What was your wake up call?

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  • Vanessa1977
    Vanessa1977 Posts: 101
    I have had a few reasons to re-evaluate my life this year but the last one that really lit a fire under my butt was when I was braiding my daughters hair and she asked me why I breahted so heavy.
    All I had been doing was getting her ready after her bath and doing her hair, it's not like I had just climbed a flight of stairs.
    So I asked my son if it was true and he said yeah it had been that way for a while, he thought I knew. Honestly I had no idea.
  • Sara1978
    Sara1978 Posts: 213 Member
    A whole bunch of my friends became pregnant last year, and at least half of them wound up having some sort of complication with their pregnancy. Miscarriages, pregnancy-induced diabetes, you name it... All of the friends were close to my age. Some of them were considerably healthier than I was before their pregnancies, and they still had problems. I really want to start a family soon, but seeing my friends go through so much galvanized me to get really, really healthy before taking that step so that I could be as ready as anyone could ever be. Since I'm already in my 30s, I don't exactly want to put off this process any longer than is necessary, so there was no "well, in a few years I'll get serious about getting healthy". It's happening now. :)
  • corena
    corena Posts: 141 Member
    I went to the Dr. for a physical, High blood pressure, and pre-diabetic. I said No No No, and agreed to loose some weight and get in better shape. Have alot of diabeties and heart conditions in my famliy and vowed i would not leave my children early in life and am determined to make a change NOW. Already feel better about my choices and small successes that I have made here and with my family. We all are eating better and getting off the couch more. My children find it fun to ride bikes together rather than watch a show together, so hopefully we can make it a total lifestyle change.
  • pfenixa
    pfenixa Posts: 194 Member
    I'm one of the people that had many little wake up calls but just didn't do anything about them for too long. It started off by gaining 20 lbs in my first semester of college. Of course I swore I would get it off but another 2 years passed and another 10 lbs joined the fun. The whole time my weight bothered me, but not enough for me to dwell on it. Then in 2008 I moved to Virginia. I gained another 15-20 lbs and Everything depressed me. I missed all of my friends, I wasn't sure if the man I moved for was the right person for me, I dwelled over my breakup with my ex, I couldn't find a job for months and then when I did it was a sh*tty job that I hated...plus I had gained weight. I knew my family has a history of heart trouble and diabetes and I knew that I was overweight. At my highest weight (170) my BMI showed me just in the Obese range.

    My (now) husband and I got gym memberships and we'd go for awhile but I never changed how I ate and the exercise routine would never stick. It wasn't until this past March that things changed. I finally got away from the part-time job that I loathed and got a full-time job that paid better. A few weeks into my new job I just decided to change how I eat, something I could never manage to do at my old job even though my boss cooked and ate healthy. Then I remembered a friend of mine talking about MFP and decided to get it from him and I've been here ever since.

    It's been such a change since I started here. I'm not that excited with the new job anymore (still better than the old one, lol), but changing my diet has refashioned my life. I've lost 41 lbs since the beginning of the year and my confidence, energy, and determination have gone through the roof since then. I've learned so much more about nutrition and exercise, a good chunk just from being on MFP and going from there. Finally starting to eat better is what woke up my desire to cook too! It's amazing how a single decision to change my diet has changed my life for the better. Congratulations to myself and to all of you for changing life for the better!
  • mlipsey
    mlipsey Posts: 34
    My wake up call is when I first started this site. I always wanted to work out but was to lazy to do it. I'm 5'3 and 182Lbs so when I checked the obesity chart it said I was obese and I started crying like a big baby. I than looked in the mirror and noticed love handles under my bra strap that I never seen before. this just made my cry more. I immediately put my work out clothes on and went straight to the gym.
  • monkeyfood
    monkeyfood Posts: 106
    My wake up call was when my size 20 pants were too tight to do up. I couldn't believe I had let myself get that big. I had always told myself as a teenager that I would NEVER get over 200 pounds..I got on my wii fit that day.. 220 pounds! I couldn't believe it.
    I knew that it was calories in, calories out..but I never knew that I was putting so many calories in my mouth. I googled calorie counters and started keeping track..I ran onto this sight and have never been happier.
    I have lost 10lbs in 6 weeks..which isn't really anything to brag about but the same size 20 pants from then are falling off of me now :) I'm so glad I changed instead of just went out and bought bigger pants like I had done in the past.
  • weaklink109
    weaklink109 Posts: 2,831 Member
    Ironically, there was another post on here tonight about "the last straw." After reading all the stories here, I decided to copy the same post I did on that thread:

    My birthday came a week before Easter in 2009. I had to renew my driver's license, which meant a new picture. There I sat, weighing more than I ever had,:cry: wondering what the h3LL happened to the 13 lbs. I lost in the prior January when I had a planned surgery. What happened to my plan to "watch it" and keep losing, FINALLY? :mad: Well, I DID watch it....just that "it" went back up, to where I had been, + a couple of pounds of "interest" :noway: because I was fooling myself about how much I was eating, and how much "exercise" there really was in walking two (at that time, now it is three) pesky little doggies, who like to stop and smell the roses, a LOT!:laugh: :laugh:

    I decided the best birthday gift I could give myself for the following year (2010) was to lose 100 lbs. During the week before Easter, I began searching out weight loss info online, and read some important basic truths. People who record their food intake and exercise calories burned are more likely to be successful at LOSING, and if those same people adopt a "lifestyle change" rather than going on a "diet" that they eventually plan to go "off" of, they are more likely to KEEP the weight off. I also found that people who had a support system, whether it was in person or online, were also more likely to continue for the long haul.

    I searched for free calorie-counting websites, found another one I can't recall, and MFP. MFP seemed much more user-friendly, than the other site, so I registered and started using it every day on April 13, 2009. I started walking (without doggies), and for a while during the summer, I was doing about 25 miles per week. The weather and shorter days made that pace impossible to maintain, but I still tried to walk outdoors when I could, and at the Mall, when the weather was uncooperative. The secret was to KEEP WALKING PAST the Food Court!!!:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

    It took me 7 months and 3 weeks to lose 50 lbs. In December, my doctor removed one of my BP meds and cut the dosage of the remaining one to half of what I had been taking. I sustained a head injury in January, 2010, and the aftermath of it, put me off of trying as intensely to lose for a while. I didn't gain, but was not losing anymore--just going up and down the same 2 or 3 lbs.

    Along about July, I was getting fed up, since what I had done the previous year to lose wasn't working. As a result of posts on MFP, I researched the HCG diet, and found it was supposed to be helpful for someone experiencing a plateau due to being at a setpoint (a weight that you held for a long time in the past, and when you get back to it, you can't get below it). I knew that I was right in that neighborhood and I was sick of it. My original expectation had been to lose 100 lbs. in a year, but when April 2010 arrived, I had only lost half of that.

    When I got a 'save the date' notice for a family wedding in September, I decided I HAD to get it in gear if I was going to be anywhere close to where I had planned to be by the end of the summer. On July 19th, I started the HCG diet. About 20 days into the process, after losing about 12 lbs. I experienced a week of severe carb cravings that seemed to come out of nowhere.

    After a few days, I figured out it had been triggered by artificial sweeteners--something I had not been using, but they were in something I had eaten away from home. Not realizing that was the issue, I tried to "solve" my cravings by having a squirt or two of sugar free syrup in the decaf I was getting in the evening at Starbuck's. Then I was coming home and gobbling multiple servings of crackers, and even some of the candy stash that I had no trouble ignoring for the previous three weeks.

    A look at my food diary for that week helped me figure out what had happened, and within two days of stopping that sugar free syrup "fix," my cravings disappeared, and I began losing again. I "lost" a week, and probably cost myself being at least 6 lbs. lighter than I am now, but I am not dwelling on what can't be changed. In another 4.5 lbs., I will be "overweight" ONLY (per BMI) for the first time since 1989!!:drinker: :drinker:

    Almost as good as that day will be, last week I visited my doctor and when my blood pressure was checked, it was 100/74!! Mind you, before this time, the best I could do off meds was about 114/80. My doctor was very pleased.

    So now I am trying to get to a loss of 100 lbs. by the beginning of November, 2010, which would put me at the high end of a 'healthy weight' for my height. Talk about something to be thankful for!!:drinker: :drinker:

    Anyway, that is the story of my "final straw"--a driver's license picture from hell. Within the last two weeks, two people have looked at it, at my bank, and looked at me and said "You need a new photo!" So probably this Fall, I will pay extra to have it redone.
  • mark996
    mark996 Posts: 184 Member
    I'd always been big, but active. Played football, baseball and soccer while growing up. I could always do the same things all the other kids could, no problems, was even a faster running than a lot of kids smaller than me. After high school, my activeness fell. I was working in a warehouse, but it wasn't the same level of movement. I stepped on a scale on day, 464....I died a little there. I had been struggling with high blood pressure, wasn't sky high, but above normal so I was put on medication. I started that day. I was in the gym just about every day. I'd lift scrap materials in the shop when we weren't busy, and I'd bust my butt doing my job because it was a work out. It felt great. I dropped over 100 pounds, and I'm still working on it. It was hard moving from an active job to a job where I sit most of the time, but where there's a will there's a way. Still losing weight, still working out, and still getting better about cleaning up my diet and intake. It was a life style change, and that's absolutely what it has to be in order to succeed. It's not a part time gig, it's all day, every day.
  • alantin
    alantin Posts: 621 Member
    High blood pressure that runs in the family. I want to get that down permanently.
  • wiseg2
    wiseg2 Posts: 210 Member
    My dad passed away last September at the age of 54 from a heart attack and I've seen the same thing happen to many of my other family members.

    I gave birth to my daughter in March of this year and said enough is enough. I need to be here for my kids and I can't stand to look in the mirror. I avoided them like the plague. I was completely disgusted at the before pics I took. I also have health issues including high blood pressure and cholesterol (and I'm only 20 years old!). So I have a lot of things to motivate me.
  • xweerachceex
    xweerachceex Posts: 85
    my wake up call
    is being over weight and seeing a picture my boyfriend took of me when we started going out
    (3 years ago this month) and let me tell you i was a skinny *****! at the time i didnt think i was but now?......... i would give anything to be that weight again! so im here getting there slowly!

    (any1 feel free to add me :flowerforyou: )

    Rachael
  • ktbug1186
    ktbug1186 Posts: 266
    Mine was going to the doctor and having sky high cholesterol levels from all the junk I have polluted my body with. Also just hated the way I look, and kind of in denial. So glad I found this site! :)
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