365 days i joined MFP here is my story and photos

Hi I am Budget and I am from New Zealand! and here is my one year anniversary story!
This is my 1st thread and o0o man am I nervous about posting


One year ago! I was googling some info on watermelon and stumbled on MFP in my google search .. it gave me the info I was looking for and I thought mmmm might join this site, it might come in handy for more info, I joined added my weight and my goal weight with a huge "YEAH right" as if this can ever happen moment,




I had had not one moment of thinking I wanted to diet, I had no goals, I was very overweight and I loved food and drank way to much wine and I was Ok with it, eating and drinking all I wanted, it was worth being overweight for I felt .. even though I really was miserable



365 days ago I said to myself well I will try ONE day on MFP and log what I eat and see if I can eat to the RDA cals!

I did it! I completed my day and it told me if I ate this way for 5 weeks I would be 4 kilos lighter I was like WOW no way! This has to be wrong! I could never lose 4 kilos and still eat.



I thought ok! I will try this for a few more days, then I was hooked!!!



By week 3 it hit me, just how slow and long this was going to be! That there was NO magic weight loss method, I had done 3 LONG weeks and I was still not skinny was my way of thinking, no one could even tell I had lost weight!



Oh how hard those hungry days were, how impossible it seemed to lose the amount of weight I had to lose, it felt it would take a lifetime if not longer, a lifetime of feeling miserable! Was this the life I wanted I asked myself over and over? Wasn't it easier to be overweight and not have all these thoughts and hard work that was showing no results



I felt so sorry for myself, even though I did this to myself I felt it was so unfair it happened to me, and how unfair it was I had to do "this" to lose the weight I had put on, I was 100% sure it would not work! I was going to be overweight for life, even if I tried, nothing was going to work!!! But hey I thought may as well at least try so I can say I did it!



Being overweight was HARD, dieting was HARD .. I told myself I had to choose what "hard" I wanted! I chose to carry on even though I was 100% sure I would never get there.



During hard times I would log into MFP and lurk on the success boards for hours seeing others who had done this! I saw everyone who had a success story, as so very lucky, almost like they had no idea just how hard it was for me! And easy it was for them, and that it would never happen to me! I was even jealous of them, it was like magic happened for them, not clicking once they had done so much hard work to get there. My brain was no negative and always telling me negative stuff.



I knew all that stopped me was my negative thinking and my will power. I have to find a way to be positive and strong! And if I couldn't I had to ignore this inner negative thinking!

Looking at others before and after pics and weight loss quote pictures helped me in those moments. Even if my negative mind tried to tell me it still would never work for me



I used the picture quote of "a year from now you will wish you had started today" It was my PC wallpaper, My phones wallpaper and FB cover pic! It reminded me every day for many months that maybe in a year's time, JUST MAYBE I would look back and say YES why yes I am so very glad I started that day!



it is now 365 days later and over 52 kilos lost ( over 114 pounds) I still don't know if my brain has realized what I have done! I have about 5 kilos left to my goal and being a very healthy BMI weight, yet my mind still tells me I will not be able to do it, but I have learned to not listen to it and just do one day at a time and wait and see what scales say




I thought being over 50 years old, would mean it would be harder to lose weight, that's what everyone told me! NOT at all, once I got the right amount of cals for me and my age, which I admit was at the lower end of RDA (as I am very inactive due to spinal issues) but once I found the right amount of cals for me, and once I weighed and measured all my food etc, the weight fell off, just as it did in my teens when I dieted, my older age made no difference!

I wish I found this site many years ago



Thanks so much to everyone on MFP who has cheered me on and been on this ride me, the next 365 days are going to be fun! In this time I hope to reach my goal weight, I hope to help others reach their goals, I will need to learn maintenance, I admit I look forward to the extra cals each day I will get, but I am so scared of falling back into eating the way I did pre MFP. I think learning maintenance will be just as hard if not harder than diet mode!



To my shock and horror I have not had wine or any booze in 365 days and I never saw that ever happening! I was a wino! and I was not a nice person on the wine I never dreamed of stopping it! But I hated the thought of drinking my cals when I could eat them



I love now that I do not hide from a camera! That I do not die if someone uploads a pic of me to FB, that I do not carefully crop my pics to hide my arms, shoulders, tum o0o whatever I could, so all you could see was just a face minus all my fat!

Now I upload a whole pic of me! I stand in the middle of a photo not wanting to kick and punch the person taking pics and making them swear to never upload them!!! Little things like this has made THE HARD side of this so amazing I love it!


anyways thanks MFP ! and thanks to every one of my friends

I am always looking for new friends!!! so Please feel free to add me !!!!!




Thanks




Photos are of

me before and after

a wedding pic 8 years ago and now


The quote I just love

my Parents and me last year and this year



My hubby and me last year and this year