Karlottap wrote: »

@Kathrout1973, I would have him on LCHF in a heart beat! Wouldn't it be wonderful if you saw improvements with his conditions that eased his suffering some? It would be hard to cheer that loud in a forum like this, but I would!!!

I will keep you informed of how it affects him - he has only half heartedly started it, but he has been eating crap for too long so its going to be small steps for him but he is definitely up for trying and has also told me not to buy any more crap for him and he is going to be eating like me - we have nicknamed it our Dino diet LOL - he is obsessed with dinosaurs (especially meat eating ones like the T-Rex)

I have two motivation. First control my diabetes without medication. Second be healthy to keep up with the kids and be involved in their active life style. Like this summer I am coaching my son's soccer team...well they are only 5y old but at 235lbs I wouldn't be able to do it now although I'm 34 week pregnant I can handle it kind of easily...if it's not 35degree C

I hate to admit it, but my motivation is just plain old vanity.

I do have health challenges -- I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and it was never properly controlled until recently. I'm also a decade post-menopausal, and though that didn't cause weight gain, it did cause intractable, severe, chronic insomnia. I was put on bio-identical progesterone to help with that, and though it did, it also caused me to gain a lot of weight in about a month or two, most of it on my chest and stomach. And it won't come off. Just won't - and I have never had trouble losing weight in the past. Calorie-restricted diets don't seem to work any more; I get too hungry at night and can't sleep.

But those things aside, I just can't stand the sight of myself. I can't stand oozing out of the top and sides of my bra. I hate the blubber on my belly. MY ARMS WOBBLE!!!!

Vanity. Pure vanity.

My motivation is loaded, everything from health to vanity. I want to reset the insulin resistance, get off the metformin, and get off of the thyroid med. I'm hoping to see improvement in my psoriasis, body pain (Fibro.). I want to look better, I want to wear all my fabulous clothes from 4yrs ago. I want to be able to run around and be crazy active with my son.

We all have some awesome reasons for starting on a healthy lifestyle.
Mine is simple. I was diagnosed with t2 diabetes. I've already got some retinopathy and a1c is high. My dad and grandmother have it and I don't want the complications they have had.
I also want to e able to have more energy. Used to be when I'd get off work I'd fall asleep on the bus. When I got home I'[d fall asleep on the couch. I want to fix that.

Mine have changed over time, as I have slowly improved myself.

Start: tired of being a disgusting, heaving mass, that looks like a pile of laundry covered in mayonnaise.
After losing 30 lbs: starting to feel better, and am convinced that it will continue to get better, so long as I don't let myself lapse back.
After 80 lbs.: holy crap, I almost have a human shape. This is getting good.
After 100 lbs.: *kitten* it, why stop now?
After 115 lbs: okay, that's enough, time to maintain, so I can make sure my numbers are on point, eat all the things, and get back to wrecking weights.

As you can see, as the progress went on, it went from "need motivation", to the process and progress itself being the motivation. Trust me, it sucks at first, but as soon as you realize that each day, there's a good chance that you'll wake up, look at yourself in the mirror, and see more veins starting to try to peek through the skin on your abdomen, you need no other motivation.
Jamie Lewis put it best for me: nothing will ever taste as good as being lean feels.

I used to be really fit - I floated up hills in 100 mile mountain bike races, lifted respectable weights in the weight room, and could effortlessly backpack all the trails. Then I got complacent.

15 years and 60 pounds (now 43) later I woke up and all I could think was, "What the *kitten* did I do to myself?".

I want my life back. Fitness for me means more confidence, more competence, and more liberty.

I am learning to love myself. It's a weird, squirrelly process filled with successes and failures. One of the things I know about me that makes me love myself is that I am an athlete. I can bike 50 miles in the Colorado mountains. I can run half marathons and feel strong afterwards. When I weight train, I lift respectable amounts of weight. I swim a hard, fast long distance.

But my body does not love the carbs I was consuming to fuel all that. My body loves the idea of becoming diabetic.

My motivation is to eat awesome and delicious food (OMG BACON YAAASS) to fuel my beloved workouts, and I've finally realized I love being a strong athlete more than I love bagels and cookies and cake and pizza on a puffy crust.

My motivation has changed over time. Started out with vanity, then health and fitness, now "living well is the best revenge." Haha. It might change again, who knows. Variety is the spice of life, right pals?

I have a whole host of good reasons to do LC but I let doubters and naysayers and family food pushers talk me out of it more than once. I can't say what my motivation was this time around but sometime during the month of March I felt a click. I'm tired of the way I feel, the way I look, not being able to keep up with my family during hikes (something I truly love to do), not being able to sit comfortably at church, tired of diabetes getting worse, and so on. The ONLY thing that has ever worked for me in weight loss and diabetes is LC and I just decided to start again. This time I don't care what everyone says and I don't care if my family has to adjust. I've adjusted often enough for them because I don't want to "cause trouble" yet I'm causing myself a lot of grief. I'm done with all of that and made the switch to keto and so far its pretty easy- I find I don't need motivation now.

In 2003 I went on Atkins after my older brother was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, that scared me & I worked hard & lost 60lbs. Over the years I've stayed relatively low carb/Paleo but the weight started creeping back on. Then earlier this year my older sister was diagnosed with diabetes as well and that scared the heck outta me even more! I knew if I ignored the carb creep I'd be next. So I started Keto March 8 and that's that. This is my lifestyle now. No more fooling myself about a glass of fruit juice or just a little bit of honey in my tea. My system is too sensitive & genetics are against me. But I'm so happy & comfortable on Keto & I know it's sustainable.

The Push: Having a dr. tell me I was too high risk due to uncontrolled blood sugar to have surgery to repair my abdominal muscles due to diastasis recti.

Motivation 1: getting off T2D medications and controlling my Diabetes. -DONE !!

2: My kids- I want to be healthy so I can participate in our lives and not just spectate. -ACTIVELY In progress

3: Not being mistaken for pregnant (a large part of this is the diastasis recti) I carry my weight in my middle. It is humiliating and I'm so done explaining it. - SEEING some changes for the better.

What do I want now: to be healthy and FIT.

At 16 I was diagnosed with "such classic PCOS I should be in a text book". I took a handfull of medications throughout my teens and 20s. Went off BC and got INSTANTLY pregnant. I really mean that. Like the day I quit taking the pill I got pregnant. Everyone was shocked....even my husband and I who wanted kids. Same thing happened when I had my second child. INSTANTLY PREGNANT.

After the birth of my boys I wasn't interested in taking a handful of meds anymore (metformin, something for blood pressure, something for hair growth and acne) I felt all of them were 'vanity" meds and not really necessary. I have never been diagnosed as IR but with PCOS it's there at some level for sure. I've never been diagnosed as Pre-diabetic or Diabetic. I had a great gynecologist who one day said "you know, you should just stay under 35g carbs a day i bet that would help you a lot".

I gave the dr's advice a try and HOLY CRAP did it work for me. I lost about 40 lbs quickly and thought. Oh, ok I can go back to normal now. I did and HOLY CRAP did I gain that 40 and a few of its friends back quickly. So, I did LCHF again and didn't learn my lesson. I lost about 30 lbs and thought ok I can quit "dieting" ....we all know what happened. So this time I quit worrying about doing LCHF the "right" way and I do it my way. It's a lifestyle. It's not a diet. It's something I'm doing for myself.

12/31/16 When my little one said "momma come play with us" and I gave him some lame excuse I realized I didn't like getting down on the floor cause 1) it hurt and 2) it was hard to get up and I wasn't playing with my kids or doing the things they wanted me to do WITH them because my weight was in the way. So January 1 2017 I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself that my "diets" didn't work and decided o focus on my own health for the long term.

I'm a formerly trained athlete. I've completed several tri-athlons I want to do that again. I want to fit into the clothes that line my closet that are 1) out of syle now but 2) were fracking expensive damnit. And mostly, I want to run with my kids, I want to ride bikes with them, I want to swim with them, and get down on the floor to color, play transformers, build trains and watch movies with them.