How did you become overweight?

I was thinking today that if I want to lose weight and keep it off that I should honestly face how I ended up overweight in the first place. For me, it was overeating, plain and simple. I had a very sick pregnancy and couldn't eat and so I "rewarded" myself with whatever I wanted when the pregnancy ended. Now I have a two-year-old and 40 (but it used to be 50) extra pounds.

So no more food as reward or comfort eating for me. Food is fuel for my body and I want it to be strong and beautiful again so it's only the best from here on out!

I started rowing at 11, and got into it in a big way at 13, doing 6 days a week training and weight training twice a week, all under the direction of my coach.  I was very slim at 5' 7" and 68-70kgs (about 150lbs?)  I had very little bodyfat and looked great - always had loads of compliments and looked good in clothes.

Then at 16 I developed overtraining syndrome and totally quit rowing.  I had really damaged my body by doing the training of an 18 uyear old and I couldn't take it anymore, so jsut quit. 

I had been eating loads, (I calculated a typical day in weightwatchers points once for fun and found it was 60 - I think 20 is normal?) and when I stopped I didn't stop eating. 

Since then I've had back problems and it's been hard to find a sport that I can do so that didn't help.  I hate not doing sport - I was a very good rower but I can never do that again and I have only jsut this last year found judo, which I love, and started learning how to run, so now I am getting fitter again.

From quitting I put on over 50lbs - I went to 97kgs from 68.  But in that time I didd develop and grow slightly (not as much as I should have and I completely stopped growing for about 2 years.)

stupidity! seriously. When I became pregnant with my first son I was 112 pounds, modeling and 17! Well me being only 17 and not realistic, I thought now was my chance to eat whatever I wanted and it didnt matter because after delivery I would be skinny again! I ate pizza hut on a daily basis, sometimes 2x's. I also had burger king breakfast every morning! Chocolate ice cream cones atleast 5 days a week! I ate constantly. DISGUSTING! Well wasnt I in for a big surprise when I was getting weighed before I left the hospital...227 pounds. That is after I lost 20 pounds from the birth. I gained more weight than I even weighed to begin with! So stupidity is my only answer! After that I only gained 20 pounds with my second son... I learned a lesson I will never EVER forget. I am now at 194 and counting! My oldest son by the way is almost 15 so I have been carrying most of that weight through the years. I started here 3/21 at 216 and have lost 22 pounds so far. I just messed up BAD when I was a teenager! We just think we know everything at that age and even though my mom kept telling me to slow down and I was gonna be sorry, I thought what the heck does she know??? Who cares if she has 2 kids and looks great! She dont know nothing! I now have learned that mom really does know best!

for me it was so gradual i hardly noticed it was happening: 2-3 pounds a year for about 20 years (with some dips during which i would notice that i'd lost weight and become immediately hungry - like, within seconds).

beer definitely has played a part for me.  but also i wasn't into team sports when i was a kid, so didn't have that foundation when i got out of high school. 

i think because i was a very skinny kid, that got built into my identity, so it took a long time for me to realize that i didn't fit that criteria anymore!

I was always a chubby kid, but it's my fault in how I continued to get fat.

I would constantly get picked on in elementary/middle school (thank god that ended in high school), and I turned to food to fill the hurt. Cliche, yes, but it's the truth.

I didn't stop, and here I am. I'm clawing my way up, and there's no way I'm going back to what I was: 22 pounds larger and 22 times more miserable.

For me it was 2 pregnancies. I was able to loose all but 10 punds with both of my children (20 lbs all together), but I had also gained about 10% body fat. My problem was that with my first child I started to just eat whatever he ate. Chicken nuggets, french fries and corn dogs... I have made a change with my second child. He eats what I eat. Cottage cheese, egg whites, etc... Suzana

College...plain and simple.  I no longer had any type of structure as far as meals went and I could eat whatever I wanted because no one was in my dorm room looking over my shoulder when it came to food. Easy mac, ramen noodles, drunken visits to the vending machine, curly fries, free fourth meals...it's a fatty's paradise and I fit in just fine!

I gained the usual freshman 15 lbs. my first semester.

College...plain and simple.  I no longer had any type of structure as far as meals went and I could eat whatever I wanted because no one was in my dorm room looking over my shoulder when it came to food. Easy mac, ramen noodles, drunken visits to the vending machine, curly fries, free fourth meals...it's a fatty's paradise and I fit in just fine!

I gained the usual freshman 15 lbs. my first semester.

I first put mine on from abusive spouse tieing me up and feeding me cakes and donuts and other junk.  Stayed with him 11 yrs. 

But is it his fault that I kept it on and gained more NO!  It's mine and mine alone.  I have gone from extremes of eating mainly junk food or to much food  to eating mainly good foods but not enough food. 

Now that I'm learning from classes, websites and stuff how to eat I'm not only losing the weight but I'm feeling so much better. 

I am currently overweight because I just gave birth to my second daughter about 3 1/2 months ago. I'm about 10 pounds more than my usual weight, but I'm hoping to lose 20 pounds.

I never had weight issues.  I was always "normal".  But at 16, I met a guy who pressured me into looking like a waif.  I ended up in the hospital several times over the next 2 years because of my eating disorder.  It messed me up big time.  To this day I still believe that in order to be loved, and to be successful, you can't be a fat person. 

Well, he cheated, I broke off the engagement, and became an alcoholic for the next few years.  I drank all day and all night and partied hard.  I worked with a band and eating taco hell at 4:00 am became a ritual.  I gained 50 pounds from that all alcohol and fast food lifestyle.  That was 10 years ago.  My body changed.  And ever since I've had a hard time taking it off.  I've bounced between 160 and 120 over the past 10 years and the only way I've been able to take off the weight has been to starve myself. 

I'm trying very hard this time around, to think about my health, and loose the weight the right way.  I was never supposed to be fat.  But years of abusing my body has caused it to rebel against me.

Well for me eating is not my first priority. I gained weight when i went to college and started drinking so much beer. I m not alcoholic but the partying and drinking did the trick for my weight. I started out being 110 pounds, then suddendly i went to the doctor and i was told i gained 20 pounds 130. I was exicted for a while because my boby became really curvy and i would receive compliments all the time. When i went out, people would stare at my lower body and i felt really nice. My ego went up and i really didnt care how much beer i drank. Eventually it caught up with me because i ate less and drank more. I could eat about 900 cals a day and so my body stored fat, evenually i went to 155 pounds and trust me it was showng. I have now stopped drinking and i m putting myself on a diet of healthy food and working out

I became overweight because growing up, my family had no portion control. we ate unhealthy food and tons of it. I look back and see that the portions of ice cream i used to be served were about 2.5 cups - when i was about 8!! cereal? a serving was about 3 cups. Plus, we ate frozen food and fatty refined garbage. So now, i am determined to be healthy, stick to whole foods 99% of the time and watch portions. And when i have kids, they will be the healthiest eaters around!

By the way, i don't actually blame my family, they truely didn't know better... but i have certainly learned from the mistakes they made!

I got pregnant. I was always one of those that had trouble GAINING weight before I got pregnant. Well, the doctors kept pushing how important it was for me to gain weight...in the beginning I was so sick that I didn't start gaining until the last few months.

I was 100lbs when I got pregnant...I gained about 50lbs...

In the last 2 months I started gaining really FAST and the doctors started complaining that I was gaining weight to fast! In the last month I stopped working and that is when my weight went from being "all in my belly" to ALL OVER.

They told me the more weight I gained the more trouble I would have getting it off...but with me always having trouble gaining weight  and keeping it on I never really listened. After I had my baby I really thought all the weight was just going to fall off. It took me a while to realize my body was working differently...and it took a lot of negative comments from people I didn't know (but had seen me before) to realize that I was overweight. I'd never been overweight before in my life...and now people were saying things like "Wow, you used to be so tiny".

I also breastfed for over a year...that is supposed to help you get the weight off, but for me I was SO HUNGRY when I was breastfeeding that I gained instead of losing (because I tend to eat the wrong things).

My real problem is I am a really picky eater...the foods I do like are not healthy, and I don't really like "healthy" foods.

(Plus I haven't worked since I had my baby...and she is now 3) When I was thin I was always so busy that I would really only eat once a day and THAT is why I had trouble keeping the weight on.

My biggest NON-pregnancy weight was 142...when I stopped breastfeeding I dropped back to around 124. I dieted to get down to 113...then stopped dieting and stopped paying attention to how much/what I ate and ended up at a steady 120.

let's seeee.... skipping breakfast, eating a nutrageous bar a day for lunch, having greasy mexican food late in the evening and being totally lazy. yep, that got me up to 150!

I should say that I am not overweight -- I am actually quite slim. I'm here because over the last year or so I started gaining weight rapidly, which was due to a combination of stupid food choices and the natural slowing of metabolism that happens when we age, and I wanted to nip it in the bud before I did get overweight. Obesity runs in my family and I don't want to end up that way.

Anyway, apart from just not being a kid anymore, I got stuck in a nasty rut of mindless eating and drinking. It doesn't help that I'm a serious cook who will eat pretty much anything. My husband and I lived in a group house for a long time, and I got in the habit of cooking for four. When we moved out on our own I was making the same quantities of food, and the two of us were eating all of it! Duh! I was also drinking like a fish. I put on 20 pounds, hubby put on 30, and that was when we decided something had to be done. Now I'm eating maintenance calories, and with the help of CC I've gotten much better about eating mindfully and sensibly. Those 20 pounds came off (it took four months), and now I'm svelte again. I tried "dieting" for a few weeks, just to see what would happen, and nothing did; it seems that I have an ironclad set point. Anyway, I'm content.

It was a mixture of things for me. Mixed cycles of eating disorders with overeating/binging and bulimia. Then just general unhealthy eating and lack of activity.
I was only about 5-10 pounds overweight though.

I quit smoking after having kept up the nasty habit for 30 years. I replaced cigarettes with food. 

I blame some on my hypoglycemia, some on the days when I was dirt broke and couldnt afford anything other than mac and cheese, hamburger helper with no hamburger and fries I snuck at work, and some on not caring, or just being sick of caring.

Before very recently (just a couple months ago) I was not managing my hypoglycemia well. I was "dieting" based on 10 year old information, which is archaic when you are talking about a diabetes related disease. When my blood sugar dropped I inhaled chocolate bars and cokes to get it back up, and ate carbs to try and keep it up, not realizing the difference between simple and complex carbs and their affects.
Ever since I was a kid (it is thought that Ive been hypoglycemic since early childhood) I would crave carbs and sugar and being a kid, when I craved them, I ate candy and ice cream and frosted flakes and just plain bread and butter. These eating habits followed me in to adulthood, and the problem that when I did exerscise, I became extremely dizzy, so I just stopped.

I have been "over weight" most of my life, a lot of which I attribute to just plain being big. I take after my dad's side of the family, and he is 6'4 and 270lbs and he is the smallest of his 4 brothers, and I dont think their sister is far behind.

I, for a long time, just didnt care about my weight. I didnt have time to worry about it, and I was very tired of worrying about it. Its exhausting looking in mirrors and hating what you see but not knowing what to do about it. So, I just stoped looking.

Now I think I am attacking this with a healthier approach, and in actuality I want to lose weight because my husband and I know we want to start trying to have a baby sometime in the next year (waiting on his promtion that includes benefits) and since I have time to prepare, I want my body to be in top notch shape before hand, since, in all liklihood I will probably have gestational diabetes, and want to cut down on the complications and risks as much as possible NOW.

Eating, eating, eating, stressing, stressing, stressing, insecurities, insecurites, insecurities, laziness, laziness, laziness.

I was a naturally very very very thin teenager (85-95 lbs in college) so I never really learned to take care of myself. Voila, you turn 30 and things slow down and your god-given thinness vanishes into thin air. Depression sets in, laziness and despair over getting older.

The weight piles on.
 
For years I have felt like I was doomed in my career.  Now instead I see with a little more hard work the world is my oyster. I am so tired of feeling sorry for myself so hence why I am here, slimmer and all the better for it!

Its an interesting question.  As I went through career changes, I went from a very active out-door life doing professional archeology to a more sedentary technology position.  The archeology kept me walking at various elevations, over mountains and deserts, forests hours a ay and things kind of moderates themselves. 

Then I got older and older still.  I neglected my health until my early 50's.  That's a big mistake.  Don't make it.  The catchup is really bad. But the weight continued to go up.  I went on blood pressure medication and I had to eat to take one of the pills. The weight went on and on.  I was getting obese and my back was bothering me every so often. 

Finally, after a bout of lower back pain that lasted almost a week and too many days on Flexoryl (wicked drug, that one); I went to my doctor and asked for help.  I waited a bit long perhaps; but half of it I've learned is the admitting to the problem.  Now I do a diet which is quite restrictive but the weight has been coming off.  I'm hungry a lot but I've learned to cope.  I eat more fruit than I can ever remember because the diet calls for it.

I would say that my pyramid of food was upside down before and slowly but surely its moving around :)