What was your "AHA!" moment?

I went shopping with my mom and realized I couldn't fit into a size L or sometimes an XL blazer. I told myself right then I would never shop in the plus size department, even though I suppose I'm already at the low end of plus sized. That, and none of my jeans fit except a few I stuffed myself into and they were already a size I never thought I'd wear and they barely fit. I felt ashamed and humiliated, but decided I had to do something about it.

Mine is similar to lizapetit's... photos taken at our office party, I thought I looked good but holy!! it was more 'the camera added 100lbs'!! That, and I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I went into the doctor in February and my cholesterol was 209. She started writing me a prescription and I told her to "Stop". I told her to give me 3 months to get my cholesterol lowered by diet and exercise and if it wasn't lowered by May then she could write me a prescription. By May I'd lost 17 pounds, but my cholesterol was down to 149. She never wrote me a prescription. I've lost 34 pounds and I've plateaued a few times but I am not a quitter, and I never have been. I feel better and have more energy and my blood work is much better.

I had lost about 30 pounds several years ago. I dropped two pants sizes and got rid of all the clothes I had then. So then after a few years the weight was creeping up again and I had two pairs of jeans, and I was almost busting out of them. I sit at a desk all day at work and in the afternoon when I would go to the bathroom, it was such a relief to unbutton them for a few minutes, and rub the big red indentations from the waist band. I refused to go buy bigger sizes. There wasn't just one Aha moment, I knew it was something I had to do, and I thought a lot about it and talked a lot about it. It wasn't until I came on here and started logging that I really became aware of what I was actually eating. I didn't think I was eating a lot, and I wasn't eating a lot in volume, but it was a lot of high cal junk. So, it took about 4-6 weeks before the jeans were no longer torture. And now they are loose.

When cleaning my shower/bath became so difficult because I was too fat.

A tagged pic on facebook. It was taken at a weird angle and my stomach was WAY bigger then I thought it was. No freaking way was I looking like that anymore!

My story is somewhat different from most that I read. Most people talk about the possibility of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes..... Most people talk about the possiblity of death as a result of morbid obesity. I feel a little different in that I had all three lifestyle related diseases and my blood pressure was uncontrolled with two medications. i lived a sedentary lifestyle, suffered from chronic pain and chronic fatigue resulting from two autoimmune diseases (one of which was undiagnosed at the time). I had a friend who finally loved me enough to call it how she saw it!!! She basically said, "If you don't do something different, you WILL die of a heart attack before you are 35. Do you want to live or die? The choice is yours and yours alone to make." It took someone being that harsh with me. I knew I had the lifestyle related diseases and that they could probably be corrected through diet and exercise. I knew that all of my symptoms were aggravated by my weight. And I knew that it was abnormal to not be able to walk up a flight of stairs at the age of 30. In the moment of my "Come to Jesus" talk with my friend, I thought to myself, "I've suffered from depression my whole life.....and I have spent more time wanting to die than wanting to live." And for the first time in my life, I think i wanted to live more than I wanted to die. And I became as willing as possible. I knew it was going to be hard work. And I knew that it was going to take more than just the desire to do the work....I had to be willing to make the sacrifice.

I was terrified, but I'll never go back no. Exercise has become a part of my daily routine...(probably more than most people). I left a job that I hated and I'm now in the fitness industry of all things. I'm 186 lbs lighter, no longer require insulin, blood pressure medicine, or cholesterol medicine. And I feel happy instead of depressed 90% of the time.

Remember, don't give up yourself, even when it gets hard. There is no time like the present to live the life of your dreams.

To be honest, I'm not sure I had an Aha moment other than one day I got tired of itching and decided I wanted to get to the stage where I felt better so I gave up gluten. At that point, it was just logical to go all out and do it all at once. I got more and more encouraged when I saw my migraine's vanish and my weight start dropping. It's funny how sometimes things are all tied together and for me - my allergy and weight loss went hand in hand.

Monica

Driving down a bumpy road one day, I could feel my boobs jiggle.

When I first read this, I thought, "Who hasn't?". Then I realized you were a guy. Aha!

I went over seas this year and had to buy a new wardrobe or shorts to take on the holiday as none that owned fit anymore.
Enjoyed my holiday not worrying too much as I won't be returning to Europe anytime soon and didn't want to experience it on a diet.
Went dress shopping at karen millen in London and tried on a dress in the largest size they had and it didn't fit, I'm only 5ft so that's not normal. I own a Karen Millen dress that is quite expensive but have only worn it once, as I just piled on the pounds afterwards.
Also it was a wake up call when I was dress shopping in Australia, and my mum emailed me outfits to check out from the large womens clothing stores.
Now that I'm back from the holiday I don't like the photos of me, and it's disappointing that a pic of me on a gondola is disgusting and I don't want anyone to see it.
I have lost 11 pounds since I've been back, and I'm looking forward to fitting into my Karen Millen dress again soon.

When I began to hate clothes shopping because all the cute clothes are in the smaller sizes.

Size 16 is not the cute clothes section.....

I was in my car waiting at a light on my way to get coffee (and donuts) for breakfast one weekend. It was freezing cold, and there were no cars on the road. As I waited, an ambulance raced past - the lights were flashing, but the siren was off, which I took to mean there was someone inside on their way to the hospital.

I had a vision that it was me in the ambulance, having just had a heart attack at home, at 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I saw my wife & 2 kids at home, terrified at what had just happened, crying, scrambling to get dressed and to the hospital, not knowing if I'd be alive when they got there, etc. All I felt was regret.

It scared the *hell* out of me. I truly felt like death was close by if I didn't make some changes. I was about 80 pounds overweight at that time.

After that I was pretty open, and it seemed like the things I needed came my way right away. I read a couple of articles about food diaries, found my way into one and started tracking. That's all, just started to write things down at first, with no changes. Didn't tell anyone I was doing it, either. And the more I saw, the more I was motivated to change. I'm a big 'numbers' guy, and it was a relief for me to reduce food and exercise to just numbers. The methods took hold, I formed some new habits, and I've been on the path ever since.

My first moment was when I was about 23 and I'd been thrown a surprise birthday party. I had gone out for a couple drinks with a friend after work, and when I came home, there were all of my friends and family, and of course pictures and videos were being taken as my friend and I walked in the door. This friend I was with had been a rather overweight for a while at this point, and even though I knew I wasn't SKINNY, I never in a million years thought that I was anywhere near her weight. A week or so later, after these pictures and videos were posted up on flickr (or something similar) I glanced through them and noticed my friend and I were practically the same size. I freaked out on the inside, but I started down a horrible path of hardcore calorie restriction and not working out - at that point I couldn't care less about health, I just wanted the weight gone. However, before I knew it, the weight started coming off. It wasn't long after that that I got divorced from the guy I'd been married to since 20, and I was living alone for the first time. I developed anxiety, started caring about nothing but partying, and eventually started dating a super skinny dude that rarely ate, someone I was embarrassed to eat around, so I had gone from a high weight of 178 to 129 in less than a year, I kept shrinking out of my clothes without even trying, just the anxiety and not following the diet of my exhusband (who was a pretty stocky and hefty guy) did it to me. However, my metabolism went down the tubes and when I moved 2 years ago to where I am now, I got a new bf, was happy, the anxiety went away and much more normal eating habits resume....and in less than a year, I jumped up from 129 back up to 158 and have even bounced a little higher than that at my worst.

This time around, my REAL aha moment as just standing in front of the mirror while washing my face one morning and seeing how rounded my shoulders were, how thick my profile was, how bulky and linebacker-ish I appeared, seeing how I'd outgrown all my jeans, most of my bras, and the fact that everyday I was just tired even though I had more than enough sleep, I couldn't focus, my back hurt all the time and I was just a lump of human nothing - and to top it off, I work from home. I looked at myself and realized there was SO NO EXCUSE to not be in the best shape of my life considering how much time I have to focus on health. So. I stopped eating crap. I started doing 30DS. Joined MFP. Cut down on (and eventually will totally stop) smoking. The very first day of making these changes, I couldn't believe how good I felt and the overabundance of energy I had. I was sore, but my back felt better. I slept better. I could think better and focus better. I experienced HUNGER for GOOD FOOD for the first time in years instead of just eating crap-food because it was time to eat. I've had a lot of half-baked attempts and full blown failures in the past, trying to get healthy - the key was expanding my knowledge. To stop guessing and assuming and start reading and learning. MFP has been a pretty integral part of that, and I thank everyone here for being so inquisitive, informative, supportive, relate-able, and inspiring 2013 - NO EXCUSES!