What was your "Last Straw"? Your "Ah-ha!" moment?

What made you start getting healthy?

Mine wasn't so much a moment, as my "Ah-ha!" month. I had a very bad month. I was miserable. My knees and hips hurt so I moved as little as possible. I could not sleep at night and was in constant pain. Then I had a cancer scare, had a D&C and was afraid that my obesity was going to cause cancer. I was so embarrassed about the D&C and felt so bad for the people in the operating room. What if one of them hurt themselves moving me around? Were they laughing at me while I was out?

My son had dropped out of college and was considering going back. I always encouraged him to get his education. In one of our discussions, he shared his feeling of being overwhelmed with the idea of getting a degree. He told me exactly how long it would take him, how many courses, and was just overwhelmed. I recommended that he just not look at the big picture. To think back to high school, as a high school freshman, he did not think "Oh, this will take four years and x amount of classes." Going to school was his life and he just did it. Graduation was there before he knew it. So, for college, just think of this semester as the big goal and then, everyday just ask "What do I need to do today?"

The light bulb went on while I was talking to him. My overwhelming issue was losing the huge amount of weight that I needed to lose. I needed to take my own advice; break it into manageable goals and then just take one day at a time. In a year I would be one year older. I could be a year older and weigh less than I did at that point or I could be a year older and weigh the same or more. A year would pass in any case. I decided to weigh less.

With this approach, I have lost 85 pounds and my son has a 3.8 GPA.

This thread from the other day has a lot of folks' moments.

Mine was feeling like crap and realizing I had no clothes left that fit. It fed into a generalized panic that my life was passing me by and I was wasting it stuffing myself. I just didn't want to live like that anymore.

For me, it was when my friend posted this photo in her blog:



I was mortified that I was that obese. You never see yourself in a true light until you see yourself in a picture.

I'm 24 and 2 days before Christmas I was in the emergency room with "heart attack-esque" symptoms. My BP was 199/114 and not wanting to come down. The room was swimming around me and it took all I could not to pass out. To top things off, my special needs daughter was home with her nurse who offered to stay late because I couldn't get in touch with my fiance to tell him what was going on and that he needed to get home ASAP. I had a flash in my mind of how much of a struggle it would be if I DID have a heart attack. We don't have enough nursing to cover him working during the day and getting a good night's sleep, so he'd have to take off work until I was able to care for her again.

It was a disaster.

So I said I was going to change things up. Get healthy, eat right, and hopefully get my BP under control again. At this point it's more of a promise to my daughter and my family than to myself. While I do deserve to be healthy, I think my daughter deserves a mommy who will be around for a long time.

It was by far the most embarrassing moments of my life:

My husband, my parents, and I were on vacation in Mexico and when we went to dinner, I sat down in a chair with too-narrow arms. I did manage to "squeeze in" but the waiter came over and told me that he was getting me another chair so "I would be more comfortable." I was mortified and spent the entire rest of the vacation having "chair phobia" everywhere we went. I realized that the weight was officially starting to control my life and I needed to start to change my life...IMMEDIATELY!

Lying in a hotel room in Las Vegas, at a business conference, at 4 AM, after one of the company's banquets, and having either a blood sugar issue or a panic attack. (I'm still not sure which it was.) Lying there shaking, with my heart going like a rabbit's, unable to sleep, and thinking that I might have to call an ambulance. Wondering how I'd do that, if I should call the front desk or room service. Wondering if people had died in the hotel before. Realizing that because I was obese & was not healthy, I couldn't tell whether I was suffering through an illness of the body, the soul or the mind. All my denial seeped out of me then & there.

I've posted it before but I've had 2 real moments. One was buying size 32 plus size pants and realizing it was the biggest size I could find in any stores.

I decided from that point that I would try to lose weight. Unfortunately, I bounced between the same 30 lbs for 6 years before I had a secondary moment where I fell down my stairs at home and my leg twisted behind me. I ended up straining my knee ligament and could barely walk for 3 months. Well during that 3 months, I lost 75 lbs because I knew that it was only an indicator of what could happen in the future.

I did not have one. In this case, it's head over heart right now. Unless you count the occasional tinge of sadness for clothes I cannot get into. Maybe a switch will go off later.

Mine was when our band decided to do Ray Charles's "Shake Ya Tailfeather". Since I don't play an instrument, they wanted me to get out front and demonstrate all the dances that the song mentions...the bird, the fly, the mashed potato...oh, **** no! I could just imagine being on stage in my dress doing all these dances, and everyone laughing at all my fat butt jiggling like jello. I put my foot down and said no, and they didn't push me...but I thought, "when I was younger and skinny I would have done it in a flash". So, I decided to get skinny. Period.

I am not sure that I have had any one moment but I have had many little moments. For me it boils down to the fact that I am not happy, I am not truly living. I know I would be a much better wife and mother if I were healthier and felt better about myself. I feel so guilty not doing things with my kids like swimming, being active with them etc. because I am heavy and feel so ugly in a bathing suit or shorts. I am making my kids miss out on life because I am overweight and that is not fair. I am doing this for my kids...at least for now. Maybe later on it will be for myself too...I just feel like I have so much to give and so much life to live and I want to be able to live the life that I want. I have spent all of my 20's so far fat and thinking wistfully about the day when I am skinny. I realize now at 27 that it is now or never and that, that day will never just magically happen. I need to work for it.

I shattered my ankle. I was alone, laid up, and frustrated to the point of madness. I literally just laid on my couch and fasted and had probably the most clarity I'd had in my entire (young) life. I decided that was it, that it was time to change.

I don't know if I would've "gotten it" in a less dramatic fashion, but it worked. The moment I could start working out I did and I began re-evaluting my relationship with food.

I think I wasted about 20 years of my life waiting for the perfect "a-ha" moment, which gave me a fine old excuse to stuff my face while i waited LOL i finally just put my head down and barreled thru

I didn't really have a specific 'moment.' Early 2009 I had a lot of personal traumas all in a short period of time. Usually when I was emotionally strung out I would eat myself 'well.' This time instead medicating my problems with food, I didn't (I was not very hungry). For about a month or so, I ate well below my 'normal' calories. I refuse to even estimate exactly how much I used to eat, but for that month I ate around 2000 calories a day. I basically stopped eating fast food, ate only food cooked at home. After a few weeks I found I could fit into my size 22 jeans again (a few weeks before my size 24 jeans were a bit too tight). This sort of sparked an "I wonder" moment, and I decided to keep up eating healthier. Again a few more weeks passed and I went down another pant size. Around that time I realized it was possible for me to lose weight, and I didn't have to be obese. I committed to a complete lifestyle change (eating healthy and exercising more) and set my goal of losing weight/getting healthy.

Here's my moment from another similar thread.