How did you get fat?
 

We all have our "fat stories" and most of us tend to blame it on ourselves, but often, we can single out a few things that played significant roles in making us fat.

What are yours?

Mine are:
-Eating a 2,000-2,500 (and perhaps even 3,000 if I ate a lot of fast food) calorie diet with very little exercise - I'd work out maaaaybe twice a week, then that twice a week turned into twice a month.

-Then, I started riding my bike ten miles a day, but I still kept eating 2,000-2,500 calories of pure crap.

-Being under a lot of stress: I was working something like 60 hours a week for VERY meager pay (only a little more than I'd get working at McDonalds, for a WHOLE lot more work and brain power) and the promise of commission and a raise (neither happened, I was just suckered into working for a shady boss and afraid to leave because the job market here is beyond awful). I gained a majority of my weight (around 80%) at that job.

-Depression. My depression was very situational (some people are clinically depressed, I'm not), but I blame it because it made me ungodly sluggish.

-Quitting eating disorders. I know it's paradoxical to quit one unhealthy habit and begin another, but I've been told that once you stop eating disordered behavior, you gain weight very quickly, and that it actually can mess up your metabolism (though in a minor sense).

Then, I stopped eating fast food entirely and quit that job, but I still didn't lose that weight because my lifestyle was relatively sedentary.

Well lets see, got married... got comfortable gained 40 lbs..... then got pregnant and gained 40 more.... stay at home mom on night shift for 4 years, didnt even try to loose..... then when my son went to preschool i got a part time office job in town..... my mother lives in town, so i would go to her house for lunch..... Kentucky fried everything!... that didnt help the weight! I wanted it off but it hurt her feelings when i didnt eat her heart attack in a bowl ( she should know she had one).

Now im a wahm, homeschooling... and i got my head on straight.... i have lost 30lbs... but i realy need to up the exersice, its already hot and sweaty out and sometimes i just dont want to do it! But doing good on cals!

I blame it on alot of reasons....

1) pregnancy. 3 kids.
2) sedatary work places.
3) friends in the office who love to go out to eat instead of eating in.
4) (ex) husband who didn't want to babysit while i went to the gym.
5) and just plain out being clueless about how much to eat, what not to eat and just plain out being clueless about my weight.

I think with me it's definitely emotional eating.
I gain when I'm unhappy or stressed.
I eat to calm down and feel fulfilled.
And when I'm unhappy I don't have the energy to do sports or even go out for a walk.
Alcohol and potato chips are my best friends when I feel down...
And putting on weight just makes me feel unhappier.
So I'm working on breaking the vicious circle :)

I have to put mine on how I was raised and stress. I wasn't allowed to do anything strenuous as a child because it scared my mom, being that I was born with heart problems which required surgery when I was a child. She wouldn't let me lift things, would yell at me actually if I did. Wouldn't let me do anything if she saw my face get red. Heck, even the phys ed teacher made me sit down if my really really light fair complexion face started going red from a little exercise. ::sigh::

Add to that, my family loves eating out...A LOT. And they believe in their money's worth. So buffets are the usual meal. Plus, the cooking alone. Mom does just as she was taught...a stick of butter in everything. Half a stick to one can of peas is her motto. They can't just eat the food, they have to "doctor it up" first. They have to dump in as many high calorie laden junk items as they can. Can't just make a can of buttered biscuits. Nooooo. Gotta put another huge pat of butter on top of all of them...they're not buttery enough.

Add to that some major problems with my family dynamics. Then I went through abandonment and divorce right after having my daughter and ended up with nowhere to go but staying with my parents til I could get on my feet. So the pregnancy pounds found some company.

Then it was working 40 hours a week and going to school 3 nights a week while raising a daughter alone. I didn't take any time out for me.

I made a lot of excuses over the years, but ultimately it is very simple: I was a heavy person because I made really bad food choices, every day.

• I was a boredom eater and I could eat when I wasn't hungry.
• I didn't have a good "stop" point and would eat to the point of being painfully full.
• Sugary/carby foods triggered me to eat more and more, making it difficult to eat a single serving of anything like chips, crackers, cookies, cake, baked goods, ice cream
• I was deliberately, purposefully blind to the calorie count of foods, I didn't want to know
• I wanted to "reward" myself - bad day at work? big dinner out. promotion at work? big dinner out. Had to work late? Taco Bell and ice cream.
• I always wanted the biggest size of everything.
• I ate in secret.
• I loved fast food, I loved to order pizza, I loved french fries.

After all those years of telling myself I was "big boned" or I was heavy because my dad was heavy and it was genetics and I was just a "big girl", it all turned out to be rubbish. I am a tiny person, not a big bone anywhere. Now that I don't eat junk and make reasonable food choices and I am unflinchingly honest about everything I eat (bad and good), I am a thin person. I know that I will remain a thin person as long as I make good decisions 90%+ of the time.

I did not have any problem maintaining a "normal" wt. through high school. I was very atheletic at that time. Once I went away to college and learned all about junk food, tons of pizza, beer, cheeseburgers, KFC, Taco Bell , donuts and such became my way of life. I became more and more sedentary and the lbs. packed on. Throw in the stress of getting my degree, bad relationships and having a couple kids to raise on my own and my wt. skyrocketed. I finally just totally quit weighing myself, I knew I was fat and didn't want to see the number. Finally, I became very sick and was put on Prednisone and eventually I landed at 234 lbs. I blame my wt. totally on me, even though I've had some rough times, I was never force fed.

Trying to remember everything in the right order...

- Latch-key kid, wasn't allowed to go out and play with other kids after school, therefore spent time in front of the TV or reading while eating pains au chocolat. (Way to build good habits, huh.)

- I lost weight in college (that was the freshman -15 in my case :D), but slowly got it back when I met my ex: the insidious tendency to start eating the same quantities as him, of course. Fortunately, he was quite the sporty type, and he was the one who actually got me into lifting weights, playing squash and scuba-diving, so it contributed to me not gaining too much weight.

- Along the road, I got a job and had more money than your average student on a meager State grant, therefore could eat more often at McDonald's and the likes (in France, that food isn't very cheap). I also started working at home, which, all things considered, isn't my style at all; I would nibble all day long, and was also alone at home all day long, so I gained very unhealthy habits, such as eating a box of cookies instead of a normal lunch, eating two bowls of cereals instead of one, etc. (I still have to fight those bad habits at times nowadays, but fortunately it's not too often.)

- Exercise: I never was the very sporty type, but I remember that during my first years of college, I would walk every day (20 minutes just to go to school, twice or four times a day). Later on, when I still could, I would bike 20 minutes to work five days a week, four times a day (going home for lunch). Then we moved to the country and I was fully dependent on the car, so bleh. I would go to the gym at times with my BF, but he didn't have much time to do so due to his work, and I didn't have a car. Then finally I had a car as well, but driving 20 minutes to go to the gym was annoying. I never was very committed, plus I had odd reactions, like going to the weights room for one hour to work out, but refusing to eat 100m if I could avoid it. That was, uh, dumb, to say the least.

All in all, bad, unhealthy habits and a less-than-active life at time were very, very likely my downfalls. (I refuse to blame it on genes, because I honestly did 95% of the 'work' myself here. :^:)

A nasty combination of being a binge eater, a boredom eater, and pretty much just lazy.

I'd love to be able to point to pregnancies, or traumatic life events but I'm pretty much just fat and lazy. Working on it, though. :)

I went to the grocery store and somehow cookies, pies , cakes, ice cream, candy bars and donuts happened to fall off the shelves into my grocery cart,not noticing they were in my cart when I went to the checkout stand I accidently paid for them and accidently took them home.Of course when I got home I didn't want to be wasteful so I had to eat this stuff. This happened many times. I was never able to understand how this happened.

Hmmm...lets see. I've always been "overweight" since about age 5. I attribute it to never having a limit on how much food I was eating, and what mom cooked wasn't "bad" but it also wasn't that healthy. We did eat our fruits and veggies though!

That, and I didn't want to be in sports so my mom didn't make me. In fact, in high school I knew I was fat and didn't want to do gym class because of it so my mom got me a doctors note for my migraines saying that physical stuff could give me a headache so I didn't have to do it if I felt I couldn't. Which, obviously, I never did anything. I didn't do much exercise in my childhood until I reached 13 and then I lost quite a bit of weight..like 50 lbs and looked pretty good, I was probably only overweight, not obese. But with highschool I gained a lot.

I HAVE to move a lot and eat right...there is no ifs ands or butts about it. This is the way I need to be for the rest of my life.

I was looking at a BMI chart and I could actually be 128 lbs and be healthy! I've always been told I had big bones...but I've never been small enough to really find that out....so that is something I'm looking forward to on this quest...if I do, then I'm looking at maybe 140 being my stopping point. If I have normal bone structure...I would REALLY like to at LEAST get down in the 130's if not 128. Wow...that's a long ways away. Oh well, 10 lbs at a time!

i've always been naturally slender, and before college i hadn't fully grown into a woman, and could eat ANYTHING i wanted without gaining weight. i gained weight in college, but managed to get it off.

however studying abroad in spain, living the spanish life style, of huge meals (my host mom served me a plate that could probably feed 3 people!), baguette bread at EVERY meal, drinking, going out, drunken munchies, taking the spanish "siesta" (nap) after lunch for 2-3 hours, laying out on the beach, drinking soda/coffee with sugar and whole milk (because i didn't want to pay 2 Euros for a tiny bottle of water) and not working out for 5 months did me in.


*hits head* i should've known better. lol. at least i'm fixing it now! heh

for me it was the computer.... i would sit and get adicted to the sims2 and play on it non stop and got my mother to bring up takeaways (chineese, idians, fish n chips, mc donalds... you name it anything prosessed and fatty... i ate it!).
its not as if i just got fat overnight ... the onl times ive ever been slim was wen i was a baby (i was quite small) and 3 years ago wen i was praciticaly anorexic weighing 50lbs but i soon gained the weight back... and more :(.
ive always been fat for my age and right now im just chillin being chubby and hopefully in a few months or how long it takes ill be slim and toned :D xxx

Wow, lots of reasons for me, too.

- I, too, also quit my eating disorder. I weighed 125 (mainly bulemic) and because I lost weight so quickly (went from 170 to 125 in four months), I developed gallstones and had to have my gallbladder taken out.

- Once I lost the ability to digest food like I used to from removing my gallbladder, I put on about 25 lbs. Also met my husband and got comfortable - we had a poor diet in the first few years we dated.

- Went on birth control and got depressed, stopped caring about myself.

- Commuted 2 hrs for work every day, so I spent at least 10 hours a day on my butt, then I would come home and veg out in front of the TV or computer until bedtime.

- I always choose convenience, such as having pizza delivered instead of picking it up or even cooking a healthy dinner for that matter. Wanting to hire movers instead of doing it myself. I pay extra to do WHATEVER instead of just doing it myself.

I hit 300 lbs at age 14 so actually I don't remember a lot about my weight gain other than I know I had an eating disorder (binger) from a very young age. I was always active in that I did a lot of activities as a young child but still was always chubby. I would walk, swim, run, dance, etc. My weight gain seemed to grow exponentially as I entered puberty and was 300 lbs before I entered high school. My mom was always dragging me to doctors about my weight, ever since age 5 but there was nothing they could really do other than tell her to watch my food and make sure I was active. I saw nutritionalists as well but still didn't help.

So, what happened beyond 300 lbs? I went to college, lost weight initially but then gained that weight back and more by not being as active and also just not watching what I ate. By the time I graduated from college, I was around 330-340.

Within 2 years, I went from 330 to 360 because I bought a car and no longer walked everywhere and also got a desk job and also didn't watch what I ate.

When I reached 360, I decided it was time to do something about my weight but unfortunately it took 4-5 years before I would actually successfully lose weight and maintain that loss.

:lol::lol::lol: Me Too!!!

Hoplesseness. Complete, utter, hopelesseness. I was made aware of my weight problem from a young age and spent the next 20 years stigmatized. I thought that if I could just stop eating my problems would go away. Well, you can't just not eat and that coupled with a hormonal issue brought on by PCOS, well, I just felt hopeless. i was fat and would always be fat and lived life accordingly- overeating the wrong foods and not exercising.
And that is what made me stay fat.

:rofl:

X

Depression - gained 60lbs the first year of it & continued deep into the depression for 10 years.

Developed bad habits that I'm still trying to kick. I used to go for fast food 'cause it was soothing now it's just a habit - no longer soothing.

Do have a family history of slow metabolism & have developed pcos, but that just means the fat may move off my body slower - right?!

Another one was that dh & I both grew up in households where there was absolutely no "extras" with food & drink (for different reasons). We NEVER had pop in the house. So when we first moved out together we went the total opposite way. We bought whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. It really truly took awhile for the novelty of being able to have a coke whenever you wanted to wear off. Plus, for a long time I still always felt like if I didn't eat all of it NOW it wouldn't be there later & I wouldn't be able to have any of it. I still find myself having to reassure myself that there will still be "treats" tomorrow if I really want them.

Secretive eating.

Denial. Straight up, far-reaching, all-around denial. I should have made my name Cleopatra!

I denied the truth about how much I was eating.
I denied the truth about what was going on in my life (abusive relationship) that was pushing me to eat.
I denied the truth about how much I was exercising.
I denied the truth about how active (read: sedentary) I was during the day.

Finally I woke up, admitted the truth, and asked for help. And look what I got! :)

I was thin as a child. My weight problems started when I went thru puberty at 11 and started high school at 12. I was probaby packing an extra 20 lbs then but it felt like the weight of the world at that age. I carried an extra 20 to 40 lbs thru college and most of my adult life. Weight went up during high stress, down when I felt more in control of my life. Ate healthy all month long & then would go nuts around my period.
Started my own business, got really stressed, and got up to an extra 100 lbs. over last five years. Down 18 lbs this month. I want to DO things again, like sports. And I'm getting too old to carry that much weight. I'm healthy & want to stay that way.

this is how it went down. high school ended so did my soccer team. got into a serious relationship were fighting occured and ice cream appeared/ and never did any movement spent to much time with him, he is a fast food junkie and poofffff fat just like that. its all his fault :) lol

No concept of portion sizes, boredom eating, eating for fun rather than because I was hungry. A love of high-fat, high-calorie, high-sugar foods.

I struggled not to gain weight once I hit my mid-20s; before that I was normal sized throughout childhood and teen years. Then in my early 30s I got a sedentary job. I tried to remain fit during this time, but it was sporadic. I didn't curb what I was eating. I did sometimes try to lose weight, and then when I had lost it I went back to bad habits.

Basically, I had a sedentary job, I didn't exercise, and I ate too much. That's what happened!

Jay

Mine was a very slow gain over the years, starting around the end of elementary school, I'd say. I haven't successfully stuck with any diet or exercise plan I attempted for more than about a week (Atkin's in high school was hellish!) so there hasn't been much fluctuation in weight - it just crept on slow and steady. Why?

I didn't exercise. I was (and still am!) really lazy. I live in AZ and HATE sweating, so I take my car everywhere. As for food, I didn't eat very much at all, but I only ate once or twice per day and it was always really unhealthy food. Lastly, I've never been great at holding down a job, so I've always got money problems, and therefore have a VERY hard time condoning food waste, so it goes to my hips/thighs/butt instead. :(

It's about time I fix this!

Depression -- Going on medication made me gain over 100 lbs. When I started taking Risperdal, all I wanted to do was eat and sleep. And the food was comforting.

Also, recovery from years and years of bulimia. I got control of the purges but not the binges.

-Stopped Cheerleading and playing Softball simulataneously in the 11th grade. I was used to eating anything I wanted because I got so much exercise..

-Kept eating the way I did when I was active, whilst sitting around on my *** most of the time and gaining more weight.

-We ate out ALOT. Mom was very busy my last couple of years at home (and even though she was a great cook), we would just run to the nearest fast food joint and pick up supper. Those habits continued with me through college.

-Stopped playing tennis and golf and swimming when I moved away from home to college, so what little exercise I had left was gone.

-Ordered pizza every week because I could get 3 pizzas for $15 and eat all week (yes, week old pizza does get kinda nasty). It was cheap. Ate a lot of McDonald's too, also for the cheap factor. Ramen too...

Here I am. Fat as all get out LOL.

I gained my weight while battling an illness that had me pretty much bed-bound, on a medical diet that is NOT conducive to weight loss (to say the least!), and on three different meds that had "weight gain" as a potential side effect.

Now, before I point my finger at the illness directly, it was my decision to ignore my weight, so the blame rests entirely with me. There was so much to deal with that I made a conscious decision to put my weight (and vegetarianism) on hold while I got the pain under control, and deal with whatever I was left with once I reached that point, so that I wouldn't have to divide my energy. I still believe that was the right decision for me at the time, and I don't regret it.

I think that's part of why losing this weight has been so cathartic for me...I'm shedding the part of me that was dealing with this illness. Two more pounds, and that illness weight will be gone entirely. The illness will always be a part of me, but once I lose this weight, it's almost like...I've won? Stretch marks are my battle scars, but the fat didn't stay. ...it's kind of weird to describe, and I'm not sure I'm doing the sentiment justice, so I'll stop typing and hit "post"! :P

Let's see.. I was a size 6 leaving high school and the dance team, we usually practiced 15 hours a week if we were lucky and our coach was satisfied :-) and still ate huge portions and then started eating fast food when on my own but no exercise at all. It eventually caught up to me 2 years later after the death of my father at the age of 39 from bone cancer and then my mom was in a horrible motorcycle wreck and wasn't expected to live and was in a coma for almost a week and then when she did survive :-) I was her caretaker 24/7 for a year and half. I also went into a deep depression over all of the events in my life and feeling like a loser and angry that I wasn't able to go to college and do the things I wanted to do. I had absolutely no help at all in caring for my mother even from the few relatives that lived close enough to help and had no jobs and they are young and healthy no kids and they have absolutely nothing to do during the day. I was really mad about that. The Social worker we worked with even recommended my mom go to a nursing home but the closest nursing home with all the therapy and rehabilitive services she would need to learn how to walk again if she didn't eventually lose her leg was five hours away and I wouldn't have had a place to live. And I ate to comfort myself even more. And then just as my mom was able to go back to work and actually walk and not need as much care she got diagnosed with Stage 3/4 Breast Cancer. Eventually I gained 85 pounds in a year and half. Then I got married and started focusing on myself and resolving all my health issues from depression and stress and going back to school and work. It's been a long road for me. But what doesn't kill you DOES make you stronger! I'm enjoying reading everyone's stories.

Well, lets see I was born premature and very tiny for awhile until my grandparents started feeding me table food very early to "put meat on my bones" because the doctors was concern because I was very underweight. So since I'm a country gal, they fed me mashed potatoes in my bottle, homemade buttermilk biscuits, "sugar water", and etc. So I continued on that path of eating, with my humongous sweet tooth and a thing for breads until I decided that I needed to do something before it gets out hand.

Growing up Itailian, Dr. Pepper's and drug addiction got me fat.

:)well until the age of 20 i was at 120 and very active and so needless to say i ate everything i wanted. well got married and 9 months to the day had a baby had her at 203(c section) i did lose all but 10 pounds there but 2 years later another girl this time i had her at 210 well i left the hospital only to find out that my 17 year old brother had killed himself was very hard time in my life and food seemed like a good answer at the time i did get down to 175 . 3 years later another girl had her at 212(c-section) and well got down to 189 after her and then the eating has just stayed the same. i have never had anyone tell me how to eat right mom and dad think fries and steak are the way of life. but i might have spent my 20's fat i am going to be skinny in my 30's:carrot:

adah

As with "Lovestorun"...this is what happened to me as well! Well, my cart was filled mainly with pizza...A LOT of pizza.

In high school I played varsity sports. I exercised in college as well, so I did not gain much during this time. But, I have always been chubby..but in shape! I gained most of my weight after entering the work world and not exercising...most of my weight came on in less than two years.

I ate poorly during my first semester of graduate school, and was told by a doctor that if I kept putting on weight at the rate that I was, I could die young. I realized that taking care of my body is just as important as anything else, so slowly but surely...I am trying to reverse the damage that I did in a two year period of time.

In high school and college I was in the marching band and was very active. I could eat anything and not gain weight. Got married, put on a few. Got prego, put on a few more because I had huuuuuge cravings. Another pregnancy,...you see the pattern? Yep, ballooned! I was so clueless over the years. If I had known then what I know now.........

Heidi

Fat from the start
 

I was doomed from the beginning... I was a 10 lb baby. Then I had a mother who loved to cook and bake. By the time I was an adult and could make my own food choices I was so confused on what was good and what wasn't. Now that I have the trusty internet I'm doing alot better.

My story is very simple. I ate a very high fat high calorie diet (yes, thousands of calories a day) and never, ever worked out and I got fat, gee whiz!! lol

I don't remember when I first became fat, it seems I was always that way as a child too. None of my sisters were, I was the only one - my Mother is 90 pounds soaking wet - so I was really alone in my fatness.

I think it was because I was greedy, I wanted the biggest portion with the most butter or whatever. I remember sneaking into the kitchen for chips, or making huge sandwiches in the evening when everyone else was in bed, sneaking candy & chocolate and having way more food then I should.

In my adulthood I got slim for a while - size 6 for a few years, long enough to get a boyfriend, get engaged and married, and then it all came back again. What a shock to hubby who had no idea I was fat up until a few months before I met him.

We were at my sister's once and she started bringing out home movies and pics of us when we were kids - I made an excuse that I had a huge headache and we had to leave - really I didn't want my husband to see my childhood pics and discover the truth.

I really don't know what triggered my weight gain as a young child, but I was definately already fat by 4 years old.

Chalk 15 pounds up to a few pregnancies.

Chalk another 15 pounds up to learning to eat horribly from hubby after marrying. (Really, I was a pretty darned good eater before he came along and introduced me to all of the evil things in life. LOL)

Then I quit smoking a year ago. BLAMMO! 60 more pounds without even knowing what hit me. Dang.

I figure 15 of the above can stay on if my body insists, since I'm older now and not going 24/7 like I was in my 20s. The rest of it is getting the boot, though!