When I realized I couldn't wear low-rise jeans, which are so popular right now. At 159 on a 5'6" frame, I was just too big and chunky looking to pull off anything looking good. Low carb gave me my abs back.

HairOnFire - how did lc give you your abs back?? Did you do any form of exercise?? How long did it take you?? And did you drink diet drinks?? I'm wondering if those are slowing me down.

Joy

Joy, I was a runner before LC (started LC in May) but was gaining on low-fat, high-carb, the typical story. After starting LC, the first thing that happened was my belly fat started decreasing drastically, and I assume a lot of this was just losing the water weight related to carb intake. So I started pumping iron immediately after LC, mostly total body work. I do a few Pilates type exercises 3 or 4 days a week, not more than 20 minutes at a time, but my weight training has been overall body work for the major muscle groups using dumbbells. I still run pretty high mileage (longest at the moment is 18 miles), and I think this may be contributing just as much to the fat burning. (Aerobics in general is supposed to burn belly fat well.)

In June I also started swimming, and I think this also helped tone up my abs and other body parts that weren't getting hit by the running or weight training.

Joy, I don't use diet drinks, but I did use them during Weight Watchers several years ago. I lost 40# on W.W. slamming down about a 6-pack of Diet Coke almost every day. It had no effect on my rate of losing weight. I should add that I was in my early 40s back then, now I'm perimenopausal (47) and I'm not sure how diet drinks would affect me. Right now, I drink about a liter of black caffeinated or green tea every day, unsweetened, but this has not hampered my weight loss at all.

I kicked Diet Coke a couple of years ago after gaining back my Weight Watchers weight. However, I'm not convinced they are really that bad for you. I drank them for years. I think if diet drinks help keep you on plan (and I know they did for me back on W.W.), you might want to try finding something else to tweak in your routine - pump iron more? more intense aerobics? increase fat in your diet? There are a lot of ways to tweak, and I know it would have been very difficult for me back on W.W.to kick the Diet Coke. I think finding other ways to tweak would also work.

Keep us posted on your progress!

Hair

Rest assured, she did. Madonna is only 5'4 and has always been small. She is 47 now and in the best shape of her life. A machine. While we are sleeping, she is working her ass off to take care of her body, mind, soul, family and career. She is increadable. A true inspiration.

If everyone who was overweight took even a tiny ounce of Madonna's will to better herself than none of us would be in the positions were in now.

With that said, my trigger was alot of things. My career, my love life, pictures I am in, my getting older (26 now) and not getting any younger. At my highest I was 345 LBS. When I started this diet I was off my scale that only went up to 330, so I assumed I was 330 LBS. As of today, I am out of the 300's. My main triggers were the fact that I work in an office, and I want to excell in my job and for Gods sake, I look weird with my shirt tucked in. So I never do it. I want to be found attractive. I want to see what my body is capable of doing.

My only regret and worry is that after all this weight is gone, Im going to look at myself in the mirror and ask myself "why so many years of abuse?", "why did I let it get this far?", "why diddnt I do something sooner when I wouldnt have had loose skin or huge stretch marks?".

Things are a process for me. I cannot just wake up one day and say "ohh I think Im going to do a low carb diet" and then get up and go to the store and start. Between airplane seats, concert venue seats, falling down a flight of stairs, shirts being to tight, my growing breasts (Im a guy), my McDonalds obsession (or any fast food for that matter), my not being able to sleep on my side because it crushed my chest and hurt the area around my heart, my wearing 2 shirt obsession, the buttons breaking on my pants (all the time), the dreaded scale at the doctors office, the feeling out of place when I just know Im the fattest guy in the room, the area's on my body where I wasnt able to get a good reach to...

It all adds up for me. And I started formulating my take off. It diddnt just happen. I set a day, and I started on that day. The night before Im sure I gobbled down some McDonalds or Wendys or Subway or Pizza Hut (I dont remember). Then I woke up, made my first egg and I was off. Its only been almost 3 weeks into it and I've hit my first goal of being under 300 LBS. This is a landmak for me as I havent been under 300 LBS in 6 years.

Yes, I feel good. But this is only the beginning.

Well I've been fat my WHOLE life. I got married when I was fat to a fat girl. Over the course of our two year marriage we were always on one diet or another. We would always screw up and end up at all-you-can-eat places. Then finally she stuck to weight watchers and ended up losing 60ish lb while I was at my highest, 270ish. She was down to 135ish and was feeling great. I was working weekends at my job and she started going out clubbing, going to the community pool late at night, etc. Well next thing you know she's cheating on me. Knipped that in the butt, got a divorce, got depressed ... started exercising and eating right. I've been stuck at 205-210 for over a year and am at the same deadend job I've been at for 7.5 years. The cut-off for the Air Force is 27 and I'm 27. I have to enlist by my 28th birthday (May, 2007) or else it's the regular old Army for me. So now I'm back on track, trying to get to 185 (or better, 175) so I can enlist. That's my story

Believe it or not my breaking point was 400 pounds. I remember when I hit 300 and being horrified and crying but it wasnt enough for me to do something about it. It wasnt until just recently that I decited that I deserve to feel and even to look good! I got all the way up to 424 pounds before I realized that this was a form of self torture and that I have tortured myself enough and it was time to give myself my life back. Be thankful, those of you who have a "low pain tolerance" because its easier to fix the sooner you fix it. One good thing I have to say is that I have decited to do something about it before I got any serious medical conditions. When I think that I weigh over 400 pounds it almost seems imposible that I doing have high blood pressure, or cholesteral and am not diabetic. But if I would have stayed on the same track I was on, I am sure it would not have taken long!

this past Christmas when the scale read 170 pounds, and also realizing my best friend ( my husband ) dident want to be seen in public with me anymore. , and to make it worse he was not interrested in me at home eather.

My realization came when I was without a scale for a while...thinking I was in the 160s and turned out that I was close to 25 pounds heavier. Not a nice surprise!

I had access to a scale, but made that bad mistake of avoiding it for awhile. Over the past year, I'd already crept up from my "normal" weight of about 155 (I'm 5'8"), to about 172. When I decided to step on the scale yesterday after vacation, I was up to 180!!! The only time I was higher than that was when I was pregnant - I had started each pregnancy at about 132 (yes I was very slim then) and gained about 55 pounds each time. My highest weight during pregnancy was 187. I lost it all after my daughter, and then after my son, I got down to about 145, but then really settled at 155. (My kids are 15 and 16 years old.)

I was never thrilled to be 155, but I looked OK and I always said if I could maintain that weight for the rest of my life, I'd be fine with it. This past year has really done me in!!! Seeing the scale say 180 was definitely my breaking point!

When I got pregnant with my third child, I was already 195 pounds at start. I put on a whopping forty pounds ( about the same as the previous two prgancies) and weighed 235 right before I delivered. After the first month I was down to 210 and I though, since I was nursing the weight would continue to drop. In the meantime, I was struggling with back and knee pain, and I had trouble lifting my son from his crib, or getting up from the floor, if I was there playing with him. When he was a year old, I decided I'd had enough. Instead of losing, I went up to 213. My blood pressure was up, I had heart palpitations and difficulty sleeping due to my back pain.

Going on atkins was thebest decision I ever made. Even hubby joined me, sincehe put on some"baby Weight" aswell.

It is harderfo rme to losenow that I am lighter, as it is harder for meto stay motivated since the aches and pains and other problems are gone. BUtI stillhave high bloodpressure and I am snot happy about the way I look. So on I go!

Seeing the scale say 206 and realizing that i was over 200 pounds and I better fix it NOW.

This is a great question. Perhaps if we could all bottle that 'a ha!' moment, we could revisit it any time we think of cheating.

My moment didn't come when I was told I had heart disease.
It didn't come when my husband admitted he wasn't attracted to me any more (when I found him looking at girls' pics on the internet)
It didn't come when my 22 pants were tight.
It didn't come when I kept seeing myself on TV (I just decided not to watch).
It didn't come when I couldn't get on my horse any more

What finally happened?
I decided to quit my job, renegotiate for a contract to work at home, and put my career goals front and centre. It's weird, it's like I have decided to reconfigure my whole life.

When I lost 133 pounds before I made a decision. I can't define myself by my weight gain or loss. I had a person in my family commit suicide after losing 200 pounds because all he could think of was, 'except for my weight, all my other problems (love life, money, etc) were still present.'
I decided to return to an aspiration (career wise) that allowed me to focus on more than just my weight loss.

Now that I have set another career goal, I am oddly ready to again take on the weight that (due to emotional crisis, medications, and laziness) had come back with a vengeance.

So, what will happen when I reach my next career goal (which is actually looking promising)? Do I have to bundle my goals?

Or should I just do my best to remember the euphoria of how it feels to slip into pants that didn't fit last month? I worry I'll get it off and screw up again!

Two things did it for me, at different times.

In 2004, I was head over heels (or so I thought) with a girl who didn't feel the same way. I was probably about 190 at the time.

Some things happened, and basically that summer I used the hurt/rejection as motivation. Began hardcore diet experimenting (low carb, psmf, even the All Natural Peanut Butter Diet - yes, there is one, and it does work! ) as well as hitting the free school gym 3x a week.

By the end of the summer I was 172, and with the weightlifting I was looking pretty good. Then school and work started in full force, and, coupled with me getting a steady girlfriend, I slowly let the weight creep back.

Flash forward to Christmas 2005. I weighed 210 lbs, but oddly enough didn't really show it. But my aunt (who can often open her mouth before thinking) made an off-hand comment, something along the lines of, "I guess you've been hitting the sweets again, eh?"

I felt awful, angry and disappointed with myself for pissing away all my hard work.

So, at 210, in February of this year, I decided enough is enough. I stared a PSMF and got down to 190. Two weeks at maintenance made me hit 195, but that was water weight.

Then I started low carbing, coupled with 3x weekly runs. As of yesterday, my morning weight is 168lbs. My goal is 160lbs, but I'm looking into a gym membership to start a true body re-composition.

For me it was stepping on the scale and seeing 206 on a 5foot4 frame while my husband is 6 feet and weighed 197...I hated weighing more than him. Even though he has never said anything about my weight it really bothered me enough to finally do something about it. He lost 27 pounds in 6 weeks so I thought I would give it a try. I love low carbing and don't ever plan on going back to my prior ways.