Being told two things. 1: I was incredibly high risk for knee replacement surgery. 2: I could control the pain (which was severely impacting my life) by simply losing weight. At the time, I was 368 (last that I knew, suspect more), using a cane, on a short-term pain med for over 3 years (couldn't get off it), hubby was doing everything for me/us except I was still doing dishes, laundry and still running my online business...somehow.

I wasn't hiking, I wasn't doing my photography, I felt like I was going to die with all too frequent nighttime reflux incidents. It was horrid.