They opened up a Fatburger near my office.
Loss of mobility following a car accident. I could barely walk for quite a while, let alone do any strenuous exercise. Once you’re middle aged, weight that goes on is very difficult to take off.
Chronic pain and booze. I’ve had arthritis pain since I was in my early thirties. I was very active until just four or five years ago. The pain started getting the better of me and I hadn’t yet worked out the magical amount of exercise that would give me some benefit without aggravating my joints. I didn’t, and don’t, eat all that much. No sweet tooth. Not a snacker. Don’t drink soda. Alas, the alcohol calories that I used to easily burn off in martial arts and the weight room are excessive for the amount of exercise I can now tolerate.
Mostly sweets. I don’t seem to have much trouble resisting soda and savory snacks, but if there are doughnuts, cookies, cake, or ice cream in the house, watch out. I will eat them and keep eating until they’re gone or until I can’t stuff any more in. Sometimes that means eating four or five thousand Calories a day. I have lost 90 lb. in the last 4 or 5 years, with about 20 lb. yet to go, largely by resisting the temptation–most of the time–to buy or bake sweets. Once they’re inside the house, resistance is futile.
30 years of just one more beer than I should, plus a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, plus a hand full of chips, three or four times. Really, it has been a very slow process, maybe a pound or two a year and then one day I go, “where the hell did that huge belly come from?”
A few years ago, a constellation of events caused me to put on about 40 pounds. They included:
•Being on Depo Provera for ten years. Gained 2 pounds a year.
•Quit smoking.
•Late nite munchies.
• Too much couch potato, not enough moving around.
Two years ago, I found my bliss in terms of exercise and dropped all 40 pounds. I’m off hormonal BC and work out too much to feel like snacking after 10 p.m. because I’m usually in bed, exhausted, by 10 p.m. And I picked up smoking again. So now I’m afraid to quit.
All of these, plus I grew up in a food=comfort family. What, you’re sad? Have some cookies. You did well in the school play. Let’s go out for ice cream.
When my boyfriend of 5 years dumped me precipitously I called my mother absolutely heartbroken. Her advice was “Have a hot fudge sundae. You’ll feel better.” That was kind of a light bulb moment for me.
I don’t drink alcohol, or use drugs. Food is my downfall. Jeff Garlin could have been describing me when he said (paraphrasing) “you could put me in a room with bottles of the finest scotch in the world, a pound of the purest cocaine in the world, and a day old grocery store sheet cake - guess which one I’m going for.”
In the last five years I’ve improved my food choices quite a bit, but still eat far more calories than I burn. I have never found an exercise or activity that I like doing well enough to keep it up.
I could lose 30 pounds. My physician broke it done: 10 pounds from overeating (chips and salty snacks are my downfall), 10 pounds from menopause, and 10 pounds from quitting smoking. Actually, I’ve lost 5 pounds, so only 25 more to go.
I traded my long string of physical-labor-intensive, little-to-no-time-to-eat job for a higher paying one where I sit at a desk all day.
A combination of a lot of things. I’ve always been overweight which is really annoying because I’m the only one in my immediate family who eats healthy food regularly or exercises at all.
I am currently at my heaviest and this particular gain was from losing my extremely physical job and spending a year unemployed and depressed followed by a year and a half of earning my Associates degree mostly with online classes. This is in addition to totally disordered eating (I eat healthy food but will go days barely eating at all and then days binging on cereal and other not very healthy foods, followed by a week or two of normal healthy eating again), soda, and being horribly lazy.
Now I have a gym membership which I actually use at least 2x per week (hour each time) and I spend at least 2 or 3 hours per week gardening. I drink only tap, carbonated, or mineral water, cranberry juice (only 1 cup per day), minimal coffee, and minimal tea. I’m also avoiding junk food as much as possible and trying to eat proper serving sizes.
It has been 3 months. I’m still waiting to see some drop in my weight. It’s a good thing I’m not holding my breath. 
50 years, sucky fat parent genes (and the poor eating habits upbringing that goes with them), Papa Murphy’s all-too conveniently located just down the street, and too many long-hour stressful jobs in front of a computer.
Working on losing them in fits & starts, but got a ways to go yet.
Alcohol. Oh beer, why do you have to be so good?
Little elves sneak into the house at night and inject the fat into my thighs and abdomen as I am sleeping. I am certain that this is the cause. I need to teach the cats to chase them off.
I do exercise, but the other four pretty much sum up for me. It’s also cheaper and easier to eat processed, pre-prepared food than it is to eat healthy. I buy fresh vegetables but they go bad before I can eat most of it, so I end up throwing it out, thereby wasting money. So that the next time I’m in the store, I decide not to even bother buying fresh, healthy stuff for the most part.
I entered don’t-give-a-shit mode a couple years ago and put on 50 pounds. Ate what I wanted (which included lots of spareribs, for whatever reason), switched back to regular soda (of which I would have 64 oz. or so a day), and hello, add me to the beer club. This was mostly the result of being in the tail end of a very bad relationship.
Reversed those trends in the last year and I’m back down to a healthy (some would say too skinny) weight again. I also run and work out a lot, so I can indulge when I feel like treating myself and not really worry.
Sugar. It’s always sugar and a tendancy to depression that makes the sugar very, very appealing. I mean if you feel like crap and cookies will make at least your mouth happy, you eat the cookies.
I’m also a good cook and I love making cookies and candy (mostly old fashioned style fudge.) I’m very good at those things and making them made me happy. So there were more around and that made my mouth happy . . . . Vicious cycle of sugar consumption.
It’s sad that I was able to maintain being 60 lbs over weight while speed walking 4 miles five days a week for 8 years.
I’m trying to cut out sugar and heavily limit the other carbs. It’s easier for me to get those things out of my house because we don’t eat a lot of processed foods in our home, however, it’s tough to resist bringing them back in. I did great for three weeks and actually made real progress on my weight loss, but the last week or so has really been tough for me. I’m sliding back into old habits. Right now even as I type this the back of my brain is trying to convince me that my children really want me to make them chocolate chip cookies. It’s tough to train in new habits.
Portion size.
I cook almost all my own food, so I know it is pretty good nutrionally. But I like it so much, I always go back for seconds.
Beer, a little bit of booze, pop, Snickers bars, and a butt-ton of stress.
If I could still afford to put in 5 hours per week lifting weights, this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m 6 feet, 200 pounds, so I’m not obese; conversely, I ain’t svelte, either.
Insulin. In the few years since I’ve been injecting insulin, I’ve gained about 45 pounds. in planning for my heart surgery this summer, my cardiologist wanted me to lose 30 pounds. I’ve lost about half that, but it’s much harder work than I’ve ever had before.
I gained 20lbs last summer. To this day I have no idea how. I can’t remember overeating or eating anything I didn’t usually, but oh well. I’ve lost over 40lbs since so it all worked out. It still leaves me confused though. I don’t know what I did to gain it, but I know what I did to lose it. Started only drinking water and pretty much just went on a generic diet of small portions of boring high protein foods and veggies. Worked very well though, lost it in just a little over 4 months.