Thank you everyone for the well wishes. You guys all make me want to keep going so I can come back with better pics!! I still have more weight that I want to losebut someone asked me to tell a bit about my journey and how I did it. I started soo far overweight that anything I did would have been good and I just couldn't see really trying hard. I honestly thought I would just try to start exercising until I could find a way to get
gastric bypass surgery. My family doctor told me to beg, borrow, change jobs, whatever I had to do to get the
surgery because she said that I would have to "move to Africa to make the kind of changes I needed to make to
lose weight." I started with just focusing on
working out 3 times a week for a half hour. Everything I have read has said
working out isn't as important as eating less to losing weight, but it keeps you focus and gives your body a better shape and it's imperative to weight loss maintenance. I lost a little weight just doing that. I really started with small changes. Like Diet Soda, instead of regular. And honey nut cheerios with skim milk for breakfast instead of tacos or biscuit sandwiches. Then I lost a little more. The more I did the more I wanted to do. I focused on doing what it took and not on the scale and I gave myself planned time off. Like I know I'm going to eat bad Wednesday so I'm
going to work out and skip breakfast. They tell you not too, but it's what I needed to do to still have the things I wanted. Then I really got crazy and threw out all junk food in my apartment and started only buying healthy choices. Sometimes now I really want to eat bad and just can't because there is nothing here! I kept motivated by upping
exercise goals,
reading fitness mags, watching shows like the biggest loser, and just looking at the changes in my body and other peoples attitude towards me. People used to worry that I was going to have a heart attack before age 30 and now people see me as an inspiration and I get hit on more and more all the time. I lost an average of 10 lbs a month for the first 8 months. Then I had a lot of life changes. I changed jobs, went back to finish my degree, and had a car accident. I quit trying as hard, but through that I kept weighing myself every week, because I never wanted to be back to where I started. If I noticed I went up a few lbs, then I'd put more effort into eating right and exercising the next week. It's much easier to maintain and I got used to eating different. Never ate as bad as before. After several months I still dropped about 5 lbs. Then we had a weight loss challenge at work and I knew it was time to put my effort back in. I lost 9lbs in the first week! In the end I lost 35 lbs during that 3 month weight loss challenge at work. Right now I am down a total of 117 lbs and unfortunately I was soo unhealthy that I still have a ways to go. But even weighing more than a lot of other people I don't have that double chin anymore and I've gone down from a size 32 at my heaviest to a size 16. People say I look normal. It's crazy. My biggest advice is no matter how bad the week was, weigh yourself at least once a week. If you see the truth about what the scale is doing, those 20 lbs won't sneak up on you and you'll be more motivated to change it. Also don't give up because of a bad day. Losing weight is really about doing good 70-80% of the time... it doesn't come off overnight, but it really adds up. Lastly, if you change to say diet soda... even if you have a bad meal, you can still drink diet soda, or skip desert. Planning my bad meals, works better for me, because I'm allowing myself to not be perfect, without feeling guilty or completely going overboard. And that is how I lost over 100 lbs and am still going. I
hope it helps! Also I don't know what size you are or what size you started at. But I have always been overweight. I didn't start with good habits and lose it. I didn't have the mental hang up of once I was cute and now I'm fat. I was a size 24 when I started high
school, and I dieted and lost 30lbs the summer before. Right now I am smaller than I've ever been and I get better looking all the time. :) I remember eating 2 subway foot long sandwiches and still being hungry and thinking that I'd never be able to
lose weight. I remember my back hurting when I first started college and I couldn't hardly walk across the campus. I couldn't imagine working and going to
school full time and now I do and work out too. Be proud of whatever you do. Give yourself credit for everything. You look better all the time. And never, ever go back.
