Why did you come to the conclusion to lose weight?

I went to the doctor and ended up in the hospital for about four days. The dr came into my room on a Saturday morning and told me that the results of my nuclear stress test came back abnormal and that I might not be getting proper blood flow to the lower part of my heart. Thirty minutes after that, my daughter brought my 18 month old granddaughter to see me. When she looked up at me and said "Hey Papa!", I knew I had to do something to make sure I was around to watch her grow up. As it turns out, I don't have any major issues, but my cardiologist told me I HAD to lose weight. He said consider it a wake up call. That is what started my motivation and drive to make a positive, permanent change to be healthy.

I got to the point that I got out of breath just walking across the floor in my own home. That scared the heck out of me. I realized that I either loose the weight or die. I want to live a happy life with my family and be able to do more. I'm tired of being ashamed to go to ball games or wrestling events at our local high school with my husband. When he asks me to go, I usually turn him down and he goes alone. It was time to do something about it and I have. I am down 12.2 lbs and already feel a lot better! I have a lot more to go, but I am determined to do it this time!

IT happened the end of July, the moment I decided my life needed change because of so many things. Hopefully, I will keep the weight off for good.

There was no moment of me realizing how big I was/am. This, I already knew. I accepted tolerated it. My main issue with my appearance has never been my weight, but that I will never be seen as feminine by anyone. Male or female. My own grandmother called me a handsome woman... Handsome.

Anywho as July was ending, I just decided to try to be the best me I can be. I just decided to try to do away with the 'I quit on life. I'll never have or be what I want in life, so why try?' Mentality.

I decided I didn't want to deal with preventable debilitating health problems if I didn't have to. And since I've never heard of an average height, 300+ lb woman living a long, independent healthy life... I decided to lose weight.

I am tired of being the biggest one in the room.

I also have three Masters degrees, and I believe that no one perceives me as being smart, effective, or capable at work. I am done with people thinking they are better than me because they are a size 5.

When you realize that your Jabba the Hutt impression is pretty much dead on.....

I was at work eating lunch mindlessly at my desk like every day. I was eating Indian food, shoveling it in, not even really tasting it, working. I remember that I actually thought I was eating healthy that day. A co worker walked by with her Indian food and noted that she loved it too, but felt bad because it was so fattening. I was flabbergasted. I couldn't understand how veggies and sauces could be fattening or too salty, etc. I mean I really truly thought it was healthy. So I Google'd it and for the first time ever took a look at the amount of calories I was consuming. As I read I could feel my a** hitting the sides of my chair and thought... my God, when did I grow side-*kitten*? Right there and then I snapped and knew I had to make a drastic change to the way I was doing things. I threw the rest of my lunch away. The very next day I got up, stretched, made myself a Nutribullet for lunch and had a black coffee for the first time ever (used to be large ice, extra cream). That was a couple of years and close to 80 lbs ago. I never looked back.