This rambles, but maybe it is common for many of us with over 100 to lose.

I have never been anything but fat. I had a brief respite in high school, when I was trying to get a starting job on the football team an took to running 4 miles a day all summer long. What's funny is that even then, in the peak condition of my life, I was still fat. I was fat and could run a lot farther than my skinny brothers. It didn't last, of course; I inevitably lost the desire, and couldn't run a half mile today with a tiger chasing me.

The thing is, I might have always hated being fat, but I never hated it enough to do anything about it. I'm not a classic yo-yo dieter; I've never really tried that hard as the pounds piled on over the years. I was fat, and I did care, but not enough to sacrifice anything to stop it. When I got Graves Disease, and eventually hypothyroidism, it made things worse. I gained weight a lot easier. I went in a few years from a 240 pound man to being a 340 pound man.

I knew it hurt my career. I knew it would kill me. I knew that people tend to hold the fat in a kind of private contempt. They don't have that same contempt for others who are self destructive--smokers, drug addicts, alcoholics, or habitual gamblers. Those people can hide their problems. Wearing black aside, there ain't no hiding fat. My flaws are on display 24/7. That's why people, even those who say they don't, have that contempt for fat people.

But I wasn't in self loathing like pop psychologists will tell you that fat people must be; I don't know why I never did anything about it.

I married a great woman; I had a baby in May, a wonderful girl. I found my motivation. They say you can't do it for anyone but yourself, and maybe that's true. I want to do it for myself--I always did--but more than anything I want to do it for my baby and my wife. I just couldn't motivate myself. Now, for whatever reason, that thing that we all have that makes you want to eat something bad...you know that overpowering desire...it's gone. I don't look at food that way anymore. It has no more power over me.

But still--to lose 100 pounds is not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. Most of us who need to do this have come to a critical decision point. I came to mine and I will succeed, or I will probably die in the next ten years; it's that simple. You can't walk around with 340 pounds on you and expect to live a full life, much less a long one.

I want to be able to get onto rides at the fair. I want to run and play with my baby, when she gets old enough. I want to be able to sit in a hot tub without being embarassed. I want to buy shirts from the regular racks. Crawl up into my attic without wondering if the ladder step will snap. Stuff like that. Stuff everyone can do. But most of all, I want to be there for my baby and my wife in a decade, or two decades.

I find that I want that stuff more than I want the cheesecake. That's my turning point; that's where I decided not to come to terms with being fat.

What's yours?