Half the man I used to be.

So I officially reached my goal weight this morning. Now starts the hard part of figuring out how to maintain where I am and not lose anymore but not gain either. I think it’s going to take me a while to figure that out, and I'm sure my weight will fluctuate from time to time, but the most important thing is that I can’t ever forget where I was 18 months ago and how long it took me to get here. When I looked at the app that monitors my scale this morning I couldn’t believe that I’ve actually lost more weight than I currently weigh (lost 158.9 / current weight 158.4). I’m not saying that to pat myself on the back, I’m saying it to remind myself how out of control my weight and bad habits had become. Not too long before I put on all that weight, I weighed about 240 and lost 40 lbs.to get down to 200. I got to 200 right before the holidays (just like now) and figured “I did it! I can celebrate and eat what I want for the festivities and I’ll be fine”… Well, needless to say I wasn’t fine. Things didn’t go as planned and it just started to snowball…. The holidays passed and I was back in my old routine of bad habits, I kept telling myself I’d get back to eating healthy tomorrow, or next Monday, or for the New Year. Months passed, years passed, and the weight kept piling on until I found myself in a pretty dire situation. It was a few months before my 45th birthday and I was at least 320lbs (who knows what I really was, at that time I didn’t dare step on a scale to find out). My father had passed away several years earlier of a heart attack at 57 years old and he didn’t really have a weight problem. I knew if I didn’t do something soon I’d meet a similar fate, and with two young kids, that wasn’t acceptable to me. When I first came to myfitnesspal I wrote on my profile that my inspirations for doing this were my kids and my dad, now I have to remind myself every day that they’re still my inspirations to keep moving forward on this journey that is really only just beginning. I wanted to thank everyone that helped me get this far, your endless encouragement, wisdom and enthusiasm has made this a lot easier. My advice to those of you who are only getting started, somewhere in the middle, or anywhere else on your journey, is to reach out to people who you can relate to and send them a friend request. Even if you’re not the most social person in the world (I’m not), having even a small network of people who are going through the same thing you are is a valuable asset. Feel free to send me a friend request… I don’t plan on going anywhere.

Thanks everyone.