Morning all! I have a question for you. What motivated you to lose weight?

For me, it was my granddaughters. I was not able to do much with them. If I was babysitting them, I would have to get the oldest one to put the youngest to bed because I couldn’t walk the stairs. I wasn’t able to play with them. I want to see them graduate from high school, get married and hopefully be around for some great grandkids. So that is my motivation.

lindamtuck2018 wrote: »

Morning all! I have a question for you. What motivated you to lose weight?

For me ... a friend posted some pics of me at a pool party and made some pretty mean comments. Guys are tough with eachother and i get that ... and ... he was right. I was an athlete. I boxed pretty seriously in college. But then life, kids, office job ... depression... i am up 55 lbs from my fighting weight.

So what started it? Shame.

But what keeps me going ? My son. I want to be the dad who plays soccer in the yard. Who raises him to be active and do things ... heck, maybe be an assistant coach on whatever team he ends up on or something. Not the dad who sits with a beer and says "go kick the ball around" dismissively. My boy keeps me striving to improve. And I'm 36... i have a definite "now or never" feeling.

And i wanna look good naked!

lindamtuck2018 wrote: »

Morning all! I have a question for you. What motivated you to lose weight?

This is going to be a long answer!

PART ONE
For the last few years my daughter has been struggling with major depression, anxiety, and self harm. The constant stress of living with this (which also involves difficult behaviours & no way to change anything) at times has pushed both me and my partner close to breaking point.

At the end of last year my daughter started on anti-depressants, and this made the world of difference. While she is still struggling with her illness, at least it feels like we have our daughter back again, and things are not as dire or stressful.

This has created space for me to be able to think about my own health, which I couldn't do while we were in crisis mode.

PART TWO
I know my daughter's medication is a band-aid to her illness, not a cure. For her to truly get better we need to address her health, happiness and wellbeing in a holistic way. For several years her psychologist, doctor, and we, her parents, have been trying to impress on her the need to eat well, sleep well, get some exercise, spend time with friends, etc as these are all interconnected and proven to contribute to our mental state.

However, I realised that we were being hypocritical. Our entire lives have shrunk around her illness, we no longer have a social life, we didn't exercise, I often stayed up late at night and had trouble sleeping, and we had become incredibly lazy with our food - too often eating convenience meals, take-away or fast food, focusing on what was quick and easy when we felt stressed, as well as trying to placate our fussy child by feeding her what she wanted, and I often stress-ate sweets and snacks.

My daughter doesn't listen to anything we say, but could I blame her when we were ignoring our own advice?

I realised that the best way I could help her to get better was for us to do it as a family - for us all to set health goals, and work towards them together. On New Year's Eve we all wrote up our resolutions, of how we wanted to spend this year addressing our health and wellbeing.

Losing weight is one of my goals.

PART THREE
In Australia Christmas falls in Summer, and this last Summer I really felt the impact of my fatness to an extreme level. It is always hot in summer, but this year was hotter than most, and I found myself overheating easily - EVEN IN AIRCONDITIONING! I was breaking a literal sweat doing basic housework. The sweat was ridiculous. I had trouble bending down, doing up shoelaces, walking for any distance would have me quickly out of breath and needing to drink copious amounts of water, I had terrible chaffing between my legs, persistant thrush that I couldn't get rid of, at times a tightness in my chest, indigestion, my snoring was epic (that is an actual rating on the app I used to measure it - snoring rating in the top 5% of the population of snorers!), I could feel my own fat pressing in on me making me uncomfortable in my own skin, and I quickly tired when playing with my young niece and nephew - unable to play with them in the ways I had with all my other nieces and nephews and daughter when they were the same age. Every opportunity I got I would sit down, or lay down, and stay off my feet.

So, with all three of these to motivate me, I set a date in my diary to begin my weight loss efforts (last week of January), did the prep work I needed beforehand, so I was able to commit to it properly.

About a month into my diet, my blood tests came in, and I found out I am insulin resistant - so this makes it even more necessary for me to make serious life changes to avoid it from developing into diabetes. Giving up is not an option.

Progress has been excellent - as of today I have lost 21.7kgs (47.8lbs), which is 18.2% of my body weight. I want to lose about 33kgs more (72lbs), which will put me back to a healthy weight I had prior to having my daughter and that I have returned to a number of times over the years through previous weight loss efforts.

With the weight loss, most of the symptoms I felt over summer have disappeared. I sleep better (so does my partner: no more snoring!), have more energy, can walk for hours (though am still pretty slow), have no problem with shoe-laces and basically feel more like myself again. Still have some health issues to address, but am in a much better place already - and it has only been 3.5 months!

The biggest thing I was worried about when I began this weight loss journey was - how to maintain the weightloss for life? I have lost and regained weight several times over, and every time the weight goes on faster and leaves me with a higher weight than previously.

However, each time I lose weight I learn more - and this time round I've come to understand how insulin stores energy in fat cells and prevents fat burning in the body, and that the key is to reduce insulin levels by being careful what foods I am eating as well as when I am eating (I have now incorporated time-restricted eating and fasting into my life, as well as eating low-carb). This is a new technique that will help me greatly with maintenance when I get to that point.