First real NSV-my mom can hug me again.

I'm not one to toot my own horn usually, outside of my friend group, so I tend to only post on the boards in response to others, and not for myself. I look at the Success Stories daily and it brings me so much motivation waiting for the day I can post my success story. But then I realized, life is ongoing, and whether it's now, or a year from now, or at my goal weight, or years into maintenence, I'm still successful. I wanted to share because like me, I know there are people out there that don't see the changes in themselves yet. That struggle seeing other people succeed when it's still seemingly so far away from attainable for themselves. So here's some background:

I'm 5'11'' and at my highest I was 307lbs. I started on September 7th 2012 with my first weigh in and logging food. I'm down to 276lbs last weigh in on Sunday morning. I have also lost one whole clothing size. It doesn't feel like that much, but I'm 25% to my goal. When I look ni the mirror, though, I can't see it at ALL!

My mom has always been fit. She's about 15lbs over where she wants to be right now, but that's as overweight as she's ever gotten. She's 5'6'' and I dwarf her basically. She's been working otu lately even with a bone spur because she's proud of me and says she's inspired by me. Coming from a mother who was always harsh on me when I was younger, that in itself was crazy to hear. But then I went to hug her to tell her good job and she started crying. I asked her what was wrong, because she wouldn't let go of me, and she said

"I haven't been able to hug you because I couldn't reach around you. My hands are clasped right now."

Which of course made me cry that I hadn't even realized that for the past year or so, when my mom hugged me, she wasn't really hugging me, she kept her arms down. I'm very tactile normally, and it just really hit home how much I had tamped down certain things because I didn't want to face the weight.