Getting personal, why were you fat?

The one question I'd like to be able to answer is why I am fat. (Aside from eating to much...)

If willing to share such a individual and personal topic, has your weight loss journey helped you understand what was behind all those extra calories?

Using my (soon to be) tool is only 1/2 the battle. I'd like to learn about other 1/2 in the hopes to keep the weight off over the rest of my life. 

I've been exploring this with my counselor, but have yet to have an epiphany.

Thanks in advance for sharing. 

Lack of movement except for lifting my hand to my mouth.  

There are a lot of factors that went into it initially, but the crux was that I used food in place of healthier ways of dealing with stress.  As I gained more weight, I became more embarrassed to go out and do things with friends because I was the fat girl...and that made me feel worse, which made me want food more.  It became this horrible cycle of gaining weight because I ate poorly and then eating poorly because I was gaining weight.  Even when I was trying regular diet and excercise plans, I never felt satisfied because I had gotten to the point that my body defined satisfaction as being stuffed.  

For me, the biggest thing I need to learn to change is dealing with stress/sadness/depression in ways that aren't food-related.  It's a hard habit to break.  :(

Because I made stupid, stupid choices.  I'm smart enough to know how to not get fat, I just chose otherwise.  

Why did I make those stupid choices?  I don't know.  Maybe it's the one thing I felt I could control.  Maybe it's for no other reason than I really like the way food tastes in my mouth.  More likely I think it might be because I decided why bother - my life has been awesome so why does it matter if I'm fat?  But then I got to the point where my fat was making my life less than awesome and I could no longer deny that.  I'm in therapy too. 

I used food as an anti-anxiety drug since I was a kid. I coped with all my problems with junk food. I was sexually abused as a child starting when I was 6 for about 2 years. I had a huge secret that I was burying with food. I ate in secret and hid food for the purpose of binging. It was so embarrassing, and I didn't know how to control it, but I felt better from it. Later, as a teenager, I took comfort from restricting my food so much that I was probably what would be considered anorexic. I never got even close to skinny, but I was obsessed, weighed myself MANY times per day, and would take pleasure from how long I could make myself go without the thing I had used to stuff down my feelings. Then I had a pretty severe emotional breakdown. I was having anxiety attacks all the time, and I started breaking out from head to toe in hives from stress. My coping mechanism for stress and anxiety was gone, and my body was so overloaded by the stress, it was physically toxic. I started eating again. The physical manifestation of my emotional pain was more than I could take, so I started eating to soothe myself again. 

Currently, I am using exercise (duh! Why didn't I think of that before?) to reduce and relieve my stress and anxiety. It is a natural anti-depressant and anxiety reducer, and I am doing so much better than I have before. I have to work really hard to keep the eating in check (both ways - it would be very easy for me with all the tracking and the restrictive nature of the procedure to head down a disordered restriction path again), but I'm managing day by day. 

For me it was emotional.  I was an emotional eater, but have since been able to combat that.  My every instinct is not to turn to food any more.  :)  Its a rough road, finding out your problems with food, but once you tackle them, you'll be better off.  Best of luck!

I was about 340 when I graduated high school about 20 years ago and had wls at that weight too.  Growing up, we always were served large meals and I ate them.  I had no education on diet and exercise.  As I got older, the few times I tried to lose weight, I would go full force, lose 60-80 pounds, then gain it all back over a couple years.  I have just always been very large.  No other health problems other than my obesity so I never felt forced to lose it for other health problems. 

I'm fat because food is awesome. It's fun. It's happy. I was a lonely teen and I would get a lot of joy from eating in excess. As I got older and the freedom of having my own money and car and ability to get any kind of fast food I want I was like a kid in a candy store. 

If my weight wasn't killing me I would do it for the rest of my life. I love cooking. I love the feeling of being full and satisfied. All that. 

Obviously everything has changed now and I have a long road of unpacking my new limitations. I will get there eventually.   

Your comment reminds me of this xkcd:

You and I have very similar reasons.