCOS that did me with the weight gain. But the truth is, if I hadn't loved food as much as I did and set off on that 30 gain in college, I might not have come to the realization that it was also my desire for good food that set me on this path.

Now, I can tell you that I eat delicious meals, amazing things, really, and I have been able to lose weight and keep it off.

I think one of the reasons the "whys" can be so tricky, is that we tend to assume that there's only a few of them, when I think that for most people there is not one, or even 100 reasons, there are thousands and thousands.

We acknowledge in drug and alcohol treatment that there are many factors to addiction issues, and treatment plans are alway multidimensional, involving social, emotional, environmental, physiological, medical, and even spiritual dimensions. When it comes to weight loss, we want to oversimplify the why and the how-to-fix, often oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness.

The popular maxim, "Eat less, move more" can be a bit like telling everyone with financial difficulties to improve their situation by "earning more and spending less," and expecting it to be equally true for Donald Trump as for a homeless, pregnant teenager.

There's still a tendency to lump all types of overweight together. I think that it's like looking for a treatment for all headaches, regardless of whether the headaches are caused by stress, migraine, flu, brain tumor, low-blood sugar, allergies...

Our understanding of weight management and nutrition, seriously lags behind the other sciences.

The research is getting better, and it would be nice to believe that we're the last generation "on the front lines," having to figure out the mystery almost entirely on our own. I think that's overly optimistic though, I think it will probably be another generation or two before the sciences of nutrition and weight management catch up with other sciences.

I believe i "got Fat" due to becoming unemployed and being loved up.
I dont wana pass the buck but you gota admit that first year of being loved up really starts to show on the hips .

I started to eat for comfort after my mom passed away from uterine/breast cancer at the age of 50. I was 20 and my father asked me to move out of the house. I stayed beside her every step and quit my university to take care of her. Once she was gone, I did not know what to do.

After that I wanted to have a family with my long time boyfriend and we got married. Then infertility came and 3 years of trying to conceive and 5 IVF cycles - I have gone through my share of binging every night.

Then twins came and even thought it was the greatest blessing that we worked so hard for, I missed my mom like I never missed her before, had lack of help and was recovering from c-section while caring for newborn twins. Postpartum hit me hard.

The "haze" and snowballing of sadness lifted this September 2010 and a new better me appeared.

I wanted my life back, for me first so I could be a better mom and wife.

Here I am ;-)

This is interesting. I for one do have an eating disorder but my weight has bounced back and forth between way too skinny and pleasantly plump. I now feel healthy enough to lose the weight I added on when I was recovering. I learned while recovering just how much fun it was to eat food on a regular basis (as opposed to eating shamefully at night) and eat sweets moderately. I learned to love food, not be ashamed of it. It didn't help that my boyfriend LOVES to take me out to eat and we eat a lot. Of course, I'm ready to be healthy now so that I can be active and not get out of breath when I dance onstage, walk up the stairs, etc. So my weight gain was emotionally "healthy" if that makes sense at all, but I'm emotionally ready to lose it, but not in a bad way. Sorry if I'm rambling.

I don't care how I got fat. That's not to say that I even KNOW how I got fat. I was born fat, grew up fat, and got even fatter as an adult. I've gone through the moody teens, the manic twenties, and the more mature thirties without being able to conquer the fat, trying to live harmoniously with the fat, trying to ignore the fat, or some in between at different times in my life.

The head games. . .eh, they might matter to some. Not to me. I know what it takes to get fat off, and I just have to do that, consistently, without fail.

I could do some navel examining and decide that I had a horrible childhood, look back at the bullying that I endured from kids at school and from within my family, reminisce about the horrible romances I have had, the PCOS I was diagnosed with at age 20, remember my lazy days and nights when I would rather slug about than get up and DO something, and many many more. BUT. . .what good would that do? I've already lived through those horrors, I don't want or need to dwell on them in some misguided attempt to "overcome" them. I've just got so many hours in the day, can't spend them all on the therapist's couch, you know?

Knowing what it takes to get the fat off, knowing that you CAN conquer emotional eating, you can get medication for certain physical conditions, you can move your body, you can improve your foods, etc. etc. That's really all it takes for me.