Environmental factors that contributed to your weight gain

At the tail end of a different thread, the discussion turned to what contributed to one's weight gain, and I wanted to extend the discussion to more than the 3 of us having it : )

I know (I know, I know) that weight gain is caused by eating more calories than you burned. However, I also think that there is some worth in looking back at what other factors encouraged weight gain. Basically, if you can pinpoint the obstacles that made you fall flat on your face, you may be better prepared to overcome them in the future.

So was it creeping weight gain? A husband who loves junk food? Pregnancy? A desk job?
Whether you've overcome it, or are in the process of, whether you've gained 100 lbs or 10, let's talk about why.

As for me:
- Misinformation: I seriously am just now learning what 'healthy' means. No learned behavior there prior to the last year or so.

-Depression: Apparently some people lose weight after traumatic events. I am not one of them.

- Injury: my activity level changed from extremely active to sedentary. My diet did not (dumb, yes. what? I'm good at math. I can't be smart at everything : )

-Dieting: Yo-yo like a yo-yo. I thought 1200 cals a day was a typical healthy diet. I rebounded over and over. All the weight I've gained in the last few years have been surpluses from failed diets. I didn't have the 'healthy and sustainable is better' epiphany until about a year ago.

environmental factors.  hmmm.

okay.

1. all that beer in my environment.
2. thursday night chicken wings in my environment.
3. the chips and dip in my environment.
4. too much income and too few physical demands (in my environment; you get the idea).
5. all my friends had babies and stopped playing with me.
6. too much comfort, too little challenge, nothing to look forward to, nothing keeping me on my toes.

there was emotional stuff, too.  i lost someone close to me (not via death; it's complicated).  my mother got cancer, then had a stroke; another kind of loss.  my dog died. 

then i looked around, asked myself, "Is this it?" and i answered "No."  sold everything i owned, turned my life upside down, went back to school.  now i know: boredom is deadly.

grief and then depression

moving and having a different lifestyle

1. Working in an industrial kitchen, where you could almost anything you wanted for free, then finishing each shift with pints of beer.

2. meeting my partner. we lazed around eating things, being in that comfortable stage.

3. Lack of food knowledge and misdiorection i.e bloody Atkins, which was forced down my throat (literally!) by my sister, who has since apologised! It made me put on at least 15kg through confusion, mis information and bad planning (mine)I wonder how I'd be if I'd never tried it.

4. All my friends moved interstate, so I had no girlfriends to go exercising with, to compare diets with, to motivate each other.

5. Moved out of home, loved independance, showed it by over consuming EVERYTHING, just because i now could!

Hmmmmm...Well, after reading pgeorgian's post, it occurs to me that there WERE several environmental factors in my gaining back 29 lbs. after having lost 83.  I had three (of my five) dogs die in the past 2 1/2 years.  And all that time, I was dealing with drastic financial problems (even having my power cut off for over a week). Found out that my boyfriend was lying to me...about pretty-much everything. And he was the second one to do that in as many years.  Yeahhhh....I guess that could explain why I started eating pita chips like they were going out of style...and lying to MYSELF about it.  I wonder if I'll recognize it "coming" the NEXT time...

Thanks for this thread, Minda.  HUGS!

Original Post by pgeorgian:

1. all my friends had babies and stopped playing with me.

 My friends having babies wasn't nearly the issue of my friends being pregnant. Suddenly, instead of meeting for a beer or two, we were hanging out over dinner-plate sized pieces of cake. It took a good 15lbs before I gave myself the 'what are you DOING?' speech. Yep, not falling for that one again.

the more time i spend on this site, the more i realize that my friends are different from everyone else's friends.

virtually all of my friends are athletes (i am not; i'm a wannabe).  going out for dessert has never been a thing: beer, pub food, seven-layer dip, caesars (the canadian drink and the salad), etc, but not cake).  when i was 168, i was by far the fattest person in my circle.  hell, even at 145 i was still the fattest.

i'm not fat anymore, but it's still hard to feel adequate among rock-hard mountain bikers, yogis, climbers, and back-country skiers.  i'm pretty mediocre.

well, I'm glad we more-mediocre folk are here to boost your self-esteem
I'm excited I can run/walk a mile in 16 minutes now....

at the same time, I always have that urge to keep up with my friends, which definitely improves my exercise motivation.

i had a recent weight gain over the winter of 20-ish lbs.

i was way out of my comfort zone as far as where i was living and what i was doing, my living and job situation were extremely unstable, and i had sunk into a pretty deep depression, and food turned into my only comfort. i was lonely, and far far away from anything/anyone familiar.  it was horrible, sad, and cold

before that, in HS and college, i was simply uneducated as to what was healthy re: amount of calories in and amount of exercise, etc. also, while in college especially, beer and late night munchies definitely contributed to a bit of weight gain

This is something I was thinking about today, since I just gained back two pounds through serious overindulging yesterday. I used Calorie Count last year to lose 20 lbs, but stopped last November and gained it all back. I started again in April but I keep cheating - skipping days, or not recording the late night munchies. 

My environmental problems are

1) Winter, because I'm not motivated to exercise in the cold/snow/bad weather.

2) Related to number one, having a good place indoors to exercise. A gym membership seemed to be too much of an indulgence when I have so much debt to pay off.

3) Having so much debt to pay off, and other financial stresses like not having enough money set aside for emergencies.

4) Hospitalizations. My husband and I have both had medical problems this past year and his required hospital stays. No sooner was this over than my father in law ended up having a triple bypass, followed by infections.

5) Desk job.

6) Fatigue, having trouble sleeping

7) More recently, husband losing his job

8) Not being able to say no to food in front of me, even when I'm already full.

The last one is the worst. How do I stop myself from taking candy or snacks when they're lying out, like at work or when I'm at a friend's house and they're out in dishes for people to help themselves. This has always been a problem for me as long as I can remember.

Pregnancy and gestational diabetes despite a really healthy diet.

Getting ill and having to take steroids (the last nail on the proverbial coffin)

And general mis-information perpetuated by people who really thought they knew what they were talking about.  Cut calories - cut calories - cut calories....

highschool! not getting enough sleep made me 1) depressed and 2) hungry all the time from needing more energy

living with family that eats a lot of bad food.

eating out with my friends that never seem to gain weight. (if they can do it, why can't i? haha)

different than some people, when my life is less routine (work, school) i keep my weight under control because i can do the things i want and don't take as much enjoyment in food when i could be doing other things!

minda, I always click on your posts because they are usually guaranteed to be interesting. 

In any case, my environmental factors would be:

-my crazy nut case of a father who REPEATEDLY told me as a child/teenager "Oh, you are so skinny, you can eat anything you want and never get fat!  Your metabolism is so fast!"  Let me tell you, it was a surprise when one day I woke up and realized, "Oh my goodness, I have gained some weight!"

-never really being informed about nutrition, until of course I took responsibility for myself (my parents never really said anything about watching what I eat because, hey, I was super skinny and had a "fast metabolism").

-chronic tendonitis in my ankle that kept me from playing competitive sports, and thus, making me less active

Great post idea Minda! 

Okay, my factors are (in no particular order):

1. Moving to the UK and their liberal views on heavy alcohol consumption after work.

2. Working evenings on my own projects/freelance to push my skills and portfolio forward (I'm a web designer, so 18 hours hunched over my computer screen)

3. Giving myself permission to eat anything I like because "I'm working so hard, I deserve a treat).

4. While I've always eaten healthy, the boyfriend (who is 6 inches taller than me) would receive the same serving sizes.

Are we going to go through how far we've come towards reaching our goals?  I'd say I was about 20% of the way there!

Too many to REALLY count, but some contributing factors....

1. Poor eating habits learned from parents/family

2. Being brain-washed by the media about how I should feel terrible for not looking like one of the "beautiful people" which helped lead to a vicious cycle of crash dieting/binging, etc. back in my younger days.

3. Lack of knowledge/Being misinformed/Not knowing how to lose weight in a healthy way until joining CC.

4. Depression/Apathy/Emotional Eating

5. Financial insecurity. I was (seriously) poor and starving at a couple different points in my life, which led to some of my fracked up attitudes towards food and a tendency to overeat at every given opportunity.

6. Getting pregnant while desperately out of shape. This lead to a much longer-then-average recovery time (physically) and probably mentally as well.

Original Post by pgeorgian:

...but it's still hard to feel adequate among rock-hard mountain bikers, yogis, climbers, and back-country skiers.  i'm pretty mediocre.

You just described me.  Do you live near a ski resort? 

I gained weight because we moved to a small town with our small kids, and I got bored and depressed, then lazy, so of course I hurt myself.  Now that my kids are bigger, I'm trying to climb out of the pit and get my life back together.  Still a little sore and a little fat, but at least I'm happy again.

Interesting thoughts here. I have often wondered this myself, because I started really gaining weight at 10. I was 263 by the time I was 11.

My number one reason for this first weight gain:
1. Being over-medicated on ritalin. It jerked with my metabolism so badly. I'd spend the day completely zoned out and not eating anything (ritalin cuts your appetite) and by the time it wore out I'd be STARVING because I hadn't eaten all day.
2. My parent's divorce and moving to a new town

My mom and I then joined weight watchers and I lost 50 pounds and kept it off for a few years...then i gained most of it back. :P Here's my reasons for this second weight gain
1. My boyfriend (no matter how much I love him) is very overweight and has bad eating habits. This transferred on to me. We went out to eat ALL the time
2. The college cafeteria. I was 195 before college and a couple months in I had gained at least 20 pounds. I had a really hard time telling myself that I did NOT need that fried food, or the brownies/cookies/whatever
3. My self-defeating attitude. When I kept on gaining weight I told myself that I'd always be fat anyway, so I may as well just eat what I want
4. Bad self-image. I'd tell myself every day that I'm fat and ugly.

Since then, my self image and self control have gotten a lot better. I've also realized that being fat isn't the end of the world, and that I DO have power over it.

• Depression/anxiety
• My entire family is overweight and eats a lot, and there are a lot of unhealthy snacks at home
• Hypothyroidism... that isn't much of an enviromental factor, but it contributed at least 7 pounds, and made them harder to lose.
• Knee problems and knee surgery
• Unemployment, which meant more time at home and less of an excuse to go out and take walks AND also contributed to my depression.
• Desk job
• Last year of college consisted of a total of 3 classes, all within 3 minute walks of each other, so I had no long walks around campus
• Film production classes, which meant hectic schedules and eating whatever the cast and crew wanted to eat at whichever fast food place was closest to the locations, celebrating with food, ordering pizza and having snacks (doritos and dips and cookies and such) around all day.

I gained 8lbs in 5 months from 3 things:

1. Stress: i moved to brazil, new language, new place, different cultures etc. But the main cause was stress. Stress tears apart your body, not only did i gain weight but i also lost hair (horrible horrible experience)

2. Boyfriend: having a boyfriend is just a sabotage to any diet or gym regime. Its just sooo much nicer to cuddle in bed with a warm body.

3. New country ment new food...and a loss of control. I didn't know how many calories were in the foods i was eating. I also was on "vacation mode" which meant eating whatever,  how much of what i wanted whenever...without second thoughts. 

Slowwwwly i am getting back to normal, but counting calories is so much less fun than eating freely...but that's life! ;-)

I went from "just overweight" to "obese" over the course of about a year during which the following contributed:

- severe lack of sleep from taking on far too much at work (1/3 of the department was off on paternity leave for a semester and, since I teach, the classes still had to be taught)

- stress from the above

- living with my sister (who tended to cook me food from boxes which, in turn, made me get takeout; also, she stocked the house full of junk food and considers TV/movies to be the best evening activities; I know I should have just cooked for myself and gone for walks anyway, so I'll take the blame, but it contributed; now she lives with my parents and my mum is fighting the resulting weight gain)

Environmental things that have helped me get to a healthy weight:

- discovering the local farmer's market and making that my mum's and my regular Saturday morning thing

- getting a work schedule that didn't involve 8am classes - thereby making it easier to walk to work

- getting back to a normal workload so that I can sleep 8 hours at night

- living alone so that I don't have to deal with other people's food preferences most of the time

1. being in the subject car of a hit and run and the time it took to become mobile - I did not bother to eat less in fact I used my victimhood as a reason to eat more!

2. Hurricane Katrina - a dear friend did the usual and prepared for a couple days away and a fun evac weekend at our house. We ate and drank a tad too much in the year he lived with us.

3. My Mom's brain tumor - another pity party at the food trough. She is ok for now, the thing stopped growing and the bits o' brain that were removed have been replaced with new neurons. Just have to watch it in case it starts to regrow.

4. My husband's 15 month unemployment.

All within 2 and a half years of each other. Ok, now I wonder why I only grew by 50 pounds. Oh well, I'm learning to deal with stress in other ways! CC is a great source of ideas.