What got you here?

So, those of us trying to lose weight are here because we love food.  Which item(s) are mostly responsible for your weight gain?

For me it is Coca Cola (leaded) and ice cream of any kind.

sweets and large portions

What got me to my highest weight was stress and the resultant emotional eating to cope. I thought that a family size block of chocolate would help!

 

Kraft dinner, sidekicks and other quick-prep packaged pastas

Fast Food: Not just one meal, I could eat that and then some. If there was more than one thing on the menu I wanted, well guess what? I was getting 2 meals!

My love of cooking RICH Calorie-laden meals, coconut curries, mashed potatoes, everything in sauces and gravies almost EVERY night.

Coupled with: Portion distortion. I ate WAY more than one serving.

And:

Greediness/lack of control, if I liked the way something tasted (and I always did) it often led to eating until my food was pretty much coming back up. I didn't want to stop, I didn't CARE if I stopped. I just kept going and going. I was always looking for the next thing to eat that was gonna taste good and I had NO full length mirrors/scales in my house to snap me into reality, so it was very easy for me to ignore or look the other way when it came to my image/weight.

wraps-I didn't realize that the simple chicken wrap I was getting every night for dinner last year was probably at least 1000 calories. Cafeteria food in general (I second the ice cream thing. My school has birthday cake flavored ice cream and sticky bun flavored ice cream, how can I resist that?). Also alcohol...

1.  A life long habit of big portions.  It was all healthy food, but I was a skinny kid and encouraged to pile my plate and eat up.  I was fine until menopause hit, then it all caught up to me.

2.  No exercise.  As a youngster, I was never able to keep up with other kids, so I avoided any physical activity.  Later in life it was discovered that I have a heart defect and that explains it.  It's caused me to be in the hospital and on bed rest at times over the years. 

So now I'm gradually changing my bad eating habits and I'm moving around more easily with really good medical care, and losing, very, very slowly.

Apathy is how i got here. I looked up the dictionary definition of Apathy and it had my picture there, but it also said this.......

Apathy is a state of indifference ? where an individual has an absence of interest or concern to certain aspects of emotional, social, or physical life.

For some reason i just didn't think i was worth the effort!

For me it wasn't just one or two foods I was eating way too much of everything. We ate out a lot at resaurants - buffets & fast food places. When I did cook I used lots of processed, high fat foods and although I did eat lots of vegetables I just generally ate too much  - no portion control.  If I liked it, I'd literally eat until it was gone or I was so stuffed I felt sick.

To top it off if I decided to try to lose weight I'd rule out certain foods and within 2-3 days I'd be adding those "off limit" foods back to my diet in huge quantities and would gain instead of lose on my "diet"

Eating out instead of cooking dinner at home, as many Dr. Peppers I could consume in a day (dammit, ruined my teeth too), late night snacking and 1-2 glasses on wine before bed.  Although mostly just ignorance of what amount of food was actually appropriate to eat.

frustration, loneliness, sitting evenings with a big bag of chips and candy trying not to think about my life and being happy to eat the candy/chips and not care.

eBay got me here.

No joke, I worked myself overweight.  Had a home business on ebay for 5 years and with my obsessive tendancies was working from the couch or desk chair basically 24/7 unless I had to go hit a drive-thru because it had gotten too late to cook.  Grabbing a bag of cheetohs for lunch was easier than making a turkey wrap.  When I did take time to cook it was the same ol' healthy stuff I had always done, it was only a couple times a week though :-(  I had always been very active and sitting around on a computer just doesn't burn the calories like running around all day.

I gave up my ebay biz, the obsession, got of the couch, got active again, started eating healthy again and found this place.

Much better obsession ;-)

pizza and beer

Pizza, Doritos, a love of salt in general, no idea about proper portion control, an enabling mother and no physical activity... that was me 8 years ago. I can't believe I used to eat the way that I did!

I agree. It was ignorance for me too. It's really confusing until you research all that goes into your mouth. Then you know what you are actually intaking. It gives ou a lot of perspective.

When i realize I was 35 pounds heavier, and strech marks started appear around my hips, plus had to buy jeans size 9, 10 or 11. That is when I stop eating crap and exercise more, thanks to that they are gone and Im close to my normal weight ufffff.....

Believe it or not , Whole Grain Oats.

I was addicted.. I always ate healthy but forsome reason I just couldn't put down the oats !

My weight was much worse in the past, relative to that, I should be happy where I am right now, haha...

But I want to look a nd feel as best as I  possibly can, and the&nb sp;thing that holds me ba ck most...

 

...Banana Fritters. 

Froot Loops. In theory.

 I was one of those kids that was really skinny, yet out of shape. I ate so much junk food, never excercised, and stayed tiny. Once I hit high school, my metabolism started to slow, and, though I never got fat, I did pack on a few pounds of fat, especially around the tummy. Grade eleven and twelve, I decided to pull myself together. I started working out and eating better, and lost enough weight to get me back to where I was before grade 9, despite being a couple inches taller. I was happy, because I got attention from the weight loss, and I felt healthy for the first time in my life.
Then college started. I live on campus, hate the caf food, and have classes every day during lunch time. I found myself eating nothing but a muffin and granola bar between 9am and 5pm, then eating an okay dinner, and finishing the night with 8 hours of solid snacking. I would sit in front of the computer with a box of Froot Loops and literally eat half the box in one sitting. It was like I could go all day without eating, but as soon as I put one thing in my mouth, I couldn't stop eating. I gained about four pounds, and realized I needed to pull myself together. My goal now is to get more calories out of healthy foods throughout the day, and curb night-time snacking before I get monstrously fat. I'm scared of the freshman fifteen. 

To be honest im not sure whether to blame myself or my parents, so ill do both. It's kinda funny come to think of it. When i was younger (this was happening from age 6 to 9) i didn't really eat a lot, one day while on the road my parents and i went to a McDonald's. They bought a cheeseburger for me which i resisted eating cause i was a picky eater. When they finally got me to eat it i really loved it, so from then on whenever an opportunity arose (which it frequently did) i asked for McDonald's. I guess that wasn't too bad but the worse part was the fact that whenever my dad does something he does it in excess. So whenever he was on the road he would call home and ask if i wanted McDonald's so of course i would say yes. But, it got to a point where he would buy 4 cheese burgers for me and i would eat them all cause my parents encouraged me to eat all my food in every other case (because i didn't eat that much). So thats probably the cause. I wish my parents had realized it wasn't healthy for me to be eating so much Mcdonald's(i wasn't even very big, i have a small frame). But most of all i wish i was smart enough to realize that McDonald's wasn't good for me. After about 10/11 ish i started becoming more aware and ate a little less mcdonalds but still ate it the first chance i got ( I moved and there wasnt really a mcdonalds around). And didnt actually stop eating it for the most part until 12.5.

chocolate.  it kills me everytime.  even those little chocolate chips in bags.  ugh.