I've been meaning to post to one of the last few threads over the past few days but just haven't had the time but now I do.

I have pretty poor self-esteem alot of it stemming from when I was growing up. I'm 5'10.5 (so pretty tall) and when I graduated high school I was just shy of 300 pounds. I've been overweight for as long as I remember but I'm healthier today than I have ever been. I'm now 33, weigh in at 220 and have unfortunately plateaued in my weight loss but I'm persevering.

Losing the weight was not easy but it was something that I really had to do. In college I was diagnosed being diabetic (580 blood sugar) and had been for years. The diabetes had done severe harm to kidneys, livers, heart, etc. I was also diagnosed, at the time, with a condition called nephrotic syndrome where the kidneys no longer function as a filter correctly. At the time we had 3 different doctors estimate that if my lifestyle, diabetes and weight didn't change I wouldn't live to see 25.

Strangely, until this point I had been fairly active and never could understand why I didn't lose weight. I played tennis since I was in 6th grade on nearly a daily basis and later got involved in Amtgard (medieval recreation/Live Action Role Playing [LARP]). I'd go out in 40 degree weather to "hit a few balls" and be out all afternoon on the courts.

When I've gotten my sugars and hypertension under (relatively) good control the weight finally started coming off. Unfortunately for a few years I kind of went through a depressed phase which had me more sedentary but had a huge wakeup call just before my 28th birthday -- I had a stroke. Due to that I started really working on control of my health issues and exercising. I have to be careful since those same health issues can be exacerbated by exercise. An enlarged heart and severe hypertension (at time of stroke 253/163) are some of those. :/

These days I'm still not really happy about how I look but I am happier now about it than ever before. I'm still working on the weight loss and working on becoming a stronger cyclist. I miss playing tennis but just haven't had the same motivation as I did when I was younger to play but I may be able to convince my sister to join me. She was really into it also.

Rambling Mel