Won my bet but the $$$ aint nothing compared to my hapiness (with pics)

It's funny for week I've been anticipating the day i'd make this post for reaching my goal/bet milestone and now I'm feeling a little bit dumb and shy at the idea of bragging about a 20kg/45 lbs loss. I know it's far from being the greatest achievement and there are far better achievements than mine in here but achievements shouldn't be measured relatively to what the others are achieving but by what it took from me. And it took a ton from me and I'm so happy to have reached this stage.
I'm gonna tell you more about my journey but first I really wanna thank myfitnesspal and all the MFP'ers. I think you guys are awesome and so is the tool. I've spent a ton of time browsing the site and especially the community section even though my post count won't reflect it.
I think the site is great mainly for 3 reasons. The calories counting tool is tremendously useful because I know for all those years I didn't have a clue of what a calorie is and what 2000 kcal would be like in terms of food that being unaware of what you actually need to eat to create a deficit is essential. I'm a bit of a math nerd but quantifying what you eat and relate it to your weight loss is fascinating to me and without the calories counting tool I'd have gone on thinking that skipping lunch to eat a whole pizza hut large pizza by myself would be a good thing (yes I used to do this and I believed it was a good thing to do.)
Secondly, the community created and the support coming from it is awesome. You guys do a great job motivating each other and it's such a moral boost, I'm truly amazed. People are not afraid of showing their body when I know some close friends of mine who wouldn't dare to show me their stomach, it's really cool.
Finally, there are a lot of people like myself who are unaware about eating. I spent a lot of time looking at the threads to try documenting myself and after every single thread i'd be more educated and thus more likely to do the right things trying to lose weight. I really hope you guys can all achieve your goals, I see a lot of you who already have lost like 100 or even 200lbs and i can't express how stunned I am by those achievements. All of you can do it and I'm hoping you will.

Now about me :
I'm a 22 years old student from Belgium.

As of today (November 2014) my measurements are : 185cm (6ft2) , 84 kg (185lbs).
As of May 2014, my measurements were : same height, 105kg (230lbs)
I'm not a big fan of pictures and couldn't really find any before pictures but I've tried my best to come up with this :

This is two pictures of me a few months ago not far from my peak (couldn't find much better)



These are 2 pictures of me taken TODAY (belly not sucked in i promise )




I used to be fit for most of my youth but around the age 18 I moved out on my own and started developing really really bad habits. It took me 3-4 years to reach a point where I realized that damn i've become fat. I don't know about people who were overweight since they were kids but to me it was truly shocking cause I used to do a lot of sports and be just fine and all of a sudden, no sports and before I can see it i look really bad in front of the mirror. I was disgusted with the way I handled my situation.

Around this summer I tried to do some researches, talked to a few friends of mine to see what I could do to eat better. Looking back at it I wasn't very willing to make sacrifices back then but baby step after baby step it worked out.
I had just started my journey with very little result when I went on holiday to Vegas with a friend of mine for 2 weeks. Over there we ate really really badly. I was a bit disgusted with myself but what can you do, Vegas baby! We are both poker players so somewhat gamblers and we came up with the following bet starting of August.

-Whoever loses 15% of his total weight first gets 100$ from the other.
-If one of us loses 15% of his weight by the end of 2014 and the other doesn't, the other owes 300$.
-50$ per month for whoever has the biggest monthly loss.
-5$ per extra pound lost over the 15% mark.

So yea as of now I've made it (and won a couple monthly bets too), my friend hasn't yet so i'm up around half a grand on him. But I really couldn't care less about $$ this was just an excuse to push my *kitten* and it worked out well. As a competitor I really didn't wanna lose.

So back from Vegas I was on summer break from school and that's when I got really serious.

I had a Google Doc sheet with daily goals I had to complete and would fill it in every single day.
I'd play outdoor basketball almost every single day, I'd be under my calories limit almost every single. I'd rarely go out of the path I wanted to go on.

This journey has been easier for me than it'd be for most others because I think all in all I was lucky and I did a good job putting myself in conditions where failing wouldn't be as easy. Other than Vegas, I didn't have holiday, didn't have any weddings, went to very few parties, there was just very little I could do to make me go out my way. My days were very lookalike but the number on the scale going down would totally make it worth it.
Regarding eating, I used to eat such crap. I started by eating less crap then a little bit less, cut some crap here and there and I've reached a status where I'm still not eating extremely healthy but I'm eating just fine. I never eat salad or never have soup for meals.
But i'd take nearly one hour at the super market trying to find things I liked and not too bad on calories. To me grocery shopping was key. I remember I used to buy 3 frozen pizzas for 2 weeks of grocery. Then I cut that number to 2, then to 1. Now i haven't even had pizza for a month. Same goes with soda, chips, candy. It's all good but I made myself aware that I just didn't need those things. I'm very happy right now with cereals for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, pasta & chicken for dinner and fruit salad for dessert and a glass of coke zero. That's less than 2000 calories. I wouldn't ever cut meat, carbs but I'd lower the amount I eat, not because I tried to undereat but because I used to overeat. The only thing I passed on was the truly crap food : candies, soda, chips, chocolate, pizzas, ... Those are such diet killers and ofc it's ok to have it once in a while but I wasn't a big fan of "cheat day" or things like that. Seems like a bad excuse to turn a bad day, into a bad week or a bad month. I was too scared of going back to my original weight no way.
So yeah, regarding food I think key is to view that as a gradual process. At first I was scared because I thought i'd have to trade all my good food for salad every day but that's really not the case. baby step after baby step, start making your efforts at the supermarket slowly change your bad habits and you'll be alright. Just think of the next step, don't think about how far you are from your ultimate goal because in the end your only goal is to be better tomorrow than you were today.
I also totally cut alcohol. I know it's not as easy as it sounds, a lot of you probably have families and friends having bad influence on you. For example you will have chips in the house for your kids whereas I only needed to preoccupy about myself. I was in a good spot to succeed but I also tried to put myself in a good spot by not having chips at home, etc...
The other thing that helped me a ton was basketball. I've always loved sport and I recently got in love with basketball. I knew i would have to exercize if I wanted to get to where I want. But honnestly, I understand the people not motivated to go to the lifting room. I don't like the atmosphere, I don't enjoy running nor lifting nor biking. Back a few years ago when i unsusccesfully tried to lose weight I would often not wanna go and force myself to go and once there it wasn't fun.
Basketball is a true passion of mine and I love every single minute I play and that was key. I would be playing right now until midnight if I could. I love the journey of getting better by playing 6hours/week. To me it never felt like "i had to go there"but I always went because I wanted to. It was paramount. So i'd recommend looking for that sport you guys may fall in love with to the point that you will want to practice every single day. Because frankly how can one be blamed for not wanting to do that 5miles run under the cold? I certainly wouldn't.
Nights I came back from basketball it'd be late, usually like 10-11pm I'd have dinner then a fruit salad and shortly after (1-2am) I'd be in bed. So that would leave very little time to eat snack out of little hunger or boredom. I think that worked in my favor too.
Frankly, I've been quite obsessed with this journey, it gave my mind something to think of every single day, some weigh ins made me sick but it was all worth it. I feel I have so much more energy right now, I just feel a lot better. You can't do such thing without dedication.
FInally, this is only what worked for me. I'm still lacking a lot of educating regarding weight loss and diethetic in general but I just know the way I lived wasn't too extreme and it worked quite well for me. It probably wont apply to you but I just thought sharing couldn't hurt. Now I don't know what i'm gonna do. Probably gonna be more leniant with what I eat, allow myself pizza or candy more regularly maybe and keep playing basketball. Hopefully I don't regain weight because that'd make me miserable but I'm hoping the transition to maintenance will work fine.
I used to believe "anything is possible" was just a bs saying to make people dream (it probably still partly is) but honnestly I've learned the value of working hard and you can do a lot with the right mindset.
Our lives tomorrow will be the result of our attitudes and the choices we make today.
I wish you all lot of success in your respective adventures,
Cina.