For those that have lost MAJORITY of their weight

[Nada]

I knew I would lose, I know I will reach goal and I know I will keep it off (although not without some bumps in the road). It didn't feel like dedication or will-power or determination, it felt more like a premonition.

[denialisnthappiness]

I'm not at goal yet but I guess I could say I'm maintaining my loss so far.

I didn't really have a 'click' feeling, more of just a calm realisation. I was sad about my life and the things I couldn't/wouldn't do because of my size.

I still struggle daily - the immediate 'happiness' (what I know to be FALSE happiness!) that is found in a bag of chocolate vs the happiness of waking up the next morning having completed another day on plan.

I just make myself think of Rockinrobin's phrase that when willpower fades, commitment stays. So sometimes it's not a case of thinking about going to the gym etc; it's just doing it - head down, feet forward.

[Heather]

I didn't really think I could do it. I don't even know the exact date I started!

But, as others have said, something was different this time around. I had a long term resolve I had never had before (to be fitter when I was 50 than when I turned 40) and a sense that if I didn't do something, I was in for a harder life (falling down the stairs and bruising my coccyx made me realize the hardship of pain and immobility).

[clarabr]

BUT there was a difference between this time and all the other times I tried and failed. I knew this time that I would not quit. I couldn't quit. I didn't know that I would succeed, but I felt like if I failed again, something inside of me would die. I had failed at weight loss over and over and over again, and each failure felt like it was killing my spirit a little bit more each time. I knew that if I tried again, it had to be for real or else something really awful was going to happen to my sense of self. It's hard to explain, but it really felt that drastic.

OMG Meg, I can't believe how much I can relate to this. It's only 12-14 pounds I've been struggling with, but they're making me miserable. And the fact that I regained them SEVEN years ago and STILL haven't managed to lose them makes me feel so, so bad. I think I must have started dieting... an average of 6 times a year in the past 7 years? So 42 times? Yeah, about that. I started again on January 19th and I feel exactly the way you described (in bold).

As for my original loss 13 years ago, to answer the question, I was 100% sure I'd get to my goal that time. From day one. And hopefully maintain. I've kept 2/3 of the weight off.

[saef]

With me, fear was a great motivator. After eating rather too heartily at my company's annual offsite meeting, I woke up in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Las Vegas with night sweats, chills and a nauseated feeling. I'd been diagnosed as very near diabetes a few weeks before & I was convinced this was a blood sugar problem. That also caused me to have what I now think was a panic attack. My heart felt like it would pound right out of my chest. I imagined getting very sick, in a place where I knew no one, and having to be hospitalized. And this would all be because of my weight & my eating habits. I finally fell asleep near dawn, but through the rest of the trip, I was extremely wary of eating anything with sugar in it. (I didn't know much about diabetes at that point.)

Not long after I returned from that business trip, the doctor gave me a six-hour glucose tolerance test & said again that I was borderline Type 2. He warned me that I'd be diabetic in six months or so if I didn't change my ways. That scared me to death. That was what I needed.

I had lost a great deal of weight years before, but developed an eating disorder & an obsession with exercise. This time, I was motivated to do it correctly, in a healthy way. I wanted to look up my weight & height on a BMI table & read the word "normal." And I wanted to see "normal" after my A1C test & my cholesterol readings. This was a different numbers game entirely. This time it wasn't so much about fitting into a size 6 or getting down to 110 (as I'd been striving to do, years before). Those goals aren't sustainable for me. But a healthy endocrine system still might be.

[wcolleenva]

I can't explain it, but yes, I really did know it was going to happen this time. Something clicked, and my thoughts and actions aligned to make it happen. Granted, I had recently experienced a major life change (quitting my job and moving to another state), so that may have had something to do with it

[Robsia]

I didn't feel it until after I got pregnant after having reached 144, 4 lbs short of my original goal weight of 140. I piled the weight back on and blamed it on the pregnancy. A week after I gave birth I was disgusted with myself to find I'd gone back up to 190 - only 23 lb short of where I had begun!

I lost all the pregnancy weight in 8 months and carried on. I hit 140 last September and began to maintain. By Christmas I had lost another 4 lb on my maintenance plan and have just started again to try to lose more weight, revising my goal to 126.

It was after I had my baby and had to start again that I really decided I was going to do it and keep it off! I began running in November last year and that has helped in a big way.

Also having successfully maintained now for over 7 months has really helped my psychological state. When I got pregnant I was going to try to maintain but I just pigged out totally and I was terrified that when I really did get to maintenance weight, I wasn't going to be able to do it. But now I know I can, which helps an awful lot.

[kittycat40]

My join date says Feb/2008. I joined this forum still looking for that magic pill. At the time I thought it was metformin. After a lifetime of doing battle with my bulges and multiple eating disorders I was getting ready to make changes. I knew in my deepest depths that there was no magic pill.

I had gained about 50 pounds with my third pregnancy, more than with my twin pregnancy. By the time my last was almost 2 years old I had settled, after about a year of "trying to diet" and not being able to stick to good choices, into fairly comfortable obesity (well, 1.5 BMI points from obese.)

It was time to get fit. I knew that I had tried and failed more than I wanted to acknowledge. I was unable to run and didn't want to play and chase around after my 4 very little boys. It was exhausting and uncomfortable to run and bounce places on my body that are not meant to bounce.

I reached a point where I knew the next time I was to attempt to get fit that I would be successful. I knew it because I knew in order to be successful I was required to change my entire lifestyle. But I was not quite ready to make the changes that needed to be made.

Then I found the cool runners thread and the 5 pound challenge threads, and of course the entire forum in and of itself . And I started to change my ways. My daily plate weight tracker starts at the end of march 08. Today I am down 40 pounds and feeling fabulous.

I was looking to get to 130/135...if I could. My screen name is kittycat40-- the forty was a pie in the sky weight loss number to me. hee

[beautifulone]

I hope it's okay to pipe in here, I'm definitely not near maintaining.

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. Something inside me just gave, and I came to the conclusion that I would NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER give up - I would keep trying my ENTIRE life, if that's what it took. So I figured that if I tried, it wouldn't actually take that long. I was right. I lost almost 50 lbs over a year. It was amazing.

I gained the weight back, almost watched it come back on (long story). Now, I want to get back down to where I was originally with those 50 lbs. But I don't feel that fire or passion, I don't have the sheer knowing burning inside me. Sometimes it feels like I'm willing it through; whereas last time I was soaring, this time it feels like a push with every other step. I'm concerned that without that fire or passion, I'm not going to succeed Silly, right. I'm telling myself I will push myself all the way, if that's what it takes. But I wish I wanted it nearly as much as I did last time.

[littletortugalover]

I don't think i KNEW. I think...I had always been fat and couldn't even visualize success. The girl who oriented me at Curves was like "ok! 50 lbs and 50 inches! That's the goal!" And i just said, "ok. sure, that seems like a lot. And not that much at the same time, oddly. Let's do it." After the first month when I lost 3 lbs, I said to myself "this week I will lose 1 pound." Then I started to say "This month at weigh in I will have lost 4 pounds." Once it started happening, I KNEW I would do it. It was like I just needed to see it was possible. I have to say, though, I hit a plateau. And one saturday morning about six months in, sitting in the Curves parking lot in my car, I said to myself "Your mom may have made you a fat kid, but you made you a fat adult. Only you can undo it. It took you 22 years to get this way, and it may take a lot longer than you think to change--but ONLY YOU CAN DO IT. YOU DID IT, AND YOU CAN UNDO IT." When those words rang through my head it was like something changed. I stopped blaming my mom and owned my lifestyle for the first time. I became so light-hearted because I saw that I really could do it. I think if you think you are a victim--of advertising, pregnancy, stress, abuse (whatever it is you think made you fat) then you can never change your life--you can't undo something that someone else did to you. You can get over it, you can move past it, but you can't change it. However--no one but me made me fat. I did it. I made my body the way it was, no one else did that for me. I was not a victim after all. that was my "click" moment.