health reasons and a very blunt doctor is what put me on track to change my life forever!

Mine was about 3 years ago, my dad was scheduled for a triple bypass and I one day woke up with chest pains and after many tests it was determined that it was a pulled muscle from hauling my middle son around on my bag in a carrier on a hiking trip. I finally was doing it and losing weight and exercising regularily then I got pregnant again.

During that pregnancy I developed a heart murmur, my gestational diabetes was still borderline but it was a pretty terrilbe pregnancy because of the weight and I went up to over 300lbs. After he was born, I tried and tried to get back to it, the summer went okay and I was back down in the 270's but by the end of a stressful summer I was going up again.

Sometime in November my mom issued a challenge to my brother and I to lose 50lb each by Christmas and she'd pay up $1000. I knew there was no way to lose that much in such a short amount of time but I thought ya know what, i have to try this, I need a jumpstart and that's what it did.

I did manage to lose 10lbs and she gave me the money away. Since the 19th of December I've been up and down, not really having a plan, exercising when I could but making excuses about everything from stress to being to busy with my sons and just waiting for the next jumpstart, it was my thing, I just need jumpstarts. Now I figure I didn't need a jumpstart I just need to go and do it.

About 3 weeks ago I picked up Jillian Michaels' new book about Mastering you Metabolism and the thing that stuck me was her list of side effects from too much insulin, I had everything on her list except the diabetes. I see my doctor and a nursing who's running a weight loss clinic at our Nursing Station and I know what my health is at but to see this list really clicked for me, I had to start doing something, make a plan and just do it. So I did. I started calorie counting and now I'm facing it everyday and making better choices. I'm happy.


I also wanted to say welcome and you know you can do this. It's hard work but it's doable. Good luck! We are here for you.

For me it was my mother complaining that if I didn't eat a whole pan of lasagna she was 'going to have to throw it away'. I looked at my morbidly obese mother and realized that I've been overweight my entire life. She's been overweight my entire life and as long as we continue this way I know exactly what the future will be in store for me. It was hard because there was a lot of pressure on me not to change but I started making healthy choices and after I had lost 20 lbs my mother saw the light too. As of my last BMI calculation I'm no longer considered morbid and while she still is she's lost 15lb so far and is on the right track. I feel proud that I'm helping her with this. She'ld lost weight several times before I was born but always with prescription drugs and weird grapefruit based diet plans. Now she's stopped talking about bypass surgery and is now talking about gym memberships.

I don't know if I've had the moment yet, but there have been a few mini-moments.
One was a picture. I have avoided getting my picture taken for YEARS. Last year, I was the "mystery reader" for my oldest son's class and the teacher took a picture of the two of us.:( I couldn't fuss my way out of it in front of his class so....*SNAP* she took the picture. When the class thank you note came with the picture in it, I wanted to die. I hid the picture right away.
Two was as my fourth pregnancy advanced, I was REALLY careful about not gaining a lot of weight. It wasn't because I was scared for my health, it was because I was scared of the scale! I kept watching the numbers creep closer and closer to 300 and it terrified me! For some reason being over 200 pounds was okay, but 300?! That for some reason was unacceptable. :dizzy: I had to take the 3 hour glucose tolerance test 3 times too. I hate that test. I almost passed out once. After he was born, I weighed LESS then when I got pregnant. I got down to 245, I felt so smug, until I promptly shot back up to 270.
Third, I have 3 stress fractures in my right foot. My foot is always swollen from just above my ankle down. I can not wear woman's shoes, the nerve is messed up and the foot is painful ALL the time. Walking, running...all hurt. I have 4 little boys! I've had these fractures for 10 years! I want to get the weight off my foot so I can avoid surgery (if possible...pins and rods don't appeal to me) and if not, at least be a normal weight so the surgery can be as successful as possible.
The fourth thing, I am embarrassed of the way I look. I am a shell of the person I used to be. I don't go out much and not at all socially. Clothes torment me...especially buying NEW clothes. I know it sounds awful to say, but I was the "hottie" of the group. I was not a stick figure, but athletic, with a nice booty. :cool: My husband's friends were jealous, my husband's brothers were jealous...I secretly LOVED it. Now I think they feel sorry for him. :( My attitude TOTALLY changed when I felt bad about the way I looked. I didn't flirt with my husband anymore, I got jealous, I didn't want to have sex anymore (sorry for the TMI) and when we did do it, I wanted it quick, with the lights off. The whole time I pictured what my fat rolls must have looked like. Not a good way to live.

FINALLY....we don't have ONE family picture. Not one. Not one single picture of me and my boys either. NONE. All because I am humiliated with how I look. That is unacceptable.

I have been overweight my entire life (with the exception of college when I unhealthily lost weight) and had several very bad moments along the way.

However, what made me realize I could really do it this time came from the most positive event in my life. I had a natural, drug-free birth with my daughter. I remember clearly looking at her afterwards and two things struck me. First, I don't want her (or my son for that matter) to live their lives overweight. Secondly (and the kicker for me that has made this a real commitment), I realized if I could go through all the pain of childbirth, that I could do anything.

The pain of weight loss is not the physical pain I felt during her birth, but the emotional and cognitive pain are equal. I have a lot of deep seeded "junk" in my head. But, I know that I can overcome anything.