What are your reasons for losing weight?

The other way of looking at it is:

What are your reasons for staying at your current weight?

Time is going to pass whether or not you are losing weight so what is the advantage of staying put? Worse. What is the advantage of gaining more?

Being heavy cost me so much and getting lighter has given me back so much.

stevehenderson776 wrote: »

Watching my Dad's obesity catch up with him over the last decade. Diabetes, knee replacements, sleep apnea, blood pressure. It was a real eye opener. So I decided I'd avoid that regrettable and completely avoidable outcome.

My 71 YO father has had a knee replacement and a shoulder replacement. He's probably 100 pounds overweight and has always complained about not being able to sleep. I hate that I'm using his life as a warning for what not to do, but he's an adult who has made his own choices.

I couldn't convince myself anymore that it was OK to stay fat, because after all I was pretty fit (objectively true) and that was more important.

Despite being athletically active, my blood pressure and cholesterol/triglycerides were high. My doctor was threatening statins, and I felt like I'd already given up enough cognitive bandwidth to chemotherapy (yup, cancer) and I didn't want to give up more. Then, severe, sudden heartburn and reflux led to gallbladder removal (not stones or sludge, adenomyomatosis), and the pathology report said it was an ugly, cholesterolized thing with holes riddled through it. Yikes. No malignancies in it, thankfully - they'd had to take it out to be sure.

Alongside that, I looked around me. Friends my age (59 then, 64 now) and younger who were severely overweight and inactive were mostly on multiple drugs (so complex side effects), couldn't eat/drink what they wanted (drug or medical contraindications), weren't able to do fun things that involved lots of walking or stairs (festivals, sporting events, museums, etc.), spent more money on drugs and health care, spent more money on services they could no longer do for themselves (or depending on their children and others), and more.

Meanwhile, friends my age and older who'd stayed fairly slim, active and athletic were spending their discretionary income on vaction trips, eating anything they wanted at restaurants, and able to do pretty much any activities they might choose. The latter group got sick less often, needed fewer surgeries, and recovered much more quickly from those they did need, with fewer complications.

Writing on the wall much? Yup.

These days, I think of it as balancing current Ann's wants (aaaalllll the yummy things) with future Ann's health and happiness. I want both current and future me to have as happy and healthy a life as I can reasonably manage. Balance. I'm in year 4+ at a healthy weight. It's great. I highly recommend it. I wish I'd done it decades ago. I was stupid.

No one gets guarantees, but we can certainly shift our odds.

1) health - I was fine, technically. All my bloodwork was in the right places, my weight didn't really prevent me from doing what I wanted, but reality told me that at my weight the chances were not good that I would continue to enjoy decent health as I got older and the consequences of that excess weight came to bear. Plus I seriously do not want to become diabetic and with insulin resistance from PCOS already affecting me, and after seeing my mother, father, and sister all become type 2 diabetics, knowing that diabetes runs in my mom's family, I knew my chances for it were high. And then there's the heart disease that runs in my dad's family, etc.

2) I was so tired of being the fat person in the room wherever I went. No one ever said anything, but it was like the pink elephant in the room. I avoided pictures because I knew what I looked like. I was tired of not being able to buy clothes off the rack, of having to be careful of chairs and ladders and other things for weight limits, of not fitting into booths, and just feeling over all embarrassed and ashamed because of my weight.


The thing is, those two reasons had been looming over me for years and I have tried and failed to lose weight since I was a teenage - the last 25 years. Why it suddenly clicked this time and I was actually able to find success? I have no clue. I think one thing that majorly helped was getting my thyroid levels way down, but other than that, I can't tell you what flips that successful diet and self control switch on and off. I'd love to know, though!

Warning! Kind of a long story here.
I went on a girls weekend a few years ago. One of the things I was super excited about was horseback riding on our trip. When we got to the stables there were weight limit signs posted everywhere. And you guessed it! I was over the weight limit. I played it off like I wasn’t interested in riding, when really, I was crushed and embarrassed. I decided then and there (after a few minutes of humiliation and feeling sorry for myself) that I was going to get healthier so I could live the life I wanted to live rather than sit back and watch life pass me by. The summer after losing 80 pounds my husband took me on a camping trip and we went horseback riding and zip lining, 2 of the things I had on my bucket list. It was the best trip ever!
My why is to be able to live, make bucket lists and check things off, try new things, and enjoy this life!