8 months & 40 pounds later: Before & After!

great job, and i agree with everyone else - love the hair (in both photos!!)
Can you tell us how you achieved your goal and if you dont my sharing your stats?

Thank you! And it was sort of trial and error at first but I can certainly try!

As far as stats:
Height 5 feet 9 and a half inches
Starting weight: 198
Current weight: 158
Goal weight: 150

Starting dress size: 12-14
Current dress size: 6-8

Initially it was all diet starting in September last year---I ate around 1200 calories a day and cut out all beverages except water, and I bought a 2 liter water bottle from Walmart that I drink twice a day now. I had dropped about 20 pounds doing that.

Then once I hit a plateau around January of this year and FINALLY decided to get serious about what I was eating, that's when the rest came off. I realized that simply counting calories wouldn't get me much farther if I didn't restrict my sugar intake, so I now make sure that 30% of my daily intake consists of protein, and I load up on veggies! I also make sure to snack throughout the day on things like greek yogurt, almonds, string cheese, etc at least every 2 hours because it curbs my cravings and stops my blood sugar from dropping. In addition, I pretty much pre-pack my lunches and dinners on Sunday of every week so I don't have to think about it later, but still allow myself one "cheat meal" a week. Some people don't really do the cheat meal, but if I didn't I would surely have quit by now.

As far as exercise, I started with an hour on the cardio machines at the gym 6 days a week, but once that got old I went out of my comfort zone thanks to one of my best friends and joined a month long boot camp. That's what really kick started my desire to keep up with it everyday because I was being taught exercises I would NEVER have done on my own. Once the boot camp ended, another good friend of mine put Insanity on my computer and I haven't looked back. I'm almost a month in now and have dropped one dress size. In addition, I'd decided to start lifting weights and amped my calorie intake up to about 1600-1800 a day. My biggest recommendation is trying to get some sort of exercise in daily because once you get used to it, you'll feel hooked AND don't get stuck in a rut of eating the same things all the time and doing the same workouts every day. If I had stayed only on those cardio machines every day I would definitely not be where I am now! Hope this helps!