Remind yourself why you are doing this. I'm sure we all have more than one reason, however, pick one of the most important things and tell us what it is, and be specific. If it is health related, be as specific as possible such as lower cholesterol, fight diabetes, get more energy, combat insomnia...

Sometimes I think it helps us to have a very specific goal, rather than vague "better health" goals. A specific goal is more measurable.


My main health goal is to lower cholesterol.

Dawn

Dawn,

Thank you for picking up my "dropped" homework ball. I went to Toledo for a funeral yesterday and forgot to list homework, as I planned, before I left.

I'm home and tired, but my goal is to be healthier (blood pressure) and more limber - it would help my back, too.

Linda

My goal is to fit into a bikini this summer. NOT! My goal is to be able to walk, my knees are very arthritic and the added weight doesn't help at all. My goal is to lower my diabetes A1C to under 6.5 and keep it there. Diabetes killed my grandmother, and I don't want to be where she was at, not taking care of herself.
My goal is to be able to have a better second half of my life than the first. As for the bikini, hey, if it fits, I might wear it to bed!

Cathy J

To fit on roller coasters with increasingly short seatbelts. Plain and simple.

I was thin all my life.

Then I gained 50 lbs in 1998-2000. I developed all kinds of health problems in just that short time - asthma, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, night sweats.

The worst was inside my head. I just didn't feel, look or act like myself.

Took me over 3.5 years to lose 40 lbs and I'm very happy at the weight I am now.

I'm motivated to retain that feeling that I am "myself".

PS all of the health issues resolved themselves when I lost weight.

Yes, there are lots and lots of reasons why I do this. But the biggest one is also the smallest -- and it has red hair. I came to motherhood a little later in life than most, but I'm determined to stay as young and active as possible for my son's sake. I don't ever want him to even notice that his parents are older than his friends' parents. I speak from experience here. My mom and dad were both 39 when I was born. They were "old" in lifestyle and attitudes and looks before I even finished elementary school. I loved them dearly, but I often wished they had made more of an effort to stay healthy for my and my sister's sake. My son will never feel that way!

I do not want to follow in my father's footsteps of heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

I feel like it's my job now to take as good care of myself as possible so that I'm around to see my daughter grow up and hopefully see her children grow too.

I really do have that sort of vague 'better health' reason. I am adopted so I have no idea what my genetics may have in them. That fact added to my absolute fright at the thought of developing diabetes (not any real substantive reason I have that fear but it is the one that motivates) drove me to think about losing 10% back in May '04. Once I got rolling though it turned out to be easy to think about getting under the healthy/overweight line on the BMI chart. I'm sitting right on it as of today. That's a nice feeling.

Peg

I want a healthy life. I don't want to be on medicine to keep me there. I want a chance to be healthy when I am older. I don't want problems just because I didn't take care of myself. It is God's temple; I should be taking care of it.

Michelle

My main goal is and has been from the start - to keep my heart healthy. Heart disease is rampant on both sides of my family, and I was born with a slight defect. while not serious, it was enough for my doctor is high school to tell me if i didn't lose weight i would be dead by 25. Well I switched doctors and binged like crazy ( wrong responce I know) I gained 115 pounds beyond the point where the doctor had said that. Now i've made it to 33 and the unexpected death of a cousin brought me down to reality adn i got serious almost 2 years ago. Thats when i found this group ( on the food network boards first) At one point I had lost 40 lbs then gained 20 back.

Anyways its a struggle, but I want to see the age of 60, so many of my family members don't make it that far. Good news is dad's made it to 70, and has now outlived all of his relatives going back 2 generations.... there is hope

LAurie

This is a strange one for me. It seems my reasons keep changing. In general, it has been to feel better about myself and get more energy - or get energy back, I should say. However, these reasons haven't really stuck and I've been waivering for almost a year now. The past three weeks since my dh was diagnosed with diabetes have been the wake up call and change I needed. He is focused on getting healthier and I'm focused on helping him. Everyone keeps saying "it's so great you're supporting him" or "it's great that you're changing for him". The ironic thing is, I'm not really doing it for him. I'm doing it for me. These are changes I know I've needed to "step up" my weight loss, but haven't had the inspiration nor the support from him to really go for it. SO, this is a circular sentence, but.......my reason is to help him fight diabetes so he can help me fight my weight issues...

Mel

Hi, Dawn-- yeah, I'm new. I wasn't sure what the normal way to get involved was so I skipped the "hi, I'm new here" post and just started replying. Hrm-- maybe I should post that after all...

-Lena

Welcome Lena, I haven't seen you on here before. If you've been around I apoligize, but I haven't been reading every thread. It sounds like you have already had some great success.

Congrats to you!


Dawn

I lost 60 pounds last year through WeightWatchers and one heck of a lot of exercise, but once I started on maintainance I discovered this massive buildup of resentment in my mind. Why me? Why was I going to have to live like this for the rest of my life? It's not faaaair! Nobody else is doing this! Waaah!

Stress and a workplace full of holiday treats-- not to mention that huge pile of resentment-- led me to gain back ten of those hard-lost pounds, and so I'm having to make some changes. The office kitchen is dead to me now, because I abused it far too often; to get my water now I truck around to the kitchenette on the other side of the office, which almost never has temptations. I wear a pedometer every day, so I have something pro-active to focus on, and I can't believe the difference it makes-- instead of exercise being something I do once a day, now it's starting to become part of my whole life.

I've started focusing on being able to diagnose my emotions before they gang up on me and get me into the kitchen, and on finding better ways to deal with stress or boredom or sickness or loneliness. I'm discovering that the more tricks I learn to dealing with the real problems, the less fulfilling an eating binge becomes; a few times now I've started in on one and pretty much said "eh, that's not so great" and dropped it and went on to try something else that would really fix my problem.

I just want to finally kick this emotional eating problem. I want to have enough options-- real options that really fix things-- on hand that I won't ever have to do that again. I want to know lots of other ways to pamper myself that don't involve food. I want to find joy and release in exercise instead of it being such a chore.

Also, I want to be fast and I want to be flexible and I want to be strong. I've never been any of those things and I'd really like to start.

I've tried to lose weight countless times in my 52 years, but it was always about being more attractive to men (or in general) or fitting in an X size dress or weighing X pounds...it was never about my health...until this time.

By the age of 50, I had been harassed about my cholesterol many times by my doctor. She was losing patience and said if I didn't DO SOMETHING, I would have to go on Zocor (cholesterol-lowering medication). My mother had been on Zocor for 5 years with great results, but had to have her liver checked regularly because of the potential for damage. Around the time I turned 50, my mother started experiencing muscle pains that were eventually traced to the Zocor. Apparently, cholesterol-lowering drugs take a while to build up in your system and cause problems. This made me even more insistent about NOT going on these drugs...but there was my doctor reminding me that I had to do something...or else.

I can't tell you exactly when...or how...or why...the click happened. The day or week or moment when I said "Okay...I'm going to make a change." But it came around the time I started watching KD on Cooking Thin in the spring of 2003. From the show, I found the cookbook and the CT board on FoodNetwork.com. On the board, I found real people like me who were losing weight just by eating less and moving more. I saw it was possible to do this myself, and I decided I was going to try.

At the next blood test after I'd been eating healthy and exercising regularly for only about 2 months, my total cholesterol went down 69 points. My doctor was FLOORED. So was I. My last blood test (November 2004) showed normal triglycerides for the first time since I've had records of my results.

My next goal is to get off of Dyazide, the diuretic I take to help control the hypertension. I got my doctor's permission to cut back from 7 days of meds to 5 days last year and I did that for a while, but experienced some dizzyness, so I'm back to 7 days a week. I'm discouraged...but not defeated. Maybe I'll never get off the meds, but if I could even get back to the 3 days a week I started at, that would be great.