In January of last year I started doing the Fat Smash Diet. I worked out 4-5 times a week, ate well, and lost 60 lbs. Then in the summer, I went to Germany. I walked a lot there and lost another pant size, even while eating a lot of Currywurst and Döner.

I came home, and fell into a lot of money issues, body issues, and boy issues. I became depressed and sat on the couch a lot, and was eating a whole lot of ramen and butter noodles. Basically, if it was a carb covered in cheese, I craved it. haha

Tonight I went back to the gym for the first time in 2 months. I biked for 25 minutes and thought I was gonna die. I had to really PUSH myself to do the circuit training. Then I went to run on the elliptical, my favorite exercise, and could only go half a mile before I had to stop. 6 minutes. I used to be able to do 60, just a few months ago.

After I worked out I weighed myself, and found out I have gained about 15 lbs. This is absolutely not acceptable, and it has lit a fire under me, because I can't just let it happen.

What was your wake-up call?

I think I was "awake" the whole time. Since I was aware of fat people/skinny people, I felt like I had weight issues and wanted to lose weight. Wanting to lose weight has been a permanant condition in my life since I was like 10. I was also aware that I had gained weight in the past year and a half. Going from a 9 to a 10 to a 12 to finally giving in and buying a 12/13 that barely fit. I was aware that I was gaining and that I was too big to begin with, I think I just had myself so convinced that weight loss was miserable and near impossible that I was too afraid of failure to try.

To be honest, I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I thought "it's time to quit wishing and start doing." I don't remember exactly what made me get serious about it. This is the first time I've ever even tried to lose weight before.

Ditto mkendrick. My mother made sure I knew I was fat and ugly since about age 8. She had good intentions, but didn't know that constantly monitoring my food intake and making everything about my weight ("You can't eat that because of your weight problem." "Going to soccer practice will help your weight problem." "If you didn't have a weight problem, we wouldn't have to spend so much on those arched insoles") would hurt more than help in the long run.

My REAL wake-up call actually came when I was skinny as a stick. I caved to the pressure and starved down to nothing. Then I looked at some pictures from a college-visiting trip. I looked like a bobblehead, with scary pale skin, cracked fingers, thinning hair, bones all over the place...I was still ugly! All that starving and running and misery and I wasn't any happier than I was when I was "fat". My first reaction was of course to binge it all back, but I had a totally different mindset when I felt comfortable enough to start thinking about getting it under control. I woke up to the fact that I was trying to obtain love by controlling my body, and sweeping all the resentments and memories under the rug by pretending everything would be okay when I was skinny.

Well I always know that I have a problem whit weight.

I remember say to myself as longs as not more than 132 pounds is ok, them 65 o 65 still Ok and I went all the way up to 176 pound, 2 pregnancies in between .

What make wake up was a picture of my 28 birthday OMG ... so my friend and I star a competition to see who lose more, I am so happy whit that decision . Here I am now 137 pound and loving it .....

The announcement by my friend that she was pregnant and pushing up her wedding to 7 weeks away..It just gave me the kick in the butt that I needed. I didnt want to be the "fat" bridesmaid. Also, trying on bridesmaid dresses that week was an embarassing shocker. I know that theyre sizes run weird, but trying on a 10 and having it *just* fit with breathing room was shameful.

I think it's sad that society makes us feel "ashamed" of being a certain size. While I may or may not be happy at a certain size, I don't think there is anything intrinsically "wrong" about being a 10, 18, 26, 32, whatever. ETA- not to say that that's what Pinkberry was implying; I just found the use of the word shameful to be jarring.

My "wake-up call" was a rather silly health scare...I got hemorrhoids (sorry for the overshare) which I attributed to my sedentary lifestyle and excess weight. At around the same time, a couple of my good friends were being very successful with weight loss, and that gave me the extra kick I needed to get in shape.

I have always known i had issues with weight, but I think the defining moment was when my two brothers lost all their 'baby fat' and slimmed down, that was a start, but while big I have always seen myself as smaller than my sister who is also obese, and one day I found out i weighed MORE than her, if just by a few pounds, and realized I cant keep going on like that.

No, theres nothing wrong with being a 10 +..I just remember the days when I was REALLY athletic and in great shape from track and cross country in high school and could fit into a size 3 and wear a size 5 comfortably. My weight never dropped below 135 but I was extremely muscular...it disappoints me to see how my body went from being so fit to the mush it is now.

I've been overweight since I was in like 3rd grade I think. I don't remember it bothering me at all until I had just come back from summer camp as an 12 year old. I remember being embarrassed not being able to do all the things that the other kids could do, and saying to myself that by the time I went back the next summer I wanted to be average size, though it was pretty much impossible to do with the way my family ate.

I've tried losing weight through college and I have steadily went down. I weight 250lb when I started, and then the past couple years have been steadily around 225. 25 lb is nice, but not where I should stop for a healthy lifestyle.

I guess my biggest wake up call was this past summer when I was working at camp. I work at a camp for kids with physical disabilities, where they stay for the whole summer and are provided therapy, plus get to do other camp activities. I love it! Well, the past couple years we've started allowing a small portion (perhaps 12 out of our 160 campers) of kids who are obese. Of course there are always some kids who have both a physical disability and are obese, but this program was specifically targeted as an educational thing for obese children to learn about lifestyle change and discover fun things to do outside and be active, and healthy food choices and all. Two of the kids in the program happened to be in the unit I directed. These kids both made amazing progress through the summer. I decided that if these 7 year old kids can lose 20 lbs just by being more active and portion control, I can totally do the same thing.

I felt like a hypocrite, working with these boys all summer and not doing the same thing myself. So that was my wake up call. I know I won't meet my goal by this summer, but I'm still glad nonetheless.

My underwear started to get to small and I'd get really deep, painful marks in my skin. There was something about having to go buy bigger underwear that just made me go "you know, I need to loose weight."

I always knew I had problems and it was always a constant struggle--which greatly attributed to my depression. But, I think the wake up call started when my cousin had a baby and I started really wanting a family and had started talking about it with my then bf. Then about three months later my periods started getting really irregular and I knew it was because of my weight gain in recent months. If I didn't stop and say I needed to get healthy, I could have risked a whole set of fertility problems. Besides, I want to be able to see the baby bump, not just know it's there under the fat!

For me it was just pictures I saw of myself where I just looked gigantic. I know the camera adds 10 lbs and all that jazz, but even with the 10 less lbs I still would have been big. I guess I had blocked it out of my mind how big I really was, unfortunately. Those pictures made me face the truth.

I have weight problems my whole life. Ever since I was in kindergarten, I remember being teased because of my weight. In my senior year of high school, I went through some pretty tough things (for me anyway), and I was so miserable, but I didn't know what to do anymore. For graduation, my dad ans step mom bought me 12 weeks of personal training at the gym my step mom works at. She told me that she and my dad would not tell me when to make my first appointment, only that it was there when I was ready. The next week, I called to set up an appointment. At night when I would go to sleep, I could feel how hard my lungs were working through all the layers of fat, and how hard my heart was working to pump through all the fat. The trainer told me that I had high blood preasure, which kind of scared me. So, I started to go, and I love it.

Mine came two weeks ago when my mother was diagnosed with diabetes. I'm going to do everything I can to stave off the same diagnosis for myself. I'm only 23, I can still be "young and healthy" if I start now!

My initial wake up call was seeing pictures of myself w/ my ex bf in Galveston... he was fat (this i knew) and then next to him was this off white whale (me, I hadn't noticed the 50lb weight gain). I've NEVER been thin, but in high school I was comfortable at a size 13 weighing about 170. I weighed myself and at 219 I literally jumped OFF the scale and jumped back on... it said 221 UGH I should of just stayed on the first go round lol. Well I was depressed and in a bad relationship I broke it off and immediately lost 280 lbs (HIM lol) and then on my very own dropped 52 lbs. In the last 3 years or so I've gained 12 lbs and those 12 lbs fluctuate. My recent wake up was having to use the regular holes on my belt again instead of my new self made notches. Round 2.