What was your "final straw"?

I broke my ankle badly several years ago and ended up with a bit of hardware in there and a slight limp. A couple of years ago, I broke the same ankle again. Rather than have surgery again, we decided on "conservative care" for the ankle....basically zero weight bearing and lots of monitoring. This left me in a wheelchair for several months. Problem is, I didn't fit comfortably in a standard size wheelchair and had to have a larger one which didn't fit through some doorways. My upper body strength was nowhere near sufficient to lift my weight, either. It was awkward and embarrassing and just a bit demoralizing.

Because I was essentially bedridden, my daughter prepared all my meals. I ate what everyone else ate in the portions everyone else ate...and ended up losing weight! That really forced me to confront the "I've tried everything and nothing works, I must be a special snowflake" mindset. So, as soon as I was allowed to walk, I started using my long neglected treadmill and watching my portions. I still can't walk much faster than 2.2 miles an hour and not for very long...I'm hoping as the burden on my ankle decreases, I'll be able to go faster. For now, the elliptical has become my best friend. As the song says, I don't go very fast, but I go pretty far!:laugh:

I started running, and I want to run more and get faster. It's hard to do when you are too heavy, so I want to lose the weight to become a better runner.

Like many here I have been battling my weight for many years. I'm now 35. I can literally count the number of times I've been "a healthy weight" on one hand (minus two fingers). I too dread taking pictures, I look horrible. I just cleaned out my closet of clothing that fit me just a year and a half ago! I now literally have a handful of clothing that fits me. I refuse to go clothes shopping due to the emotional havoc it wreaks on my psyche, as well as the financial part where I can't afford to.

But my final straw was this: My children asked me to take them to a water park. I said I couldn't due to funds. The real reason was out of selfishness. I can't wear a bathing suit in public, let alone privately, so why would I take my kids to a water park where I couldn't have fun with them?!?! Yes selfish, I know, painful too, not being able to live a full life and having wonderful experiences with my own children because I didn't have the strength or will power to stop eating.

What have I learned in the last 3 years? School, stress, unemployment, and more stress isn't exactly fun and wreaks havoc on your health. I will not let it beat me though.

Next thing on my to do list after having joined myfitnesspal? A scale so I can take full ownership of my weight problem and getting it into check.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I started off at 190 pounds, bordering on obese for my height. I had gestational diabetes so I ate very carefully and gained only 25 pounds during my pregnancy. After I had her, I lost most of the baby weight quickly. Then, I stopped caring about portions and was soon bingeing on a regular basis. Before my daughter was a year old, I had gained my pregnancy weight back plus 3 pounds. I realized that women contestants on the biggest loser had started out at or just above my weight and I just couldn't face watching the number on the scale go any higher. I am also STILL in maternity clothes which is too depressing for words since my daughter is now 13 months old.

Finding out my BMI classified me as obese
Seeing me in family pictures and my reaction was "Oh my God", and noticing that the jacket I was wearing was actually too small and being embarrassed
Always hiding in pictures
Never wanting to look at my reflection when passing by windows or mirrors in stores
Hating to shop for clothes when I once used to love shopping
Hating to get dressed for work and taking forever to decide what to wear because nothing looked good anymore
Just plain being ashamed of the way I looked

It may never be the final straw but it was the last straw! I've lost 18 this year. Last year it was 35. So I gained nearly half back over a bad winter, spring and early summer. But this last straw was that I donated all my size 36 waist pants. So I refused to wear anything larger than 34. But the only thing was that I had to wear shirts un-tucked because I was ashamed of my small belly showing. So my last straw is shame.

Pulling a muscle in my chest while shoveling snow was one of the best things that happened to me. At the time, I didn't put two and two together as to the cause of my injury. All I knew was that my chest hurt for several days. I went to a doctor and was falsely diagnosed with angina. This was a few months before my 38th birthday. My wife and I were stressed about the idea that I could potentially have a heart attack at any time. Of course, that could still happen now, but you get the idea. A week later, my wife introduced me to MFP and it was the start of a much healthier lifestyle for both of us.

My trigger moment happened while on vacation..my husband had a stroke at the age of 40. Official diagnosis was a TIA (transient iscemic attack) on the left side of his brain. He lost all movement on his right side. Thankfully with the help of great Dr's and rehab he gained his movement back. It was a long process but he never gave up. Hes now at about 90%. We decided then to live more healthy. We both stopped smoking and started regular check ups, and addressing issuses that should have been taken care of years ago. With genetics, smoking, high blood pressure, being overweight, eating junk, and not exercising we were a ticking time bomb. We had our "Aha" moment!

So, last summer I got an epiphany that I was a fatass. The elevator was out at work and I was breathing like a beached pilot whale from climbing three flights of stairs. I remember thinking, "Is THIS what you've become? Is THIS the best you can be?"

I took a long hard, and truthful look at myself. At the advanced age of forty five I'd ballooned up from my physical work weight of one hundred fifty-five pounds to two hundred thirty pounds. My BMI was 34.5, and I was a mere fifteen pounds from being classified as 'morbidly obese'. I was tired all of the time. I didn't really do anything that involved being physical. I'd stopped working in the wood shop I have. Yard work requiring more than me pushing a self-propelled mower didn't get done.

At fifty-eight weeks of weight loss:

Weight: down from 230 lbs to 173
BMI: down from 35.4 to 27.1
Body fat (guess from pictures): 40%+ to 28%
Waist: down from 40 to 33
Endurance: up from "Couldn't get up three flights of stairs" to "hiking six to seven miles a day in under ninety minutes."