80 pounds gone so far! Over halfway! (With pic!)

I've been overweight my whole life. Then when major depression hit in high school, I started gaining faster and things got way out of control by the time I was in my first year of college and they years thereafter. And while I hated how I looked, I didn't really care enough to do anything about it. Cue a marriage and subsequent traumatic divorce, and I ballooned way up. I was miserable in so many ways, and comfort by means of food was all too commonplace.

I've done my weight loss in two stints so far. I don't remember what my first trigger was to start losing weight. I think it was a bet with a coworker at the time. I started in 2005 at around 270 pounds. I lost about 35 pounds before some major medical issues put me in the hospital, and then stopped my life for many years. I was subsequently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia (two for one day at the Mayo Clinic?). I was lucky that in that time period, I only gained 5 pounds back, so I was still way down from where I'd started.

In March of this year, I had another wake-up call. It wasn't the high blood pressure spike with chest pain that landed me in the hospital for a stress test a year and a half ago. It was my GERD getting way out of control to the point where it started causing hoarseness that affected my singing. (I am a semi-professional classical musician -- singer and violinist.) I knew then that I needed to get back on the bandwagon. Since March 1, I have shed 46 pounds. This makes for a total of just over 80 pounds released! And they ain't comin' back. I still have another 30-40 pounds to go, but all in good time, they'll be gone, too!

My first concert requiring concert black attire is coming up. I'd no longer owned any such attire -- my last outfit...well, the pants fell off me, and I was swimming in the shirt. I acquired a new outfit today. Both the pants and the shirt were size 14, a size I haven't worn since...your guess is as good as mine. I picked up the pants I ordered, and had a momentary bit of panic, because when I picked them up, they looked too small. I thought I ordered the wrong size. But when I put them on...holy crap, they fit! Not a bad NSV. I found a picture circa 2005 of me in concert black, before one of my first Symphony Chorus concerts. Here's the Before and Current of Me in Concert Black (tm):



New friends always welcome!

ETA: My ticker here shows my current weight-loss journey and doesn't take into consideration the first half. That's why the number looks off.