What was your "Ah-ha" moment?

When I realised it really was up to me to change. No one else was going to do it for me. My left knee was going to need replacing how much further was I going to go before changing.

Jessyd76 wrote: »

Love the threads in here! I'm really excited to see everyone's transformations and I'm looking for a little extra motivation for mine!

For those of you who have achieved your goal or are well on your way to it... what was your "Ah-ha" moment? Was there a situation, an event, a realization, or something that made you prioritize health/fitness/weight loss over everything else?

Getting too close to 200. I felt like if I got past that there would be no stopping me so I got together with the dietitian and her first words to me were increase my activity and that was a big help. I am down to 171 now and I've got about 20 pounds to go. I've lost 25 so far since it's the beginning of the year.

I've always been active. Four years ago, I got sick and went from 145 to 195. I avoided it because I was focused on school. Then I took a trip to Tennessee to go hiking. In my mind, I was still a very active 145lb person. In reality, I couldn't fit my hiking clothes and I couldn't hike the trails I wanted to do because I was so out of shape. I was so angry with myself that I started working on my health the day I got home from that trip. It's been up and down due to health issues, but I'm moving forward. I'm planning to go hiking in Peru next August to celebrate.

a few years ago I went in to see my Dr. as I always do right around my birthday...I was 38 and turning in some really bad blood work. I wasn't grossly overweight...as per BMI I was right on the bubble of overweight/obese...but I had a lot of other bad habits and didn't exactly rock my nutrition.

my Dr. basically told me to get it together or I was going to, at best, be pretty sick in my early 60s if not dead. i knew i was heading down the same path as my dad who died at the ripe old age of 62...no bueno. I have two little boys that I would like to see grow into men and I would like to spend my retirement years traveling around with my beautiful wife, not lounging about in a hospital or worse...

I never cared so much about the weight as I did reversing a lot of that bad blood work....which I've done over three years time. A nice bi-product of all this good livin' (nutritionally rich diet and regular exercise) is that I dropped about 40 Lbs with a great deal of ease and have now maintained that for over two years.

As far as motivation goes, be wary of counting on that. It's just like anything else...you're not going to be motivated all of the time. Ultimately you just have to be disciplined...discipline leads to consistency and consistency is what wins the day. Motivation is a very fleeting and fickle emotion.

Reaching 200 lbs and hating the way I look in pictures. I am 5'1" so being that heavy is a lot of weight to put on a short body. Not wanting to waste my 20's on not doing things I want to do because I feel "to fat". I also want to look amazing on my wedding day. Me and my boyfriend of 8 years are losing weight together. I want to start a family eventually, and I am going to school to be a teacher. So being in shape will basically give me the confidence and strength (literally and mentally) to do everything I have ever wanted to do.

My fasting blood sugar...... I am already on 2 HBP medication and when my blood sugar started creeping towards pre-diabetes it scared the heck out of me. My father and both grandfathers had diabetes. And recently, 2 dear friends of mine passed away from illnesses related to her long term diabetes. It was a horrible, long drawn out way to die.......
I re-started on MFP in March and have lost 42 lbs!!! Fasting Blood sugar completely normal!! Still on the blood pressure meds, but feel like I may be able to stop taking one of them soon!!! Mine has been slow steady progress, and the changes I have made I can keep doing for a life time!!!!

I went for a hike up a mountain w/my daughter and wife. I wanted to go early because I knew it was steep and it was supposed to be about 90 degrees that day. Others didn't get up early so we got a late start. The trail was steeper and longer and hotther than I had anticipated and I started getting out of breath and dizzy about 3/4 of the way to top. I started to picture myself having a heart attack up there and decided to turnaround while the others enjoyed the view from the top. Had a lot of time to think while waiting for the others to come back down!

Set a goal to complete the same climb by labor day, which I did, and have lost about 12 lbs. so far with another 25 to go.

jarrettwhite07 wrote: »

Yeah I didn't like the way I looked in my pics so I decided to change it.

Yep same here, was shocked when someone took foto from behind.. .took a year to lose 85lb and still have a few lbs to go and a lot of toneing up, but keep that foto near to keep me going wen I'm fed up..

When my spanx felt too tight.

I had been frustrated with myself for letting myself go for sometime, but was making a lot of excuses. Meanwhile, my older sister who at one point trained with Olympic level athletes got pregnant. She worked out most days and at six months pregnant, her baby bump was smaller than my everyday belly. One day, she was in center city Philly with her bike and they wouldn't let her on the train with it, so she rode about 15 miles home...7 months pregnant. She made having a baby look easy because she was healthy. I realized I wanted to be healthier so that life would be easier, so one day when I decide to have kids pregnancy will be easier and chasing them will be no problem.

There were other smaller motivations too: fitting into clothes, seeing old pictures vs. newer ones, watching Gossip Girl and thinking "man, I want to be able to have super hot sex like those people."

A male coworker saw me in the elevator, looks at me and goes "are you gaining weight?"

Yep, bottom reached right there.

going on a dream trip and not being able to keep any of the pictures of me in them without serious cropping, and editing. I must have deleted half of them cause I didn't like how I looked...that had to change

Plantedinpots I totally know what you mean, control freaks and people who just like to keep people down have also affected my weight loss journey but like you I have retaken control and realised that my perception of my body is the only one that matters. Ah ha moment came when I hit 100kg I had to change eating habits, i had zero energy and no love of life
This is changing every day.

So this Endless Journey started 1,000 days ago. It was a Friday, got home, went upstairs to change, came back down and then something happened. I had to sit down, sweat pouring down me, struggling to breath and had chest pains. my body was telling me that all was not well. The pains got worse so decided to visit my doctor. She sent me to the ER straight away, I was very quickly seen by a Consultant who carried out tests. I did not want to tell my wife as she was at work. The consultant called me in and said very simply, that if I did not change my lifestyle, he gave me five more years. very simply I was killing myself. Going back to my car, I realised now that life is not a rehearsal, I needed to act now. My Journey has now started.
After tellng my wife, she said that only I could change this and of course she was right. I grabbed the laptop and sat down. So how was I killing myself?, for one week I wrote down how much I was eating and drinking. The results were frightening I was consuming up to 4,000 calories a day, add that to the fact I was not even exercising, nothing more to say. My weight was 276lbs, pulse rate 77. My blood pressure was normal.
A new diet was planned, out went hamburgers, take aways, junk food. No more drinking alcohol, and eating between meals. The fridge was completely emptied and replaced with fresh fruit, vegetables, salads, chicken, fish. Cans of coke were replaced with bottled water. Extreme you might say but time was not on my side. Eating beteween meals was a problem so each morning I would get a bowl and chop up some melon, apples, raisins, add some celery, nuts and raisins. Now whenever I was hungry instead of having crisps or chocolate I would reach for the bowl. Drinking water before each meal helped to curb my appertite.
Ok thats the diet sorted but now exercise, being so overweight this was not going to be easy. I just started going out for walks around the block, the first time after twenty minutes I had to stop I was so out of breath. But gradually as each day passed i just incresased it. Weight loss was slow so i checked my diet, reducing my intake to 1200 calories, this suited me but may not suit everybody. My BMI was 49% so the body had enough fat to live off. The next stage of getting fit, I decided to purchase a mountain bike. OMG what a sight seeing me trying to cycle, confidence was low, and made worse by other cyclists making nasty comments, this just made me more determined. I was hooked on cycling and went out every day increasing the time I spent out on the road. The same cyclists passing me by asking if I wanted a push. My time would come.
My weight was starting to melt away and i started to feel good about myself so the next stage was to invest in a road bike. I did this and started cycling furtther and further. Ok 2014 was not good i got knocked off my bike no less than four times, but was determined to carry on. Easter this year I decided to enter a road race, a 130km race. The weather conditions were the worst I had encountered but was determined to complete the course. Oh so what happened about those cyclists who were so cruel to me I can here you ask? The next time i went out on the road I saw them in front of me approaching a hill. As they started to cycle up it they were all breathless, I pulled along side them and said. would you like a push? I then left them struggling, looking over my shoulder they knew who I was.
So 112lbs lighter and a healthy pulse rate of 45, BMI now 25.5, everything was going good. Until about 12 weeks ago, after a long cycle I returned home feeling unwell ok I thought it was caused by the long cycle but it was not. After a visit to the doctor and some blood tests, I was sent to ER to see a consultant. Who just by looking at me suggested I may have Kidney Cancer, leaving the room my wife just looked at me with tears in her eyes. Comforting her I said lets see what the scans show. Two days later, after two scans the best results ever, I did not have cancer. There was however a problem with my Kidneys. I have been told that an operation will cure the problem, I am still training only after speaking to the surgeon. I have had surgery now and are back to training.
One final thing to mention. Not only has my wife stood by me and supported me but also my MFP friends. in my early days when I was not eating enough and over training there was one friend who has followed my Journey for a long time and has just been there. That special friend is Dorothy. What can I say about her, she has been very supportive, critical, and not afraid to give me a virtual kick when needed. There have been times when I could of easily thrown all my hard work away. But I knew Dorothy was there supporting me. Sometines I would not be on the site for a while but she would send a message asking If I was ok. What more can I say apart from Thank you so much:)
Thank you for letting me share my Journey with you all. It is an Endless journey and it will continue. Remember, life is not a rehearsal, you do not get a second chance, so dont waste it. Your body is a temple so look after it.
Good luck as you take the first step to a healthier you.

For me it was when I returned from a Disney trip with my family. You see Disney provides you with this really "cool" picture taking service and sends you the picture via email. There are photographers around every corner it seems...So, when we returned from our trip and looked at the pictures...I was horrified. I didn't even recognize myself. I cried, deleted all of the photos and decided to make a big change. I had so much weight to lose and wanted it off in 2 weeks...LOL! I had to learn patients and realize that to do it correctly would mean taking time to do it. I lost about 8 pounds my first month and then found this site. Since finding this site, I then lost another 15 lbs. I'm now 23 pounds lighter, and feeling great. I still want to lose quite a bit more and working on it. My next Disney trip will be at the end of May. I plan on keeping the pictures this year!!

Goals:
1. 7 pounds between today and December 31, 2015
2. 15 pounds between January 1, 2016 and May 25, 2016
3. Disney trip 2016

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(to weigh 45pounds less that May 2015 trip)