One Year of Photo-Logging (PICS INSIDE OBVS!!)

Ok, a little backstory that I'll try to make as short as possible. In 2011, I saw pictures of myself from my sister's baby shower and realized just how much weight I'd gained. I probably got up to about 285 pounds, but my highest known weight was just a few ounces shy of 265 pounds. So I got my wake up call and decided to do something about it so I started tracking my food and exercise here, on MFP in summer 2012 - except I apparently wasn't as mentally ready to do so as I thought, not to mention that my physical health was not terribly great. All said, I did lose about 32-ish pounds in about 5 months.

In November 2012, I was fired from my job and it destroyed my motivation, so I stopped eating well, I stopped tracking my food entirely, and I stopped going to the gym. I was able to secure a new job by mid-December, but it took me until July 2013 to become well-adjusted in this new job. I realized I had gained weight again and I was prepared for the worst, but I discovered that I only gained back about half of the weight I had lost, which is completely different from the yo-yoing I've done with my weight in the past. I decided to give this weight loss thing another shot.

I restarted everything on July 12, 2013 - started tracking my food again, watching what I ate, and going to the gym. I even got back in touch with my old personal trainer and set up sessions with him. In about a month's time, I lost a little less than 13 pounds, which put me at just about the same weight in which I had stopped taking care of myself the first time. I kept going, I started taking weighing myself everyday to get a feel for the patterns my body would go through based on eating certain foods, I started taking weekly body measurements, but what has become my favorite things is photo-logging.

In August 2013, I started taking photos of myself every month and comparing them to the previous months photos - this helped me to put into perspective the changes I wasn't necessarily seeing on the scale, or even with the measuring tape. It's a little late, as it's almost time for me to take September's photos, but it's been a year since I started this project.

Okay, time for pictures!




Some stats:
My highest known weight is 265.7 pounds
SW (in July 2013): 250.4 pounds
CW: 161.2 pounds
GW: 140 pounds, (for now)
Loss since re-starting: 89.2 pounds
Total loss so far: 103.5 pounds
Pants size I started at: 22W
Pants size now: 8/10 and shrinking
Shirt size I started at: 2XL
Shirt size now: M, though I'm probably going to fit into S soon.

For photos of me at my highest weight, feel free to look in my gallery, as I have a few of those in there. For those wondering how I did it/am doing it, no special diets, no gimmicks, no diet pills, just a simple calorie deficit and increased activity. Right now I'm eating anywhere between 1680-1730 cals/day, I make sure to always go over my protein goal, which is set to be 25% of the calories I consume, because I weight lift in addition to doing cardio. In fact, my protein goal is more important to me than my calorie goal is. I use a HRM with chest strap to measure my calories burned during exercise and I measure almost all of my food. It really can be that simple, but I'm also pretty realistic that what is working for me might not necessarily work at all for someone else.

Thanks for looking/reading!!

*Edited to move my stats to under the photos and to add clothing sizes to the stats*