Brutal Honesty - What was the final straw?

It was years of verbal abuse, rejection, my marriage ending because I was fat, being hit with type 2 diabetes, that caused me to finally kick it into overdrive and become human again.

My scrubs for work were getting to tight, and they have a draw string!

My motivation was not a negative thing. Well...I guess maybe some would see it as one. My moment of change came when I decided to leave my marriage back in 2007. I had been miserable in a loveless marriage for 16 years. When I decided to leave it, all of a sudden I had hope for the future. With that hope came the decision to remake my life...remake myself. It took me a year to lose 90 lbs. I have maintained that loss for over three years.

The past few years have been so much better than the previous sixteen. I would like to lose another 20-30. Hope for an amazing future...happy about who I now am...is still my motivation.

Best wishes to you all!

some amazing and heart wrenching moments - its just plain painful isn't it? I think we spend so much time lying to ourselves and justifying the weight gain. I was always relatively active and fit even at my heaviest so I justified I was just a big boned - except I'm really not. I'm around 5'5 and now that I've lost a small person (lol - 49.5kgs - 108.9lbs - only the last 7odd kgs since joining mfp) and I can SEE my bones structure again I realise just how disgustingly dismorphic my body was before.

For me the final straw is a bit hazy - but I remember waking up and just decided that if I only lost 2 kgs a month, in a year I'd be a lot lot lighter..... as it happened within 6 months I went from being too heavy to ride my ridden gelding (full size horse) to light enough to ride my very little and refined pony stallion - that was a HUGE motivation, because horses are my absolute passion....... That initial weight really just fell off, and it was closer to 2 or 3kgs a week at first... MUCH slowed down now of course!

My 94 year old mother went on and on at Christmas about how fat I was. (I'm 15 pounds over my HS graduation weight but I no longer carry it well and for better health I need to change my ways. And,,,,,,,my belt buckle cutting into my new found gut

Because the snoring resulting from my weight gain has gotten so bad that I can't sleep in the same bed as my wife. I've been to a sleep clinic and they said, basically, you don't have a sleep disorder, you're just fat.
I'm not going to spend the rest of my married life in the guest bedroom!!!

I hit my highest weight ever and decided that I was *not* going to buy the next size up in pants. So a friend who lost over 50 pounds pointed me here and I started journaling and my new way of life. I've lost 16 pounds so far (was more until Christmas hit) but need to keep going. Right now I'm waivering and I heard this morning that it takes over a month for new habits to become a way of life so I guess I just need to start a great new habit. I have to admit that I like the way I look now with those pounds off and while I don't want to gain, I'm afraid actually to keep losing and have to go shopping to buy all new clothes. And that is sabotaging me bigtime! I might need another "final straw."

Try shopping at consignment shops for your "in between" sizes. Most of these types of stores have nice clothes. Save the big spending for when you get to the size you really want to be.

Trying on clothes in Von Maur's dressing room. I was horrified.

Couldn't fit in a summer chair, refused to wear summer clothes and I love summer

For me it was when I realized that for months I would come up with an excuse to go upstairs to shower and get dressed when he wasn't in the room.. when I was wearing sweatshirts in the summer, sweating my butt off because all of my shirts were so tight it showed my belly fat.... when all my jeans became so tight I just started wearing sweats most of the time. I've always been skinny my entire life until after having my son, and the feeling of "fat" was overwhelming. I was actually never overweight even at my heaviest, ( thought I was darn close) but I did not carry the extra weight well at all and I was so embarrassed and so uncomfortable in my own skin... I just got sick of it and decided enough was enough and I wanted to feel good again. In the beginning it was all for vanity, but oh how far I have truly come since almost a year ago.

Was there anything specific in your life that happened to cause your new journey towards health and well being?

Yes.

1. A picture where I looked like a bloated Walrus
2. My wife said I was unattractive as a fat man.

OUCH!

Ouch is right! I would slap my husband if he ever said that to me, honest or not lol. Congrats on your weight loss though!

In 2006 my dad died at 58 years old. He was 6' and close to 500 lb. He had a sudden heart attack. He had no cardiac warnings, just boom, gone. Well, dad and I are very alike. So I was worried I would follow in his steps, of dying early. In Dec 2010, I made the decision (not resolution) to get healthy in 2011. So on Jan 2, 2011, I joined WW and began the path to a new me.

It's been an adjustment, mainly eating out and having temptations in the house. But it's been successful, and I am aiming for -100 this year!
Melissa

Receiving my 15 year award at work... then seeing the picture that was taken of me receiving the award. ABSOLUTELY MORTIFYING. I keep that pic in an envelope on my desk and glance at it a few times per week.....

Elbow dimples. I saw a picture someone had taken of me from the back, and I had elbow dimples! It was then that it clicked for me that I was in danger, though I'd known it for years. Seeing that picture made a bomb go off inside me & helped me to realize that I didn't have to accept where I was. That I HAD to change or I'd be dead. Today, at 30, I'm 70 pounds lighter. I have about 40 pounds more to go. I can run. I can breathe. I can haul mulch with my husband. I've never felt so good! Whenever I need a reminder, I find that picture!

A plane trip was a big part of it for me, too. I flew to Cali this summer and was very anxious about it - airlines were starting to charge double, even if the person next to you was your own child! Once out in Cali, in a world designed for thin models and starving actresses, I had trouble fitting in - quite literally. At one restaurant, they had "barrel" shaped chairs and I had to ask for another chair. Absolutely humiliating. That same week - my daughter got mad at me for eating the last cookie and said something very hurtful. She and I both cried for a long time. That was the absolute last straw.