70 lbs gone, 38 more to go. (With pics)

First, let me introduce myself. I'm Terry from Spokane, WA, 52 years old, 5'4', mother of 3 grown children. I've been overweight most of my life, though not into the obese BMI category until I went on meds for Bipolar Disorder 8 years ago, and then quit smoking. After that I just ballooned. At 252 lbs I got a wake-up call -- I'd developed Type II diabetes. I dove straight into a 600 calorie crash diet and managed to lose 40 lbs quite quickly. But then my psych meds got changed (again) and I promptly gained all but 15 of it back.

On April 26 I weight 234 lbs. I didn't think I looked too bad until I saw this picture:



That's when I discovered MFP. My daughter told me about the app for my smart phone so I installed it and started tracking the next day. For me it's a constant battle to eat enough -- the further I cut back my calories the less hunger I feel,. It becomes a competition to see how low I can force my intake and still function. Not healthy, I know, but the challenge is addictive. Then during the summer months my husband and I got very involved in road cycling, doing some of the great trails in the area. As my endurance built up I found it easy to shoot for a net calories of 0. As you can imagine, after a couple of weeks of fabulous loses my body tanked into starvation mode to where if I splurged on a 400 calorie dinner with a few carbs I gain 2 lbs overnight. I'm still trying to fight my way back out of this. But amidst all this struggle my dr. was thrilled with the rapid progress and told me to stay under 800 calories a day with less than 50 gms of carbs. At the same time he told me that my blood sugar was now perfect, as well as my cholesterol and triglycerides, so I got to toss all those meds. That was Dec. 16 and my weight was 183. I took Thanksgiving to New Years off, but only gained 3 lbs which I have since lost. I'm trying to use this little vacation to reset my metabolism. So far it's sluggish, but moving in the right direction.

Now for the pics. Please bear in mind this is "in progress," not the end game.

This is me at 183.
From this one you can see my Upside down V shape. No matter how much I lose, the boobs remain.

The basic stats:
BW: 252 lbs
SW: 234 lbs
CW:183 lb
Stage 1 goal weight: 160 lbs.
Final GW: 145 lbs.