My First Success Story....7 month progress

This is the first time I've posted a success story....perhaps because it's hard to define "success" when you are on a journey that hasn't ended yet. I started in February. I was never overweight when I was younger and I found myself in my 40s with two kids, a hubby, two dogs, a cat, three degrees, a job, and I weighed more than I did through either of two pregnancies. What was even harder for me was to see that I didn't SEE the weight in my head....I was the same person, with the same family, the same outlook, and probably the most detrimental was that I was happy. I wasn't the girl who was unhappy and I had no "AH HA" moment. I just woke up on February 18th and said I was gonna try something new and so I did.

So I started tracking my food....figuring out how many calories I could eat, and started walking. I had the patience for exercise like a 4 year old has the patience for a long car ride. I gave myself 30 minutes. So whatever I could do in 30 minutes was what I did. I walked a mile and a half in that 30 minutes and burned maybe 200 calories (probably less) and I did it consistently. It didn't take me too long to figure out that if I jogged a little in that 30 minutes I could burn a few more calories so I would run a little and walk a little to up my distance to 1.75 miles in 30 minutes. By April I had gone from 204 to about 190 and had read the C25k posts and decided I wanted to try it...I mean technically I was "running and walking" anyway so I started it. It was NOT that easy...but not that hard either and I kept at it...three days a week like I was supposed to and I rested on the days in between. I finished the C25k and kept running. I was never a runner and it's important to say that I didn't intend to become a runner but what running did was allow me a couple critical things: FIRST - alone time....this Mom of two tween/teen girls needed "Mama time" SECOND - weight loss...the weight kept coming off at about 7ish pounds a month being combined with staying in my calorie counts and THIRD - stress relief...running has ended up being the best & cheapest therapy a 45 year old, Mom of two, wife of 17 years could ask for. I am currently at 151 and my goal was originally set to 140. This month has found the loss slowing down; but I've run my fastest 4 mile thus far and my longest run of 7 miles last Saturday. I ran my first 5k in August and signed up for my first 4 miler to be run on Thanksgiving morning.

I hope I can post "goal achieved' sometime soon...but if I never get to it I want to be proud of this moment and what Ive done so far thanks guys....couldn't have done it alone or without MFP. This picture shows the hubby and I in March at a basketball tourney game and again last weekend at a football home game so 6 months between these two pictures.