so, what was the REAL motivation?

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Replies

  • ohmariposa
    ohmariposa Posts: 372 Member
    I feel shallow saying this...but mostly it is 98% vanity. The health thing is a great bonus though! I also love how I feel after a good work out!
  • small_ninja
    small_ninja Posts: 365 Member
    I've already replied to a couple of forums like this, but why not :tongue:

    I decided I wanted to get fitter and look fitter after I saw Scarlett Johansson squeezed into her Black Widow costume and it made me mega jealous while I was sitting there, watching the movie, stuffing my face with popcorn :happy:
  • DonniesGirl69
    DonniesGirl69 Posts: 644 Member
    Had my pic taken with the body guard of one of my celebrity crushes.......then looked at the picture and I was the same size as the body guard.
  • TexasRattlesnake
    TexasRattlesnake Posts: 375 Member
    Heart palpitations. When the heart starts talking, I knew I really needed to listen.
  • zeebruhgirl
    zeebruhgirl Posts: 493 Member
    My future family. I want to make sure my fiance and I live together for a very long time, and I want my future kids to have no health complications.

    So here we go for a hopefully easy pregnancy!
  • Mathguy1
    Mathguy1 Posts: 207 Member
    The first big motivation I had was 7 years ago when my father asked me how much I weighed. After I told him 235 (I'm 5'10") he told me that my weight qualified me to play linebacker for the chicago bears!

    The next day, I began daily walks around my neighborhood until I reached 205.
  • abyt42
    abyt42 Posts: 1,358 Member
    I was identified as "the fat mom" in public. By another mom volunteering at school.
  • LeggyAmericanGirl
    LeggyAmericanGirl Posts: 285 Member
    to make porn movies
  • michelleindeed
    michelleindeed Posts: 117 Member
    I'm afraid that when/if my MS affects my legs I'll fall down and five giant men will have to carry me to an ambulance.
    After I started MFP I found out I'm invited to a weekend-long wedding in a year, and there are people there that I haven't seen in years and I want to look GREAT.
  • SarahJean0704
    SarahJean0704 Posts: 33
    Mine was when i stepped on the scale (didnt used to do very often, i was terrified!) and i weighed more than i did when i was pregnant with my son who came out weighing 10 pounds! and also this is really shallow lol but a couple years ago i was a stripper and when me and my fiance first started dating who would tell people "Man, I'm dating this super hot girl she used to be a stripper" and if he would tell people that now they would probably laugh in his face .. so i want to be about to feel confident again when he calls me beautiful and tells me how hot i am .
  • gobraves47
    gobraves47 Posts: 213 Member
    It took getting diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol in the span of a week to make me change my ways. I'm doing well now, but I know that the extra weight isn't helping any of those things. Looking better will be a nice perk, but is definitely not my main motivation.
  • Thatsdatdiva601
    Thatsdatdiva601 Posts: 209 Member
    When I went on cruise to Mexico dec 2011 and took soooo many awesome pictures but was too ashamed to show them to friends and family due to my weight!
  • chunkydunk714
    chunkydunk714 Posts: 784 Member
    All of your responses are awesome and thank you for sharing.

    I have yet to find my "a-ha" moment and it scares me to think I will be 30 pounds heavier when I will find it.
  • GemmaMcIntosh
    GemmaMcIntosh Posts: 15
    My reason isn't as inspirational and moving as others but...

    I planned a trip to Europe in March 2011 and that motivated me to lose weight - when I went I was about 2-3 kg above my goal weight but I look back at photos and think 'Hey, I didn't look too bad after all!'

    It's a shame that after I got back I put on 10 KGS!!!! 10 kgs in a year (about 22lbs isn't it?) - I was not happy. So now I am on a mission to drop that 10 kgs and then drop the extra 2-3 as well.

    All before Christmas.

    I joined a gym 6 months ago but nothing was really coming off so one of the trainers suggested I try MFP - I'm already 3kg down :)
  • goddessofsewing
    goddessofsewing Posts: 110 Member
    My profile pic. When my in-laws sent it to me and (sincerely) told me I look fantastic it was upsetting. I didn't want "fantastic" to look like that. Sustainable lifestyle changes started three days later. Sixteen pounds down and still losing!
  • gabriellejayde
    gabriellejayde Posts: 607 Member
    i think everyone is so awesome for sharing. I forgot another thing that motivated me to come HERE... i had a coworker a few months ago and everyone would get us confused. We were both "bigger" women. She went on a different but similar site to MFP and started losing weight. Everyone in the office kept telling her how hot she was getting and how good she looked. She was quiet about it, but it made me want to do the same thing.
  • m23gm25
    m23gm25 Posts: 153 Member
    I lost my health insurance and so must pay cash for my 2 medications for hypertension and 1 med. for diabetes and i for Rheumatoid arthritis. They aren't cheap! So I thought maybe I can eliminate those first 3 meds if I lost the 75 or so extra pounds I carry around.
    I guess money talks.
  • gsmithnp
    gsmithnp Posts: 139 Member
    1. Saw pictures of myself in my cap&gown when I graduated with my Master's degree--oh, dear God...

    2. I always had a number in my head and told myself that if I ever reached that weight in a non-pregnant state that I would have to do something about it. Well, I got up to 2 pounds shy of that number and decided it was time.

    3. I have 3 kiddos, and need to be able to keep up with them.

    4. I hate shopping for clothes. Always have (even at my thinnest--just hate the process of it all). My work pants were getting so tight that the waistband was digging into my skin and leaving marks. I absolutley REFUSED to go buy bigger ones. Now they fit much better and know that if I reach my goal (8-10 more pounds) I'm likely to need to shop anyway--but I think I can handle that!

    5. I figured I better practice what I preach, and telling my patients to exercise and eat healthy while I was stuffing my face with Starbucks, Pepsi, brownies, etc and not getting any exercise felt hipocritical.

    Now that I've been doing this for a while, I feel better and like what I see in the mirror better. I'm having some trouble with these last few pounds; thinking about why I started this in the first place has shifted my focus from the scale to the other reasons I'm making these changes.
  • roosterfish81
    roosterfish81 Posts: 13 Member
    Well besides the obvious reasons already noted, the moment the penny dropped for me was after reading the book, In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan.
    Irresepctive of whether or not anyone agrees with the finer details, the broader message of that book just made so much sense to me and resonated in a way that nothing else had before.
    Subsequently, as a result of reaidng that book I am currently down 50lbs with 20lbs left to go.
  • ImprovingEla
    ImprovingEla Posts: 396 Member
    A lot of things that are already said applies to me too.

    When it comes too the shape, this is my motivation:
    - I would like to go shopping and do not have to ask the salesman /woman: What is the biggest size you have here, because if it is to small, I´d save my time and look elsewhere!
    - Second I wanna go on a summer vacation and I would like to wear a Bikini!
    - I wanna take a pic with the chippendales and I don´t wanna be the fat girl in the middle of them, I wanna be a girl, they wanna tease (even if it is only for the show) and be lifted up!

    When it comes to health:
    Diabetes and Heart Attack runs in the family and I am a nurse, I so do not wanna go down that road some day!
    On top of that I am trying to get pregnant and extra weight is so not helping, not when it comes to being pregnant and not to have sex to get pregnant, cause when I cannot feel good about myselfe, how can I expect to be sexy for my husband?

    As last for being into sports:
    At the moment I only run in the gym and re- started my workout there, but hey it would be so great if in a year or at most 2 I could run a half half marathon in venlo/Netherlands where I live. It is a major event and I am thinking about it for years to be in.
    (Since starting on becoming healthier I decided, that just thinking about doing something will never ever get me anywhere!)

    So thats what gets me started! And I want it to be my motivation for going on and suceed this time!)
  • irishbrat77
    irishbrat77 Posts: 10
    When I found out through a series of tests that I had pre-cervical cancer. Not cancer yet because they found it in time but I still had to go through surgery to have the cells removed along with some scares about what it could mean for my future. I decided at that point that I'll be damned if I wasn't going to do everything in my power to stay healthy for the rest of my life. I know I can't control everything that is going to happen to me in my life but I can certainly do things to try and swing things in my favour. And that started with a complete overhaul of my diet, regular workouts and eventually losing 55lbs.
  • ciobair
    ciobair Posts: 69
    I have 3 main motivators.

    1. My back is sick of carrying my belly around and it protests quite often. Sometimes to such a degree that I can't move because of the muscle spasms.

    2. I'd like my wife to find me desirable again - I'm assuming she must have found me attractive enough to have married me, hence the again.....

    3. We moved a long way from home and friends 3 years ago. I haven't been back since but when I do go back, I do not want to be the only fat guy in the photos again.


    Started MFP 4 weeks ago, at 267 and have lost 14 1/2 lbs so far. Still a ways to go, but I just keep reminding myself of those 3 things, especially when I catch my hand wandering towards the cookie cupboard.
  • ruthnor
    ruthnor Posts: 35
    Kind of silly, but:

    I was planning to meet online friends at Comic-Con and didn't want them to meet me and see how fat and disgusting I was in real life. (I also wanted to look cute taking pictures next to celebrities! I'd went the year before that when I was in the 300s and I can't even be proud of those pictures because I was not lookin' hot at all. More like a hot mess!) The tickets sold out this year, so it didn't happen, but now I have even *more* time to get to a healthier weight. Just trying to stay optimistic!

    And a little less silly:

    One of my friends also made a huge change in her life and lost 50+ pounds (albeit very unhealthily) and it made me say to myself, "if x can do it, I can too."
  • gabriellejayde
    gabriellejayde Posts: 607 Member
    Well besides the obvious reasons already noted, the moment the penny dropped for me was after reading the book, In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan.
    Irresepctive of whether or not anyone agrees with the finer details, the broader message of that book just made so much sense to me and resonated in a way that nothing else had before.
    Subsequently, as a result of reaidng that book I am currently down 50lbs with 20lbs left to go.

    cool... I took a look at it just now and bought it (the kindle version). I'm going to start reading it soon.
  • mochalishious
    mochalishious Posts: 97 Member
    When I got tired of being disgusted with myself. Just got tired of not liking what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Also got tired of people saying your tall so it's ok. What the hell does that mean? I'm doing this to be at peace with myself
  • Annabel89
    Annabel89 Posts: 63 Member
    My daughter. I want to set a good example for her, so I reformed my entire lifestyle. We eat clean organic foods and excersize every single day. She works out with me and talks about mommy "exxxxerSIZING!!" (She is two) I do NOT restrict my calories below 2000 most days (still losing and close to goal) and I NEVER talk about my body in a negative way. We discuss how strong and capable our bodies are and we cook healthy meals together.

    I would very literally move mountains for her, so this has been relatively easy. I am in the the best shape of my life, happier, healthier and showing my baby girl that you don't have to be hungry or go on some crazy diet to be fit and at a healthy weight. My hope is that she will never struggle with her weight or self esteem like I have in the past. Life is good. :)

    That is beautiful!! The world needs more mummies like you :)
  • JerseyPook
    JerseyPook Posts: 135
    A combination of things, really.

    When I was in my 20's - my first husband turned to me out of the blue one day and said, "If we have kids one day, you'd better lose all the weight afterward because I won't be married to a fat girl. I've seen your parents, you have potential." Now, no matter how much of an *kitten* he was for saying that...there is an ounce of truth to it (my parents are both extremely overweight). Good thing for me, I lost 135lbs in the divorce! LOL But, seriously - every now and then, those words haunt me (if I allow it).

    Secondly - I literally was disgusted one day by my reflection in the mirror. I looked at myself and thought out loud, "Who IS that?!?" It's not me...I was always in shape and took great care of myself. THAT was probably a much larger motivator...

    Oh...and this - I have ALWAYS wanted to do this...(and WILL when I reach my goal!!)

    www.badgirlboudoir.com

    **edited for link that the message board did not like!!

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