One year on MFP = 80lb loss (pics)

First year down, and I’ve seen so many changes. I’m just a lb or two shy of hitting my initial “final goal” and have been able to reassess what that really means. Now I’m aiming to lose 5-10lbs or drop 3-5% body fat. Just rewarded my year’s effort with a HRM and will be buying some dumbbells to start weight lifting at home. I began with cardio, first light walking, then C25K. Aside from that I’ve mostly changed through diet. Which has definitely left me “skinny fat”, which I’m going to be working on.



My motivation for change stems from a blood clot I got in my leg about seven years ago when I was 18. The clot spanned the whole length of my leg, and has left me with valve damage. My circulation isn’t the best and in order to regain functionality in my leg I continually have to push myself to the next level to help my endurance at lower levels of activity. I have to walk fast in order to make it easier to walk slow, jog in order to walk fast, etc.

("Bad leg" shown on right in mirror pic)



The injury affected my life in a lot of ways. I handled a lot of the stress from the injury and life in general with comfort foods. It didn’t really seem like a problem, until I got to 247 and my back hurt all the time, I lacked energy, and was constantly going up in clothes sizes. I started thinking, I’m in my mid-twenties, I should be at my prime fitness, not having health issues. I didn’t really do anything until I realized I needed to go up another pants size again, to a 20. I just moved to a new town to start graduate school, I had nothing to do all summer, so I decided, what the heck I’ll try counting calories again (past attempts never worked because I was trying to just log in my notebook). I didn’t have any big dreams about weight loss since I “knew” it wasn’t going to work, but I thought at least I can not buy new pants. In fact I was determined that I would not buy another size larger even if I had to wear pajama pants when the school year started and be embarrassed. I was tired of rewarding my laziness.

So I got the MFP app, since I finally had a smart phone. It was super easy to count calories, so I had no excuses this time to quit. Lost 10lbs pretty quickly, and decided why not try jogging again and start the C25K app to see if it would help with my leg strength and endurance. Managed to fit back into my jeans and just decided to keep on going. To my surprise I just kept losing weight by sticking with it. I finally felt encouraged enough to make a “final goal” and decided to try to lose all of the weight.



I’m now in a “healthy” bmi, and weigh less than I have since going through puberty. I’ve always been slightly overweight, so I never thought I could get this small. I do have a larger frame, but not so large as I once thought. My goals for this next year are to work on building muscle and strength and hopefully knocking off fat, not necessarily weight. I’m still at about 28-30% body fat. I can finally jog now, not that slow shuffle thing I called jogging. I no longer limp and my circulation has seen a lot of improvement. I actually can jog faster and longer now than I could prior to my blood clot. Now I’d like to work on decreasing my mile time and sign up for a 5k. My confidence has also improved. Before I hated showing my legs or any skin for that matter. Now I’m not so embarrassed by my “bad” assets. I’m actually kind of proud to show off my leg, even if it’s “damaged”.



It's hard to see, but that shadow is some muscle coming in.

tl; dr - Lost about 80lbs in a year. I’m 5’11”, SW: 247, CW: 167. Feel free to friend, comment, PM with messages, whatever. Hope this was able to help anyone, and if you’re just starting out thinking a year is forever, it’s really not. It’ll be over before you realize, just keep with it and you’ll get there too. Believe me, I thought I wasn’t one of “those people” who could do it (after all I was a “lazy person” right?), and I’ve come a long ways, you can too. Work hard for yourself, you’re worth it.



And because I love making progress pics, if you couldn't already tell, I made a timeline with every 10lb loss. I highly recommend it for those days where you don't see a change.