70 Pounds Lost - pics included

For those that just want to see results and don't care about the rest, please feel free to skip to the TL;DR section at the end. For the rest of you, here's my story.

I have dieted my whole life. Well, since I was seven years old. Back then all I heard was "chubby," "fatty," "beached whale," "ugly," etc. Then I entered junior high. More ridicule and ostracizing ensued. High school: VLCD, weight lost/gained repeatedly but learned nothing. Bah! College years: more yo-yo dieting + bulimia + depression = one hot mess. My twenties = See college years.

My thirties. This is when I decided to end the yo-yo cycle and focus on recovering from the ED. After I had lost some weight for my wedding in 2006 and promptly began gaining it back (15 pounds in six weeks, WTF?), I decided that I was NOT going to "diet" again until I could lose it and KEEP IT OFF. Then I proceeded to yo-yo once again two years later. Lost 27 pounds then gained back 21 of it when...

...in late 2008 I found out I was pregnant. I completely stopped purging but kept overeating pretty steadily. I gained 44 pounds and reached my highest weight. The day my first son was born, I topped the scales at 222 pounds.



My first year of motherhood was a blur (and included PPD) and hadn't fully ended when I found out I was pregnant again. In that year I had managed to get down between 199-204 pounds. I was active, walking my boy nearly every day in the stroller, but I didn't change my eating habits at all. In fact, they kind of got worse. By the time I gave birth to my second son in March of 2011, I weighed 216 pounds.



I barely remember the next six months. We bought a house, closed escrow and moved 50 miles outside of Los Angeles with a confused, screaming 22-month old toddler and a mostly sleeping (thank God) three-month old baby. Shortly thereafter we had a 2nd birthday party for our older son, and I just remember feeling hot, sweaty, and really f***ing fat. I had just turned 39 and said to myself, "No more." 

Five more months passed before I really meant it. But I spent that time really focusing on changing my inner voice. You know that voice...the one that tells you things like, "Oh, you're fat, ugly, and can't lose weight. You are too old to get fit. You're a mom now...just get used to being out of shape and out of breath all of the time." Well, I began ignoring that voice and visualizing myself the way I wanted to be. I had difficulty at first picturing myself with a fit body, so I would just imagine the number "136.0" on my digital scale. (At the time, that was my goal weight.) Every night before I fell asleep I would spend a few moments visualizing the body I wanted, imagining being strong, fit, and capable again, and picturing myself running after my two little boys laughing...not red-faced and huffing and puffing, but playing with them the way I wanted to be capable of doing.

So here are a couple of before photos. 





This is the most recent one, taken December 2011 at my husband's company holiday party:



On December 28, 2011, I started exercising more. Not just walking the boys in the double stroller, which I did almost every day, but using my Wii Fit board. And I bought a mini-elliptical trainer (it has just the foot pedals) to use when I couldn't get the boys to nap at the same time and had to work out in my kitchen. I also did resistance-band exercises, push ups, and chair dips. I could only do about ten push ups on my knees...good Lord. And I tried a burpee. Ummmmm...no.

On Friday, January 6, 2012, I joined MFP and started tracking my food. And by that time I had already lost two pounds just through exercise. All right!

The biggest shocker on that Friday morning was just how many calories I was consuming in a cup of coffee. I figured out that I was probably adding 200 or 300 calories of non-dairy creamer to my coffee in the morning...and I often had two or three cups. Holy empty calories, Batman! 

Over the next few months I did what most people do...I underate and over-exercised, and still binged a couple times a month. By the beginning of May, I had lost 35 pounds, but my weight loss had stalled. I bought a used copy of P90X and began searching the forums for more information on plateaus. Over the next few months, I learned how to more properly fuel my body while completing the P90X Lean program (I slowly increased my calories fom net <1200/day to between net 1600-1800/day). By early August I was a "P90X grad" and had lost another 18 pounds. My goal was 50 pounds lost by my 40th birthday...I reached that goal a week early.



When I reached 60 pounds lost, I had a good two feet cut off my hair:





I joined a fabulous group on here and did the Insanity challenge in late August-October. From there I started ChaLean Extreme, then added TurboFire to the mix in early January. The holidays were not the best time for me weight loss-wise, but I managed to maintain through the end of January.

This past week I finally reached the 70 pound loss mark. YAY! My goal was to post a success story when I lost 70, so here I am.

Throughout this whole process I've made many, many great friends on MFP and learned so much I thought I already knew about weight loss, fitness, and nutrition. I still deal with binge eating...I am not even close to perfect in that respect. My path along the way has been littered with a few setbacks. But the difference this time has been my change in attitude. I have truly made a lifestyle change. I really believe that I am worth taking the time to be healthy now. Even on days when I want nothing more but to climb back into bed and cry from exhaustion (did I mention that I have two toddlers? Haha), I force myself to work out anyway. I never regret making the effort, even when I (occasionally) can't get through the entire thing. And I am truly blessed to be a stay-at-home mom with two little guys that have adapted themselves beautifully to my lifestyle change. Not everyone can do this the way I have done it, that is true...but anyone can do this. You just have to be willing to value yourself enough to try. And try again. And again. And again. Until you make enough permanent changes that you've changed your life.

The TL;DR version:

Age: 40 
Height: 5'6"
Start date was 12/28/11 
SW: 214
CW: 143.7
GWR: 136-139 (now it's more of a goal look than a goal number, but I still hold out hope to lose that last 5-7 pounds)

Before:



After:



This year's company party photo: