What was your spark of motivation?

[Leimanu]

For me it was about 6 months into my current job. I am 30 yrs old, a social worker, and I started working with the local elderly population about 1 year ago. 6 months in, doing home visit after home visit in a very rural, low-income area, I realized that if I didn't make a change, each face I saw would be my future....the diabetes, COPD, obesity, heart disease, CHF, wheelchair-bound, severely limited in functional abilities, and the extreme, extreme pain a lot of my clients are in. Not to mention the mental health effects my clients carry after decades of dealing with the effects of these conditions. I mean, my job brings me up close and personal to what these diseases actually mean in people's lives. I love my job and I love working with the elder population, but it is also a wake-up call to lose the fat and strengthen my whole self...bones, muscles, organs, and mind. I feel like I had an epiphany about how short life is and that my body is going to truck right along whether I'm paying attention to it or not....so better to pay attention now, get strong and healthy, and have a better chance for a healthy future.

Me too. My inspiration is older people who still do weight lifting to keep their bone density and old guys who can still do pull ups.

My area is about 4th in the country for obesity and I can just see how it affects their lives and they don't even realize it because that's their "normal." I seriously thought I just couldn't lose weight. But I was beginning to gain a lot of weight around my midsection, was tired. I thought that someone my age shouldn't feel like this.

Also, I was beginning to not fit in my size 18 jeans. That's the biggest size you can buy at Wal-mart. I refuse to be any larger than that and wear elastic in my waist band!!!

I really got motivated when I started thinking differently about nutrition, came across this site, and read about multi-functional movements and paleo. I didn't try paleo until months and months later, but it intrigued me because it paralleled the stuff I was thinking about.

[EmCee]

Longer story than this but I got divorced and that is really what kick-started my journey - I wanted to be the hot ex-wife, damnit! Then, a few months after that I got into a really bad wakeboarding accident and nearly died. As most people probably would realize, I realized that life is so so so precious and that I really didn't want to spend it being unhappy and unhealthy and that I wanted to enjoy life with my girls so I went full-steam ahead! Plus, strength training helped my back and shoulders stop hurting when nothing else would.

[Froggiesrock]

I've had the moment of inspiration many times over the last decade. When I realized I was a size 18, when I was told my cholesterol levels were a point too high, when I found out I was pregnant, when I had my daughter, and countless other times. But finally just recently, I had been surfing NerdFitness and decided to give it a try. I joined a gym and had my access badge hanging from a lanyard. When I got home with it, my daughter was excited in her 4 year old way about my lanyard. She then dubbed it my 'medal', and every time I went to the gym I was going to get my 'medal' from her. I went my first time to the gym, received my 'medal' as promised, and then she gave me the biggest smile and told me this, "Mommy, I want to be just like you. I want to be strong." My entire being melted for my little girl and I haven't given a second thought to my lifestyle change. I'm doing it for myself, so I'm doing it for my daughter and leading her in the right direction.

[knifeboots]

Sometime between Christmas and New Year's this past winter, I looked at myself and how I'd been inhaling junk food and I knew I couldn't continue like that. I've been up and down with weight my entire adult life, and I knew in the back of my mind that we humans are not meant to be overweight. I also looked at my mom (type 2 diabetic, obese) and my dad (type 2 diabetic, obese, mobility issues, heart trouble) and realized that was my future if I didn't do something about it now. I started doing internet searches on clean eating, which led me to searches about paleo, which led me to here, MDA and most recently Whole9. Since January I've lost 37 lbs and a couple dress sizes eating Primally, and I have NOT felt deprived. And next week I'm going to take it a step further with Whole30.

[Guest Alpha Bookworm]

I turned everthing around in what felt like a day (and it kind of was because I went cold turkey with the Paleo diet). But the thoughts about needing to change were going for about two years before hand. I'd read this book that just kind of spoke to me 2 summers ago and at one point the main character says, "When I wake up in the morning, it's like I'm wearing this giant fat suit, and if only I could find the zipper, I could step out of it and finally go start living my real life."

And that just resonated, but I still couldn't get up and just start the change. Nearly two years after the first time I read the book nothing had changed.

And then I went shopping. Normally that might be a good thing except for looking in the mirror and finding that clothes didn't fit the way I wanted, having to go back for bigger sizes, not being able to find a dress looked good. Something had to change.

So I started poking around on the internet and talking to people who had gone whole grain and non-processed route. They were getting results, but I still couldn't get myself to ditch the junk. Finally I found this site and discovered Paleo. That was it, my golden solution. It had rules and guidlines that I could stick to, it was possible for me. I debated for a few weeks then just went ahead and started.

My family thought I was insane, but within 2 weeks I was down 8 lbs. And I am never going back. I feel better then ever and though I have cheated the junk foods just aren't good anymore. I love what the Paleo diet is changing and am going to be joining the next 6 week challenge in order to work on my strength. Because now that my weights dropping I want to start upping my strength levels so I can feel, and look, even better.

[Germaine]

Mhhh...I guess it wasn't a specific moment but a couple of situations during a short time. I weighed 40 Pounds more at that time with no notable muscles. A friend of mine then said to me "You're becoming pretty fat lately, huh?" It wasn't really meant as mean as it sounds now. It's just his character to say inappropriate stuff sometimes. But it was honest. He didn't think twice. And some time later I could say the same to him while I was loosing weight like a champion.

Then some other time I was shopping jeans. At the age of 17 I couldn't find a pair that fitted right. In the end I had to buy a pair of stretch jeans.

Now I remember that this "I'll do it now!" moment was when a really good friend of mine told me about how he is going jogging now and bought barebells. It was summer and I went for a poor jog with my street shoes what caused nothing but pain and suffering. I noticed that I was really weak and had abs. no endurance at all. I bought a pair of running shoes and learned a thing or two about running. I can't describe the feeling I had when I finished a 1 hour run for the first time. It was amazing. For Christmas I got a couple of weights. The next day I just pumped all day long and thought "Well, that's incredibly easy!" Waking up the next day proved me wrong. I couldn't get out of bed for half an hour. My upper body was sore as hell. I never have been THAT sore ever since.

After some time into running I realized that eating sweets and cake and what not all the time and sports kind of don't go together well. So I decided from one day to another that I won't eat sweets anymore. No sweets, no ice cream, no cake, no cookies. NOTHING. The first two months were hard and I had ravenous appetite for these things I didn't want to eat. After that it was pretty easy to resist although my parents ate that stuff. The only hard thing was to constantly say "No." to friends who all were eating that stuff.

[Florei]

I've been pretty bad in the past about keeping up with my goals. I want a strong, capable body - I've never been worried about how"acceptable" I'll be when I'm done. Like one or two others have said here, I looked at myself and where I was going, and didn't like what I saw - didn't see myself going in the direction I wanted. It wasn't a single spark that motivated me, but a string of things I paid attention to -- women's fitness (we can lift, too!), back-to-the-land living, the fact that I can't run half a mile without killing myself. A lot of little things added up, and out of this swirl the clear thought is: I'm going to be what I want to be.

I think that's a good way to begin one's adult life.

[Siferiax]

Well for me it's my mom. People who know me may actually get annoyed by how many times I have to say "thanks to my mom". She's really all the inspiration I need!

Last year we both started a weight loss journey. I started on August 1st exactly. I had always thought I was nice around 78 kilo or whatever... turns out I was already 86.

We set goals and then my mom (being the awesome person she is) said if we both reached our goal weight, we'd be going to Disney! She also tends to motivate me with things like "you're 25! You have a chance now! I'm already 51 and only getting into it now, realize what you can do!". Which is truth.

I was even losing weight with Christmas and New Years... but then this dreaded thing happened... I stagnated at around 77~78 kilo. My weight was a lot down, sure, but my goal was 75. I was just so demotivated and pretty much stopped exercising.

I don't actually remember how I found NF, but it was through some other website linking to it. And that's really what flipped my world around.

Life a game?! Why hadn't I thought of something so awesome!!

Also the idea of paleo instantly appealed to me.

So I'm back in the game since June 28th and have already reached a new time low: 76.x!! I had gotten below my stagnate weight!

Mom was all "well guess we may be going to Disney after all". With her already reaching her goal weight (but she's a power woman anyway, )

For some strange reason a lot of things utterly can't motivate me. My diabetic grandma who's severely overweight and actually unable to get up by herself.

My whole dad's side of the family being really overweight as well. My mom constantly hammering in those facts and that I'll be heading down that lane.

My dad reminding me that poring that much sugar on my pancake will give me diabetes.

The fact I couldn't spend a day shopping without being utterly exhausted and needed to find a seat in every store.

Nope... I really need positive motivation. For example setting quests with rewards (even as stupid as experience points toward a new level haha)

So yeah that's it for me. NF gave me positive motivation and even something more awesome: the drive toward being able to do parkour.

Seriously, that's a goal I can't get to any other way than exercising!! And it's what gets me going.

(my weight not being a problem anymore (I'm 5'10" / 178cm), but keeping exercising up to keep my stamina up is definitely a problem)

TLDR; my mom and NF keep me going

[Uber Schnoz]

A year ago or so I saw a youtube video for Tough Mudder. I said "I want to be able do that!"

From there I declared that 2012 would be the year of Tough Mudder and started training. At that point I couldn't even run a mile, much less 12 miles up a mountain with obstacles. In June of this year I completed my first Tough Mudder and I'm not stopping there.

I just found NF and this site is so packed full of great information it has really helped expand my workouts.

[empeg9000]

Finding this site ad reading Saints article got me thinking but I still did nothing. Finally I realized my wedded was going to be coming up in 5 months and I didn't want to look disgusting in my wedding photos or on the honeymoon. I love 57 lbs for the wedding. I've kept it going in the two months since and lost 13 more lbs. It's getting tougher to drop the weight but it's still happening.

[Blaidd]

reading all of your motivations is very inspiring!

For me it wasn't that my mother had adult onset diabetes when she died, or that my grandmother and father had both died of heart attacks, my best friend dropping 30kg's back to her pre-pregnancy little dancer weight or that i had overheard my (now ex) fiance tell someone i had never met that we didn't really have a future cos i was "huge". None of that did it for me!!

What did it for me was that 4 hours into a 12 hour flight to the Netherlands, i was in tears of pure pain from being scrunched up in a tiny seat with the arms digging into my sides and not being able to breathe easily cos the seat in front of me was pushing against me! I couldn't do this anymore! I couldn't be overweight anymore. I had to do something. So i took a hard look at where i'd come from (tall, weighing in at 56kg, latin american ballroom competitor who trained on average 3 - 6 hours a day) and just had to make a plan to get back somewhere near there.

[Waldo]

<----------Him

I want my son (kids hopefully) to have an awesome active dad that will have no issue keeping up with and challenging hyperlittleboy, to be there for him for any physical activity he wants to do. Additionally I was starting to get fat people problems (I was very skinny my whole life until post college); sore knees, hard time standing up, hard to put on socks, etc...., and it sucked.

[Anivair]

Mine is sort of embarrassing. I grew up in and around Cedar Point (being from Sandusky). A few years ago we went with my new In Laws and I was eager to display my coaster riding skills, as I'm a seasoned vet of most of those rides.

Except that I was literally too big to ride the rides. I couldn't even get in most of them.

I remembered my childhood and seeing all those people who were too fat to ride the rides. I remembered them pulling in a futile manner at the lap belts that were never going to close and I remembered how amazed I was that they let things get that out of hand. And here I was, that guy.

So that was it. I started looking for the best ways to get in shape right after that. And I'm pretty crazy about research. before long I was here on NerdFitness and I expanded out into the paleo-verse and never looked back.

[Eddi]

It took a single photo of me at my brother-in-laws wedding late last year to see (or to realize) what I had done to myself. It had been 6years since once being fit and healthy and during that time I added 70lbs of fat. To keep a long story short, I've removed 58 of those lbs since seeing that embarrassing photo.

[AngelCastaneda]

<----------Him

I want my son (kids hopefully) to have an awesome active dad that will have no issue keeping up with and challenging hyperlittleboy, to be there for him for any physical activity he wants to do.

This.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

The first time I tried to get fit was leading up to my wedding, because that's what you do. Then in the honeymoon pictures I realized, in the 2 months leading up to the wedding, pretty much already gained back the 25 lb I spent a year losing because I had gone abck to my old ways. That moment, looking at those pictures, I decided I was never going to "diet" or "lose a few lbs" again. These temporary changes lead to temporary losses, and I wanted permenant changes. Within 2 months I found myself here.

[DylanAilDon]

My spark of motivation was the fact that I just got tired of hating who I am right now and feeling like I wouldn't be able to change if I tried.

I want to change, and now I just need the sincerity and determination to see it through to the end.

I don't want to be someone else anymore, I want to be the best me that I can be!

I had what was pretty close to a breakdown at the start of university, which was bad enough to land me in counselling. I admit it wasn't pretty, and sometimes it still isn't. I've continued with it since, and have managed to pull myself together. But now that I have a foundation, I want to keep the pieces I like, throw away the ones I don't and find new ones to take their place. I've started to do this, but it's not going to be easy...

As for my motivation to join NF: I randomly found this site while surfing, decided to look, discovered the forum/community and realized that I need to be held accountable. Who better to do that than other people who are trying to achieve similar goals! So I signed up... and here I am.

[Flex Luthor]

My "spark" was kind of realizing that women aren't attracted to thin, weak, "boys". Which I know may be totally superficial and says nothing about my character but consider I was weaker than most girls. That being said I believe it was Zig Ziglar who said motivation is like bathing, it's recommended daily. When I started I sought out and continue to seek out those that inspire me.

[70Kel]

Mine is sort of embarrassing. I grew up in and around Cedar Point (being from Sandusky). A few years ago we went with my new In Laws and I was eager to display my coaster riding skills, as I'm a seasoned vet of most of those rides.

Except that I was literally too big to ride the rides. I couldn't even get in most of them.

I remembered my childhood and seeing all those people who were too fat to ride the rides. I remembered them pulling in a futile manner at the lap belts that were never going to close and I remembered how amazed I was that they let things get that out of hand. And here I was, that guy.

So that was it. I started looking for the best ways to get in shape right after that. And I'm pretty crazy about research. before long I was here on NerdFitness and I expanded out into the paleo-verse and never looked back.

Hey Anivair, your story isn't embarrassing at all, actually far from it, I found that it is actually very INSPIRING!

Thanks for sharing, this is why I luv NF:]

[Merentha]

I wish I could say I had a great epiphany, but the fact is, I just got a job. I had worked from home for a year before being laid off, then I was unemployed for over a year - 2+ years of sitting in front of a computer goofing off made what was already a very bad situation very much worse. When I got a job, there were things I absolutely had to do. I had to walk 3 blocks to the bus stop (and then home from it) every week day. I had to walk around my office at work, and the office was huge. I'd suffered horrible back pain for years that kept me from walking, and there were times on the way home from the bus stop that I would get to my front steps, sit down, and cry from the pain. Many times. In the office, I would make sure not to leave a meeting with anyone, because I couldn't walk all the way back to my desk without resting, and I would huff and puff all the way; I was embarrassed. I felt like I was just waiting to die; I know that sounds horribly melodramatic, but I was a physical and emotional wreck at 370 lbs and couldn't see any end to it.

I think it was forcing myself to move even just that little bit that did it. The horrible back pain vanished, like POOF! which gave me the closest thing to hope I'd had in years. I grabbed onto what I was pretty sure was a very narrow pain-free window and started walking as long and as far as I could. I also started making an effort to eat better -- nothing extreme, I just dedicated myself to not eating random junk food every single day of my life. That kicked me off; I was convinced this was my last chance and determined not to let it slip away. I don't know how it would have ended if I hadn't found out I was gluten intolerant and looked up "gluten-free diet" on the web; that led me to the paleo world, which basically saved my life.

[Ja_rossjr]

My divorce and the subsequent hating of my life along with way to much booze. Luckily a deployment followed on the coat tails of said events and I pulled my head out of my butt and decided I was not happy with who I was.

[Daverin2112]

For me, it was the twin realization that I am obese and way too out of shape, and the fact that I enjoy being the strongest in my group of friends.

[ponita]

Wow, everyone's stories are so inspirational!

I ran out of excuses. My new job gives me a lot more free time and we moved to an area where many of the people are health-oriented so healthy food and work-out facilities are easier to come by. I've also hit a really tough spot in my marriage and have come to realize that while I can't force my husband to care about his health, I can take control of my own. I don't know if our marriage will survive, but I'm determined to be strong and awesome for this journey, wherever it will lead.

[Lefeux]

I arrived at Bagram weighing 215 lbs (being all of 5'7" - called it being stocky). Lugging my gear around the base about killed me. Over the next 3 months I dropped 25 pounds and then plateaued. I have copious amounts of time to work out and decided that I didn't want to look like my dad (5'9" and something like a 60 inch gut), so started working out at the beginning of the year with a coworker. I was counting calories and starving myself and working out 3-5 days a week. I lost 2 pounds. Changed schedules, went on leave in March and just jacked up my routing. I bounced back up to 195. Kept getting down on myself for not working out and was pretty depressed. Right before my next leave at the end of July, I found this site and learned about Paleo. I was on it for about 10 days before my wife and I had went on a cruise, and I had dropped down to 188. 7 pounds in 10 days, eating my fill of healty meats, veggies and fruits. I had more energy, wasn't flatulent, wasn't starving myself or counting calories. I new I had found something that would work for me. Of course the cruise set me back a little, but I am back to where I was, to include loosing about 4 inches off of my gut (was at 44 inches, now at 39") and I am hoping to get back down to a size 34 or 32 jeans instead of a 38 which is where I was headed.

My wife and I want to have kids when I get back and I don't want to be the father that doesn't play with their kids because they are too tired and stuff. I want to be in better shape for my wife, my future kids and myself. (I can't live to 120 if I don't take care of myself). And I really want to look dead sexy nekkid!!

[Scherzo]

For me it wasn't so much a weight issue. I'm definitely not a model, but I'm fairly healthy. I've eaten well all my life, except for maybe that first year of university where they fed me that cafeteria garbage all year. But generally, I have an average BMI. So I always thought, why bother getting in shape? I suck at gym class anyway, and I don't need to lose any weight.

And then... Depression. It can come out of nowhere and totally knock you out. This is my third year living with it. While I'm doing considerably better, I just can't seem to kick it. I finally got some energy back this year, and I figured, I might as well use that energy for something. They say activity is the best thing for depression, so if getting in shape is the way out, you bet I'm going to learn how to do a pushup! I don't see how this plan can fail. Even if I don't 'cure' my depression, I'll have found a healthy outlet, and I'll look good, too. There's no way being awesome is a bad thing.