17 People Who Have Struggled With Their Weight On How They Got Fat

1. Drinks.

Alcohol is such a diet killer. I put on so much weight when I went to college because of the amount I drank.

2. Eating while drinking.

For me it’s not so much about drinking (of course it affects too), it’s the eating that comes along with drinking alcohol. When I’m drunk I just can’t resist going to McDonald’s or getting a pizza. I haven’t eaten McDonald’s or other junk food sober for like a year. But when I’m drunk…

I’ve been weighting my self everyday since summer. My weight has stayed the same. On the weekdays, I always lose about a pound, but on the weekend I gain it back.

3. All my life.

I been fat my whole life. I would drink about 12 cans of Pepsi a day, plus I eat unhealthy food not many fruit or vegetables. As a kid I was active, I didn’t do sport but a bunch of us would play football, basketball, and kickball after school.

I have always been embarrassed by my weight. I go to the beach and go swimming with my shirt on. I went to six flags and got on a ride and could not fit in the belt. No one has ever seen me naked because of my embarrassment it one of the reasons why I am a virgin, because if my body make me sick why would a female find it attractive.

My weight got to 280 when I had enough, so for the past year. I stop drinking soda, and change my diet. I now weight 195, and I am closer to being thinner.

4. Sympathy Eating.

While my wife was pregnant, she started eating all kinds of weird things. To keep her from feeling self conscience about it, I started eating it all with her. And the result is that I look like I am going to have a baby soon.

5. When I was young.

Started out when I was young. I was the youngest in my family so am the most pampered by my parents as well. Any delicious kind of food I wanted, BAM they get it for me and the unwanted food from my elder brothers who lead an active lifestyle also go to me because “let’s not waste food”. And then so developed my love for food whereby I didn’t give a shit, bought and drank whatever the hell I wanted. When I was 12 years old I weighed 90 friggin’ kilograms (near 200 pounds) and this continued till it peaked 125kg at age 16. Needless to say the consequences of being that big sized was a harsh one. Lack of social life, inability to do many activities etc. etc. Then one day I was watching “The Simpsons” with the episode where Bart got addicted to junk food and became fat and Marge said “I could tell people that at least Bart has his health. Now he has nothing.” (something to that extent) and it sorta hit home for me because even between my brothers I was the one that was not doing so well academically either. And then it actually made me very motivated to begin losing weight and enjoying life. Of all places to find the reason to lose weight, it was from a damn cartoon. I laugh about that thinking back now.

Not sure about you guys but my country(Singapore) offers so many numerous kinds of unhealthy food mostly the food of other ethnicities instead of Chinese mainly from Indians and Malays. Such an example would be Roti Prata, Murtabak, Mutton soup, Mee Rebus, Mee Siam, Laksa. Just leaving it here in case you guys wanna google check any of these.

6. Cancer.

I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Between having ol’ lefty removed and starting chemotherapy, I decided to “put a little money in the bank” as I called it. Malnourishment is a major issue with chemo patients.
I started eating ice cream with every meal. I put extra butter on my popcorn. I ordered sides of everything when going out to eat because, as I explained to our waitress, I was a growing boy. (One of the best parts about having cancer is that you’re allowed to make otherwise off-limits cancer jokes)

I didn’t get really that fat, but I did put on a good 25-30 lbs while loosing muscle. It was a great time.

7. I’ll admit it.

I’m huge. I’ll admit it.

It started with just having a bit of a pot belly that the other kids my age didn’t have. You know like the girl in little miss sunshine? My frame was sturdier. I had slightly thicker legs and arms than the other girls in my school despite being a very active kid. I was in swim squad every morning and rode my bike everywhere.

Despite being as active as I was, I was always a little heavier than most kids my age. I wasn’t fat, just not thin. As I got older I got a little heavier, even though I was still very active.

Then we moved interstate and I started school in a remote town with 12 kids in the entire school. There was no swim squad, no football oval to run around on, kids didn’t include me in games…

I felt like an outcast, but the one thing I was good at was schoolwork. So I did the best I could at that. I wasn’t riding my bike around after school because there was nowhere to go, nothing to do and no-one to go and see. I would spend my time reading or eating to curb boredom. After a while I would snack on whatever was around to make me feel better after another day of being shunned. One day my parent’s tone changed from: “You’re not fat sweetie!” to “Why are you eating that? No wonder you’re getting fat.”

I packed on about 25 kilo’s in my last 2 years of primary school and then high school started. They didn’t give a crap about physical activity, it was about studying. And the pressure to do well or end up ‘stuck in this hole of a town’ was phenomenal. So I turned all my attention to study. And while I made friends early on, once they all got into things like alcohol, drugs, wagging school and misbehaving I stopped being friends with them. I was then branded a loser outcast and a fat cow as well. It didn’t seem to matter what I ate, I developed early on and packed on kilo’s constantly. The more I was stressed and depressed and lonely, the more I isolated myself and ate to calm me down and alleviate boredom. All the kids around me were eating junk but they didn’t seem to gain weight like I was.

High school finished and I weighed 120 kilos. I was definitely into: “I’m a fat disgusting whale” territory by then. But I had dismissed it and didn’t want to think about it. I had university to worry about.

Needless to say I didn’t cope well and my weight gain kept steadily increasing and increasing.

I dropped out after a breakdown and started work. I was too old to do hospitality work (reserved for people under 18 where I live) and did an administration course. Completing that I started work at a call centre. Long periods of time sitting on my ass.

I have had 4 different jobs in the last 5-6 years. All of them have been administrative.

I have gained weight since I was about 13, at the rate of 20 kilos a year.

I weighed 167 kilos the last time I weighed myself. At my heaviest I was 178 kilos (392.4 pounds).

I go through stages of trying to get some of this weight off, but working 9 and a half hours a day in a high stress job makes it hard. I barely have time to have any kind of social life and sleep.

I tried not to let it, but because the weight gain was so steady, I let it define me. I now think of myself as “the fat girl”. I can’t imagine life being any different. I have to size up a chair before I can sit in it and worry that I’m cutting off circulation. Clothes cost a fortune. And now that I’ve gotten as big as I am, if I do lose any weight I am going to need surgery for the excess skin.

I am a master of denial and most of the time I don’t think about it. But when I do examine myself in the mirror it leads to me wishing I was dead. I hate being trapped in this heavy, exhausting, inconvenient, disgusting meatsack and I gaurantee you no-one despises the sight of me more than myself. I honestly consider myself the ugliest person on the planet.

This ruins any chance I have at a relationship because I don’t want the other person to have to ‘settle’ for me. I feel like I would be holding them back. So I sabotage any chance I have at happiness or play dumb. The last time I gave it a try, the person backed out saying they didn’t love me enough.

I try really hard to believe that it’s not because I’m grotesque, but deep down I feel that if I were thin, this wouldn’t be an issue.

I work constantly to prove myself to people, to make them dismiss any ideas they get the second they look at me. I feel like people will hate me on appearance. I’m always shocked when they don’t. I basically feel like I’m in a psychological and physical hell of my own making and there is no way to make it better. For the most part I have everyone fooled, they have no idea that I question how anyone could love someone who looks the way I do. Even my parents.
I know this is more information that you asked for, but once I started writing this it was hard to stop.

8. Comfort.

I was raised poorly and now have a horrible relationship with food. I tend to go from one extreme to the next. I comfort eat then I feel bad so I starve.

9. Zoloft.

tried zoloft for ~6 months. totally zombified me. I hung out on the couch and literally ate 1-2 boxes of Little Debbies everyday,washed down with much Wild Cherry Pepsi.
This made me go from less than 150 pounds maybe to 200.

so it was sort of fast I think, and I didn’t really notice because I guess I didn’t try to put on anything other than my pajamas for a long time. Trying to put on your jeans and having them stop at your knees is saddening.
I definitely don’t like it, and have fortunately lost quite a bit just from going back to my lethargic-but-not-as-glutonous life style, but I definitely need to be a bit more active. it is hard to make myself exercise though as it is unenjoyable, and I feel like I won’t look any better, just have smaller thunder thighs. probably the same for a lot of people.

There is a Sonic right by work that I have definitely been abusing, and have probably gained a few pounds back. Cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, you are my foe. As well as boredom and convenience. cannot do any work while waiting for a background check.

I probably tmi’d this. if so, sorry, I cannot sleep and am babbling, which is more tmi.
Snorlaxxxxxxxxx.

10. Moving to Oregon.

Ummm moved from sunny California to very rainy Oregon. Gained 20 pounds. Then I got pregnant w/my second child and gained 30 pounds. Then got pregnant again really really soon after my second and gained 30 pounds with the 3rd. Went a year an a half got pregnant again but miscarried the baby at 4 1/2 months, while my mother-in-law was dying from pancreatic cancer. Raising a ton of kiddos and dealing with loss put me at 245. I’ve lost almost all that I’ve gained except that I’ve got Rheumatoid Arthritis and fibo now and the drugs they give me make it very hard to drop the last 25-30 pounds. Can’t walk without a cane or a walker most of the time so exercise is very hard to do. Then I lost my oldest child last year in a hit and run and now I could give a shit about losing the last of it. I’m just trying to survive at this point.

11. Read this.

Here’s what happened, and it’s true for a lot of people. If you’re under 25, read this.

Your metabolism will decline in steps. For me, the first downslope was 25. I didn’t pay attention and kept eating like I was a growing teenager. I chunked up a little, but not too bad, so no big deal, right?

At 30, my metabolism took a nose dive. Straight off a cliff, and landed in fatty-fatty land. I still had not modified my diet, so, I ended up being unpleasantly plump.

I corrected it all with three simple things that didn’t require much effort or denial.

No more soda. Avoid HFCS if you can. Soda is soooo bad for you. If you do nothing else, stop drinking soda!

Portion control. It’s amazing how little I need to eat. Where I used to scarf down a plate of enchiladas with sauce, and beans on the side, and rice on the side and two sodas and maybe even some fried ice cream … I am perfectly happy and full just having two simple chicken tacos and a glass of ice water. Still full!

Eat one vegetarian meal a week. Do your best to avoid deep fried crap, but still allow yourself to eat it once in a while.

I dropped 60 pounds and the ladies noticed. It was awesome.

12. Same.

This is so similar to what happened to me.

I’m six feet tall. In high school, I weighed about 145-150 and I was as skinny as a rail, 31″ waist. I could eat as much as I wanted of whatever I wanted, and I wouldn’t add an ounce. That was great.

In college, my metabolism was still pretty fast, but with the addition of beer to my diet, I filled out a bit. Waist size went to 32″, weight was about 155-160. But I could still eat as much as I wanted of whatever I wanted.

In law school, this caught up to me. I went up to about 195, and I started to look fat in my face. I was still very active and working out regularly, but I knew something had to change. It took my then-girlfriend (and now wife)’s influence to help me change.

I stopped drinking soda entirely. My wife is a great cook, and she made lots of healthy food (I wasn’t eating processed crap all the time). And she helped me with portion control as well. I would no longer eat an entire frozen pizza in one sitting. I stopped eating to the point of uncomfortable fullness at every meal.

Over about 6 months, I had dropped back to the 165 range, and I looked a lot better. I didn’t even notice the weight loss happening. But one day, my wife’s sister (who hadn’t seen us in about 8 months) came to visit us and said, “60565, you’ve lost so much weight!”

Now I’m 37, and just keeping these healthy habits have helped me stay in decent shape.

13. Smoking.

Cigarettes. All that shit about appetite suppression don’t matter a good goddamn when you smoke enough to make two flights of stairs into K2. Also, drinking, drugs, video games, depression, and drinking. Drinking, as well.
But I’m back in the gym, off the smokes, quit drinking, and don’t have time for the rest. Yay adulthood.

14. Working graveyard.

Working graveyard for a year at a holiday inn express. I was right across the street from a McDonald’s so I would eat that almost every day plus I would drink about 3 cups of coffee each night and each cup would have 5 sugars and 5 creamers. I also used to make the complimentary breakfast for the entire hotel and would eat as much as I pleased. I gained 70 pounds in Oct 2010-Oct 2011. I never even noticed how big I got which was the crazy thing. I’ve lost about 60 lbs and am almost back to my normal weight thanks to cutting out dairy, jogging, and just eating a lot less.

15. Childhood and teenage years.

During my childhood and into my teenage years I ate a ton of junk food. Honestly, my mother and father enabled the behavior (although I would never hold anything against them, I knew I was fat but didn’t care to change). Lots of McDonalds, empty carbs, little debbie stuff, the whole deal. I was also truly against physical activity of most sorts. I liked sports but didn’t play them, never went outside, and in general lived a sedentary lifestyle. I was about 214 pounds at my heaviest (as a 5’4” male, so you could imagine I was a chubster).

Oddly enough, it was a girlfriend breaking up with me in high school that was the motivator for it to end. I was bored and started playing basketball every day with my friends. I was so active that eating the way I used to was making my body physically ill. I couldn’t choke down a fatty school lunch or McDonalds for dinner without throwing it up. By the time I graduated high school, I was down to 140 pounds. The weirdest part was that I didn’t even notice it until other people pointed it out. Freshman year I packed on another 5, which is almost a rite of passage for all freshman. Junior year I decided I wanted to be physically fit and actually scrutinize the things I ate on a meal-to-meal basis. As a result of that, at my lowest I was 115 pounds. I was uncomfortable being that light, because honestly I wasn’t sure if that was a healthy weight or not. I’ve hovered around 120 pounds for a couple of years now (although I’ve put on 5-7 since moving in with my girlfriend because she is an amazing cook and I haven’t exhibited an ounce of self control). Within the next year I’ll be down a little below 120 again.

My advice to any person, really, is to be happy with the way you look. If you are unhappy being overweight, then the onus is on you to make that change. I didn’t change in high school because I wasn’t self conscious of how fat I was. I was always popular and had some success with girls so my weight never bothered me. It really wasn’t until college that I began to really monitor it. But truly, if you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin, make that change.

16. Down the seam.

It started in high school. There was a social aspect to eating with my friends. I used to eat bagels every morning, french fries at lunch, candy bars for a snack and go home and eat dinner as usual. Went to college and went totally crazy in the dining hall and took a little too much advantage of campus delivery specials local take-out places had. Too intimidated by the gym because of all the juiceheads.

I’d wash my jeans and think “wow, these shrank in the wash,” completely burying my head in the sand when it came to my serious case of muffin top. Then my jeans got those holes in the thighs, time for new ones. I was a size 14. But these sizes run small, right? My butt looked huge, but the mirror was just messed up and distorted my image. Those jeans got too big for me. Those jeans got holes in the thighs. My sides bulged over the waist. I was up to a 16/18. I worked at a coffee shop where I helped myself to free pastry samples and whole milk lattes all day. I went shopping at Costco and stepped on a scale. It read 215. No way, those scales are broken! I’d go out for meals with my friends. Photos with me in them had me sporting a double chin, but that was just the bad camera angle. Pizza, Chinese take-out, and fast food were like my three major food groups. Got dressed for class one day, pulled on my pants.

They split down the seam.

I had no other pants. I felt humiliated and no one else was around. I had to wear coveralls I wore to shop class to regular class because nothing else fit. I knew I had to do something about it. I read Fast Food Nation. I started eating better. Took up going to the gym, and some juiceheads were surprisingly nice and encouraging to me, the rest simply didn’t care (that is, they didn’t look down on the fat chick huffing and puffing at the gym). Now I’m down to 135 and I feel great. It’s certainly possible to lose the weight, and it’s never too late and you’re never too out of shape to change :)

17. Gradual.

It was gradual. I started out at about 110lbs at 5’5″. I was very, very thin. I could count my ribs and every notch of my spine. I had no ass and my boobs were barely there. I had always been that thin naturally. It wasn’t conscious, I wasn’t anorexic or ill in that regard.

Then I had a mental breakdown and started taking medication. The weight gain began immediately when I started taking the meds. Little things, like the inside of my thighs began touching and my boobs looked more full. I developed a nice ass, too – but then the weight kept creeping on until I had a flabby stomach and gigantic thunder thighs.

I also became extremely sedentary due to depression. I stopped being active. I began eating poorly. Not necessarily a lot of junk food, but a SHIT TON of carbs. That was my demise – no exercise and carbs, carbs, carbs.

I’m close to 200lbs now. I gained the weight over the course of four years. The only positive thing about the weight gain is that I have amazing, perky, perfect boobs. I’ve been trying to lose the weight, but I’ve found it more difficult than it seems it ought to be to lose weight. I’ve changed my diet, eliminated fast food and other junk like chips or cookies (I didn’t eat a lot of those anyway), but the weight just doesn’t seem to come off. I’m extremely jealous of people who seem to lose 10lbs a month doing the exact same things I’m doing… but I only seem to gain more inches.

It’s really depressing and I feel exasperated. I do push my limits in a work out and I do get sore from all the weights. People keep telling me I’m “doing it wrong”, but I keep thinking… how the fuck do you do physical activity WRONG? I push my limits in cardio – I work hard until I’m covered in sweat and I’m out of breath and feeling faint. I lift until I feel like my limbs are jelly and it hurts to move the next day.

But somehow, that’s “not enough”, and the weight won’t go anywhere. I feel like a disgusting, ugly loser. I used to be so pretty. Men used to respond to me. Now no one looks my way when I walk by or enter a room. I’m a fat blob of nothing.