What turned it around for you?

Great post Sue... as always!! I honestly don't know what turned it around for me except to say that it was finding this site. I was still doing my same old "tomorrow" routine and I would like to say that I had some sort of epiphany but I didn't. I had been praying for so long for God to release me from the insanity that was my life and to change me. I know things happen in His time so I guess it truly was time for me to do this because I don't even remember how I found this site... I really don't. I do know that nothing has been the same for me since I came here and committed to doing this. I look at everything different now and have a peace with my food and with myself that I have never had before. I don't even mind that reaching my goal weight is going to take a long time. I am working every day towards healing my body, my mind and my spirit and am loving every minute of it. Even the lows since they are teaching me patience. So for all of you that are still struggling, I promise you God does answer prayers and you can change. I am living proof of that. God Bless!!!

What a great question Sue!!! Your story is so inspiring!

What did it for me was a series of several things. I had a stroke at the ripe old age of 44 years old. I was just over 220 lbs at the time and miserable at that weight. I had been "losing" off and on for a few years and just getting heavier. Anyway my blood pressure was really high and my blood sugar was too high and I was depressed. After the symptoms of the stroke began resolving and I began to understand that I could and probably would have a much larger and more devastating stroke someday if I didn't do something, I went on yet another diet. I gained 15 pounds! Back at the doctor for a routine followup (about 6 months after the stroke) my doctor sat me down and flat out told me that my bloodwork was horrible, my cholesterol was too high, I was on the edge of a diabetes diagnosis, my liver was fatty and if I wanted to watch my then 11 year old son graduate high school I had to lose weight. He said he wanted me to do it the old fashion way, diet and exercise and if that didn't do it, then we could talk surgery.

I thought about it, I denied it, and ignored it for about 2 more weeks, then I checked my bloodsugar on a glucometer I had at the house and it was 124 fasting. It was between 115 and 124 every single day for the next week and it scared me. I watched my mother die of complications from diabetes at 71. She was wheelchair bound, legally blind, on dialysis and unable to do anything for herself and had been that way for several years. i didn't want that to happen to me, I never want to be that kind of burden on my children. I decided to stop eating junk food, McDonalds was a weakness, I stopped for a happy meal every day on my way home from work, (I still do but only get an iced tea), I also started walking around my neighborhood. I got on the scale and was 238 lbs, I am 5'3" tall.

I walked and I ate normally except for my McD's fix and lost a few pounds and rediscovered this site. With the help of MFP I started eating healthier, walking faster and farther and by March of this year (about 6 months) I was down to 188 lbs. I joined a gym in November because my hubby was scared of me walking the neighborhood in the dark after work, we I can now lift 225 lbs. in a deadlift, I can leg press 270 and bench 105 lbs. I can walk several miles without even losing my breath. My fasting blood sugar hasn't been over 88 in 5 months, I am down to 1 blood pressure medication and only 1/2 strength, I am at 182 lbs and stuck there (have been for 3 months now) but while I am frustrated with no progress, I know my body is stronger then ever before and I can see the reversal of the scary medical things. According to my trainer, I would be able to bench much more, but my left arm is still weak from the stroke, so every time I try and go heavier, it is a reminder of why I do this.

So to sum it up, it wasn't one thing, one click and I turned the corner, it was a series of events and a long time to get my head on straight, but I did it and continue to do it through the frustration of the longest plateau of my life!

Congratulations on your achievement Sue. And yes its a nice post.

I had a job once as a medicolegal typist and it was then that i realised how little ordinary people know and understand about their own bodies. Its only when get a rude shock like you had that you have to start learning something. And now you've taught us something too.

Anyway, my turnaround this time was just feeling disgusted with my size and appearance. I'd been feeling this way for some time but was in a good frame of mind otherwise. I'd been feeling undepressed for several months. So then new year came along and a few days after on the spur of the moment, i decided to make a new years resolution to get down to 60kg/132 or 135 pounds by the end of the year. I haven't looked back. I'm currently in my 140s somewhere/65kg today.

I"m feeling great in my body and determined that i will never be overweight again. I'm so loving my food though. More than when i ate ice-cream by the litre. Today i've prepared meals from 3 mediterranean countries - spain, france (a sugarless dessert) and greece. Tonight will be leftover italian. diet wise its been such an interesting year for me.

I logged on today and went to the message boards looking for some inspiration. Your story (and the stories of other posters that followed) gave me that inspiration. I am so impressed by your commitment and positive attitude. Thank you!

I remember looking in the mirror in December 2012, and I had one of those life changing moments - I wondered what it would be like to look "normal." I know that there isn't one normal state of being, but I later realized that I just wanted to know what it was like to live my life like most people do. I wanted to be able to go outside and walk around without feeling like I was going to have a heart attack. I wanted to know what it was like to meet people as something other than a fat man, to see if anyone would appreciate the good person I am and get past who they saw with their eyes. And I realized in that moment that I was going to have to do it on my own, to gather the determination to lose the weight once and for all. At my biggest, I was somewhere between 450 and 500, a 6'2'' man with a 64 inch waist. That's before the profile picture...there I'm still over 400 with a 58 inch waist. Today I'm at 232 and still losing. I didn't start MFP until I was 259 and at a plateau, and I had the great idea of eating up to the max recommended amounts of sugar, sodium, fat, etc. and not going over. The combination of the two events changed my life and my future. My health has never been better, and I'm thankful every day that I have a chance to make my health and my life better.

I have been dieting for weeks/months/years, but what has suddenly forced me to really keep to it is my 9 month old baby! I had fertility issues first time round, and even though I got pregnant naturally in the end (awesome story, but for another time)there is no guarantee that I will be able to a second time. I know that when I do start trying again, the first thing dr would say is, lose 5% of your body weight!! So, I need to lose that extra 20lbs from baby, as well as 5% more.... it hit me I had 3 months to lose that 20lbs (we want to start trying again around his first birthday) so MFP it is.... and for first time in weeks/months/years, it's working!!!!

Well, I didn't have that much to lose but I guess what frustrated me was that I was always tired and felt lethargic. Also, my health was falling slowly; I'm sensitive to my body changing so I really felt the side affects even at the small weight gain. Glad I took action right away though instead of keep letting myself go because now I feel great, moving more and eating better. Skin rash is gone; great healthy looking skin, eyes, and hair altogether. This was my first time ever "dieting" but I'm making a commitment for life. I'm never gonna let myself go!

Everyone has such inspirational reasons, mine seems a little silly. But I'm a teenager so my brain isn't at full capacity yet. Yeah let's go with that

For me, it was basically a two part whammy.

Part one: I was on a family trip in June and wearing a pair of shorts (as seen in profile pic) that I had had since Freshman year of high school. I wore them all trip. They buttoned, and they were tight, but I could move in them.

Then the last day of the trip I crouched down to untie my shoes and they ripped up the left thigh. I had always prided myself on the fact that even if I gained about 10 pounds per year, I never had to buy new clothes unless the old ones wore out. I've been a size 12 since Freshman year but in that moment I realized that that couldn't go on any longer.

RIP beautiful shorts that were awesome and I couldn't find another pair of in my size. But that's okay because I decided then that I would start exercising since I was headed to a summer program at a college with a gym.

Part two: I went to the program, and about two weeks in got sick to my stomach. I didn't exercise for that week, obviously. But long story short , I dry heaved so had I burst a blood vessel in my eye, which sent me to the doctor. They didn't weigh me there, but there was a scale in the bathroom so I hopped on, expecting to see little to no change from last year, which was 190. Boy was I wrong. 206. It was one of those special weight balance-y ones so I know it was pretty accurate. Since I had been exercising already, I'm sure it started out higher. I don't know why 190 was okay and 206 isn't but I decided then and there that I was going to stop this before it got any worse.

In 2009, I was diagnosed with pseudotumor cerebri (PTC): high intracranial pressure, right at the diabetic threshold (99), low thyroid, mass on my left adrenal gland, UARS (sleep apnea cousin), and blood pressure/cholesterol numbers/heart rate that were still normal, but definitely trending upward from the super-low numbers that are *my* normal. I wasn't thrilled with my weight, but I was also still pretty strong and able to do things - coasting on lifelong fitness, really. Sleep and eating were a complete mess, worse than I'd realized (my doc had me keep a 1-week diary).

But PTC can cost you your sight. I write and edit, and reading is also one of my favorite relaxation go-tos. Yes, there are workarounds for the blind, but at 40 the loss of print would be devastating.

So I made a spreadsheet like any good scientist: sleep, food, exercise. And things got even uglier. Kept waking up screaming, and spending the day feeling as if I was going to crawl out of my skin.

THAT was when I got diagnosed and started treatment for PTSD. Because I was self-medicating with stress. So until I addressed that root problem? I was always gonna find another way to stress myself to the "comfortable" crisis level. One thing I had to address that seems little discussed is how to work out *hard* without that level of stress/negative self talk. It was difficult to separate the two!

It's working. Slowly, but it's working. And when life threw some curves at me a couple of months ago, I did backslide - but not completely and I'm recovering faster. What makes it work for me is knowing that even without crisis-level stress, I'm an active, healthy person, and I'm learning how to treat myself that way without a crisis driving me.

Nothing in particular. It was just taking too long to dig my own grave with a spoon (and a knife and a fork and a straw).

That said, I'm experiencing a new turnaround entirely now that I'm supposedly a healthy weight. I want to really be healthy, not just fit into smaller clothes. And if that means changing my mindset completely about food and exercise and body image, that's what I'm determined to do. I'm not settling for a skinny fat or even skinny unhealthy, stressed out, junky food drive-thru life. And neither should anyone else!

thank you so much for this thread. i haven't felt this encouraged and motivated in a long time.

in an indirect way, it started with my second pregnancy. it was an extremely difficult pregnancy emotionally, mentally and physically. i ended up on disability for most of the pregnancy getting tests done, and when everything came back normal they finally put me on zoloft for stress/anxiety disorder. however, the NP insisted, and did not relent, that i begin seeing a therapist. so i did. and my life changed. i'm a completely different person now than i had been for the first 26 years of my life. there was so much crap that i had never dealt with, and so much hurt, and damage, and negative thought patterns. i didn't know what hope was. i didn't know what trust was. i didn't know what love was. so learning about those things, and understanding that i could have them in my life was the first and only reason i'm where i'm at today. i did therapy for a year, and then we moved away and i have not been back. but when we moved it gave me the chance to be myself, the new self, with people who had no expectations of me. and i slowly put the things i'd learned from therapy into practice. positive self talk, believing in hope. trusting people. loving myself.

loving myself is the biggest thing i've ever learned. i always thought i had to hate myself. i always thought that was how you put others first, how you humble yourself, how you change yourself. what i learned though, is that i cannot be good at any of those things unless i first learn how to accept the fact that God loves me how i am, because he created me. and that i can't love others (even my children and my husband) without learning what love is. if i can't love myself i can't accept love from anyone. and i've learned that it is not selfish or bad to love yourself. it isn't prideful. its just love.

anyway, its taken me a long time to fully accept that. i started exercising just to stay active after i quit my job to be a SAHM. i didn't lose a single pound even after running two half marathons in the space of one month. i started running last october, and my last half marathon was april 28th. that was day i started a weight loss competition with my family. i felt like it was probably a bad idea, to do something so competitive, that had to do with my perception of my body compared to my family, but something kept me from saying no. we officially began the day before my race. i ate as usual because i didn't want to mess up my routine and when i got home i started calorie counting that monday. i had tried to use MFP in the past and it was the easiest way to track so that's what i started. and this time, it just clicked. it came so easily to me. the weight started coming off for the first time in my life. i've never lost weight on purpose. because i knew competing with my family could be dangerous for me emotionally, i fully invested in doing this in a healthy and balanced way. so i didn't do cheat days and i didn't do any restrictions. and i didn't do any crash diets or cleanses at the end. i didn't win either. i had lost the most weight, 14 lbs in a month, but we had agreed to do by percentage because there was a wide range of starting weights. so i lost the competition. but it didn't crush me. in every other way i had won. so i kept going. i've only been doing this for 3.5 months but i already know, this is my life. i'm going to be a healthy person in as many ways as i can control. i know there are things i can't help, but there are so many things i can, and i'm committed to doing the work.

sorry that was so long. i didn't mean for it to be when i sat down to write.

Love all of your stories...every path is it's own! Mine is quite simple; I am in my early 50's, married, mother to four young, adult children who are all, thankfully, slim and trim. I have always been "chubby" (a word that sticks in my mind when I think of my body), I am 5'4" and usually wear a size 12 or 14. Well, after a knee injury in February 2013, subsequent surgery and the down time from all that, I found myself squeezing into a size 16. Spring 2014 was upon us and so was a decision I needed to make: buy size 18's for the summer or lose weight and wear the nice clothing I already have. About this same time an opportunity for a trip to Mexico in September came up, that helped cinch the answer to the decision: lose the weight. My goal was to wear a size a 12 ("L") on our trip, right now I am in a loose 14. I have bought some super cute summer dresses in a "L" (not XL or XXL or 1XL!) and have been wearing them and feeling good about. After my trip in 6 weeks, I will see about going on down! Thanks for listening!