What Was The Turning Point For You?

For me it started with quitting smoking. I had asthma, was more than 100 lbs overweight/morbidly obese, stressed out to the max, fatal family history hanging over my head. For Valentine's Day 2009 I decided I would love myself enough to take care of myself and quit smoking. It was the best decision I ever made and started my being aware of the state of my health in general. In 2010 I joined WW and learned so much about diet and what I was putting into my body. I lost 62 lbs and 43 inches. The first 4 months of 2012 I sat back, maintained, and finally got my motivation back at the end of April. I will be 40 on June 8th, and hope to spend the year learning to be active and reaching my goal weight. My asthma is all but gone now, my stress level has really improved with exercise, and my blood work looks great!

I have a lot of knee problems and have had surgery on one of em.....didn't really help much though. My doc said that losing 1lb of weight alleviates 5lb of stress on my knee, so I am trying to get to the point where I can walk around comfortably.

Plus my work clothes were getting super duper tight, and it's cheaper to lose weight than to buy all new clothes

I'm a big fan of Hervé Léger dresses, but the weight I've gained in the past 3 years has made it impossible for me to feel comfortable wearing one. Now when I wear one of those form-fitting dresses, I see a body that doesn't feel like it belongs to me. At one point, I even told my boyfriend that I wanted to get liposuction. In fact, I looked up the best plastic surgeons in my area for a consultation! That was it for me. I'm still very young and I never, ever even entertained the idea of plastic surgery, and now I want to get procedures done on all parts of my body?! I needed to regain control of how I looked, so hopefully in a few months, I can fit into those Hervé Légers again.

Looking at pictures of myself from a side view and I don't have a neck. I hate my double chin...and when I got too fat to even wear some of my necklaces, I thought "This is crazy! It has to change!" I was working on it a few weeks before I found MFP, but joining MFP is when things really clicked for me.

As embarrassing as it is….It was last summer, I was at my local amusement park with my daughter. She wanted me to go on the slide with her…heres a picture of it (http://www.knoebelsfun.com/pics/skyslide.html). Well I agreed, as I got to the top I realized how narrow it is but tried anyway. Well as you can guess…I got stuck. Not only was it a disappointment to my daughter, my family was there to see me struggle to make it all the way down. As silly as it may sound, that ride haunts me and I never EVER want to be in that situation again.

At the house where I babysit, there is a mirror in the foyer. One day I looked in the mirror at my stomach and thought EW. This is not attractive. I was about 138-140 then. That day I decided I had to change what I was doing and I haven't looked back since. I usually get into a healthy kick for a week or two but I started being better to my body in early April and I'm still going and don't plan on stopping!!! I never want to go back to feeling ashamed of my body.

I blew a blood vessel in my eye. The doctor told me all the possible causes, blood pressure was the likely culprit. I had to go on blood pressure meds. I hate taking pills. My doctor sent me to a dietician. I lost 20 lbs. in eight months. Over the winter I gained 10 pounds back. I decided not this time. 2010 was the first year I can remember weighing less at years end. I was going to keep the weight off and start a new tradition of not gaining it all back plus. I now weigh 264 I have two more pounds to get below my last summers weight. I have tried fad diets. I always gain it back. This time I am trying to get in a exercise and diet schedule I can live with for the long haul. I would love to see the other side of 200. I have a boss that had the by pass surgery, He went from 340 to a current 180 but eats nothing but crap. We go in his office and he will be spiting whatever junk food he has been chewing on in the garbage. It's gross! If ever there was a poster boy for not having the surgery it's him. There are no quick fixes, I put on this weight a few pounds per year since Sept 1986 (before a got pregnant for my daughter ,@ 120) Hopefully it won't take that long to take the weight off. I would like to start dating and go traveling but my weight slows me down.

I was never inspired to lose weight. I continued to eat, continued to stuff my feelings down into my stomach via food, and I was fine with it. I thought that if someone would love me, they would love the fat me. I continued to destroy myself for 5 1/2 years after having my daughter and I gained 100 pounds in those 5 years. I continued to have that destructive mind-set and never really wanted to do anything about it. I was addicted to food (and I still am).

One day, as I dropped my daughter off at school, a little boy said "wow, your mom is SO fat, she is really, really huge" and I wanted to die. I literally wanted to lay down right there and just die. I knew I was fat. I knew I was super morbidly obese but I NEVER wanted my daughter to hear about it. And now that she's school-aged (and kids have no censorship or know better about saying these things out loud), it's happening.

On that same day my work sent out an email about "Shape Up the Nation" a challenge we, as a hospital, were going to participate in and they were looking for participants. I signed up.

My start date was March 7th, 2011. I found MFP that same day and I haven't looked back. I've lost 55 pounds in less than 3 months. My work challenge has been over since May 15th and yet, here I am, going and going and going! I WILL continue to lose the additional 130 I'd like to lose. Even at that weight, I will still be obese. At that point I will want to lose about 50-75 more pounds but I need to get to that big first goal before I focus on that REALLY long term goal.

One step at a time.... I can do this. Here are my stats:

Height: 5'8"
SW: 436.4
CW: 381.2
1st GW: 250
Ultimate GW: 175