What, specifically, caused you to become obese?

[careya123 260]

I've spent a bit of time lately thinking about how and when I got so fat. I'm surprised by my own conclusions.

1. Sugar: Brownies and fudge for Snacks during college. Every day. Net Gain: +30 lbs

2. Weight Watchers*: I lost the weight and I gained it back, plus a little extra. I re-joined, lost some weight and gained it back, plus a little extra. I'm sad to say I joined many times before I learned my lesson. The end result was always the same. Net Gain: +15 lbs

3. Phentermine: I loved Phentermine. It made me happy, gave me energy, and completely destroyed my desire to eat; I shed pounds like rain off an umbrella. I gained the weight back faster than you can blink and it brought many many many friends. In retrospect, I think I lost a lot of muscle and my metabolism slowed way down. Net Gain: +40

4. Cyproheptadine: An anti-histamine. The doctor told me not to worry that it was also used to treat anorexia; I should have worried. Net Gain: +15 lbs

You know what's not on this list? All my other bad eating habits (besides sugar). I have plenty of them, but I truly don't think they've played a significant role in my weight gain over time. My weight has been incredibly stable apart from the periods listed above. It gives me hope for the future.

*I know I'm about to receive a lot of flak for this one!

[Babbs 14,681]

No flak for the Weight Watchers comment. It's all part of the yo yo dieting we've all come to know and dread so much.

There's no doubt about it, constant dieting f*cks with our metabolisms. I would say my reasons for gaining are very similar to yours. Even the phentermine. I got to my all time high weight stopping phentermine after a 40 pound loss.

I'm going to try my hardest to finally jump off that dieting merry go round this time. So far, so good

[Miss Mac 6,262]

Being raised poor where every meal was mostly starch, gravy bread, brown sugar sandwiches, chicken and homemade noodle served as gravy for mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, biscuits, dumplings, etc....

Gained 15 pounds with my first pregnancy / 70 pounds with second.

Two lousy way too long marriages and several immobilizing surgeries.

Orthopedic issues and neuropathies.

Steroids and Lyrica to treat those.

Yo-yo dieting since 1978

What convinced me that I needed to do something drastic to lose the weight? A stroke.

[careya123 260]

High blood pressure is scaring me right now. At the doctor a while back, it was 173/121. I freaked out.

[ProudGrammy 8,322]

how and when I got fat

@@careya123

i was an average (whatever that means)sized kid and teen-ager

very active, sports etc

i was never told i was eating too much

i had 2nd + helpings at dinner (big portions)

sweets galore whenever i wanted

by the time i was 16 or so, i started gaining weignt

my mom pointed it out to me all the time about my weight

she was, and still is my worst critic

my 4 siblings and parents were fine weight

got married young at 19

trouble at home, bad marriage

gave birth to my wonderful daughter at 21

(that didn't help the situation)

started to eat and eat after marriage

thought it would make me feel better

get rid of my sadness/pain

what a wreck i was

overweight, sad in general

divorced 8 years later (good 2nd marriage 25 years and counting now)

still eating too much

wrapping it up, i was in my late teens when i started to become a "little" heavy

why - because i loved to eat food and it made me feel better through hard times and good

that is my story and i'm stickin' to it

kathy

[heather5565 959]

High blood pressure is scaring me right now. At the doctor a while back, it was 173/121. I freaked out.

Holy sh*t! I'd say you have every reason to freakout!

[Dub 9,922]

Convenience, laziness, timing and poor habits were my downfall.

I'll start with poor habits. No game plan.....no structure for meals, timing and lack of structure.

I've worked shiftwork for decades and lived off fast food to & from work, cafeteria and vending machine junk while there. Horrible arrangement.

I didn't monitor calories in vs calories out......had no clue where I generally was....just did as I pleased. No strive for balanced macros....just whatever tasted good.

I did not weigh very often and had no plan for taking corrective action when the scale results said that clearly their should be.

I worked hard and indulged hard in hobbies....golf, hunting & fishing with buddies. All three had bad aspects to them, too. Golfing at a beer-a-hole pace all day packs on the calories. Same with fishing. Days in the woods usually included a mid-day trip to a local country restaurant where we'd all eat horribly.

So much was upside down with how I lived.

I look back an see all this and simply laugh heartily. It feels good to have taken each of these and put solid plans down now to address each. I'm engraining the right way to live now.....it's becoming habit. It feels good and is getting the results I was hoping for.

Now....being around my same buddies and family members.....I see in their actions all the wrong I was doing. It scares me to think that I was leading the pack in my excessive indulgement of everything. It was not my time to die, I suppose.....at 47 I was spared the heart attack or stroke that I certainly could have expected. So stupid.

Now....I've sort of become more of a lone wolf.....working on my new habits and refining things. I"m still on great terms with my old pards....but "selfishly' having my "me-time". I reflect a lot. I consider where I was and where I want to be.

I'm happy again. My first reaction to most things is laughter and finding the humor in situations.

The stress and pressure of my job is at an all time high.....truly a pressure cooker. A number of my counterparts have left because of it.....yet I stay.....calm and ready for the challenges and know that I've always given my best....and now my best comes even easier.

I'm not even 4 months past my sleeve surgery yet I feel 20 years younger but 20 years wiser at the same time. It's an interesting state of being and one that I am tremendously grateful for.

[Kspot42 49]

Carbs. That is my#1 reason. I love carbs. And good food. I have been larger my entire life. Always been the chubby cheeked kid. Even when I hit puberty I was built more like a guy than a girl. Yeah I got breasts but never had a figure other than round or square. Even when I was dancing 5-6 hours a day in college and was extremely fit I was still chubby cheeked and masculine. It's going to be very interesting to see if I ever get any kind of figure.

[OutsideMatchInside 10,166]

Stressful relationship with my mom. Kids can't drink scotch, so I ate food.

I was never an obese kid, just a little overweight, but learning early to eat your feelings and hold them in instead of expressing them, just carried over into adulthood. As an adult, I kept eating my feelings, the good and the bad ones.

[Mrs_O 118]

I was tiny growing up. Could eat a whole pizza if I wanted and be fine. Got married and was working third shift. Got pregnant with our first son and had the classic "I'm pregnant and can eat whatever I want" syndrome. Hasn't been the same since. I really love green Beans but seriously all the other veggies I enjoy are all starches (potatoes, corn, rice etc). I'm just going to have to train myself to like others. And carbs, especially bread is my fav snack so bye bye to that!

[tera1982 194]

Was an "average" sized child, during teens slightly larger than my friends, but not overweight. I suffered from severe fatigue and headaches. Saw multiple specialists with no diagnosis. I got pregnant when I was 16(please reserve judgements) and was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I gained 70 pounds and that put me over the 200 mark. After my c-section, I saw the hospital dietitian and joined weight watchers. The diabetes did not go away. The team of specialists I saw at multiple hospitals determined that I was most likely an undiagnosed type-1 diabetic my entire life. While I did lose 23 pounds with ww, I was stuck/stalled. The endocrinologist told me that insulin LOVES to hold onto fat. I then got this amazingly stupid idea to withhold insulin to try and lose some weight. I did, about 30 pounds until one day I ended up being rushed to the ER in a diabetic coma, which I was on for 3 days. While I was scared, I repeated this cycle several times and was hospitalized several times. I finally realized that it was not worth me not being around for my daughter just to be thin. I ate whatever I wanted with the mentality that it didn't matter because there was nothing I could do to lose anyway. I ate a lot of fast food and unhealthy foods. I was stupid and didn't realize that this path was also going to lead me down the same road of not being there for my daughter. I started getting low self esteem and it ended up being part of the cause for my divorce from my child's father. I sunk into a depression and HATED food, which I blamed for a lot of my problems. I stopped eating except for two TINY meals a day, and those where only because my daughter/family/friends/coworkers were around. I lost, actually got down to about 160. I met my guy, who I'm still with to this day, and was happy again. As years went by, I gained the weight back...and then some! Fast forward to 2014, when my endocrinologist suggested VSG. I had never considered it before, as I thought it was only for severely morbid obese people. I was ecstatic! Sign me up. I now am post-VSG(sleeved 12/08/15) and happy as can be. Best decision I've made in a long time. Sorry for the long story, I just realized that other than this thread, I've never really talked about my journey except with the psychologist required before VSG. Long story short, fast food had a LARGE part to play in my obesity. Convenience foods also(gas station, pre-packaged, etc.). Thanks for letting me vent!

[LipstickLady 25,682]

I ate too much.

[Dischord 24]

For me it was a history of mental abuse from my peers, and an inability to cope with my emotions. I ate rather than dealing with the problems that were around me. I ate to cope with everything from sadness to depression. I'd done the yo-yo dieting thing since I was 12. I'd tried going vegetarian, I tried cutting out carbs, I tried Weight Watchers, TOPS, Jenny Craig, all before I ever hit 21.

Well, as you can guess, I kept going up and up and up, always gaining about twice what I'd lost. But I managed to hit and stay at a maximum of around 300-320 lbs, thanks to a stupidly high amount of exercise, since I was 'active', even when I was fat. I could run up and down a flight of stairs without getting winded, and I was starting to work around my emotional issues, and things were looking good!

Then at 23 I fell and blew the cartilage out of both knees, after which I was diagnosed with PCOS and had to have surgery, coupled with losing my father to cancer. Between the emotional and physical issues, I just went immobile. I stopped being able to dance and run the way I used to, and I just quit caring about anything, so I started trying to eat myself to death, despite having a wonderfully supportive husband and a halfway decent life regardless of the troubles I was having at the time.

I ended up almost 500 lbs at my heaviest. It wasn't a pretty journey, but I'm determined not to go back to where I was.

[VSGAnn2014 12,992]

I ate too much and moved too little. And I had some bad habits.

But I will remind everyone that our original stomachs used to produce a helluva lot more ghrelin than they do now.

And our stomachs could hold a helluva lot more than they do now.

Those changes are huge contributors to our current successes. Most of all, these changes have given us a lot of breathing room to build healthy eating and lifestyle habits.

I think the gastric sleeve is a f**king miracle!

[losergrl75 277]

I was very petite and underweight when I was young. 5'2" and 95 lbs in high school. Even having kids very young (16 and 18 ) and being borderline gestational diabetes with both pregnancies, I lost the weight right away. I went on the depo shot in my early twenties and gained 60lbs in one year along with acne and horrible headaches. I think the hormones in the depo kicked off my struggle with PCOS. Then I started the yoyo dieting with the only success coming from Phentermine. Each time coming off, I'd gain the weight back just a little bit quicker. I had been on and off the diet drug for the last twelve years until my hbp finally got too high and no doctor would prescribe it anymore.

Edited January 25, 2016 by losergrl75