Mom: "You can't leave this table until you eat everything on your plate!"

Taught me to eat even when I wasn't hungry and to ignore hunger cues, and I still have a hard time not cleaning my plate, even if I'm uncomfortably full. This was just the first of many bad habits.

Other factors in no particular order: Not drinking enough water, confusing hunger with thirst, drinking my calories (soda, juice, milk instead of water), always being the tallest kid in class and having a larger build than most made me think I was fat even though (looking back at old pictures I realize) I really wasn't more than about 10 or 20 lbs overweight (body dismorphia) and my situation felt helpless (it really wasn't but no one told me that or tried to help), as a child not understanding why I was gaining weight or how to lose it, my mom pressured me to buy clothes she liked (often too adult/matronly) rather than things that made me feel good about myself or comfortable and it contributed to poor self-esteem/self-confidence and a false belief that I wasn't attractive/cool, candy bars and ice cream were always used as rewards so I associated them happiness and celebrating which later contributed to my emotional eating, eating too much fast food and non-healthy options, the ONLY veggies I got consistently growing up were the cheap bags of mixed frozen veggies that had the peas, cubed carrots, and lima beans (which I hated) so I didn't learn to love veggies until I was an adult, not getting enough sleep (throws off your hormones that regulate hunger/stress, messes up your hunger responses, makes you hungry when you arent, less satisfied after eating, and reduces impulse control), depression, shitty stressful jobs and bad bosses, doing what was expected instead of what I wanted and being unhappy/depressed as a result, too much tv and sitting on my ass, PCOS, mom didn't really enforce the rules growing up and let us get away with a lot like not helping out or doing chores and as a result didn't learn a lot of self-discipline, wasn't really challenged in school - it was too easy - didn't have to work or study hard so got lazy/complacent and again contributed to lack of self-discipline/self-control, etc, etc