Hi there!

Hi there,

I've been using MFP now for about a month, and have been browsing the forums for a while. I just haven't managed to pluck up the courage to say hello to all you lovely people! Well, better late than never, eah?

I've been struggling with my weight for a long time now, I slapped on weight massively for various reasons over the course of five to six years from about sixteen onwards. But upon saying that, I was fairly 'happy' in myself, and didn't think much about loosing it at the time. However, that all changed about a year and a half ago after a family death when I finally decided that life was too short as it is- I certainly didn't want to make it any shorter! Since then I've lost the best part of five stone (honestly, I'm sure it could be more, as I had a phobia of scales back then) over the course of the past year and a half, going from a size 20 (UK sizes) to a neater size 12-14 now.

The majority of my weight loss came from working at a rescue centre five days a week, where I was on my feet lifting bags of dog food, running around, cleaning like a maniac and generally getting very sweaty (plus smelly). Diet was the least of my concern back then, in fact I didn't make any major diet changes bar to eat a bit more cleanly. However, as I went back to college last September, my weight loss has slowed down dramatically now I'm only there twice a week. I tried changing my diet by myself, but to be honest I didn't really put my all into it, and my results echoed that lack of effort.

But, a few months ago, my other half proposed: and I want to get into the smallest size wedding dress I can in a few years time, and have some amazing wedding photos to look at. I know this sounds really quite vain, but it's worked extremely well as a starter to a serious lifestyle change!

I started running two months ago (started from scratch with the C25k), and I'm now happily running 5k 4-5 times a week with a mixture of Fartlek training alongside side- I'm hoping to run my first 10k race at the end of August. I also started Jilean's 30 day shred a few days ago, and I've finally been persuaded to start the gym soon- so no doubt I'll add some weights to my repertoire. I'm hoping this plus a mix of calorie counting will eventually get me where I want to be, I'm under no illusions that weight loss will take time, but I'm hoping this time next year I'll be a few steps closer to my goal!

I've lost a few KG so far from this website, I bought a new set of scales a few weeks back which put me at higher than my old set- so I'm not 100% sure exactly what I've lost prior to the new scales. However, the new scales showed a shiny loss of just over 1kg for the last week and a half, so I'm getting there!

Sorry for the stupidly lengthy post, but it's lovely to chat with you all!