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.

Oh yes and emotional eating too - happy/sad/hot/cold/ill/well/busy/bored I eat!! I would love to be someone who can't eat or forgets to eat when they are busy or miserable!!! Me not remembering to eat would be like someone else not remembering to breathe - impossible!!!

I started eating to make the emotional pain go away when I was 8/9. Not helped with being made to finish everything on my plate because of starving children in Africa. I’m 46 and haven’t learned another way yet. I’m chucking money at therapy at the moment but it’s not a quick fix. I am fit and healthy and exercise a lot but this does not make me lose weight. I need to eat less and so does DH. We enable each other which isn’t great. DD2 is filling out at nearly 10 so we need to address this urgently.

This is a really interesting thread.

For me it's a number of things:
Complex PTSD means I have emotional flashbacks from triggers that I am not always aware of. Being in my parents' house is one. One of my "freeze" reactions is to eat or drink excessively when I am emotionally triggered. The only trouble is I can't avoid many of these things and it often takes me a while to realise that I am being triggered or have gone into an emotional flashback. I get a feeling of discomfort and don't know what to do about it, then choose to eat or drink alcohol to relieve the feeling. But all it really does is numb the feeling. Then when I realise what it was, the calories are already consumed.

I also have chronic low blood pressure and I am attracted to salty foods. Salt makes me feel good as it raises my blood pressure, so I will eat crisps of chips like medicine.

I also had a miscarriage a few years ago. I am unable to conceive while overweight so stayed fat as a defence to protect myself from the possibility of another loss. I did shift some weight to have DS when I eventually felt ready but now I'm right back where I was.

Boredom eating. I need to lose about 2 stone. I know exactly how to lose the weight and I'm really unhappy being the size that I am, I just lack the motivation.
I can eat really well all day and then I binge at night out of habit.

My parents encouraged us to eat more than we wanted to as kids and seemed to have no idea of appropriate portion sizes. We'd be made to finish our food. We were both incredibly fat and I put on about a stone a year until I left home.

I now have PCOS and other health issues and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get down to a healthy weight.

Comfort eating without a doubt, everything feels better whilst eating but it only lasts as long as I'm eating.
I've got a gastric band now so I have to think of other ways to feel better because if I try and eat my old foods I'm just sick.
I clean, paint the house, have various other hobbies and don't drink alcohol because if I did I think that would replace the food and I'd be an alcoholic.

• portion size
• too much festive food on non festive days
• too little movement
• forgetting that I need less calories the older I get
• not taking the effects of my thyroid problem into account

Self medication.
Food has a brilliant (albeit temporary) ability to subdue depressive thoughts, anxiety, sadness, grief.
The same way others use alcohol, drugs, obsessive exercise, shopping etc. to alleviate MH issues.

Stress and comfort eating. Works stressful, life hasn't been the happiest for the past few years and my weight crept up and I just didn't care. I didn't care about myself, wasn't taking care of my appearance, life was(and still is busy) and I told myself it didn't matter.

A little while back I decided to change things and as of this morning my bmi is 25, still have more I want to lose though. I have started c25k in the hopes that I can replace stress eating with stress running so I suppose we will see how that goes.

Leg problems which means I can only manage about 5k a day

Frustrating
Unavoidable too as I’m human and cannot starve myself while undergoing such misery

Also I'm not sure what my motivation is to lose weight other than looking a bit more glamorous, being able to wear different clothes perhaps, being able to run faster, but the thing is I'm really comfortable in my skin as I am and am fit so I'm not strongly motivated to cut down my food or drink as it's miserable and I eat a good diet anyway. I could do with losing 2 stone for BMI reasons, but I'm not massive, 5'7" and a size 14, and not in bad shape, pretty well-proportioned. Health things may come into play when I'm older and I worry about putting more weight on (though I haven't overall in the last ten years) but currently my cholesterol and blood sugar are perfect, resting heart rate and blood pressure are low and I hardly ever get colds let alone anything. Endometriosis and probably now peri-menopause/menopause symptoms are managed well by the mini pill.

Emotional eating brought about by feeling inadequate and being bullied as a child. Then a series of abusive relationships which led to me eating for comfort.
I know what I need to do to lose weight, I know how to do it and I definitely want to do it but I think after years of feeling and being told I’m not worth anything I need to get past that barrier and convince myself I am worth helping

As a child I loved food and ate too much as it made me feel better when I was unhappy.

My mother had issues around food and spent all her time getting people to eat. My dad grew up extremely poor in rural Italy and had a number of traumas that made him binge eat particularly sugar in the evenings
My parents were not the sortr to do any exercise either though they both had very physical jobs which kept them very fit despite their overeating until they retired . The over eating didn't really impact their health as neither had heart problems or diabetes and both died in their 90s. One of a brain tumor and one of just old age

This means although I know being obese is bad for me,.I look at parents and dont see this. Also the fact that I can still exercise quite a bit, have normal blood pressure and glucose means I am jjust am not motivated enough to make the long term changes I need to I don't feel like I want to be lighter. I am used it this and am genuinely ok at this weight ) BMI of 36. The only reason I am still trying to .lose weight is because everyone else says I should.

Having said that I have changed what I eat a lot over the last couple of years but that is because I feel better and more energetic for it .I still like eating a lot though and don't want to give that up. Hence I am not losing much weight

I definitely comfort eat. If I am stressed ie. teenager stropping with me so I have to confront, be firm, discipline etc. I get a physical urge to quell the unpleasant, tight knot in my stomach with food...quickly. Stops me crying. So that usually means a fistful of cereal or slices of bread/toast and it’s almost frenzied.

That is compounded by no ‘off’ button when it comes to appetite but especially to heavy carbs ie. potatoes, pasta, pastry, bread anything with starchy ‘weight’ to it. My partner pointed this out to me. I can eat and eat and eat and have no urge to stop other than feeling embarrassed.

Low-level depression when food becomes a distraction ‘something to do’, to ‘delay’ jobs I don’t want to do and general unhappiness. And then booze. Which again is drank in vast quantities in an addictive way with no ‘off’ switch.

I was a slim teenager hovering around 8 stone and then weight began creeping on at 19 when I went on the pill for a year. Next two decades wavered between 9 and half stone to 12 and half. 40s-50s maxed out at 13 and a half, mid-50s now and have peaked at 15 and a half stone over lockdown. One or two periods within this I have got down to 9st-10 st by dieting or being in a stressful job that meant I felt too sick to eat but the weight always comed back with a vengeance.

Now it’s a bloody mental battle not helped by the menopause. And the fact that I do the sums and projections and know that, even if I’m super strict, it will take me over a year to get to a weight that I considered obscenely fat when I was in my 30s so I can’t celebrate losing a stone, 2 stone, 3 stone or 4 stone even because that will still be deemed fat and that makes me depressed and defeatist.

I know I overeat. I know I drink too much. I know exercise is hard and I worry about having a stroke or a heart attack if I over exert myself and it becomes a catch 22.

Currently I am low-carbing (again) and have been alcohol-free For 6 weeks. Trouble is, I don’t feel like me. I feel like someone who is pretending to be someone else and that somehow fatness is my lot in life.

It’s as much a mental thing for me as a physical state. I’m utterly ashamed by it.

Let alone anything else I meant to say there.

Stress and emotional over eating made me put on weight.

Having a small TDEE is making it hard to lose weight. Unless I eat 1000 cals or less I can't lose weight. I gained weight whilst on weight watchers. I've been to the doctors for help as I suspect hormonal issues (my hair has changed from straight to curly) but he just suggested another weight loss group and didn't even weigh me.

I'm now been doing 16:8 for 3 weeks which is helping the overeating but I've not lost any weight yet.

I am fat and flabby because i eat poorly. I eat healthy throughout the week only to eat carbs carbs and more carbs in the weekend leaving me worse off. I have only myself to blame. .
And the government incouraging you to eat out doesnt make you fat. You can eat out and it healthy. Nobody is forcing you to go to KFC. Only yourself

So yeah. I am fat. Because i lack willpower and am too lazy in the weekends. Oh and when i have my period. Or when i feel sad. Or when i feel fat hahahha. I actually just joined a gym (not in uk btw). Ready to break the habit/cycle. I am ready to be not fat anymore. I wanna love myself and my body.

I just fucking love junk food and cant be arsed to cook from scratch all the time.

Eating too much and not exercising enough.

BMI 27.7 because I eat too much. My portions are too big. I cook from scratch most of the time but this last 2 years we've had more takeaways. I haven't gained additional weight in these 2 years though so for me, take-aways and junk food are no worse than a stupidly large portion of home cooked food. I don't really snack as we don't keep snack food in the house, but if I want chocolate or crap food, I have no concerns about getting ubereats to deliver it - usually of an evening in front of the TV.

I'm lazy and I'm greedy and gluttonous. It's really that simple!

Underactive thyroid, plus menopause, makes losing weight really difficult but putting it on easy. I am chronically tired and so eat for energy but then get fatter.

@Rumbletumbleinmytummy your story put a lump in my throat

I've not always been fat - I was BMI 21/22 until I was 27 or 28 then just ballooned really over the course of a year. I've remained a stable 27.7 BMI for 7 years now.

Sitting on my arse too much.
Eating too much in the way of snack foods, although I don't eat a huge amount overall - but definitely too much sugar.
Not doing anything much in the way of exercise, which creates a vicious cycle with back and hip problems. Too much exercise > back and hip pain > sitting more > more weight > harder on back and hips > less exercise > more weight etc. etc.
Menopause isn't helping now either!

Short story, what makes 99.99% of people overweight, consuming too many calories and not burning them off.

Long story is I’m an emotional eater. Bad day? Chocolate will fix it. Feel bad because I’ve gained weight? A cream cake will make me feel better. Done well? Celebrate with cake!