I am now 44 years young with two sons, 16 and 9. I have been overweight since grade school. I lost weight before I got pregnant with my first son (43 pounds), but gained it all plus 35 pounds during my pregnancy. I managed to lose about 50 over the next several years before getting pregnant with my second son. After he was born I joined one of those diet centers that went out of business (also very very expensive). I started in home child care 8 years ago and got lazy. Between taking care of other kids during the day and then taking care of my family during the evenings, I forgot to take care of me.

I have now advised my husband and kids that I am taking my life back. I am not going to be any good to them if I'm dead.

My oldest son is soooo supportive. He dabbles around with the Insanity videos he got from a friend in addition to football and wrestling practice. Tonight I really saw support from him. I was setting up the living room to do Turbo Fire and he ran into his room and changed his clothes and joined me. What a great kid! Just love him to pieces.

I am taking my life back one day at a time.

I'm 27. I'm from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. I've been overweight to obese since I was, at least, 10 years old.

It has been a long and frustrating battle. After I fully developed, the lowest I weighted was 192 when I was a senior in High School. When I graduated from college, four years later, I went up to 283 lbs.

In the five years after that, I managed to get down to 245. Eventually I did a fast program that got me to 218. But then I went back to 250.

I want to do this because I'm tired of struggling with my weight. I want to know what it feels like to be at my normal weight range (according to this site, I'm not supposed to go over 164). I don't want to be frustrated when I buy clothes or when my clothes are tight.

Furthermore, I want to live a healthy life and not have diabetes and cholesterol problems later.

It's a long story. When I was young, I always saw myself as "the fat kid." Looking back, I wasn't really, but I have learned that I can take criticism from loved ones and really internalize it deeply in a negative way. In 2000, I quit a job that was very stressful to me, and I was probably about 204 lbs. then. I started losing weight after that. I quit smoking in 2003, and started to exercise. From about 2005 to 2010 I was in really great shape. At some point, it was as if someone had thrown a switch, and it was easy for me to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I'd been inspired by books that really helped me turn my thinking around ("Don't Eat This Book," by Morgan Spurlock; "Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think," by Brian Wansink; a book on whole grains, the variety and how to cook them -- can't remember the title -- by a couple who had lost a lot of weight together; and "Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets from my mother's Tokyo kitchen," by Naomi Moriyama).

Then some things started getting out of sync. Some of my relationships weren't going too well (was polyamorous -- taking a break from it now), and I didn't know how to handle that. I started drinking more. I got physical anxiety symptoms, so I went to a therapist to try to sort that out, but I quit going as soon as that went away. My chosen family made fun of me for working out so much. They would say stuff like, "You're crazy. Whatever. I'm going to relax and have a cocktail in the back yard." At the time I knew that was having a deep impact on my attitude about myself and making me lose my enjoyment in working out, but I didn't understand why. Just recently (like last week), with a new therapist, I realized that that sort of minimalization of something that was important to me was a trigger from my childhood. My mother can be extremely judgmental, and her harshest criticisms come in the form of "that's silly, that's just stupid, and why would anyone do that?" So, to have my loved ones make fun of me, even though they were just teasing, really kind of killed a part of my vitality. I stopped seeing a trainer. I stopped bicycling to work. I stopped going to the gym. I started just tuning out of my life after work and doing chores while drinking heavily. In three years I went from about 142 to back up around 204.

I started seeing my new therapist last August, after my last outside relationship kind of exploded in a roiling mess of insecurity and pain. I've started dealing with emotions, learning to feel really, and looking at things. I've finally gotten my drinking back under control. And after starting to exercise again, I've started to feel good again, not just low-level depressed most of the time.

So I want this because it's time. I turn 48 this summer. I respect myself, and I deserve to treat myself well and to feel good. I feel better, sex is better, and I have a great positive energy when I'm exercising and eating right and getting/staying in shape.