6 months, 37 pounds (pic heavy)

Hello everyone. I've got to start this off with a huge disclaimer: what you are about to see contains a lot of references to the company Apple. This is rather embarrassing, but unfortunately circumstances led to these being the best pictures. I am an app developer for iPad/iPhone so they feature heavily in my life... and someone asked me to dress up as an iPhone for their party, IT'S NOT MY FAULT! :laugh:

I'd unwillingly done a lot of crash diets under my mum's guidance (situation was complicated, but essentially my mum did not allow me to eat > 700 calories per day for weeks at a time to get my weight down). Then I'd binge secretly at night-time on CHEESE and rebel against my mum. You can see how my weight fluctuated at my blog post: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/helenium/view/why-yo-yo-dieting-is-a-waste-of-time-106015 - anyway, December came round and I got up to my highest weight ever (191+ lbs) and I went on another crash diet - 600 calories per day + hours of exercise.

Then I found MFP!

I signed up, started counting calories... reached a plateau... then started reading all those forum posts regarding starvation mode and whatnot. I became convinced I was doing it the wrong way. Then I started the long slog of trying to convince my mum I could eat more... we fought quite a bit, but eventually I won. I ate 1200 calories a day + exercise calories. Plateaued some more (as expected), but soon began to drop again. I WAS dropping again, without starving myself completely!! I increased to 1350 a day and am still dropping. I've lost a stone (14 pounds) since eating healthily and eating enough, and my mum's shushed and is just letting me get on with it. This is an NSV!

OK, here we go, picture time.

This is me at approximately 12 st 12, or 180 pounds. I know I'm dressed as an iPhone. Don't laugh. :blushing:



Then I went to the party. This was taken by someone on my own phone. Needless to say it never went on Facebook.



Things got worse (185ish lbs):



And even worse (191 lbs):



Now, after the crash-diet-followed-by-a-real-lifestyle-change, I'm at the lowest weight I've been since 2008, which predates my entry into university. I'm sorry, I couldn't find my real camera (but be impressed with my balancing act):



And my face.



Hope this is useful to someone out there... this is what it looks like when you drop almost a fifth of your body weight.