>>513469593 (OP)Was never morbidly obese, but was obese.
Contributing factors:
Low bodily awareness. If you don't pay attention to your body, the weight creeps on and you keep having to buy larger and pants but you keep writing it off mentally. Oh it's just a few pounds, oh it must have shrunk in the wash, I'm just growing, etc. It takes years of ignoring your own body to get big.
Lack of nutritional awareness. I was never really taught calories, nutrition and dieting. I believed the food pyramid, which is basically just eat as many carbs as possible everything else is a treat. As a kid this doesn't matter, you can eat whatever you want and burn it off exercising, but as an adult suddenly eating a whole pizza and two burgers a day for a year means you can't walk.
Bad habits. Fast food is habit forming. It's quick, it's easy, it tastes great. There's nothing wrong with it, but it isn't filling and it's extremely high calorie. If you eat 3 McDonald's meals a day, that can easily be 10,000 calories when you should be aiming for 2000.
Inability to cook. If you don't learn how to meal plan and grocery shop, it's easy to just buy bags of chips and other junk food.
Denial. Your mind goes to a place where you aren't really even aware that you are fat. Your self image is that you are just as you were. You deny the mirror. It can be quite shocking when you snap out of it and suddenly realize you're a beluga whale. It's a form of body dismorphia. You convince yourself that you're skinny, only look at yourself in the mirror at certain angles and wear clothing that hides your fat. You even start to walk differently and hold yourself differently in an effort to not jiggle all around.
Sugar. Sugar is packed into everything. Most of the fat guys I've known start to gain weight initially from carbonated soft drinks. It's so easy to drink 3000 calories a day without really feeling it. I initially started to gain weight because I was drinking a Big Gulp worth of sugar every day.
