What caused you to have to lose weight in the first place?

Emotional & Physical Pain @ TILT.

A thousand things, but one big one is that I was reading treatment guidelines for kidney transplant recipients (of which I am one) and saw that our incidence of cardiovascular disease is many times that of the standard population. And I'll be damned if I'm going to survive kidney failure and successful transplantation at the age of sixteen only to keel over from a heart attack or stroke in my forties or fifties. The irony alone would probably kill me.

OMG!! What a terrible thing to have to go through at such a young age! What a great way to turn something terible into motivation!

Yeah, that was not a fun period. Fortunately kidney and I have been doing pretty well ever since. (Fingers crossed!) And it made for one hell of a college admissions essay.

hubby and i were looking at my friend's facebook one day after she did a bikini competition and he commented on one of the girls having a "10" *kitten* and rockin body. Not only did I agree, I was impressed with her transformation. That motivated me. I want to be his perfect 10.

I was a dancer in school up to my junior year in high school so I was fit. I broke both my feet my junior year and gained weight in my senior year- maybe 30 pounds. But when I went to college I gained 100 pounds the first year and kept adding to it (at least 20 more the next year) - it was so stressful with no exercise and I had a boyfriend that could eat everything and gain nothing. I eventually lost 100 pounds (still overweight but not horribly so) but gained it back later again when I was in a relationship plus 50 more (at that point being 200 pounds overweight) and then lost 160 of it after that relationship ended. That is when I met my husband. Now I am married and I gained back all but that extra 50 - I stopped myself when I saw I was back where I was at 20 years old - 125+ pounds overweight. I decided my relationship did not have to end my eating - I had to end my eating and exercise 5x a week even if I have a full time job and 4 children and am in a relationship.

My problem is that I work out sporadically or stop altogether if I'm satisfied with where I am. I don't have a food addiction or issues and I'm aware of calorie counts, proper portions and what have you. I never gain weight as long as I'm consistent with working out.

I've always been naturally thin. I was a skinny child and a skinny teenager. I ate like a horse and 90% of it was junk food. My family is from the South and there was a lot of fried food on the menu. Also, I literally used to sit and watch TV for a couple of hours and eat 3-5 bowls of sugary cereals with whole milk. Cinamon rolls and snack cakes were also a favorite or mine and it was fast food for dinner several nights per week. And I never, ever gained weight or had health problems.

I hit my adult height of 5'11" at age 16 and for a reason I can't remember, made the decision to clean up my diet a little and start exercising. I still ate junk, but it was more balanced with "real" food and I really didn't do all that much in the way of exercise. I did something like 20-30 minutes of cardio a few days a week and went from 140 to 125 in short order. I didn't have anything against weights or resistance work, I just didn't know anything about it. When I found out that lifting weights was good for you, I began adding resistance exercises to my routine in my mid 20s. My weight went back into the 140s, but I was still a size 6.

Since I didn't really have to work much to maintain, I got a bit lazy. I would slack off exercise for a while, gain about five pounds, go back to working out for a couple of weeks, lose the five pounds, and get lazy again. I just took it for granted.

In 2008, my clothes were feeling tight and when I weighed myself, I discovered that I weighed 160, which is the highest I had ever been and I freaked out. On top of that, I had a trip to San Diego upcoming in 2009. I buckled down and got back to my "nomal" size. However, after San Diego, I started taking it for granted and slacked off again.

Fast forward to late 2010. Not only had I gained weight again, but I was in the low 170s. That's when I joined MFP. Honestly, I let a lot of the noise around here get into my head and tried many different ways to lose the weight, but it wouldn't budge. The month I tried "clean eating" was a blast. I decided to go back to eat sensibley and go back to the combination of cardio and calisthenics that my body usually responded to and in June 2011, I started doing Turbo Jam exclusively. By the end of September, I was back in a size 6 again.

Fast forward to late last year. You guessed it. Slacking off again and only working out sporadically. By March of this year, I bought new jeans and they were a *tight* size 12 and I weighed 192. I was disgusted. I didn't even know it was possible for me to weigh that much. I long for the 160 that freaked me out just five years ago.

In April, I got back on the wagon. Those size 12 jeans now have to be held up by a belt that I have to take in three notches. My other clothes are getting loose as well. And I haven't changed my eating habits all that much.

Though I've made great progress, I still look in the mirror and get discouraged and wonder how long this is going to take, but I tell myself to snap out of it and be realistic. It took almost two years for me to gain the 35 pounds and it's not going to go away in a few months. It's just always been so fast before, that it's frustrating. I have to remember that I was younger and didn't have nearly as much weight to lose the other times. If I stick to it, I should be back to "normal" by next spring.

I saw some pictures of me at my highest weight and was like oh hell no, I don't want to be fat. I was always skinny in high school and to go from 99 pounds in HS to 170 within the years was not going to work. I am also short...5'3 and I looked like a compact dough boy. So I have been working my butt off since May 2012 and I finally feel comfortable in my skin.

Slowly over the past 8-10 years the weight has creeped on due to osteoarthritix of both hips limiting my excercise ability, it has gradually dibilitated and now is the worse its been. It's very hard but I am now having to adjust the amount and type of food I eat to make up for the lack of being able to get the physical excercise I always could before. I will undergo my first srugery in November with the snd to follow Feb/Mar and then 3-6 months after the last I should regain most all function back. In the meantime the more I can lose prior to surgery the speedier the recovery will be. Wish me luck.

Well true. If put that way. Mine would be just from basically growing up and getting older thinking I had all the time in the world to "Fix myself". Having had 4 children, daily stress and just not eating right made me balloon. Think that's kind of typical though.

My family and I were walking past a store with glass windows and I just happened to turn and look at myself in the glass..... And I thought "OMG I look so damn fat! That's it. This fat is coming off." I've had 2 kids and the fat just kind of stuck around and then some. I can't bend all the way down to tie my shoes anymore. I have to lean at a certain angle to tie them. I don't fit into any of my shirts. They are all too small. That's what motivated me to start losing weight.

I've always been a bit chubby. That was apparent around the age of 8 when I started gaining weight. My household was not the least bit healthy and I ate what I wanted, which seemed to be processed/pre-packaged foods smothered in fat. If only I would have known...
Growing up, I ate comfort food. I'm from the south. People practically force feed you here. If you didn't eat (at least back then) it was almost an insult to your host's cooking.
By 14, I was pretty heavy. I'm guessing I was close to 180. So I used Atkins and lost about 30 lbs, which wasn't enough, but it was much better. I stayed around that weight until junior year in high school. That summer, I started dating someone seriously and gained a few "happy" pounds. His family (not surprisingly) was not into healthy eating/fitness either. So the weight came back, with a vengeance. Then I was put on the pill for my acne. Not a good idea. At all.
It made me crave things I'd never even thought about eating. I'm not saying it was solely responsible for my weight gain, but it certainly didn't help. The combination of cravings and unhealthy people surrounding me made me constantly eat things that I knew I shouldn't be eating.
So for five long years I have had a battle with my self-image and weight. I'd tried dieting off and on, and they probably would have worked if I would have stuck to any of them for more than two weeks. I was totally depressed and disgusted with myself.

My real "epiphany" moment came when I was texting a friend and they asked me if I was happy. I told them "no" and explained why I wasn't happy (my appearance). I also mentioned I couldn't do anything about it until Christmas break, because I was just so busy with school and work. They then said "there will always be an excuse why you can't. if you want something bad enough, you will make room for it."
I had known that and thought about it. But it took someone else telling me that for it to really sink in. No more excuses. It's now part of my life, and always will be. No going back.
It has taken a lot of trial and error, but I am now down ~20 lbs. I feel so much better now that I know my body so well and that it will only get better.