3 year anniversary

Yesterday marks my 3rd year of being on this path of change and I wanted to share it since I know how hard and impossible it can feel when you have a lot of weight to lose. The highest weight I hit was about 275-280, I am about 5'6 and carry a lot of my weight in my stomach (sexy!). I never really had a AHA! moment, I knew that I was fat and miserable but I had no will power to change. One memory that sticks in my head was about 8 years ago, I might have weighed closer to 250 lbs but still out of shape. Me and my sister joined a protest that included a 6 mile walk through Hollywood. By about mile 4-5 I was dead, my legs where dead and I could not walk anymore. My older and equally overweight sister was fine and was able to continue the whole walk and in fact walked ahead to the car since I needed to stop. That was me at 25. Fast forward to 3 years ago, I joined the gym and I made a commitment to go at least 25 times in that month. Even if I didn't work out, just walk in and try. I accomplished my goal, the next step was to track my food, I didn't even care about keeping within range I just wanted to get in the habit of tracking. Slowly and surely I did, I tracked all my food and eventually I made it a point to stay within range and sure enough the weight started to come off. Within the first year I lost about 40 lbs, it hasn't been fast and it hasn't been easy. I have had great months where I tracked and ate on point and I have had bad months where I put back 20 lbs but I have been able to catch myself and try again and lose it again. Fast forward to yesterday: I am down 90 lbs from where I started, I ran/jogged for a straight hour (5.65 miles) and afterwards played volleyball for over 2 hours and wake up this morning at 6AM to play basketball. This whole journey has never been easy but it has been worth it, my life is very different and while I still mess up I realize that is a part of life. I still have about another 40 lbs or so to go and I know that I will hit my goal. Had you asked me 3 years ago if I would ever be under 200 lbs I would have told you no. Everything felt impossible, my own happiness felt impossible but I am happy now and I am proud of myself which is something I can not believe I am able to say aloud to anyone. Once I loss 100 lbs I will post pictures, I am not ready yet but I wanted to share this because I know that stories like this is what got me through the first year of this change.

My best advice to anyone out there is be as consistent as possible. We can all diet and exercise for one day but doing it for 6 months is the hard part. It's much more important to make small changes that you can live with instead huge changes that cause you to fail. Change will come if you just give it the time.