What Made You Really Start?

Having someone point out how fat I had got after having my baby, and saying that I used to look really hot. It made me feel awful and now I'm determined to be healthier. I'm also ashamed of how much bigger I look in photos and avoid having them!
When my little boy is older I want there to be pictures of me and him in the photo album together. It wouldn't be a good example to say there's no photos of mummy because I felt fat and didn't change to make myself happier.

My first motivator was a picture that someone took of me when my fiance and I were boating 2 summers ago... It was horrible, then of course I went to the doctor shortly after and he told me I was fat...yep he seriously told me I was fat. Then the final straw was when I attended the health fair at my work and they measured my body fat percentage which was almost in the pre-obese category. So I decided to make a change. I lost a good bit last year (12 pounds) then after a ton of snarky comments from friends and families and rumors flying around saying I was anorexic I stopped, but recently I've gotten back into because I realize this isn't to impress anyone else but myself.

Weight loss is tough, even if you don't have much to lose.

ETA: Being over-weight was a tough pill for me to swallow, throughout my entire life I had been severly underweight... I could eat anything and everything and not gain a pound. I graduated highschool weighing less than 100 pounds so it was a huge wake up call that less than 5 years later I had packed on around 30 pounds.

i was drunk on new years eve and i said i was done feeling sorry for myself and hating everything about me so the next morning i started on this 2 year long journey of ups and downs.

that is awsome

for me, i have been going to the gym for the past 3-4 years, but 2-3 of those years my workouts were balanced out by me eating fast food 4 days a week and pizza three days. it was basically a mexican stand off.

then last april i went to CA to see my niece graduate highschool and the picture we took as a family just sunk in.

i joined here and starting logging everything and after about 2 months i cut out mcdonalds, burger king, wendys and arbys.

THIS is awesome! I have definitely found that quick and easy eats will kill you... LOL I don't always pass by 'quick' but I'm working on it...

For me it was totally an accident. I was walking one of the dogs, he chased a squirrel, and in that sprint after a squirrel, I realized I missed running. So I started again. Damn squirrel.

The thing that finally allowed to me to focus on taking care of myself was getting a medication for depression that worked for me. Prior to that, I often had good intentions, but they fell into a ugly, scary vat of "Why bother?" after a day, or maybe just a meal.

I will give myself some credit here too: I finally took the initiative to see a psychiatrist instead of merely my GP to get treatment. It's entirely possible that there is some serious placebo effect going on in that I was so ready to make a change that I believe that the new meds are god's gift to my nutty ol' brain. Either way though, stopping the old meds and starting new ones gave me the ambition, motivation and ENERGY to start using all the years of information and knowledge I'd acquired about living healthy. It's pretty effin awesome.

I had alot of stress in my life marriage issues, car accident, father died, son was hurt not seriously but broke his leg. I started to run just primarly as a stress reliever with really no intention to loose weight and eat healthier but one thing led to another and about 50lbs later someone said to me are you loosing weight and sure enought I was. I still excercise for a stress reliever but for other reasons also. Doctors also wanted to put me on anti depressents ect ect. Just for the record im not bashing anyone for needed medications for what ever reason it just was not for me. Now I need no high cholestrol medication no High blood pressure medication no anti depressents and my marriage is doing well and so is my son.

I lived all my life in a suburb of Chicago where its cold or chilly 9 months of the year. In June of last year we moved to a suburb of Mobile, Alabama right on the gulf coast. Its HOT most of the year. For years, I fluctuated with my weight but never got really heavy until after I had my daughter. I weighed 217 for a year after giving birth. I finally got down to 185-190 and have stuck for about 3 years at that weight. I "wear weight well" so I was complacent. I could hide my big booty and thighs in jeans in Chicago most the time! I always made sure my makeup and my hair was perfect. Applying and curling every day, keeping up with the beauty routine but I didn't exercise. I felt beautiful all made up, wearing jeans and a cute top, always carrying a sweater to use for camouflage if needed. Then we moved to AL and bought a house with an inground pool. I had to wear bathing suits all the time and shorts. It was so hot and humid! We met friends who always want to go boating and to the beach. I can no longer "hide" behind my old staples. The makeup melts off my face. My hair gets flat and stringy in the humidity and water play and I have to wear shorts, tanks and bathing suits all the time! I realized I spent more time at the pool, on the boat, at the beach, arranging my towels and coverups to stay hidden than I did actually having fun! I was uncomfortable with showing myself in such revealing clothing nevermind I can no longer use the makeup and hair thing to feel beautiful. Last summer I felt like a whale. I would see a pic of myself in jeans and a shirt, all done up and then a pic the same weekend of myself in a bathing suit, not done up and think how can that be the same girl? So boom. Im tired of hiding, I'm tired of strategically placing towels, and my daughter in front of me in pics and Im tired of not fully PLAYING with my family because Im so self conscious. Ive always had a pear, hour glass figure and there is no hiding it anymore! Ive started cardio and weights and calorie counting and Ive never been this determined or stuck to something for more than a few weeks. I'm doing it this time and I feel great! I haven't lost much weight yet but the inches are showing and I know to stick it out. By this summer, I want to be confident, even without the face paint, hair and coverups!

I played soccer when I was younger about 5-6 days a week. I never had to diet and I could eat whatever I wanted. Then about five years ago, I tore my ACL, and had to stop playing soccer. I didnt change my eating habits, and sunk into a depression to the point that I hated looking into a mirror and I avoided them like a plague. I just wanted to cry everytime I saw myself. I hated looking at myself in pictures. I have had major health complications from the cancer, which has stopped me from getting surgery for my torn ACL, but I decided I need to find something that I enjoy doing as much as playing soccer. So me and my brother's girlfriend decided this year we are going to sign up for a Sprint Triathlon, we signed up for three of them actually. So that got me movitated to start going to the gym and getting back to basics.

I dont want to be skinny, I was never a skinny girl, I was meant to play sports not walk a runway, which I am fine with. I just want to be healthy.

During hurricane Sandy, I was sitting in my husband's grandmother's house watching my daughter play with her cousins. I caught sight of myself in a mirror, and sat staring for a while, thinking, "I used to be pretty. I used to be happy. Now I just want to lay down, go to sleep, and never wake up again." I was in the middle of a very severe bout of depression, and when the power came back on two weeks later and the episode passed, I decided it was time to do something about it. I was tired of being depressed, and I was tired of feeling ugly, and I knew getting in shape would help both of those problems.

And (along with a new and powerful and effective antidepressant) it has. I feel pretty good about myself again, and my depression mostly stays away. Still have a ways to go on my weight loss journey - now that I see it really is possible, I'm thinking of changing my goal to 125 - but I already see how my life has improved.

Such good responses !
For me, the deciding factor was when my boss called me lazy. I don't know why he called me that because I feel that I work harder than my colleagues but I was being called lazy. While trying to wrap my head around this, I concluded (perhaps erroneously?) that surely he must think I'm lazy because of my weight. Otherwise why not chastise the skinny people that play farmville all day? So I decided that either a) I have to lose weight to advance myself professionally or b) I have to lose weight so that I am not so insecure about it that I am making excuses for other failures in my life. I plan on spending fewer nights and weekends at work and more of that time exercising and preparing healthy foods, thank you very much!

I bought a new pair of jeans and, although they fit round my waist, they bagged round the hips. My waist was two sizes bigger than my hips, and it finally occurred to me that, if I didn't lose weight, I could never fit well in jeans again. I had also been asked if I was pregnant when I wasn't, but the jeans were the final straw.

If weight around the waist is the biggest danger, I just have to accept that being 'average', ie overweight, is not a healthy option for me.

good for you luna...

i understand people trying different tactics to try to get you motivated. i never really was pressured all that much but from time to time my mom would ask if i was doing anything to lose weight and i would just wave her off. my friends never gave me crap about my weight in highschool. i too was a skinny twerp when i was a kid then around 9th grade i got a little heavier and more so and more so.

my early 20s i was where i am now, just about 220-230. i can say i gained weight cause my father moved away, that a friend played a prank to get me to ask the captain of the cheerleaders to the prom and a host of others things i could put the blame on and no one would question it. except for me. there is one common element through all those things, me.

What made me start? Coming dangerously close to being 200 pounds. Ehhh!! I am done weighing that much so i started and so far i went from weighing 196 to weighing 180 NOW. My goal for this month is to weigh 170

I will be 50 in the fall and I have come far enough with improving the inner me. Time to get the outer me in line.

Seeing myself in my nursing uniform in the recording of a practice lab for nursing school. I looked like a baby beluga whale. Everyone was critiquing what happened in the lab, but all I could see was my fat self nearly breaking out of the seams of my extra large sized uniform. I felt disgusting, and sobbed during the review process. Everyone thought i was embarrassed by a tiny mistake I made. I wasn't, I was shocked that I'd let myself get that fat. That was my first realization that it was MY actions (and lack of actions) that caused me to look the way I do.