Don't Ever Give Up! My Success Story! (LOTS of pics!)

PrettyPearl88

Oh my goodness! I cannot believe my thread got so many comments! :embarassed: Well, I feel very thankful and blessed that so many of you were so inspired by my story and journey! You all are so sweet and so awesome! Keep up your amazing work because I'm confident that every one of you can reach your goals! :bigsmile:

Also, thank you so much for all of he kind messages and friend requests! They have been an INVALUABLE encouragement to me! *hugs*

Finally, a couple questions I read through that I wanted to answer:

-I'm 5'4"

-No, I don't have any loose skin. None at all, and for that I feel very lucky! Perhaps it was the fact that I lost weight slowly, perhaps it's because I didn't lose enough weight to even have the loose skin problem, perhaps it's that I'm still young, or perhaps it's just good genes.

-When I started running, I actually didn't do any kind of "Couch 2 5k" type of program. I just started running. First I tried to run for 5 minutes at a time and then I just kept pushing myself to be able to run for longer and longer. I ran a few times a week and it took several months to even be able to run a mile. (I didn't really keep track of exactly how long it took or exactly what my "training" was, I just kept trying a few times a week and it wasn't on my mind all the time because I had lots of other crazy things going on in my life at the time.) I go and run often at a park nearby and at that park, there's a little trail around a lake. After I was already able to run 5ish minutes at a time, I tried to push myself to run one lap around that lake without stopping. Then I pushed for 1 1/4 laps, then 1 1/2, then 2, and so on. I discovered that pacing was EXTREMELY important, so I learned to pace myself and slow down at times and then speed up for a bit and then slow down for a little while again; doing that gave me the energy to keep going when my brain thought I couldn't. Eventually, several months later, I could run for about 12-ish minutes at a time without stopping to walk. That's when I went on a treadmill at the gym one day and said to myself "I'm tired of this! Today I'm going to just DO IT! I'm going to keep running until I reach a mile!" And I did! :bigsmile: Since then, I've pushed myself slowly to 2 miles, then 2.5 miles, and then 3.1 miles for my Color Vibe 5k. My next big goal? The Princess Half Marathon at Walt Disney World! :bigsmile:

mister_universe

Very cool sequence of pictures!