what made you fat/gain a lot of weight?

was it more diet or exercise related? Is it something you learned since childhood, something you feel predisposed to, or caused gradually? 

i always loved to eat & i always ate too much.  the foods i love the most are all "bad" foods, so that's pretty much ALL i ate.  another thing is breakfast.  i never ate breakfast.  most times, i wouldn't eat all day & then pig out at night.

i've learned that it's ok to overeat now & then.  just make up for it by eating a little less the next day or two, and exercise.  silly me!  i'm 50, and i realize now that i can actually burn off my extra calories.

also, breakfast really IS good for you.  it gets your metabolism going!  i try to never skip meals anymore, and to eat the "good" foods.  they really DO taste good  :D

Hmmm let's see....constantly stuffing my face with starchy, processed foods, not moving unless I HAVE to, eating horizontally, drinking too much wine every night and gorging myself on Chinese food every weekend (I'm highly reactive to sodium).  That oughta do it!  =40 lbs gained over 2 years...oh yeah and I'm an emotional eater and have had lots to be emotional over in the last couple of years.  Currently reading self-help books to deal with that issue as well as body image problems.  I want to get to the source of the "problem" and find other ways of coping!

Sedentary lifestyle combined with a wicked sweet tooth and complete disregard for realistic portion sizes.

Original Post by santonacci:

Sedentary lifestyle combined with a wicked sweet tooth and complete disregard for realistic portion sizes.

Ditto! And with age, that stuff really creeps up on you and bites you hard! When I look back at the portions I used to eat, it's a wonder I didn't weigh twice as much as I did. Seriously. Gah.

I'll see your sedentary lifestyle and complete disregard for portion sizes and raise you.... a love of rich foods and fine wines....  :-)

Ill call both your 'sedentary lifestyle and complete disregard for portion sizes' & 'a love of rich foods and fine wines', and raise you another 'comforting myself with food at every turn and being completely unaware of nutritional values!'

*tips visor, smokes cigar, and sorts poker chips*

Yes, but have you ever eaten "chocolate" dog treats? Ate a whole pack when I was about 10 and felt so ill!  Proud to say haven't done it since. 

wine and beer played a big role, but i'm starting to think that the bigger factor was a level of seasonal depression.  when i was younger, i would be on the ski hill all winter, getting exercise and vitamin D.  but the last fifteen years or so, i wasn't able to do that.  i guess i would gain five pounds over the winter, then lose only two in the spring/summer.  it added up! 

i've never had a debilitating bout of depression, but there are weeks during the winter when i fulfill obligations and don't do much else.  it's been that much worse since i moved north: from mid-november to mid-january this year, i was totally useless!  and it's only last month that i really got moving again.

I love food. Especially fatty food and salty food. I loved to eat when I was sad or stressed as I thought it made me feel better. In reality, I think it made me feel more lonely. I just kept gaining and gaining throught high school and college and I finally just had to take control.

Hmmmm... seems like there's always a "reason."  Emotional eating (stress or depression), bad education (but then again, most everyone is only very recently realizing that convenience foods aren't so convenient when you start having health problems), a love and desire for rich, wonderful foods (damn you, Food Network!), a husband who has no love for vegetables, very little love for anything that isn't fatty meat or starch or junk food, and a sedentary lifestyle (office job, love of video games).  It's rough.

I suppose, though, it's lucky that not only do I enjoy fresh food as much, if not more, than junk food,  but I also enjoy the challenge of making something delicious from a sometimes bewildering array of healthy ingredients :)  Best thing I ever did was study food and nutrition in culinary school, even if I never made a career out of it, I've benefitted greatly.

Love and luck to all of us :)

It's a fairly simple equation - I liked food and loathed exercise! A little too much of the one on a regular basis, and not nearly enough of the other had predictable results.

I met my gf (now my wife) 5 years ago in college and we ate out alot, combine that with the business that we started (very sedentary) and boom, I gained about 35 lbs.  I didn't even know I was chunky until I saw some pictures from a cruise that I went on.  Then with some improv dieting and no exercise i managed to get down to 217.  Then it was back up to 225 as of a few weeks ago, now with CC AND exercise I hope to get slim again, about 210 ish give or take.  SO yeah i got chubby by eating a lot of bad food and not moving enough.

When I was little I had hypoglycemia(sp?) -- blood sugar problems.  I would get shaky and pass out if my blood sugar got low.  So my mom got into a habit of making sure I had something like a piece of cheese or a spoonful of peanut butter when I got up in the morning.

Whenever I was tired, cranky, moody, etc. she would blame my blood sugar and have me eat something.  I know she meant well, but it got to the point where if anything was wrong -- bad mood, angry, depressed, tired  -- I would eat.  It's a vicious cycle.

I would love to blame it on College, so I will! College, moved out of my parents house, where I was getting healthy cooking with a lot of veggies, to a place where I have ice cream after EVERY meal!  Towards the last 2 years of college, I gained the most weight.  Drinking caused a lot of it.  Drinking wine, beer, and vodka, all which have a lot of calories!  Then this leads to insatiable appetite at 2am!  I wish I could take it all back, but I can't.  Just trying to purify my body now and its been 2 weeks and no alcohol! :)

I am way more knowledgable now.  I didn't know anything then, I just stuffed my face with anything.  I actually think before I eat and drink now. 

you know, i'm just beginning to realize that i'm an emotional eater.  i always thought i wasn't, because when under stress, my appetite goes away.  but on tuesday afternoon, my dog got in a fight and got hurt.  it wasn't a major thing, but her ear got torn, so it was...messy.  i went to the pharmacy to get some first aid supplies to fix her up.  walked out of there with non-adhesive gauze pads, a roll of gauze bandage, a roll of first aid tape, a bag of chips, a tub of philli dip, and a half-price chocolate easter bunny.

so i guess i should add "consoling myself with junk food" to my reasons.

Drinking!  Tailgating!  Going out with my friends!  It was all so fun, but man was it overindulgent.  Gaining 16 lbs in a semester was not my goal.  And I was still working out!  I ran a  5K in the middle of the semester, lol.  One day I came home from work and went to put on a pair of size 7 jeans and a form-fitting shirt to go to a party...and couldn't get the pants on!  I don't know how it happened without me noticing, but it was demoralizing.

Well at least my pants fit now...lol...but this beer gut is slow leaving.

I was pretty much ok weight wise (according to my mother) until I went to the Gaeltacht when I was 14 or so. I hadn't been away from home before, and I didn't like the food, so instead I bought packs of biscuits and would eat those. Ever since I've thought it completely reasonable for a person to buy biscuits to eat, just like people buy chocolate bars! I just forgot that most people stop at two biscuits.

That, coupled with my activity levels plummeting (until 15, I was playing several sports a week) piled on the weight, and college added to it with those evil vending machines! Strangely enough, something else that added to it was losing loads of weight. I lost about 2 stone, but gained it back, plus nearly another two, over the course of four years. That's just adding insult to injury, if you ask me :(

let's see.. I was raised in the "clean your plate" club and also could eat whatever junk I wanted (ie... giant bowl of ice cream with every topping under the sun, plateful of pretzels/tortilla chips drowning in melted mozz. cheese, those microwavable pretzels)  .. 1. b/c my parents let me and 2. b/c I had a great metabolism as a kid... obviously. We also grew up on rice-a-roni, hot dogs, hamburger helper, and countless other overprocessed foods... which didn't help... I continued to eat whatever and clean every plate through high school, and paired with marching band, it was hard to gain..

then I got out of hs.. and I moved in with a friend.. and we started the macaroni and cheese (blue box of course) pizza, and beer diet... with a side of Subway runs at 3am (at a local BP) where I would get a 12" cold cut trio and have no shame in eating the whole thing... it didn't help that while I was at a healthy weight my friend encouraged me to be lazy and eat a lot because "i had weight to gain"... sooo.. 15lbs later... I was a little less than thrilled. I didn't let it get past a 15lb weight gain.. when I saw that I thought, WOW I need to get my butt in gear!

I've revamped my whole view of eating and nutrition over the past 2 years and live better now :) and I don't feel bad anymore about throwing out scraps on my plate :)

I was always really healthy, eating well and exercising, but I started taking an antidepressant and it slowed me down. I didn't have all of that nervous energy and often found myself watching TV for hours every night. I gained ten pounds after that whole ordeal. I stopped taking the meds but kept up with the laziness.
The next thing that really impacted my weight gain, another 10 pounds, is living with my hyper-metabolism boyfriend. He can eat cookies and cake and soda and not gain a pound! Slowly I started eating some of his treats and the weight crept up. I was avoiding the scale so I didn't know the exact number until my pants started getting too tight...I finally sneaked into the bathroom and hopped on the scale...#$!@!...then I joined CC.

I was always an overweight kid.  It wasn't for lack of running around and playing though, I just ate *a lot*.  I would sit down with a box of cheezits and a couple of sodas and eat the whole box, and I could do that every evening.  But I didn't realize I was over-eating.  I thought it was all normal.  After all, on TV and commercials you see these thin people pigging out, drinking regular soda and having hamburgers.  I could not understand why I was fat!  When I moved out of the house (and thus away from all the junk food) for college, I lost a lot of weight.  There's been a bit of yo-yo dieting since then, but I'm hoping to do it right this time.  I still have a huge appetite and can polish off a whole box of anything, so I just don't keep any of it in the house.