I decided I was definitely going to lose weight when I realized I was nearing 200 pounds.

I always thought to myself "Well, I'm big, but I'm happy and I feel pretty good and I never had trouble finding boyfriends when I've wanted one."

I got a new job last year in a cardiac cath lab, and we have to wear lead aprons during the procedures to protect us from the x-rays. Everyone always complains that they're heavy, so one day on a lark I weighed mine and the whole kit weighs almost 30 pounds. And I realized: 30 extra pounds makes me this sore, and this tired, and I'm carrying around over three times that much extra fat every day of my life.

Yes, I am still happy, and I still generally feel like a healthy person. But now I'm excited thinking about how much I'm going to feel even better when I ditch some of this extra poundage.

Two things made me realize that I actually needed to be serious about this after 40 years of "dieting" -- obviously not too successfully. First, I had set a goal to have lost enough to be able to take my grand nephews to the Zoo Lights display at Christmas. Couldn't do it because it requires a lot of walking. And, I had dieted the entire year and managed to end the year weighing 30 pounds more than when I started. And, I hit 396. I was NOT going to go over into another hundred. It made me want to lose weight for me.

I am staring 50 in the face and I'm bound and determined to make the next 50 the healthiest and happiest of my life. DH just turned 50 and I want him to be around as long as me so we'll be improving our nutrition and eating habits together.

Thanks for this thread... Oh my I can relate. My main straws. Seeing the scale hit 320 (my highest weight). Thats also the point that I pretty much stopped having sex with my BF of 8 years-I just didn't feel sexy anymore. God love him he is patient and doesn't say anything and always makes me feel wanted. Then there was my dad being hospitalized for heart failure for the second time last month and was diagnosed as diabetic (although he says he's not). I realized it could just as easily be me in the hospital or worse my kiddo could have to live without me.

I am new here and haven't posted a formal introduction yet... But for me, the final straw was being out with my boyfriend and him taking some pics of me on his phone... I saw the pics he took and I looked disgusting in them. And I was even all dolled up to go out. It was my size and the fatness of my face and my neck that made me look so bad. So I decided that was enough. That was back in November. I've lost 26 pounds since then. Still have a long way to go though...

I'm one of those people who carried weight really well. I have to gain a lot before it starts to show. The downside to that is I also have to lose a lot before it starts to show. I've lost 26 pounds and only shrink one pant size. People haven't started noticing yet. But I notice and my bf says he can tell, mainly when I'm not dressed, lol...

So yea, that was my last straw.

Mine was my boyfriend wanting a "private" dance, I tried dancing for a three minute song and couldn't and was so sore the next day and I could just imagine this walrus trying to dance and skin rippling and that was it. I promised myself by his next birthday I'd have the confidence to do it for him. Though it has now become about being a healthy mommy for my kids also.

The past 6 months, I have hid away from cameras, from going out, been very home-body-ish and that's just not me... I realized recently that the reason I had hid myself away was because I had gained so much weight and I was depressed about it and ashamed and when my boyfriend said "You never want to go out and do anything fun anymore!"... I realized I needed to face this monster that was my weight and do something about... Not to mention seeing pictures recently, seeing the lines created in my face from the excess weight which made me look older, my risk of diabetes as a gestational diabetes patient with my daughter, and then my mom called me chubby, and I've been a pretty thin-average person my whole life.

I cried a lot in the past few weeks cuz I know I need to do something about it, and now I'm on day 4.

When I regained half of the weight I had lost and could not fit into any of my pants, then realized I was 3 sizes larger than the smallest pair of pants I had. Also seeing a picture of myself back at 245, when I had reached 185 in 2011.

Although I'm technically at a normal weight (5'9" and 150ish pounds), I have a naturally very small frame, and I don't carry weight well. I was already disappointed that I was gaining from a vanity stand point. The last straw, however, was when my breasts kept growing to a point that they were too heavy for my back to carry. I herniated a disc two years ago, and while resting, climbed up to about 150lbs. I had to take the weight off, because my DDD breasts were IMPOSSIBLE for my bad back. Now I'm at that place again, and it needs to stop before I actually hurt my back again. And I figure, since starting is the hardest part, once I get healthy, I can lose some vanity pounds, too.

After my c-section for my twins, when I was finally able to stand I looked in the mirror and was horrified. Up until that point, (and the entire pregnancy) I had never been big. I was always small. That changes when you have kids, especially twins. I think the second part that was hard for me to accept was that I couldn't fit into my favorite Tripp pants anymore.

When I got on the scale and realized I had hit 150. Which was 10 pounds heavier than I had ever been before, and also I was right in the middle of the "overweight" category - any higher and I would have been closer to obese than a healthy weight. Also, I thought "yikes! If this keeps up I'll be closer to 200 than 100!". Not that I want to be 100 pounds even, that would be too skinny, but thinking of steadily creeping up to 200 scared me.

I've experienced a lot of the things people mentioned... even the really embarrassing one that OP mentioned! But for reasons inexplicable to me, none of that made me try to lose the weight. I mean, REALLY try. The "straw" was my kids - plus the fact that I am in my 40s. When I was in my 20s and 30s I felt indestructible. People that age didn't drop dead. Then it dawned on me that I am no longer a kid... and people DO drop dead in their 40s, especially people like me who were over 400 pounds. I decided that I wanted to live a normal life span and be around for as long as I can for my family. I decided that I wanted to do it while I was still otherwise healthy, and not because I HAD to do it because of diabetes or heard disease. While its nice to look and feel better, and I SHOULD have done it for those reasons too long ago, I didn't.

Before I got back the health train, I rarely weighed myself (like once every 3-4 years). Though I tried to deny it, I knew I was getting bigger. Once I faced up to is, stepped on the scales and saw I was not just 200lbs but over 10lbs above that, I knew I had to change.

I hadn't left the house for ages and it was my 26th birthday. My family pressured me into going out to dinner and when I started getting ready, I realized none of my clothes even came close to fitting. I had to buy a pair of jeans in sweat-pants just to be half-way presentable. They were a size 22 and my last size had been an 18.

It was sort of a realization about everything in my life being wrong. I was just on the worst possible track. I was wasting my life and getting deeper and deeper into the hole I was digging while trying to block out reality. Dieting was just a part of the realization that I had to crawl out of the hole and be part of the world again.