284 days, 60 pounds, and a 5K

Today has been my 284th day on MFP. This has been an amazing journey so far. I started back in January as a typical New Year's resolutioner. For the past 12 years, I have made the same resolution: to lose weight. 11 years in a row I failed. With every passing year, I just gained more and more weight. Without making this a long drawn out story, I will tell you what was different about this attempt. I BELIEVED IN MYSELF. I believed that for once I could do this. And believing led to caring about myself for a change. I started to care enough about myself to take charge of my health and my life. I put all of my past failures behind me (and lord knows there were hundreds of them) and wiped the slate clean. I told myself I could do this. And I have. I've been my OWN #1 cheerleader, almost to the point of narcissism and conceit :laugh: But you know what? After years of hating on myself, it's about time I started thinking positive things about myself. I threw out all that negative self talk, and replaced it with a positive attitude. Here are the results so far....

November 2011, 290 pounds
February 2012, 270 pounds (-20)
August 2012, 230 pounds. First 5K!
Today 230 pounds (-60)
5'7 tall

I had many days where I messed up and went over my goal. But I always picked myself back up and carried on. How did I do it? I ate between 1600-2200 calories a day.I exercised 5-6x per week, 30-60 minutes at a time. I did strength training and cardio. What started out as another diet has become a lifestyle change for me. Somewhere along the journey, my focus shifted from weight loss to fitness. I lost 60 pounds in 8 months (Jan-Aug). I started to feel burned out from having a constant deficit, and decided to maintain for the months of September and October. I have maintained my 60 pound loss for almost 2 months now. I have continued to exercise, and for the past 3 months my exercise has shifted to primarily heavy lifting 3x per week with moderate cardio sprinkled in 2x per week. The funny thing is, even though the scale hasn't gone down in almost 2 months I continue to lose inches. My legs have noticeably slimmed down in that time frame with ZERO weight loss on the scale. My body fat has gone down 3% since eating at my TDEE (maintenance) and lifting heavy weights. Let me just say, I squats and deadlifts :bigsmile: :bigsmile:

After my 5K though, I relapsed into my depression for the month of September. As a result, I am sad to say that I deleted all of my wonderful friends that I made on here I got overwhelmed with trying to support everybody....and just felt the need to pull away and focus on myself. I really felt like I could barely help myself let alone anyone else. I was in a bad place for awhile. So if any of my old friends are reading this I'm sorry and you are welcome to re-friend me :flowerforyou: I love you all.

I still have a ways to go, but I am confident that I will get there. My goal is no longer to lose all of my excess weight in a short amount of time. I went into this thinking I could lose all 140 pounds in a year. Well, THAT isn't happening :laugh: but you know what? I'm okay with that. I realize this may take 2-3 years to get to my ideal weight. Honestly I don't know what that is exactly anymore. My body will tell me when I am done losing weight. My goal is no longer a magical number on the scale. My goal now is to be healthy and fit. My new gauges are the mirror, how my clothes fit and how strong I feel.

Apologies for the long winded post, thank you for reading if you got this far

OH and a big shout out to HELLOITSDAN :drinker: I owe most of my success to the Roadmap :bigsmile: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12
This has been the voice of reason for me in an otherwise chaotic crazy confusing MFP world :laugh: Thanks Dan!

-Andrea (formerly Andrea_78)