what is the most important thing you would have done differently in order to prevent you from gaining weight?

I honestly think that if I had stayed hydrated and learned to like water when I was a teenager I probably never would have become as obese as I did. I remember that I always had dark/scant urine even when I was a kid. I have probably spend most of my life mildly dehydrated. I used to be ravenous all the time and I thought I had some kind of medical problem that just made me really hungry but I think I was really just thirsty. It is so much easier to control my eating when I drink enough water!

The most important thing I would have done differently was to eat breakfast! I always skipped breakfast and was ravenous by lunchtime! I realize just how bad that was to do now

I wish I could've really explained to my pregnant self that you don't need sugar for a good life. I drowned myself during my pregnancy in chocolate and I'm paying the price now. I knew better but still did it. What I didn't know is how to cook well without sugar and that part I really wish I could've passed on to my former self!!!!

A lot of it I don't know if I could have fixed until I got my head together, which made it possible for me to beat emotional eating and easier for me to beat habitual eating.

But the biggest single thing that would have helped me if I knew it sooner is that I can't handle a low-fat diet. I could have avoided several well-intentioned, but ultimately unsuccessful and demoralizing, diets if I had known that.

I'd have stopped myself at one. I always wanted more as a kid. I'd want more candy, more cakes, another soda an extra sandwich a second roll or scoop and mashed. I just wish I had had someone whisper in my ear "just one" everytime I reached for more.

I would have never started to drink alcohol. I firmly believe that was one of the largest contributing factors to my obesity. As drinking just leads to bad, bad choices.

yeah...alcohol too lol

I would have learned to cook. I am learning now and I love it but I spent high school and most of college eating highly processed foods because if I couldn't microwave it, I didn't know how to make it.

Now I can make my own tortillas, bread, pizza crusts and healthy dinners using healthy techniques and I get so excited to learn more.

I never understood the concept of portion control, or calories in/calories out.

However, the BIGGEST thing I would have done is (try to) divorce eating from emotions. Food doesn't have to be the thing we turn to in love, joy, sadness, and fear. There are other, much better, ways of processing emotions than eating. I would have taught my younger self to learn some of those ways.

I wish I had known that weight loss didn't have to be a soul destroying process, I wish I'd known how to count calories, and I wish I'd known that there are worse things than being overweight. That I could be beautiful, worthy, and overweight at the same time.

If I'd known those three things, I would have had a completely different experience of my teen years.

Although in retrospect I probably didn't have the maturity to be healthy about it at that time...

If I could go back, I'd tell myself that if I counted calories and practised patience, everything would work out.

I hear that one! And the "clean plate" club. My mother did that one. Thankfully, I did not do that to my kids. Somehow, my kids ended up reasonably sane, don't know how that happened.

And I would have skipped one traumatic childhood event. The one relative everyone thought was so great, well, wasn't.

Regrettably, I'm still a member of the clean plate club. I just make sure it's a much smaller plate now lol

This is almost word for word what I was going to say.

That would have been the one thing I would have changed - to have not gone through what I did at aged 10.

I was going to say, I would have changed how I would have dealt with it, but you know what, I was 10. I didn't know. So, yeah, I would have just skipped the whole darn experience.

I would like to have changed two things

1. Never discovered fast food. I think that has been my biggest downfall- I can cook fairly healthy meals but ever since junior year when I got to go off campus to buy lunch I could go days eating both meals out. And then the dining hall at college which is basically fast food...

2. The second would be embracing activity more as a child. Growing up I was a huge reader and all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a bowl of goldfish reading a good book. I associate food with the comfort of that time and I think that's why I go for food when I'm stressed.