What was your "moment"?

I have had many should have been moments in the past including not being able to ride rides at the amusement park with my son for fear of not fitting, being too uncomfortable to be in bathing suit in public, having a horrible poorly healing tendonitis, huffing and puffing after walking only a couple of flights of stairs, etc, etc, etc-the list goes on and on. A huge moment should have been three years ago on Thanksgiving day when my father collapsed from cardiac arrest and my brother-in-law and I did CPR for nearly half an hour while waiting for the ambulance (country living)-he did not survive. Sure seems like it would be the ah hah moment that would motivate me to get in shape but instead I fell into a deep depression and managed to pack 75 lbs onto an already overweight body. My "moment" started emerging over the last month and a half but really kicked into full swing about 2 1/2 weeks ago. My older brother died at the age of 51 at the beginning of October from liver failure. It broke all of our hearts-he was a good man. My mother made me swear to her that I would not die before her-she said she could never survive another one of her children dying. I promised her-what else could I do? Then I really started thinking about the fact that there is nothing I was doing that was helping me live up to my promise. I was not exercising. I was eating very poorly. I was not getting enough sleep. I was feeling stressed all the time at work and with family. As my birthday approached, I realized how important it was for me to try to live up to that promise-for my mom, for my son, for my husband, for the rest of my family but most importantly for me. I am not trying to be perfect but I am trying to be better. I would appreciate help along the way. Thank you.

I'd always been thin, 5'5" 130 lbs and active. A little over 3 yrs ago I lost my appetite and was only eating 1 meal a day and started to gain weight. After gaining 50 lbs the Dr finally figured out I had hypothyroidism. Well I've tried "dieting," raspberry ketones etc nothing worked. I was talking to a friend about feeling tired all the time and gaining all this weight and hoped I'd lose the weight soon. Her response was well you're not 25 yrs old anymore what do you expect. I was crushed she said this. She was one of my closest friends! Well I expect to be healthy and lose this weight I told her. Now that I've found this site I'm hoping I can loose the weight and be able to hike and ski like I used to.

I've had several moments really but being a stubborn lazy bugger I didn't take notice. I had a really bad stomach bug one time that got so bad I ended up in hospital being given morphine for it, they thought it was my appendix but the surgeon was reluctant to operate because of my weight.

Another one was I went on holiday with my parents once and we met up with some friends on holiday and they wanted to walk up this mountain, well I was only 29 at the time and I couldn't do it as my joints were all hurting before I'd barely started yet an 85 year old man we had in our group ran up it. No one said anything but I was so embarrassed and my mum made an excuse that it was to hot for her to go up there to try and spare me some embarrassment.

The other time was I was out with a female friend and a few other friends and she was very drunk at the time she told me she would've gone out with me ages ago if I wasn't overweight.

My moment was when I discovered LCHF diet. I discovered it on a business trip to Scandanavia, where it is even prescribed by doctors and even the Swedish food and nutrition governing body is prescribing it as the best way to cure obesity and related ailments like diabetes. When I got back home, I did a bit of extra research on the diet and then decided to take the plunge. In the first month of the diet I didnt only lose weight, but noticed that my skin had cleared, breathing was better, nighttime asthma went away, had deeper sleeps, heart palpitations stopped, had more energy throughout the day and best of all I was not ravenously hungry. It was a miracle that I stumbled across this diet. Was it fate or Gods angel who sent me to Scandanavia to discover this? I was doing MFP for a LONG time and struggled so much, losing and gaining and losing like one month up and one month down and then next month up again. And during that time I was so hungry I could have eaten my own arm. Today, my weight is a steady decline downwards, and it doesn't feel hard at all! It's incredible how well this diet is working for me now!

Hell yeaaah... It's the best way! Paleo works exactly like that. LCHF. It puts your body in a state of ketosis, and the body uses fat for fuel.. I love it.

I've struggled with food for most of my life whether it was eating too little as a teen or too much as an adult. It took a long time to realize that being overweight is just as much a sign of an unhealthy food relationship as being underweight. My moment was last Wednesday, the 20th, when I was sitting on the couch eating cupcakes for lunch. YES. CupcakeSS for LUNCH and the crumbs were no longer landing just on my boobs... they were landing on my gut too... I took one second to think about where I've been in my life as far as weight and food and decided I need to do something about it because this isn't okay.

When it truly sunk in for me was when I started in Nutrisystem back in 2011, I think it was. I knew I was big and all that but it never truly sunk in until I weighted in the first morning when I started the program. I was at 300 lbs exactly and I started crying. Knowing, and really KNOWING, seemed to be two different things. I never would have thought I had gotten that heavy and I was ashamed, upset, depressed, etc. I was determined to follow the program as best as I possibly could and I did for a while. I grew to dislike their food tracker, however, since it didn't seem very exact but I used it. I had no idea if the calorie count I was getting at the end of the day was too high for me, too low, etc. After a while I did a search for tracking apps and came across MFP, which I ended up loving. How easy is it to just scan the label? So, I started tracking more here and less there, and eventually I just quit NS completely. I did lose 35-40 pounds on the program so obviously something with it works, even if it mostly taught me how to do smaller portions. I'm still thankful for that. I'm even more thankful I've been able to keep it off, even if I do yoyo between the same 5 pounds for a while!

I still have what I started to call the "Woe is me" moments when it comes to my weight but I'm at least a little more forgiving to myself. Exercise has never been my strong point but I've picked up doing DDP yoga and while it's challenging it's not strenuous and it doesn't make me hate myself while I'm doing a workout. I have a long way to go (100+ pounds to lose) but I just keep puttering along the best I can.

When I saw myself (my back only!!! thank goodness i was turned away from the camera) in school posters for an event I had attended a few months prior.... the posters were EVERYWHERE and all i can see every time I passed by one was my HUGENESS and how many fat rolls I had... and how deluded I was to think that the clothes I was wearing still "fit." That was my highest weight and I dont ever want to go back there, ever again!

I had to go to a meeting and give a presentation. Literally none of my smart clothes fitted me. I ended up wearing a stretchy bright pink cocktail dress with a stretchy royal blue cardigan, and 'sensible' shoes. Honestly I looked stupid. I gave my presentation, but I was crying inside. The next day I started counting calories, and then I found MFP about a week later. Thank goodness!

Late this summer I was diagnosed with gout.
I am 30 years old and female, so not exactly the stereotypical demograph for the illness (although both of my parents also suffer and there is a genetic link).

Although I have always had a problem with portion sizes, I've always eaten pretty healthily - so for me, the main contributing factor for preventing re-occurrences happening is simply, my weight.

I've never been skinny and also suffer from PCOS, but have carried my weight well enough that people really don't believe how much I weigh (I am 5'2" and currently at 173lbs; UK clothes size 16). It's time to get with reality and face the fact that I AM overweight and I alone, am responsible for sorting it out.

WOW!!! What a great idea! Soooo many motivational stories!!!!