Hello everyone! So happy to be a part of this group. My name is Anna. I am 34 years old, have 4 children and have been married to my husband for 8 years. I started out almost 2 years ago at 343 pounds. Today I am 230 pounds. I have recently been diagnosed as bipolar, severe social anxiety and borderline personality disorder. I cannot see the 113 pound weight loss in myself. I still feel like the same person and when I look in the mirror I still see FAT ANNA. I know I have lost weight. I have gone from a size 30 pants to a size 18 and a 5x shirt to an xl. I know physically the weight is gone. But mentally it is still there. This causes me to binge, which then causes me to shame myself, which then causes me to binge again. It is a vicious cycle and I struggle every single day with these illnesses. It is particularly hard for me at night as I do not sleep well. It is hard for me to make friends because of the anxiety I feel. I hope we can all support each other in this group.

What I have found works for me as far as actually seeing my progress is keeping old before pictures hanging up, and putting some current ones next to it. One that works especially well is my license picture from 4 years ago. I had to renew my license in January. There is a huge difference.