So, to get it all out of the way: Long time lurker, first time poster. I think my formatting is okay, but please let me know if it isn't. Also, if this is something that shouldn't be posted here, or belongs on a specific thread, please let me know! I looked through the rules, and I think this should be okay, but I could be wrong!

Be: A person of a healthy weight/height ratio, with a reasonable relationship to food.

Don't be: Me, 165cm (5'4"), 99kg (220lbs), unrealistic about my weight issues.

So, here it is. I'm a ham. Or at least, I was a ham. See, I've always been fat. Obese, really. My BMI is 36.6, I have terrible joint/back pain (and though that could be down to potential hEDS, the weight certainly doesn't help). My family is big, my uncle had a heart attack and dropped about half of his body weight, and he's still big. My dad is probably around 400lbs (but he's 6'6", so it doesn't look as bad as it could).

My relationship with food is terrible. I have no impulse control, and binge easily on sweets and fries and anything unhealthy I can get my hands on. I've been vegan for around a year, so that's greatly cut down on my options for binge foods, but still I find myself ordering 2, 3, 4 large fries when I go to McBeetus for lunch with my friends from college (I feel like they pay me just to spend my paycheck there, which is a pretty solid business plan as it seems).

I talk big about weight loss, too. I know all about CICO, portion control, and I'll track for a few days and then just stop because I'm lazy and unmotivated. I always seem to think that I'm not that bad, that I'm not really obese, my legs are just muscular from cycling (which I haven't done in years since the pain got too bad). If I'm not in college or in work, I spend most of the day in bed (and yeah, I have some pretty bad chronic fatigue and sometimes getting out of bed really is an impossible task, but I know that I'm using it as an excuse for myself). I don't really exercise (I started running, but had to stop after three weeks since my osteochondromalacia started acting up, but it's healed now and really I have no excuse). I'm filled with excuse after excuse, each hammier than the last. I even tried to make my PCOS an excuse, which my mother backed me up with at the gyno. Luckily, the gyno wasn't having it, and told me weight loss was still an achievable thing with PCOS.

But, I think I had an epiphany today. Maybe that's why I'm writing this, an admittance to my hammy ways. I'm addicted to food, unhealthy food, and I'm lazy, and if I carry on then I'm going to die. I was told when I was 15 that I could have a heart attack by sixteen (I didn't), and I've had Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver since I was 14. My liver function went as high as 280 (it's supposed to be around 30), and every time I see my GI Specialist or Dietician they tell me the same thing: exercise, lose weight. And I made excuses: I hurt too much to exercise, I eat hardly anything, nothing works.

And yeah, it does hurt. And sometimes I can't get out of bed because I'm exhausted for no reason, and my joints just won't stop aching, and any movement of my back makes me cry out in pain, and when I stand up I go all faint and fall back down. But on the days where I can get up, where my joints hurt just that little bit less, then there isn't an excuse. I know, I'll probably be in a wheelchair before I'm 25 – that if I do have hEDS then it isn't something I'm going to get better from – but I can still do it now. I can walk now, I can run now, I can move. So, there's no reason for me not to exercise when I'm able.

And I don't have to binge. I don’t have to have pizza three times a week because I can't be bothered to cook something (because when I cook it's healthy foods, and I track it and control my portions), I don't have to go to McBeetus for lunch when I can just make something to bring with me instead. I don't have to lie to myself about how much I eat, it isn't doing me any favours. I say I eat around 1500 a day, but today my breakfast was probably 700cal, and that's most likely a gross underestimation. My habits are so obviously ham-like, and even though I read this sub pretty much daily, I refused to see the ham-like properties I held. I'd say that I wasn't that big, that I wasn't that rude (which I stand by – I will never be as rude as the hamplanets we talk about here, and I can't imagine taking the attitude some of these people we talk about do), that I didn't talk about Mah Condishuns as an excuse. But I do. Perhaps not to the same level, but I display all the common traits of a Ham.

But today, it stops. I'm going to track religiously, I'm going to restart the C25K programme, I'm going to bring my own food to work and college, I'm going to stop ordering so much takeaway. Because I'm 5'5" and 220lbs, I'm obese, and it is going to kill me if I don't do something.