I am maid of honor in a wedding next May. I just can't handle being the fat bridesmaid.

I *clicked* when I saw the scale almost hit 200 lbs. I had always, ALWAYS sworn to myself that I would NEVER break 200. It's how I consoled myself when my weight first started creeping up - "At least I'm still under 200lbs" - because, y'know, that arbitrary number kept me away from being one of the "real" fatties. Getting on the scale one day, more out of idle curiosity than anything else, and seeing the 198 flash scared the sh*t out of me. Not that I've made steady progress since then - I'm hovering around 185ish these days, but coming back to active weight-loss efforts one more time as of right now - but it was what made me go from making excuses to acknowledging, yeah, I'm fat. And I need to do something about that.

I remember about a year and a half ago stepping on the scale and it reading "179" 180 seemed like a very big and scary number to me, so i decided to make some small changes- switching to diet soda, walking instead of taking the bus, getting salads with my burger instead of fries...VERY small, sort of inconsistent things. The other day I stepped on the scale and it said 159. It made me realize that by putting in hardly any effort I lost 10 pounds in about 18 months...but it also made me think about how much I could of lost if I had put in just a moderate amount of effort. It really was an 'aha' moment. Whenever I don't feel like exercising I think about a year of running vs. a year of not running, and how I would look and feel after each.