If you are overweight, what, in your opinion, made you that way?

[SistemaAddict]

There's been lots of threads recently about weight inspired by the government trying to crack down on obesity yet encouraging us to eat out and posters bemoaning the lockdown lard/pandemic pounds. There has been lots of discussion about the causes of obesity or being overweight due to societal and financial factors but I wanted to ask what posters think made them either overweight or obese because reasons will vary. Certain medications and conditions can cause weight gain and/or make it harder to lose weight and the peri-menopause/menopause doesn't help.

I stopped breastfeeding a year ago and my appetite didn't return to normal after stopping so I gained weight. Then my asthma was bad from October onwards and my ability to go on bike rides was limited. Then lockdown and shielding and my 5 mile school hike up and down big hills went out of the window and I ate too many biscuits and chocolate and would eat in the evening while reading or watching tv. I gained around a stone and that took me into the overweight category.

In June I decided enough was enough and started 16:8 and limited myself to around 1250 calories a day. I bought a fitbit and started using my fitness pal. Both encouraged me to go on walks with the dc and to take more trips up and down the stairs than were necessary to meet my target of 25 flights a day. I stopped eating after dinner, watched my portion sizes and cut out most of the junk I was eating. I'm now a normal weight with a BMI of 24. I'm carrying on with my healthier lifestyle and improved habits but it's hard especially in the evenings when I want chocolate. My aim is to get to a BMI of 23 as that is where I look and feel best.

I don't want this to be a judgemental thread, or for anyone to fat shame posters, I just wanted to share my own reasons for weight gain and ask others' experiences because it's a very individual thing beyond "too many calories in vs calories out" and it can be very complex.

I'm the least competitive person ever hence hating pe...I couldn't give a shit if you can run faster than me or are better at netball or hockey. I'd rather go for a walk or swim

Agree formerbabe there is just so much choice and variety of food to buy and it is a (relatively) cheap way to treat yourself. The first time I went to M & S Foodhall after lockdown (when I just used my local supermarket) I was overwhelmed with all the delicious things available to buy. . I can remember going to someone's house for lunch in the 1970s and a bowl of crisps was put on the table for us all to share, I thought that was such a treat, now I can grab a bag of crisps anytime I want and no longer see them as a treat.

And another point is that we are all encouraged to eat three meals a day, whether we are genuinely hungry or not. I have had success losing weight by doing intermittent fasting and eating twice (sometimes once) a day but it is not easy when you are also cooking for a family, so often you eat out of habit, or boredom or just because "it's time for dinner". I rarely feel 'hunger' because food is just so easily available and tempting.

First and most importantly, I am to blame. Nobody forced me to eat absolute rubbish.

However, my mental health has been very bad in the past, I use food as a coping mechanism, I've always had a bad relationship with food and self image. I've always either been too slim or too overweight.

I”m lazy and greedy. My mother’s family have addictive personalities-she’s addicted to alcohol, my uncle too, another uncle to drugs, an aunt to food-all siblings. My addiction is obviously food.

Emotional eating. Lifelong aversion to sport due to school PE experiences. Work schedule not conducive to health eating and maintaining a fitness plan. It takes a lot of planning for me to be able to stick to this, but it’s one of the few things that Covid has helped as my work travel is less.

When I was pregnant I had severe pelvic pain and could barely walk. I went from exercising every day to being unable to walk. I have also never known a hunger like it, I could have eaten a 5 course meal three times a day. I was so sad and in such pain all I could do was eat. I put on 3 stone in about 6 months.

I'm 18m post pregnancy now, my pain is still bad but I've been doing as much exercise as I can and I'm 4lbs off a healthy BMI. It's been really hard I can't deny it. But I found living with the extra weight really hard too. My confidence was rock bottom.

I should have said I just learned I was technically obese which I couldn't believe! I'm 5ft 8/9 and was a big size 16. Everyone was shocked when I said my BMI was obese but maybe our perception is just warped?

I've always been a comfort eater.

I have a lot of stress with constant exams.

I also avoided going to the gym because of Covid.

I think with "obese" it's just that we tend to have a clear cultural/everyday image of obesity which is someone very, very overweight and rotund. Whereas BMI obese means "the stage beyond "overweight" - they presumably drew that line where they did for a reason, but of course it's going to contain a wide range.

Coming off ADHD medication and looking for dopamine hit from food. Not enough physical activity. More calories than expending. Not doing anything about it. Huge icecream cravings over summer. Eating to cope with lockdown.

Decided to stop, in week 2 of a healthy meal plan and lost 4lbs so far.

I also think peoples perception of 'normal' weigh has changed, women seem to be either super fit and toned or obese.
Very few seem to be a healthy weight without actually working at it.

Being out of work and bored shitless for me.

I was quite slim as a student, then had dc (actually lost weight while pregnant because I couldn't eat), then piled it on while he was very young as I was eating biscuits and toast instead of proper meals. My build changed though so even though I weighed less, my hip bones and rib cage were so much wider that a lot of stuff didn't fit (or fit in the same way.)

Then he went to school and I was still a sahm, and would go for coffee and cake 2/3 times a week, as well as eating the types of food dp likes (very carbon heavy, think lasagne garlic bread and chips, pie and chips and bread, two packets of instant noodles as a snack). He has remained 10st for as long as I have known him, but I can't eat anything like him and not put on weight. We eat a lot of takeaway pizza too.

I also blame hormonal bc for some of my weight gain. I put on a stone after I started taking the pill and have never been below my pre bc weight since.

I have started a new job recently that involves being on my feet for most of a 12 hour shift, so I'm hoping that, with a few tweaks to diet (soup for tea when I get in as too knackered for a big meal for example) will help shift some of it.

I think you are right about being overweight bring normalised Blackbear19. I made a conscious decision at the beginning of the year to lose weight and get fit. I've had loads of people tell me I didn't need to lose weight and I was slim: I really wasn't and I'm still not quite in the healthy BMI range now!

Any exercise, even just a walk, I have to do on my own as DP has knee and foot problems. He's finally woken up to the fact that he should lose weight after the GP suggested he do so as he has some arthritis.

@JoysOfString

I think with "obese" it's just that we tend to have a clear cultural/everyday image of obesity which is someone very, very overweight and rotund. Whereas BMI obese means "the stage beyond "overweight" - they presumably drew that line where they did for a reason, but of course it's going to contain a wide range.

I agree with this.

At the peak of the Covid-19 deaths, I was shocked at how many people I knew who had died or been very ill with no underlying factors such as age/illness/obesity.

Then when I did my own BMI and realised that I was technically just about obese, at a size 14/16, I realised that people I thought of as being "overweight" "tubby" or "a bit flabby" were in fact in the obese category, and this probably explained why so many of us knew someone who we felt should have been "safer."

I am now overweight and aiming for "normal" for health reasons, and have found this strangely more compelling than my usual vanity reasons.

eating too much (of the wrong kind) and too little of the good stuff. and not moving enough.

I could always blame it on my circumstances (lone parent, trying to hold down a job whilst parenting 2 DC, one of which has complex SN) resulting in burnout, depression and just generally struggling to cope but honestly, I have no discipline when it comes to eating. I have only mzself to blame.

sophiestew - I agree!

Basically just eating too much, especially of the wrong thing and doing no exercise. I did start off ok on the exercise front but that waned and I’ve done nothing for a long time.

Totally down to me.

The NHS.
I got pregnant with dd and during the pregnancy a disc slipped but even though I was shuffling round on a zimmerframe and going to see a consultant and physio appointments for 7 years no one actually looked at me (I mean that literally) I think the strain on my joints led to me developing arthritis so I cannot exercise, coupled with now menopause and insomnia I don’t think I will be thin again.

If I hadn’t have gone private and got someone to look at me I dread to think where I would be now.

Probably dead I don’t think I could have taken the pain any more

@Blackbear19 I also think peoples perception of 'normal' weigh has changed, women seem to be either super fit and toned or obese. Very few seem to be a healthy weight without actually working at it.

This is quite true for a number of reasons. It's very, very easy in our society to get overweight. Food is plentiful, unhealthy food is addictive, easy and cheap. Our lives, en masse, are more sedentary than they have ever been. Putting on weight little by little as a young adult and then the weight gain accelerating as you get older is a very, very normal thing to just happen. If you realise it's happening and restrict your food intake, the strong odds are you will go back to a healthy weight, get complacent and get heavy again. Then either stay heavy or keep yo-yoing between restricting and dieting.

The only realistic way to stop that happening is to have a complete lifestyle change. And the odds are that the way you will change your lifestyle is if you find a sporting hobby that you fall in love with. And if you fall in love with a sport, there are really good odds that you will want to be as good at it as you can be. So at that point you start working on improving your body, not because of looks or even health, but for performance. The looks and health are a very real bonus, but they have stopped being what the person is working for.

If you go back to a point where people were naturally very active, they would be slim and physically strong. But they weren't guaranteed the ability to eat well. They also weren't able to change what they were doing in order to fix a physical problem. So if you were a farm-working peasant you'd be very strong but not always well fed and once your back started to cause pain from the labour, it would in all likelihood just get worse and worse until it crippled you. Nowadays people who want to are more likely to have access to a complete nutritionally balanced diet specifically tailored to their needs. They can choose to exercise in a way that gives them the best chance of performing in a way they want. If their back starts to hurt they can adapt their exercise to avoid the pain, or begin a routine to improve back and core strength and flexibility to hopefully recover and be better than ever.

Being fit and athletic is possible in a way that it never really was before. But it's also one of the only ways to avoid the negative consequences of the easy availability of so much food and sedentary livelihoods.

(All this obviously just applies to people in rich countries, as food availability and easier livelihoods are not available to all people.)

Undiagnosed thyroid autoimmune condition. I put on 4 stone in 18 months with no change to my diet and excercise. I only stoped gaining weight when I got in the right meds but it's very hard to lose. Like a PP said, it's like my body now has a natural point it's set at and won't budge from that. I'm currently 6 months pregnant and have only put on 3lbs despite having a big bump and the baby measuring fine.

I love food but have a seriously disfunctional relationship with it, I have mental ill health, I have physical ill health, I have a sensory thing about textures, I'm peri-menopausal, I've got four kids and a husband so I tend to come last in the priorities, I'm not as active as I could/should be, I have seriously disfunctional relationship with my body (years of being told I'm fat when I wasn't had a fundamental effect and definitely not what I assume was the desired one by those telling me this).
I had started doing P.E. with Joe and my plan was to come out of the other end of lockdown a couple of dress sizes down, however, I slipped down the stairs a week in to it and bruised my coccyx badly which put me out for three weeks and then all my motivation had gone.
I'm contacting a personal trainer who comes highly recommended to see if she can give me a kick up the backside and help me address a few of the reasons above!

SSRI
PCOS
And two seriously painful knees which make anything other than swimming out (my swimming pool is still not open either )

Someone recently gifted me some crystal heirloom wine glasses as I complained that ours were too big.

They are TINY

It’s not hard to see why people drink and eat more now.

My love of wine, got away with it before menopause hit.

I was absolutely eating to feed the numb and empty emotions.
Dh has been out of work on and off for two years. Chocolate makes me feel better