I changed my life.

I reached my goal after a 9-month journey, that started on January 15th, 2010. I am 5'6" and back then I weighed 217lbs according to my doctor. When I asked one of the nurses at the clinic what I could do, he told me it's age, and there was nothing I could do. I wish I could show this guy how very wrong he was back then.

Today, I weigh less than 130lbs. (Between 128 and 130 depending on when I weigh myself.) I want to go down to about 117 lbs, but last time I was at 119 I looked pretty unhealthy, so I may just stay at this weight.

It hasn't been easy at all. I've always either been on the very top of the BMI scale, overweight or obese. Yes, I tipped my BMI scale at 35. Obese begins at 30. I've been on diets for as long as I can remember. Even in middle school. I've tried not eating after 6pm, Weight Watchers, doing silly workouts that didn't really help along with extreme diets (even the one that tells you to only eat lettuce and avocado). Nothing worked. I kept relapsing after a maximum of three months, and gained all the weight, plus more back. Then, I moved to Austin when I was hired on by Blizzard where I had my daily free sodas (all three of them), Pluckers, fast food and hot chocolate. Around the same time, I started taking Depo provera. The result: 60 lbs gained within a year. Even after becoming vegetarian, I was still unable to lose the weight, because my diet was messed up. Instead of meat, I had plenty of dairy, fries, grilled cheese sandwiches and veggie burgers on white bread with lots of mayo, salty sweet potato fries and sodas.

Seeing all the thin Hollywood actresses and skinny every-day people walking down the street caused great depression. My self esteem was low... actually, I didn't have one. One thing I am grateful for is that I wasn't suicidal, otherwise bad things would have happened. The internal struggle was immense. I felt trapped in my own body. I wanted to escape to be someone else, I wanted to get rid of my body and replace it with something lean and pretty, like in the not-so-good movie "Surrogates".

This had to stop. When I weighed in at 217 lbs I felt lousy, ugly, disgusting and a true failure. Looking in the mirror on a daily basis was terrible, and not being able to fit in my old clothes was even more difficult, but I kept holding on to the hope that some day I'd be able to drop all that weight. There was a beautiful and inviting gym across the street from me. I kept wanting to check it out, but the procrastinator in me prevented me until a couple days after my doctor's visit.To further motivate myself, I spent a grand total of $500 on a Weight Loss program. I wasn't about to waste all that money, so I had to go through with it. After 12 weeks of intense workouts, I lost 42lbs, the person with the most weight lost in the class. My trainer and my nutritionist told the class that this wasn't temporary. If we wanted to keep the weight off, or if we wanted to keep on dropping weight, we had to change our lifestyle. No more dieting. Instead, we needed to go through an overhaul in our lives. They had us throw out all the junk from our pantry and fill out fridge with healthy foods. In addition, they advised we worked out at least 5 times a week.

After class ended, I panicked. I thought I couldn't do it alone. Especially when I'd hit days when I wouldn't lose weight, I felt I failed again. But just as I was about to quit, I asked myself: "who is in-charge of my life?" The answer was obvious: it was me. I was and I am in-charge of my life. It was finally time to make good use of my stubbornness. A trait that people can find difficult to deal with gave me strength to overcome negative feelings and keep moving on. Take that, cravings and sense of defeat! Yes, I may be stubborn, but you cannot control me! I am in control of my own life, so if I say I will lose all the weight, you should be damned convinced that I WILL! Trust me, I even remember the numbers when I had such moments: 187lbs, 173lbs, 158lbs, 153lbs, 148lbs, 139lbs, 137lbs, 133lbs... But stepping on the scale days later and seeing that I had dropped more weight made me even more motivated. I wanted to keep on going! It gave me strength.

This is truly an amazing moment. I haven't weighed this little since before high school. Is it over, yet, though? No, it's not, because like I said, this was a change of lifestyle.