Why are you obese?

[Beautybunny]

I have been following a fab thread regarding others not being obese. Lots of posters that are obese have commented that the strategies other have don't work for them. I have tried many diets, acupuncture, fasting, diet pills etc. In my adult life I have been a size 8 and a size 22. Food and wine are my comfort in unhappy times. I have a nutrition qualification and am a very competent cook. I was also a vegetarian for years. I like my veg. Never had a weight problem until I had my children. Their births were followed by a harrowing law suit and then a bereavement. I have lost weight on and off in the last twenty years but generally I have been fat and getting fatter as I now take steriods for RA. I also have an under active thyroid. I find slimming groups difficult as the logic can be a bit bonkers (mashed banana is a syn etc). I also work away so the personal trainer approach is not convenient. Has anyone used a good therapist /weight loss guru? I know my weight is my amour against attack, it started in my childhood. If I have a shitty employer I put on weight, conversely I had a great one in 2016/17 and lost two stone naturally. I would love any suggestions.

I’m what you would class as borderline obese. If I put in my height from my early 20s I’m bmi 29 (overweight). If I accept that I have actually shrunk and have lost an inch then I’m bmi 30 (obese). I’ve never been thin, always been at the very top end of healthy or low end overweight but I piled it on during lockdown 1. I was just sitting at home with all the snacks and not enough exercise.
I’ve recently started Noom though which seems great and is currently working very well (5lb down in 10 days). It’s just calorie counting really but there is also psychology lessons each day, you get a personal coach to message (although mines in America so only replies at night time), and I believe at week 3 you get an online group too. But I like the way it automatically adjusts my daily calorie allowance based on my steps and activities. It’s all very much about moderation and no syns to count out.

Because bingeing is literally the only thing that gives me a few seconds of control and release in my life at the moment.
It's a form of self harm and I know it but every time life turns to shit (more shit, it's always bad tbh) it's like a really unhealthy crutch.

I was trying hard to lose weight and succeeding in a small way last month but shit happens and I can't cope.
I do hurt myself too but not to the extent I used to as I don't want my DC to know.

I'm punishing myself, it's kind of like drugs and alcohol for some people, I just want to take the pain away.

I was bang in the middle of healthy weight until I started taking tablets last year.
The neurologist said they would make me hungry, they don't, they just make me fat.

I was a healthy weight until I had dc in my mid 30s, that's when I started to struggle with my weight. I could no longer eat what I wanted and stay slim. My dh had an affair and became abusive which kept my weight off due to stress, then divorce and another poor relationship meant I kept my weight off. However I met my now dh about 10 years ago, and because I'm happy and content I eat. I'm just in the obese category, however it's because I snack on an evening, a lot.

Bad habits formed in childhood. While my diet wasn’t awful (I would shun processed food like fish fingers and chips for a homemade meal like a roast or cottage pie etc) I probably had portions that were way too big and lived on comforting meat and two veg type meals. I was very active as a child and competed in gymnastics regionally and trampolining until a teenager so I never really had a day without exercise but was always chunky. I was allowed to drink fizzy drinks too much (multiple cans of coke daily) left me with a horrible fizzy addiction. Once I stopped the sports I really piled the weight on, parents worked shifts and late shifts so I lived on ready meals like curry or pizza and would often have bread or crisps alongside it. I was a desperately unhappy teenager so I think used food as an emotional crutch, and still do to this day. I’m chronically lazy and have anxiety so leaving the house is really difficult for me so often I’m barely getting off the sofa.

I have a child now so I’m really aware of getting her out of the house and not passing on these issues to her so working to address my issues.

@HopelessSinking

I don't do drugs but I do drink a lot (my friends do too, even the slim ones). My husband has a cupboard of booze I don't touch but I would always drink a whole bottle of wine. My pain does go away then. With this comes the crisps and cheese. I personally think a good counsellor would help but it is not easy to find them. I have been married for years to a kind man but my wider family are shits. Particularly my sister. I went to AA thinking that was the answer but I can have a cupboard full of booze I don't touch so I don't really have that addiction although I talk rubbish when p*ssed. I also have stacks of cheese and cakes in the house. Don't eat them but the fat has come from somewhere. I get how food helps momentarily.

I lost 3 stone last year. It is as much of a battle to keep it off as it was to lose it. Its a bit depressing sometimes that I know I'll have to do this for the rest of my life if I want to keep it off (and I do). I was a binge eater and a sugar addict.

I used to say I gained the weight because of pregnancy, but really, I just ate too much. It was only when I took a real long hard look and evaluated my entire lifestyle that it started to change.

I used no therapists, no slimming clubs. Everything you need to know you can find out online. I made small changes. Educated myself about nutrition. Focused on food first. Then drinking more water. Then exercise (home workouts, then running outside). Then sleep. Then mindset. Habits grow over time. I really recommend a book called atomic habits - it genuinely changed my life.

Always been overweight, am now just obese according to my BMI. I don't like the way I look or feel.

Party of my problem is that eating is an emotional response for me. Bored? I eat. Sad? I eat. Tired? I eat. And I eat badly, too. To much freedom and to many crisps/ chocolate as I was growing up didn't help, so now my go-to foods are sugary, fattening and generally unhealthy.

I'm trying CBT to learn to stop the link between mood and food but it is a long, slow process. When I managed to get down to 9st 10lbs a decade ago I was so much happier. I keep wanting to get down to that again but I self-sabotage constantly. It's draining.

If you already know that wine makes you eat lots, then it’s kind of clear what you need to do to start!

I don't know how to stop eating. I'm autistic and I have real issues with needing to eat that stem way back to my childhood. I was about 10 or so when I started compulsively taking food. I couldn't stop myself. I still struggle now.

@NiceTwin

I take loads of tablets including steriods. I have always been hungry. I could eat a whole anything!
Had first child at 33, was lovely and trim after then bang, pushed out of job. Shit in the work place ever since. People use my size against me. I would love to be slim one more time. I hate being the fat one.

Because I treat myself to wine and cheese at night once the days work and parenting is done, I'm alone and feel I deserve something nice. Through the day I make good choices, porridge for breakfast, protein and salad or veg for lunch and dinner, rarely biscuits, cakes or crisps really. It's just that late night thing. I sometimes make myself do a puzzle or knit or even reading means my hands are busier so the snacking stops.

I think poor lessons when I was younger I was your stereotypical 90s diet, smile faces, chicken nuggets etc., Which would never fill me up so I would then eat more. This coupled with being a very picky eater as a child (much better now) meant I didn't learn good to make good choices.

My thyroid is also wrecked (not an excuse now as I'm medicated) but that's how I piled it on in the first place. Now I'm stable and it's a case of losing it. I go up and down about a stone. (Which throws me from overweight to obese and back again). I think I'm obese right now as I've just been on my honeymoon and I'm only starting to watch my weight again.

I think I just like cheese too much tbh. I have good willpower for a while and then I give up as I tbh the only way I've lost weight is tracking everything I eat as it's so easy to over eat with a wee snack here and there. I'm pretty short.

I was obese, overweight since I was a child and then carried on gaining weight in my teens. For me I think it was a combination of things, for example, the more weight I put on, the more self conscious I became about my body and the less I wanted to play sports etc; I also found the lower my self esteem was the less motivated i was to look after myself and my body. I also binge ate, I'd eat until I was physically sick sometimes, not because I enjoyed it, but because I couldn't stop thinking about that particular food until I ate it, no matter what I tried. I'd hide packets in my room and was really ashamed of it, but carried on and the self loathing cycle continued. I just thought I was greedy, but I understand now it was more complex for me.

I lost a lot of weight at university just by being busy, walking a lot (as in hours a day rather than paying for a bus!), but it soon piled back on when I graduated. I had a breakdown a few years ago and received emergency mental health support. This included therapy and medication for anxiety/depression, and honestly my urge to binge slowly faded, I started to love my body which meant I wanted to spend time exercising. I still have the urge to binge now and again, but have coping mechanisms for my triggers now.

I think for me it wasn't about the food at all really, but that was a way I dealt with what was going on in my head.

I do plenty of exercise but over eat. Big portion sizes and snacks. I think it goes back to child hood. We didn't always have food available

Oh and I drink calories. Lots of cold coffees, lattes ext

I am morbidly obese still but on a downward journey finally which IS going to be the last time. I got to this point after a lifetime of comfort eating, I went to my first weight clinic aged 8 and am now 57.
I have eaten my way through any event or life happening, that is the ONLY truth. What changed for me was visiting friends and having to ask for a kitchen chair because I didn't trust their garden chairs, going out with my son who was taking me for lunch and realising I was picking a venue based on chair stability and then hearing a very dear friend describe someone who is extremely morbidly obese and hearing hidden disgust in their voice at their lack of control. I have lost 2 stones 2lbs in 6 weeks and am going to continue.

I had a traumatic childhood and learned to use food as a way to make me feel okay.

@Hippywannabe

I am morbidly obese still but on a downward journey finally which IS going to be the last time. I got to this point after a lifetime of comfort eating, I went to my first weight clinic aged 8 and am now 57. I have eaten my way through any event or life happening, that is the ONLY truth. What changed for me was visiting friends and having to ask for a kitchen chair because I didn't trust their garden chairs, going out with my son who was taking me for lunch and realising I was picking a venue based on chair stability and then hearing a very dear friend describe someone who is extremely morbidly obese and hearing hidden disgust in their voice at their lack of control. I have lost 2 stones 2lbs in 6 weeks and am going to continue.

Wow that's amazing, what a fantastic start!

Big portions and clearing your plate - left over from my childhood.
Now, it’s frothy coffees and lots of biscuits/chocolate in the house, which I didn’t have as a child.
Peri menopause has meant I’ve developed a belly like a barrel , and I can’t seem to shift it.

Interesting a PP saying they had unlimited choice of unhealthy food as a child. In my childhood my DM was very health conscious and always ‘watching her weight’. So sugary treats were always rationed and used as reward and for special days. I remember sneaking sweets and once at a buffet made myself sick by overeating.

So I’ve spent a lifetime trying to stop rewarding myself with sugar. I haven’t succeeded psychologically but it’s more under control and because of that I am, for the first time in my adult life, not overweight. But it’s a constant struggle.

A chain of events a few years ago led to depression and fear of going out (in my head, I had to be available incase there was a problem at school... but at the same time, I couldn't answer the phone.)

Food made it better while doing no exercise.

Now its trying to shift it.

I'm lazy. My body responds best to 3 meals a day. Instead I exist on coffee, toast and peanuts. I work at a desk for ridiculous hours each day and some days don't even get to 1000 steps. I could blame it on the PCOS or the WFH but with concerted effort I have lost the weight before. I do not like the way I look currently and am determined to lose it before 50.

Definately agree with the not really food thing. If I am honest I feel bullied at work and not respected. I know I need a new job but it took me a year to get this one due to covid. We also lost a lot of money and I am trying to put it back. I want to tell my employers to feck off but I can't yet so I eat. I have lovely staff that I enjoy working with but there is one director that undermines everyone. A total cock. I speak with him then scoff my face. Nowt to do with food really.

I eat too much. Every day I think today is the day I'm going to break the habit. Come 3pm and I'm stuffing my face.