My 100 lb journey (with pictures)

Hello all,

I wanted briefly to share my success story about getting and staying in shape for the first time in my life. If you're someone looking for inspiration, I'm not going to tell you that it was easy. The truth is that it was a ton of work, and that still, every day is an ongoing process of reminding myself of how I want to feel and live my life. But the payoff for that work was worth every wonderful drop of sweat that I expended. Being proud of how you look is something you can't put a price tag on.

I was a chubby kid growing up, and never got in great shape throughout my childhood or teenage years, but college really did a number on me. Suddenly I had the freedom to have as much pizza and beer as I wanted, and it showed. After graduating and entering the workforce, I was confronted with even more opportunities to fool myself about how I should eat and live (respectively, a lot, and lazily).

That's the start of the story, and it was about two and a half years ago, when my health was at what I'd guess was an all-time low. At that point, one day, I finally woke up, dragged the scale back out of the closet, and admitted I was tired of feeling bad about myself and really ready to make a change.

I'll save you the long version and just say that it involved redefining my diet and falling in love with the gym. I guess that I grew a lot as I shrank a lot. I'm a 6'0 man, and I started at around 265 lbs. Today, I'm hovering between 160 and 170 (working on getting back to the former of those two numbers).

My story in pictures:

Mid 2009, 265 lbs (before my transition began):





End of 2010, 232 lbs (about 5 months in):



Mid 2011, 195 lbs (about a year):



Mid 2012, 160-170 lbs (about two years in):