Small success ON TO BIGGER!

I'm one of those stories you read on Oprah. Extreme abuse in my childhood, leading to toxic choices in my adult life through both necessity and flawed perspectives/mental health. I was a ballet dancer, a singer and actress. I was thin and dare I say beautiful. Sadly, I couldn't see it in myself. Abuse left me extremely depressed and with PTSD. Thus, when I liberated myself from my mother's home I ended up falling victim to other toxic people and narcissists. People who drove me to seek comfort in food and enabled the bad habits through undermining my efforts to get healthy. Now, I take responsibility that regardless of my mental health and surroundings my choices were my own... I realize now just how impaired I was.

A couple of years ago, I managed after having children to take off about 40 of the 100 I needed to lose through use of this website. Sadly, my youngest daughter passed away and plunged me back into the vicious circle of overeating for comfort. More adversity faced me, as I rebuilt a life without my youngest. Finances keeping my husband and I in a perpetual state of unrest, in addition to the fact my depression had worsened and the PTSD was more severe.

Long story short, somehow a beacon of light appeared to us and we ended up relocating to NYC. I ended up going from someone who had essentially given up to actively pursuing my long time dream of theatre.

NY was just the change I needed because it's not a place that allows you to be really inactive. Not if you want to get anywhere in the city. There is a lot of walking, and the sudden activity boost saw me dropping weight like crazy without changing any of my eating habits. I knew eventually I would need to change my eating habits, but at the time I was focusing more on my emotional and mental health than trying to keep up with logging.

Now, I'm in a much healthier place both mentally, emotionally and physically. I'm 60 pounds down from where I was when I came to NY with about 60 more to go (give or take depends on how I look in my clothes). I'm logging again. I'm slowly transitioning to a more vegetarian and even vegan diet. I'm doing yoga and pilates at home. I'm waiting on the arrival of a ballet barre to install in my living room. I can't wait to get back to the beautiful person was as a teen. I can't wait to get the chance to enjoy that *me*

Here are some pictures, most of which taken when I arrived in NYC or just before (none are really full body because I was miserable and knew I looked bad). After those are ones of me taken fairly recently to show my initial progress. Hopefully, I'll be replacing these with ones of my ultimate success in short order.





And here I am 60 pounds lighter.