At my initial goal--thought it was time to post.

When I initially decided to lose weight, my mantra was "I'd like to get down to 175, but 180s would be nice too." At the time, I was 250 lbs. and having serious health problems. I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and bulging discs in my back, so the weight was not helping that situation at all. I was also developing pretty severely high blood pressure and getting sick a lot. My rheumatologist does my blood work every three months, and my results always indicated fatty liver. (Surprisingly, my cholesterol was always really low.) The injections I take every week for my psoriasis/arthritis weaken my immune system, so when you add that with the extra pounds and the side effects of carrying them around all day, it can be an awful combination.

My typical food intake during the day was lots of coffee, a HUGE can of Red Bull and maybe a king sized Snickers before lunch, a #9 from Jersey Mike's with bacon and mayo (and chips) for lunch, various chips and other snacks during the afternoon, and then a huge dinner usually consisting of several servings of pasta or pizza or whatever else I was hungry for.

At the time, I looked like this:



I was tired of feeling and looking bad. I was worried that I wasn't going to live to see my kids graduate college. I felt guilty that I had let my body deteriorate for so long. I often wondered what my wife now truly thought when she looked at me. While she has always expressed concern about my health, she has never given me any grief about my appearance, which had been on a downward spiral since the day we got married. In my mind I didn't feel like it was fair that she was still as gorgeous and young looking as the day I met her and I was turning into this old, fat bald, grey ogre. In reality, I know she didn't think of me that way, but that was what I thought of MYSELF.

I decided to try to do something about it for about the 50th time. I started tracking my fitness on my Apple Watch, logging all my food using a food scale on MFP, getting more sleep at night, and spending less time in front of the TV. I immediately saw results:



The above picture was the day that I realized I didn't have to hide my double chin with a goatee anymore. I was down to about 230 lbs at the time.



This was (obviously) the day I hit 209.



This is me as of this morning. The scale officially said 189 today, and I was ecstatic. I still want to get down to 175, but I feel like that's just icing on the cake at this point. I'm going to keep logging, exercising, and losing the rest of this belly fat, but I finally feel like I have a body that I'm fairly comfortable with. I've lost 60 lbs! That's more than the entire weight of my 8 year old! My liver levels are back down to normal, my blood pressure is well within the normal range, my back and knees feel good, and I don't huff and puff going up the stairs.

My attitude today is "I made it." I think MFP was the most valuable tool I had to getting here, and I'm going to keep using it. But I don't have to post any more success stories. I did it.