Your "AHA" moment...

I have no idea if this is the right forum, but I'm just curious what moment led you to the decision to make a lifestyle change?

I like to see other stories about people who are on their way to leading a healthier lifestyle and I like to see success stories, it helps me stay motivated.

I'll start by sharing my moment, or well there's a couple. When my daughter was born in October 2009, I weighed closer to 300lbs than I'd like to admit, so right away I started eating right. I dropped that first 20lbs within 2-4 weeks, breast feeding does wonders! Once I started work again, I started counting calories by myself, I had a notebook I wrote everything in. I had a pretty active job and I ate around 1400 calories everyday, I used to give myself a "cheat day" and eat 1600 calories on Sundays. This worked pretty well for me, when my daughter was 6 months old I weighed about 250lbs, then we moved and I stopped keeping track, bu I still did pretty well, I lost another 8lbs, not as quickly, but by that summer I was in the 240-242 lbs range. Then i up a quit my job, I hated it. I was stressed, I had weird hours and my kids were always at my parents house because I would work too early in the morning or too late a night. I HATED IT. I decided I needed to do something about it, so I just quit. I put in a request for more regular hours and they denied it, I changed it a little and they still denied it. I walked out that day and have never once looked back. I spent a couple of months off with my kiddo's during the rest of the summer, it was great and lots of fun, but I really needed to go back to work. So, I started temping. which worked out fine, but I never found a job I really liked and slowly my pants started getting tighter and tighter. I finally bought a scale and was horrified to find out I was 260lbs again. All that hard work down the drain. This was around the end of 2010. I didn't do anything to change what I was doing. Then 2011 came, in June I joined weight watchers, it was fine and good. In four months I lost 15lbs and gained it all right back.

In the last month I've had a few "AHA" moments. The first one: the beginning of this month the inside of my pants (inner thigh) started wearing out and 2 pairs of my pants (I have three that fit because I refuse to buy bigger pants) have holes on the inner thighs. So, yeah I really need to fit back into the smaller jeans.

My second "AHA" moment: I went to my doctor on November 18th 2011, for the first time in 5 years. During that 5 years I was pregnant twice, had the same sexual partner and didn't feel I needed to see my regular doctor. Here is how the appointment went: I got there filled out the list of what was bothering me, ect. I used to be able to fill those out with nothing wrong. Then it was weight time, I almost cried: 272lbs. Really I had gotten that "fat" again?!?! Then it was time for the blood pressure, the small attractive nurse took it and said to me "Do you usually have high blood pressure?" My response was "No, not even while I was pregnant, why is it high?" She said "Yeah, it's 146/84" Me: "OH MY GOD?!?!" THEN, she looks at the regular sized gown and says "Well, I'm going to go get you the plus size gown for you." I wanted to cry so bad at that point. Anyways, fast forward we discovered I had a couple of aliments, that I don't feel comfortable sharing right now and I had a follow up appointment on December 8th, I lost weight the scale read: 266lbs. I was pretty pumped, but that first appointment was my real "AHA" moment.

I have lost around 10lbs in about a month and a half, I have another appointment to go to on January 19th and it would be great to have lost some more weight by then. After that first appointment I thought to myself, "Really Lissa, you're 23 years old, you weight 272lbs when you should be at most 165lbs, your blood pressure is higher than it should be and you have two children that need you." So, I got my butt into gear.

I have been on MFP for 2 weeks now and feel free to add me as a friend if you want.