Thanks, Joanie. I felt a bit stupid opening my life like that and having people shoot me down for posting on a thread they didn't like. It was hard for me to write that.

I hope it helps someone else.

No problem! Keep posting, and keep examining your eating habits. If you do so, I can almost guarantee you'll have greater success in the long run.

Amen.

I was an extremely skinny child. Then I hit puberty and developed a pot belly.

My parents were always very health concious. We were not allowed junk food at all. In fact we didn't eat much meat either. We ate a lot of soya, fruit and vegetables.

As soon as the weight started to notice, my parents went ape. Fatty food was banned. I was allowed meals like weetabix, orange juice and banana for breakfast. Actually I stopped eating breakfast at about age 12 and it's only since LCing that I've started eating it again.

My parents weighed and measured my food and weighed me daily. The weight continued to creep on.

I was always quite an active person. As a family, we'd think nothing of hiking ten miles or more. I walked to school and back every day. We went swimming a couple of times a week. I played sports at school a couple of times a week, despite having asthma which could make it quite tortuous.

No matter, by the time I left home I weighed more than 200 pounds, though some of that was muscle.

I carried on eating two meals a day in adulthood, mostly low fat, high carb. I ate a lot of bread, pasta and tomatos, that kind of thing. Additionally, I discovered junk food and alcohol, which definitely didn't help. I'll also hold my hand up to being a comfort eater. So despite working outdoors in all weathers for most of my adult life, I'm well on my way to 300 pounds. With low carbing (stone age diet), I've stabilised and am slowly starting to lose weight.

I suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome and insulin resistance, and have also discovered I have gluten intolerance and casein intolerance. Caused by my obesity or a comlicating factor, who knows.

I'm just glad I finally found a solution. I'm the only overweight member of my family.

all the weight charts would call 200 obese at that height..and so would i!!
i am 5/9 1/2" and at 200 i am still obese, trust me!

The reason so many Americans are obese is simple..too much sugar and carbs! For me personally i did the whole yo yo dieting thing for years and tried the low fat low cal diets, but for my hubby..he never yo yo dieted, he never did low cal or low fat..and he ended up weighing 340 lbs by age 29!! Then he went on Atkins and lost 90 lbs bringing him down to 250 lbs (which is barely overweight for his height of 6'5"). After a couple years he has now decided to continue on and lose ALL his body fat so he is back on atkins shooting for 215 lbs. Anyways, he is an example of someone that got obese simply by eating a bunch of fast food, sugar and carbs!

Nails it on the head himself....thanks.

Food may have a part in it but I think not being active enough contributes to obesity much more. With the invention of Tv's, cars, nintendoes, computers and all our other convieniences, we stay on our butts almost the whole day long.

We drive to work, sit at the computer, drive home and sit and watch tv. There is a little activity in between those obviously but not nearly enough as our bodies need.

I personally have started to use the computer more because of my home business and although I am 115 right now I do see the pounds creeping on and the flabbiness building up. This always happens in the Winter. I gain maybe 5-10 lbs. When Summer comes I use the computer still but I am more active and the pounds drop off easily.

I grew up VERY skinny and even as a young adult at 5 ft. 10 inches and 125 lbs. I was very thin. I gained weight with each of my 5 children and never completely shed the extra lbs. I had gained with the pregnancies. My weight finally settled in at about 160. I still looked pretty good because my weight was stretched out on my tall frame. While in my 30's, I had a lot of dental work done. Unfortunately I had an incompetant military dentist who kept losing the files he was using for my root canal down into my tooth. He gave me multiple xrays to find the file ea. time he would lose one. I got concerned and just didn't go back, but the damage was done--my thyroid was almost completely destroyed from the excessive xrays. I was lucky I didn't get cancer. Anyway, after that I began to feel very sluggish and would be sleepy all day long. I would just pass out and sleep for hours if I was at home. Also, even though my eating habits were the same as always, I began to gain weight and no matter how hard I tried, I could not lose it. Finally I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. That was the good news (at least I knew what was causing my weight gain). The bad news was I was beginning menopause, which further slowed down my metabolism. A DOUBLE whammy! Being on thryroid medication stopped my weight gain, but it doesn't help me to lose the weight I already gained. My weight had shot up to 260. I was miserable. Then I discovered low carbing. I have lost more than 20 lbs. but its taken 2 years. I am still working on it and losing a little at a time very slowly. But at least I am not gaining. That is MY story.

Everytime I see this thread pop-up, I think back to Kristen (the mod) observing how this thread has become like "Return of the Living Dead."

It just won't die....LMAO

Why or how this thread started is completely irrelevant. Thinking about how you got obese is IMPORTANT. In fact, to not do so almost guarantees that you will fail in your weight loss/get healthy quest. The reason the thread doesn't die is because the core question is a critical one.

I do not quite qualify, but I'll bite.

My best guess is that because I developed a taste for sugar so young.

In retrospective, I see that my family served very reasonable portions.

What was not reasonable was the free access to snacks anytime. snacks that would be tons of Fudge-o, Oreo, Honeycomb.

I must be lucky to not be diabetic.

Since I learnt to change my taste in 2003, my world has changed.

Well said. This thread seriously improves with age. To whoever starts harping next about killing it, I have one question: How did you become so obese?

Take a swing at my post count. C'mon, I dare ya.

Hmm,

In my case, and in most people's cases I really do not think it can be pinpointed so easily and simplified like saying "it was the sugar". Oh, but it was so much more than just sugar. Yes, something like that did contribute immensly, but so did all the other factors throughout ones life of ill fated choices. It was just one factors in a unafortunate sequence of change that occured. No one was born fat.

It has to do with much more. To me, weight loss is oh soooo much more than just eating right and excercising.

Weight loss, and the subsequent "learning" is a unique amalgamate of mind, body, and soul. When you have certain elements, be it emotional, societal, physical or whatever that cause and gear you towards an unhealthy weight situation, it is extremely difficult to grasp the problem.

It has more to do with "don't eat the cake", but more so "why do you wan't cake to begin with", and better yet "why is it there". Yes even cake has and had a purpose, and that is what I strive to find out.

The journey is far from over, with anyone. It has just began.

I blame low cal dieting and yoyo dieting. And alot of people are afraid of fat in there food. So they starve themselves with all the empty calories, and if you eat carby/ starchy food you are hungry in an hour tops. I can tell you that from experience. There was nobody more dedicated to ultra low fat dieting then I was, and I was always hungry. So misinformation is the key to diet failure. Judy

Yes it does get better!! And when I said that I wished it would die, I was wrong and Joanie is right!!

I find it funny that you registered to make a post with no stats....hiding much?