So many wonderful and honest posts on this thread. Thank you all for sharing. Don't feel so alone with my struggle today.

I've always wanted to lose weight but never did a thing. Part of what got me serious about it was when I broke my ankle a year ago. Hoping around on crutches really made me realize how hard my weight was to handle and during the same time, the ex I gave another chance to cheated on me many times for girls that were size 0-2....seriously a third my size because I've met most the girls he cheated on me with. I got seriously depressed, almost died, and slowly realized that I needed to love myself and change to what I want to be.

On a funny note, I did realize I needed to lose weight when an old couple looked at my belly and smiled thinking I was pregnant..lol I've never had kids so this belly's gotta go!

Uh...not being able to get my wedding ring off was my last straw... I had convinced myself that as long as I could remove it in the shower with the help of shampoo/conditioner/general soapiness, I was still not-fat.

One day it happened. I couldn't take it off and I panicked. I felt TRAPPED. Not trapped with my husband but physically I felt sort of...finger-claustrophobic (if that's even a thing!?). I told myself it was not going to continue and I was going to slim down. About 3 months ago, I was able to remove it and then of course, promptly put it on again. It was fabulous just knowing that I could take it off whenever I wanted. TAKE THAT FATTY FINGERS!

YES, YES, YES I'm so glad you brought this up

My last straw I was @ a water park with my grand girls & I had a hard time
( was not stuck) getting out of the inner tube . When I was trying to help my 7yo grandgirl back in her tube. I wasn't worried she can swim & the water was only 3 ft but I had alllll this stomach to roll over to get out of the tube. I felt like a loser & I said to myself THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT , YOU CAN FIX THIS !

That someone loved me,but couldn't be with me because of my weight. It may seem shallow,but I don't think it is. It's the fact that he didn't want to love me then lose me to some weight related illness.

My new I.D card picture, I had triple chins,and no cheekbones!! I looked 45 not 31. EWW!

Tying my shoes took sometimes 15 min.

When the belly sticks out farther than your breasts,or your stomach becomes an arm rest,yeah the fat has got to hit the road.

My doctor actually said to me yesterday that if I don't lose weight, I will probably have to add a third blood pressure pill to keep my blood pressure down. And my cousin told me she is ashamed to go out of the house anymore because she has to wear "tents" then I found out that although she is an inch taller than me, I weigh 40 pounds more than her! The third thing is that I have always been very social, but now I don't want to go out with friends because I always feel like the fat girl in the group

I'm so glad I read this almost 2 year old thread, because this is so funny, but true. There are so many things that thin people take for granted.

The responses here were very good, and honest.

I recently went to the doctor, and when they weighed me, I was almost 20 lbs heavier than I was a year ago. I was shocked. Sitting in the waiting room waiting for my doctor to come in, I was just looking in the mirror, still completely shocked. After the appointment I compared my now self to pictures from a year ago, and realized I really had blown up. Even when I was small I could never get small enough, and now that I blew up. My self esteem took a ****. I felt like I wasn't good enough for my boyfriend. Constantly comparing myself to thinner women, like I would never be that. Then, about a week ago, I woke up, and decided that I was going to be one of those women. Since then I've been on a 1200 calorie, low carb, no wheat diet. I'm starting to exercise and tone up, although a little at a time, and most importantly, I'm getting excited for the future. Because now I know that in one year, I'm going to be a whole new me. I needed that sadness to get me to realize I was throwing myself a pity party.

*~Love and Light~*

For me it was a gradual change in attitude. I'd "diet" in the past but all the hatred of myself was still there so I gave up trying. I've been seeing a counsellor, i've got out a whole load of the c**p that was holding me back, and 3yrs ago I fell in love with a wonderful man who loves me no matter what my size and just wants me to be happy with myself. I started setting boundaries with people who were using me as a doormat. I've managed to claw back some self-worth I seriously don't think I've had since I was... 8? I'm not kidding, I've been depressed most of my life and done a reasonable job of burying it. Now I'm I'm a kind of limbo, where I like myself on the inside but not the outside. I realised that I am so sorry for what I've put myself through, hiding behind pitying myself for being fat. Now I realise I'm actually worth a whole lot more than I thought, I feel stable enough on the inside to do something about it. I'm sick of just existing. I've had enough of buying into this myth that being thin won't make me happy. Sure, I don't want to be a size zero, and losing 100lbs won't solve ALL my problems... but it will solve a lot of them! I finally feel like I deserve to be happy. I owe it to myself. This journey back to who I am is a gift I'm giving myself to make up for so many years of treating myself like a piece of ****!

Some of the last straws on here made me laugh out loud because I can totally relate.
Here's my last straw...We are remodling our bathroom it's been months that we haven't had a shower. We have to take only baths. GAWD! I feel like a whale in that tub trying to wash my hair, move around, and forget trying to get up to get out! I feel like my butt is pure lead. This thing is heavy!

The last straw for me was when my 5 year old son said I had a big belly just like super Mario. It made me cringe. So I went to my doctor because of pcos and gerd, to see what I could do. He ran some tests and the results were startling.I had always viewed my weight as something physically unattractive, I had never really concidered its impact on my health. Duh, I know. I have to make changes.

It's really interesting to see how different everyone's last straw is. For me its my mother-in-law tbh. She's a big lady and she's diabetic. Seeing the problems she's having with knees/back/feet due to the stress of carrying so much weight has made me realise i dont want that for myself. I'd always seen my weight as a cosmetic thing and not a big deal, but seeing its effect on her has really driven home that it's a massive health issue too.

For me I had kick started so many times, I had said out loud to all my friends that I wanted to lose weight but everyone just kept saying 'oh you're not big,' 'you're exaggerating', 'you don't look as much as you weigh'. Even when I got I mistaken for being pregnant 3 times I still just kept telling myself that I looked fine and that people were just being blind. And then one day I was flicking through all the pictures in my photo albums from a couple of years ago and I was wearing clothes that I could only dream of fitting into now, and I wasn't exactly slender then, and then I looked through more photos and as the time went on I looked bigger and bigger until I got up to pictures and I was really straining to fit into generous sized clothes and then the final kicker was when a friend of mine who used to be bigger than me gave me a bag of clothes that didn't fit her anymore as she had lost so much weight and they were all at least two sizes too small. So I said to myself this is just silly now, your big, your too big, I had a bad BMI and I was 3 stone heavier than my boyfriend that 5 inches taller than me. DO SOMETHING! So I have, and I am here with all you amazing people, with so much courage and so much willpower. And hopefully if I just keep going I can look at this whole experience as a learning curve! :-)

I can barely fit into any of my clothes anymore! Over the years, I've bought new gear and the sizes keep inching up... but I don't get rid of the old clothes b/c I'm thinking "this is only temporary, no way I'm going to stay this big for long..." So I buy cheap bigger clothes and keep fooling myself. Like the weight is just going to fall off all by itself