I struggle with eating because I'm bored, sad, tired, angry, happy, etc. I've always been an emotional eater but I was able to keep myself out of the obese category and just overweight.
However, that all changed when three things happened: I quit smoking, I got pregnant and got a desk job all around the same time. I didn't adjust my eating habits or food choices and it allowed me to really pack on the pounds. Now I'm just trying to undo the years of damage.
The first time I started stress eating was in 5th grade when I was bullied terribly. I remember coming home every day and eating ice cream with chocolate sauce.
I grew up on a farm and we worked really hard so I was always in great shape. I was a size 8-10 in high school with a nice curvy shape. But, we ate a terrible carb laden and high fat diet.
I married a very controlling man at 18 and stayed with him for 12 years. He was heavy and ate recreationally. I dieted during graduate school and was a size 8 when I got divorced. I didn't even take a full day off to go to court, I just ate my way through the whole thing.
Basically, I just never saw a double cheeseburger or an extra cheese pizza that I didn't want. I am really trying to change my relationship with food.
Nobody or no thing made me gain weight. I did it to myself by eating more calories than I expended. You might say I was a volunteer. I see the person responsible each morning in the mirror while I am shaving.
The good news in all this is that to lose weight I don't have to rely on someone or something else. The guy that was responsible for my weight gain is also responsible for my weight loss.
I don't mean to say that the support I have gotton from everyone on 3FC is not important. It has been very important to me and very helpful. What I am saying is the responsibility to take the actions needed to lose this weight is mine and mine alone.
Great topic by the way!! I need to be reminded from time to time who is the responsible party for my future.
While I was always a big girl, living with an emotionally abusive and controlling boyfriend while having depression helped me gain 100 pounds in a year. I finally shed myself of that but have to still work on the rest of me.
At the most superficial level- pregnancy. I gained 65lbs and over 2 years later I'm still not back to my pre-pregnancy weight.
Peeling off the next layer I was a HS/college athlete, when I quite sports I went from 155lbs to 185lbs (at my highest), although I stabilized closer to 175lbs.
Going a step deeper, I grew up with a mom who had severe issues with food. She would tell me sometimes how she use to binge with chocolate, she'd constantly use food as rewards, and she encouraged binging (I think it was because it made her own issues look OK if others joined in).
All these things contributed to it. Also lack of sleep/stress of being a new mom/work etc. Basically, I went from 175lbs to 240lbs in a span of 9 months and just never recovered from that. I'm finally back in pre-pregnancy clothes but my weight loss is extremely slow so who knows will I'll lose those last 15lbs to get to my prepregnancy weight=?
I always was and still an unually shy person. I have social anxiety. I can remember being in gymnastics, when I was really young, and enjoying it. My parents put me in a womens softball leauge, and I didn't enjoy it at all. I was made fun of for my clumsiness. So, I stopped trying. We ended up moving to a new city, I had to make all new friends, I started getting interested in boys. The ones I crushed on rejected me. I turned to food, cause food wouldn't reject me. I ate myself up to 278 pounds ( and maybe even more, I avoided the scale ) I decided I needed to take control of my life and not let food control it. I wanted to be a healthy Aunt to my neice and nephew, and perhaps someday, God willing, my own children. But I will need to find a guy first. That'll be the tricky part.
Last edited by Smiling_Sara; 05-02-2011 at 02:01 PM.
food - lots and lots of food. My whole family had terrible eating habits and I was homeschooled, so anything mom ate - I ate too! A bag of doritos everyday and that was not complete without a candy bar and soda! Do a good job at dance class or horseback riding? Get a reward at Mcdonalds!
Initially, it was the birth of my two children that made me gain weight. I went from 127 lbs to over 200 lbs with both my children. After my first son, I was able to lose all the weight. My second son was over 13 lbs at birth, and I was not able to lose any of the weight. THAT, combined with depression commenced a vicious cycle that hasn't truly stopped. This cycle consisted of depression leading to stress over my weight, which led to more depression, which led to me seeking comfort in food, which made me gain more weight; leading to more stress and depression; in turn leading me to take more comfort in food...and on, and on, and on. It wasn't until this past December that I stopped the cycle and began to lose weight. Unfortunately, I had gained some weight back when I was on mission in the military. But I'm back from mission now, and ready to tackle my weight loss goals once again.
I had 2 babies less than 2 yrs apart, and was lazy about food. My diet was literally 95% fast food. I'm not saying I didn't over-eat from time to time, but really, it was just the sheer # of calories packed into my bad food choices, not the amount of food that made me big. I usually picked a grilled chicken sandwich and lemonade, but also ate fries and stuff too, w/ every meal....and I felt it was necessary to have a dessert (just 1 serving of cake, cookies, or cheesecake etc) 4-5 nights or so a week lol! I also didn't exercise-said that was for people who actually liked it.
I never really thought too much about my weight or food, until 1 day, I realized that my youngest child was almost 3, and I still weighed 170, the "baby" weight wasn't just going to come off this time. Light bulb moment
Now.....I eat 95% of my food from home and exercise. And I like it that way!
Last edited by pinkflower; 05-02-2011 at 02:48 PM.
I had pretty much been the weight I am now through my teens and 20s. Always fighting to take off 20-30 lbs. Then I took a job that involved extensive travel the month I turned 30. Suddenly all meals Monday-Friday were in restaurants or fast food. Evenings were in front of a computer or TV in hotel room. I packed on 100 lbs in @18 months and didn't take it off for 20 years, even after I gave up that job.
Depression, loneliness, feeling that food was my "friend"...food helped me cope because it was always there for me when I was upset. I am a very emotional eater and I tend to eat when I am happy, sad, anxious, tired, upset, mad, etc...you name the emotion, and I relate it to eating. That has been the hardest part of my weight loss journey: working through my feelings instead of eating them.
A pound of bacon in one sitting.
Eating cake batter like it was soup.
McDonalds – breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mac and Cheese, please!
Chinese, Italian and Mexican.
After my divorce I lived on my own for the first time. No accountability whatsoever. I was bored, lonely and depressed. Food was my friend without benefits. The older I got, the harder it was to lose. And in the past few years, I started binging. I don’t know why. I was so attached to it that one time I took a week off from work, told people I was going to Florida, but in reality I bought $350-$400 dollars worth of food and soda and ate all of it the entire week. All I wanted was to be alone with my addiction.
Part of my problem was that I always thought I was fat. In high school, I was a steady size 12. I didn't eat particularly healthy or particularly unhealthy, but I did exercise (fencing twice a day 5 days a week burns a lot of calories!). But I wasn't skinny and have always been naturally curvy, so I didn't recognize how good a shape I was actually in. When I got to college, I lost weight, rather than gained, and looked great. But I stopped working out.
And then my finace and I moved in together. He had a very unhealthy eating style, but he was the one who cooked. His eating habits combined with the stress of finishing college and his not finding work meant that we didn't eat very well -- especially when we lived right across the street from a taco bell and a domino's. Not having a lot of money made buying easy carbs and processed foods much easier. Plus, with his depression, we turned to eating out as a way of "cheering him up." This continued for a good four years and my weight shot right up.
Then he died, and the stress of that, the depression, just made me not care. I was just trying to get by day to day, nevermind what I was eating while trying to work and go to graduate school.
In the end, it comes down to stress, not paying attention and snacking constantly, not really knowing how to eat well in more than a theoretical sense, and having no will-power.
I have kind of a positive reason - I became fat and happy (like a cat!) when I was in close proximity to my husband. I've always been comfortably chubby but packed on a bit of weight after college when I moved to the same city as my then-boyfriend and we started eating together often. He is a BIG eater and doesn't have a weight problem. I kept it reasonably in check until after we got married and I gained 20 pounds in only a few months from eating with my husband nearly all the time because we were finally living together. It was both a volume and quality of food problem. I call it my "love weight." Now I'm well below my wedding weight, striving for more, and my husband is very supportive!
I need to be reminded from time to time who is the responsible party for my future.
My whole family had terrible eating habits and I was homeschooled, so anything mom ate - I ate too! A bag of doritos everyday and that was not complete without a candy bar and soda! Do a good job at dance class or horseback riding? Get a reward at Mcdonalds! 
