How did I get so overweight in the first place?
Recently, I was talking to my favorite person about my weight loss and she asked me what I thought it was that caused me to gain all that weight in the first place. Interestingly, I had never really thought about what bad habit or habits specifically caused it. Since that conversation, I have been thinking about it a lot. I think to truly change myself and make sure I grow and move past obesity, I need to know the answer to this question.
The root cause of my weight gain is obvious - depression. I have touched on this before, but I spent years being depressed without even realizing it. I was in a bad relationship and under tremendous stress at home, I hated my job, and I felt cut off from my family. As I got more and more depressed, I did less and less and ate more and more and my weight steadily increased. I rarely exercised.
However, there is another aspect to the question - what was the physiological cause of the weight gain? Was I eating too much, too often, the wrong things, etc.? Obviously I was taking in too many calories somehow, but it is hard to figure out exactly how. I typically would eat two meals per day and I rarely snacked. The only drinks I ever consumed that had any calories were beer and wine, and I did that maybe once every couple of weeks in moderation. I ate no desserts or sweets.
When I did eat, I mostly ate crap. Fast food. Frozen food. Pizza. Restaurant food - Mexican, Italian, BBQ, Chinese, etc. I read yesterday that an order of chicken fingers with fries and corn on the cob at Chili’s is 2700 calories. Seeing something like that tells me all I need to know about how I was carrying 150 extra pounds of fat on only two meals per day. I imagine I had a lot of meals that were far worse than those chicken fingers - 6-7 slices of pizza were nothing to me. I supersized everything. I was not shy about adding cheese, gravy, ranch, mayo, etc. to whatever I was eating. At 9 calories per gram of fat, I was probably going over my maintenance calories in one meal and the second huge meal was just feeding the fat.
I have long since changed all of these habits. I eat several small meals and never skip breakfast. I avoid fast food. I always get lean, healthy foods at restaurants and if they give me too much I take some of it home for later. I never add fat to anything. I am now trying to reduce or eliminate the bad fats I take in. Interestingly, I changed all these habits without ever thinking specifically about why I was doing it or how it was different than what I was doing before. I think fully understanding the mistakes I made in the past will greatly increase my chances of success in the future. Now that I know what I did wrong, I will always know how to do it right!
October 30, 2007 at 6:54 am
Great read!
October 30, 2007 at 8:41 am
thanks, fred!
October 31, 2007 at 6:55 am
Man, those Chicken Crispers at Chili’s are SO good too. What a shame!!
I’ve never had to deal with depression, but probably the biggest reasons why I steadily gained more and more weight over the years were exactly what you stated: Lots of unhealthy fast food and restaurant food combined with no exercise.
Good post.
October 31, 2007 at 7:01 am
the more i think about it, i think the depression kept me from exercising but did not play a huge part in how i ate. that was just a bad habit I always had, even before i was depressed.
November 5, 2007 at 10:32 am
I was married to a man that was raised on fried potatoes, chorizo, tacos, burritos, bacon, sausage, and on and on…So I learned to cook his way and , well…. there ya go. Rarely did he allow veggies in the house, sometimes I got away with fruit in a can. I never thought of this until Chris made this post. I haven’t ate that way in 8 years now. In fact, my diet has changed drastically since then…makes me wonder, would I still be alive today if I kept eating all that junk? I doubt it.
Blessings, Juliet. Good read Chris!
November 6, 2007 at 10:15 am
thanks! man, i really miss mexican food. if i still lived in texas, i would still be round! my ex and I ate mexican most of the time. i still cook it, but a healthy approximation of it! it;s not the same, though…