what made you fat/gain a lot of weight?

me as a kid i was adverage..... i started gaining weight about 5 years ago... i have feet problems and had to have both operated on.... and still have problems with them..... so lack of exerisce is what happened..... i use to be active and  5 years ago that came to a dead halt.... now i am slowly doing other exercises and doing what i can in walking....

I think for me it was a lot of things.  I was a thin teenager and young adult.  In febuary of 04 I lost a pregnancy at 5 months.  It was really hard on my body, and the depression it bought helped me eat way more than I needed to.  Then in July of the same year I became pregnant again.  I was on bed rest for the entire pregnancy, nothing but eating and laying around.   My daughter was born almost 6 weeks early....but healthy, and still 6 pounds despite being such a premmie.  When she was 6 months old I weighed in at about 230.  She is now 3....and I am up to 295.  I never thought that at only 27 years old I would look like this.

Plus.....I have adult ADD.  I had been off meds for years, because the dr told me that it was something I had "grown out of".  This is unfortunatly not true.  Very few people ever grow out of it.  Adults with ADD/ADHD have a very hard time making wise food choices....because we have poor impulse control, and no ability to plan ahead.  Now I am back on meds and seeing a huge improvement in my motivation, menu planning, eating times, food choices....and life in general.  

I am also exceptionally lazy.  I HATE the gym.  I get bored walking.  So that is something I am working on. 

I think it was just a combination of a lot of things that got me here, and I think it will take a good combination to get back to where I want to be.

I honestly believe my parents made it hard for me.  My dad has was overweight growing up and since I was in elementary school was always obese.  Unfortunately he has only gotten worse.  As a kid it my parents always bought the bad cheap stuff, just cause it was cheap.  I'm talking those 500 calorie little pies for 25 cents.  They would go out and buy $5 worth of them.  Weight was never an issue to my family and my parents never really pushed us into sports.  Basically when we got home from school it was, "Go out and play and don't come home til it's dark."  They never got out and exercised with us.  Hell, I didn't even know what exercise was until I graduated high school.

Unfortunately living and growing up like that has made it harder for me now.  I have to work at knowing what is good and bad to eat.  Plus joining the Air Force has pushed me to stay in shape, thankfully.  I'm not sure I would exercise as much if I was required to do it.

It was a combination of overeating and inactivity, for sure. I found (and still find, sometimes) way too much comfort in food! I think I was genuinely afraid of exercise. I believe that school made me hate exercise. I always enjoyed it until eighth grade when my coach would torment me for my glasses being crooked and for constantly pulling at my bra (which was new to me and UNCOMFORTABLE). I DESPISED THAT BITCH. I skipped gym for a whole semester to avoid the embarassment lol...I had to rediscover it as an adult and I learned to love movement, dance, weight training, yoga, running, all of it again.

For me, it was 1) Being completely sedentary from a back injury for 4 years. 2) Eating out a lot and polishing off the pasta alfredo dish EVERY TIME. 3) Fast food, secret eating in my car.

Original Post by unicornfeathers:

For me, it was 1) Being completely sedentary from a back injury for 4 years. 2) Eating out a lot and polishing off the pasta alfredo dish EVERY TIME. 3) Fast food, secret eating in my car.

 ditto @ #2!!! zio's every weekend with the girls...5 cheese alfredo, gobbled down every bite!

1) health related - virtually no metabolism due to thyroid disease, and the immediate storage of all food as fat due to PCOS/insulin resistance

2) emotional eating - eating to self-medicate with no regard to portion size

3) just generally bad eating habits - eating SUGAR, not eating at regularly scheduled times (causing wide fluctuations from high to low blood sugars)

4) generally low self esteem and distorted body image

Beer+Overeating+Sedentary lifestyle.

I guess a lot of that was self-medicated because I was depressed at midlife and stressed out about finances.  I finally came to terms with midlife and got in a slightly better financial position, in addition to getting my weight down

I couldn't deal with being fat in Japan.  Everyone here is trim and takes pride in their appearance.

umm..let's see. I was a full-time student (pre-med) and working TWO part-time jobs. PLUS I was a new mommy. I drank coffee all day to help me stay up and study. Long story short, I gained all my pregnancy weight back (20+lbs)! It sucks bc I was 5 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight (135 lbs)after the birth of my daughter. I guess breastfeeding didn't work that well after all!! LOL

I grew up, until I was 12 or 13, as a very overweight kid. Grew up with my granparents, who were first generation Italian Americans, so everything in our house revolved around a big meal. Something good happened? Celebrate it, with a meal. Something bad? Wash it away with a big meal. It was awful, I was teased, and just made life a nightmare.

I started high school, vowing not to be the fat kid, anymore. My high school weight coach actually introduced me to heatlhy eating, and exercise, primarily weights. I basically spend my entire freshman year, training, and eating right. My family was mortified, of course, that I turned away the homemade ravioli, for chicken breast(I used to microwave them...yuck!). By the time my sophomore year had started, I was in great shape, and I immediately dove head first into athletics, as a way to keep my motivation. I carried this all the way through high school, and 4 years of undergrad, and 3 years of grad school.

After football ended, I took up other sports, like powerlifting and bodybuilding, to stay in shape, as well as distance biking and some triathlons. At one point(around 2 years), not long after grad school, I found out I was going to be a dad, and knew at that point, I'd be raising her alone(long story). I chose then, to re-prioritize my life, and with it, came elimination of much of the fitness principles I'd lived with, for around 13 years. Not a decision I regret for one second, because had I not done that, and focused on work, and making a life for my little girl, I may not have her today. Over the course of the past 10 years or so, I've slowly put on somewhere between 70 and 80 pounds of fat. Very gradual, and all my fault.

For me, if I were to guess, I'd say my weight gain was probably 75% due to not having that exercise in my life anymore. My diet was never outrageous, during that ten years. I probably ate less, on average, during that decade, than I did the 13 years prior. But my body, for more than a decade had been built through hard work in the gym, on the track, and on the road, and all that went away.

my weight gain began about 4 years ago when i was a junior in high school. i was really rebellious and would "do what i want". i was an athlete so i was able to eat a lot and not worry about my weigh but then drinking came into the scene, along with eating way too much (ie: i would get burger king after practice only to go home and then eat a whole other meal). I gained about 8lbs but then once the season was over i broke off some bad friendships and started focusing on myself a little more...and i lost the weight.

i maintained for most of senior year and then at the end of the summer i was getting ready for college--my gym membership ran out and i didn't worry although i should have. by October i was up 10lbs and miserable. then i maintained that until january where i made a lifestyle change that lasted until about may. i got down to my average HS weight and was happy.

once again the end of the summer rolled around, a lot was going on and i  began to gain again. i wound up changing schools and made a promise to myself to eat healthy at my new school which i managed to do for the most part. i only gained about 3-4lbs for the semester which isnt too bad, but then second semester came around and throughout Feb & March I was so stressed/depressed/miserable that i constantly was turning to food and i would have more than one weekly binge. now im at my highest weight and upset bc i can now be considered overweight--for the first time in my life.

with a new month upon me i hope to overcome all of my food anxiety and find the strength to get back to being healthy. with the exception of this past wednesday i have been okay for the most part. thank god!

For me it was eating so late at night. After a night of partying i would wake up at like 4 pm and then since i am not hungry when i first wake up i would first eat at like 8 pm. I didn't eat b'fast. I ate mostly carbs, starchy foods, and i would eat only like once a day. I was thin but since i only ate once a day, when i started to eat more the lbs came on. Also i barely exercised and i drank too much soda and sugared juices

I was normal probably until I hit puberty around 11 years old. I was never an active kid, I HATED sports and hated gym class at school. My parents spoiled me so they never really forced me to get active or deny me food, but they would point out that I was eating too much junk food when I would get caught.

I probably ate completely out of boredom throughout my young teen years. In grade school my mom would always make me a HUGE delicious lunch and I would eat all of it. Then I would come home  from school and munch on random things and watch TV. Then it would be dinner time, and even though I wasn't hungry all the time because of all the after-school munching, I would eat it anyway because I felt bad for my mom who cooked it and didn't want to disrespect her. Then, before bed I would get hungry again... What would I do? Eat more!

Whenever there was nothing to do, I would eat. And watch TV. My portions of food was completely out of control. I never understood why I was so much heavier than everyone else and why my sister was so skinny.

Now I realize I was overweight because of years of a sedentary teen life, emotional and boredom eating, binge eating, total lack of portion control and a lack of nutritional knowledge.

Original Post by birdy22:

I gained a whole bunch of weight in only a couple months. I was in a depression, and my doctor took me off my ADD medication, which is a powerful appetite suppressant.

I want that med! lol  My ADD meds dont do much for the appetite, I wish they did.  Then again I was on high doses of phentermine for 4 months and still managed to put on 12 pounds during that time.  None of the stuff that is supposed to keep my hunger under control seem to work.  For me the only way to lose weight is to be hungry.....all the time. 

their namesare zachary alex and ray (my sons) combined with my denial of being fat and my lack of knowledge and  willpower to lose it.

I used to blame my weight gain on having kids, you know 5 pounds for every kid, it was only 50 extra pounds!, but then I hit 50 years old and something must have happened to the metabolism, cause I gained like 30 more pounds in just 2 years! So now I'm trying to get things under control.  This site is awesome. It is really helping me to be aware of what I put in my body and giving me lots of ideas and support - I know I'm not alone in my struggles, you know how misery loves company! Plus everyone gives me hope that I can make the changes I need to.

I was very thin and pretty healthy as a child and young adult.  I was fairly active, and could eat whatever I wanted without gaining.

That all changed at 24 when I went to law school.  I did nothing but eat, study, and sleep, and I was totally broke, so I bought the cheapest, easiest stuff.  No exercise, garbage diet.  I gained 5 pounds each semester.  And when I graduated and started practicing, it only got worse.  I worked long hours, got no exercise, and I ate "out" for two meals a day.  And you know what portion sizes are, eating out. 

So it's basically what some others have said: sedentary, unhealthy food choices, and far too large portion sizes.