I'm actually really annoyed, failing to succeed so many times before. This time I'm out to prove something, for one. I always said I'd be in shape for my 21st birthday so, you know...gotta show the world something lol. :) More than anything, I wanna be my personal best.

Three things that happened to me in quick succession:

1. not being as athletic or flexible as my partner which is inconvenient anyway but especially during...certain times.

2. I developed extremely painful plantar facitiis and my podiatrist said that I could get a series of 5 very painful shots in my heel to paralyze the muscle every time I had a flare-up OR I could lose weight and it would go away on its own.

3. I was diagnosed with arthritis. I'm in my 20's and that one really blew me away. The doctor said that my frame just cannot support the weight and it's starting to degenerate and fail. That one really hit me. I am permanently damaging my body. I only get one and when I break it, I don't get another!

Hi there, everyone--
I'm reviving this thread because it truly resonates with me. It's weird how when you are facing a difficult challenge that it seems like you're the only person in the world to face it, ever. Logically, you know that's not true, but it sure feels that way. After reading all of the reasons why y'all decided that 'enough is enough', I feel inspired to list mine.
1. My fiance and I have sex far less often. He's gained about 100lbs. since I first met him. He said that he feels self-conscious and unsexy when he sees himself naked. Having gained 50lbs. since meeting him, I realized that I feel that way, too.
2. Over the past two years, I've really hated seeing myself in photos. I never used to scorn my image like that, before.
3. I stepped on the scale for the first time in ages and saw that I was 3lbs. away from hitting the 200 mark.
4. I saw that all of the clothing that used to be my "heavy" wardrobe are sitting unused and unwearable in the back of my closet.
5. I look about eight years older than I did only two years ago.
6. My doctor said that I have high cholesterol, and that my joint pain is likely due to my increased weight.
7. I'm getting married in May of 2013, and realized that if I hate my photos now, I'll really hate my wedding photos.

RVAscreenwriter, :hug:

My "Fat" clothes became too small. A coworker said "wide load coming through" as I walked by. My boss bought me diet snacks and told me I should start losing weight again. I overheard my step daughter call me a "Fat A$$" on the phone.

I was just so tired of being miserable, embarrassed, uncomfortable, and mad at myself.

Now when I make it through a day eating healthy and exercising. I'm proud of myself. I'm not doing this for anyone but myself, and that feels good. I want to look in the mirror and think I'm pretty. I want to wear a cute outfit and feel good.

I also want to let everyone know on this website that I'm so thankful to all of you. Your all so supportive and kind. I feel so safe to say what I feel here. So thanks you everyone. No matter what you are all winners to me.

Thanks, BerkshireGrl!

Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry that you experienced such antagonizing over your weight. No one deserves to be treated that way.
Best wishes on your journey, RainFalls! :hug:

To Therainfalls: I'm so sorry that those hurtful things were said to and about you. It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant people can be. Congrats on doing it for YOURSELF!

RVAscreenwriter: You can do it!!!!!!! Congrats on your success so far :)

My final moment was a friday in December, the last Friday before Christmas vacation at school (I'm a school counselor) and it was dress down day. My totally stretched out size 16 jeans, that were most likely more of a 20 due to stretching, ripped when I put them on. I had nothing else I could fit into - no other jeans that I could squeeze into. I figured, ok, grab my long sweater to cover it all up and make me feel ok....couldn't find the sweater. I ran around my house screaming "where is it? I have nothing to cover this fat ***, I'm such a loser". What made matters worse was I had lunch duty that day so I also got to stand in front of 1200 kids, feeling so fat and ugly, trying to cover ripped jeans. I decided then to make a change. I NEVER want to call myself fat *** or hate the way I look again. It took about 1 more week of eating junk food daily and binging all the time and then I went full blast on Jan 2 and haven't stopped! Ladies, you have been an incredible amount of support for me. THANK YOU!

Thank you all for listening. :D

Congratulations, TurboLaura, on your accomplishments! Keep it up :)

I was in denial for so long. I knew I was fat but I always though I wasn't that fat. My best friend started losing weight and she looks absolutely amazing. I used that as my motivation a few months ago and so far I haven't looked back.

I've lost about 30 pounds, and now, when I see myself in the mirror I can't believe I was ever bigger than I am now. It's so strange how perceptions can change so drastically.

I started belly dancing last year and my teacher has one of those "infectious personalities" so despite being the biggest person in the class, I continued. She also turns out to be a Facebook fanatic who keeps on tagging me in photo's.

we have a show in August where our class will be performing and I decided I wanted a proper outfit this year. So instead of covering up Everything like I did last year, I decided to "bare the belly".

I found a lifestyle that suits me and so far is showing great results. I know this is just the start but I think finding this website is going to keep me focused and continually inspired!

2 months ago the elevator in our apartment building needed to be upgraded, so it was out of commission for 4 weeks. I live on the fourth floor and, in the beginning, I found myself having to stop for a rest twice on the way up while my daughter ran the entire way. By the end of the 4 weeks I was only stopping once. That was when I realized that I needed to 1) get healthy and 2) that I could!

You know what is a kicker for me... not nearly the straw that broke the camels back, but something that happens EVERY time I have a boyfriend? They all weigh around 220-225 and are about 6'0 to 6'2 ( i always pick the same body type) and I think to myself I wish I weighed that... hahahah who wished for 220? Me...

My very first straw was July 2011. I too had to ask for an extender for the seatbelt. I remember how humilating that was. Never in my life did I think I would become one of "those" people. But I did. I tell you what. I have never had to ask again. I fly at least once a month and a mini goal for me was to never have to ask for that damn thing again.

The straw this time was realizing I just want to be healthy. I enjoy more than anything being active. Outdoors... hiking, biking, camping, on the river. I can do these things at this weight... I just don't want to anymore. I want to be active in all of these things without wondering if I can make it up that hill or if I can walk that long. Its just time and its ridiculous that I have to spend a moment of my time in this life worrying about any of these things. Dammint... its time to xxxx or get of the pot.

I LOVE your enthusiasm! :cp:

Thank you, RCAscreenwriter :)

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

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 :)


http://www.3fatchicks.net/img/tulip-...5/125/201/.png

Oh Yes !
 

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 !

http://www.3fatchicks.net/img/tulip-...5/125/201/.png

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 ;)

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. :D 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.