Down 70 pounds/best day of my life

Hi everyone!

I'm so happy to be able to post a big success story like this one. I have lost 70 (technically 70.4 but who's counting??) pounds to date. I started this journey at 367 pounds. I was a junior in college, extremely unhappy and unable to do much. I was about to turn 21, could barely get around, and was about to apply for jobs that I didn't think I'd get in my health.

I lost 30 pounds before my senior year, and maintained (read as: gained and lost the same pounds again and again) for the past year until I started getting serious again.

I'm not making excuses for why I gained so much weight in college, but it sure was hard. I wish I could go back and tell myself it was okay and food wasn't the answer to my problems. I lost close four family members and my dog, I was engaged and broke that off (although I started losing weight after I broke it off lol), was dealing with the stress of being a first generation college student at an Ivy League school and trying to make it by, etc. I wish I could have done things differently, but I'm not looking into the past, but focusing on the future.

Anyway, here are (hopefully) some pictures! I would like to think the first one is an over representation of what I looked like, but sadly I think that's actually how overweight I was. I'm 23 (well, 20 in that picture) and 5'11.75" tall, so I kept saying to myself that I was carrying it well because I was tall and broad.

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d33/jenephur/white_sweater_compare_zps435a6dac.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d33/jenephur/front_face_compare_zpse32abfbb.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d33/jenephur/purple_dress_compare_zpsf5431532.jpg

I am SO HAPPY! I have achieved the best NSVs ever possible, and I live for the days that they happen, such as jogging for 16 minutes in my interval training for my upcoming 5k. Or buying a blazer in a 22 instead of the 28s I started in. Or the dress that I'm wearing in the after picture actually being too loose (it may not appear like it in the picture, but it's definitely falling down today and I'm trying to keep the girls covered at work today) after being so tight in June 2012.

I'm not done by no means. I still have 110ish pounds to go until I'm at a "healthy weight" of 187. But I'm not looking at it like that. I'm looking at it in small increments, such as "oh, I'm only 21.6 pounds away from my heaviest in high school at 275" or "OH! I was 250 and in a 16 in most of high school, and that's only 46.6 pounds away!" or even "whoa...I've almost lost 100 pounds!"

I wanted to share my happiness with everyone, because it's honestly been one of the best days of my life.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to add. I love having new friends.

Jen

EDIT: the pics were too big to show the "after" side, so I just left the URLs for now.