For all of my life, my siblings(I'm the oldest) and I have been slightly overweight. Last year my brother(who's 18) lost a lot of weight and is now very fit and muscular. I'm losing weight too and trying to be more healthy. However my sister(14) is still overweight, and not to be mean but she is bigger than any of us ever were. I get scared because of her weight, my brother was on high blood pressure medicine at his HW and many people in our family have diabetes.

My mom is a dietitian( kind of funny her kids were overweight) and my sister won't listen to anything she or my father says. However she listens to me. She will be in high school next year, and it's hard being overweight at that age. So I started out trying to lose weight for myself and it's going well. Now I hope my sister catches on and adopts a more healthy lifestyle.

So I know losing weight should be for yourself, but who are you trying to set a good example for?

Hmmm. I don't think I'm trying to set an good example for anyone at the moment....but then again, I don't interact with a lot of people younger than I am. Maybe I can somehow convince my younger brother (he's 21) that he should shape up and get healthier as well, if I get smaller than he is! =)

honestly, I'm hoping to set a good example for my entire family - all of whom are obsese now. (I say that begrudingly because my overweight parents raised us as overweight kids)

Hopefully... they'll see the choices I make and decide to mimic them. I would like to still have my parents and brother ALIVE in 20 years!

I would kind of like to show my mom that losing weight is doable (she's struggled with hers since I was born pretty much)...but as I live in a different state she really can't see for herself that here I am, eating decent tasting food yet healthy food, exercising a little more every week than I did the last, and I'm doing it. And while its not easy, its not nearly as hard as I would have thought before, I would have laughed if you told me I'd be able to go up 50 flights of stairs or that I could bike 10 miles on one go without having a heart attack. I wish I could be around her to get her started doing the same things. Not that you can really make anyone decide to get healthy, but I think if I was home she might be inspired a little. I'll see her in May, maybe if I drop enough weight between Christmas (when I last saw her, weighing around 170 pounds) and then she'll decide to make some changes.

I want to lose weight and develop good habits now, so that when I hav kids, I can pass my good habits on to them. My parents raised my sister and I to eat healthy and I want to teach my kids the same and I wouldn't be able to do taht with the bad habits that I had before I started on my 'journey'.

Hi, good question...Really, im doing it for myself, however...I really am more proud of myself for setting a good example for my two kids!...They are both under 4 and my 4 year old understands the difference between healthy and unhealthy food...and I know I cant teach her to eat healthy if I am not doing it myself...so yeah...i do it for them too!! I think thats fine in our weight loss journey...if anything, its a motivator...no?

I really am hoping to get my oldest sister to do something. Since I'm losing weight she's talking about doing it, I talked about losing for a long time but just talking doesn't help. I am really just wanting to lose weight before my daughter realizes I'm fat. My niece told her dad that she didn't want to eat anything because she didn't want to get fat like her mommy. I think changing my eating habits will benefit my family in the long run, I used to eat crap growing up because that's what my mother fed us, so I am making sure that my daughter eats healthy food.

I am starting medical school in a few short months. I plan to be a cardiologist, and i know that i am going to have to tell a lot of patients that they need to change their diets/lifestyles, and i would like to be a good example for them. I always had trouble as a teenager hearing my 300+ lb physician tell me how unhealthy it was to be overweight; if it was really that bad, i thought, he would do something about it for himself. Additionally, most physicians know little to nothing about nutrition. It's just not taught in medical school. So when i tell a patient they need to lower their cholesterol or blood pressure, i want to really understand how to help them do that through diet and exercise, and be a living example. I am interested in getting a masters in nutrition in addition to my MD for this purpose.

I really admire what you're doing! Having a degree in nutrition to compliment your MD will also influence your fellow doctors, which may eventually benefit their patients as well! So many doctors don't know ANYTHING when it comes to nutrition (there are several threads on the topic around here) and you have a sort of double impact in being a cardiologist as well. Good luck!

I agree with you SCraver. I want to have healthy eating habits so when I have kids someday I can start their lives out right and hopefully they will never have the weight battle that I have been through.