326 Days and 100lb down

Way back in November I finally plucked up the courage to step on the scales to discover my weight was approaching 300lb. At 289.5lb and 5'1", I had a bmi of 55, could barely walk and was heading for an early grave. It was more than time to do something about it and try to get my whole life back on track.

With a total loss of 153.5lb needed to get to a "normal" bmi, the sheer scale of things was overwhelming. I couldn't bring myself to enter the target weight in any of the apps, I didn't think I'd find the "you have 150lb left to lose|" motivating, so I set myself a series of smaller targets, mostly based on 10% weight loss. As time passed and the pounds dropped the I slowly started to come to terms with how much I needed to lose until I was finally able to put my target weight of 136lb in to the Fitbit App.

So how did I lose the weight, what was the magic trick? Well there was no magic, I simply ate a little less and moved a lot more. I didn't follow an faddy diet, or cut any food out, I simply logged everything I ate on here and used a Fitbit to track my activity, ensuring that I ate less calories than I expended. Once I'd lost around 20lb, I finally allowed my photo to be taken and joined a gym where we worked out a programme that would help minimise muscle lost and increase my overall fitness. At this point I still struggled with mobility, couldn't get up and down from the floor and would easily burn 700 Calories in an hour as I struggled just to walk.

As the last ten months has past, I've steadily lost the weight and as it's come off I've found myself able to do more. A couple of months ago I started going to actual exercise classes, high impact classes at that, Insanity and Boxercise. I can't yet manage all the moves, but I'm getting there and making improvements every week. I also started an actual weight lifting programme (5x5), to further help maintain muscle. Everything was going swimmingly, except I discovered that lurking under the fat there was an umbilical hernia, it had probably been there for years, but I had it repaired at the beginning of the month and am just starting to get back to the same activity levels. I've found scaling the weights back to barely anything the hardest, but used it as an opportunity to work on form and the depth of my squats, turning the enforced low weights in to a positive (and almost getting atf in my squats). But strangely the enforced rest seems to have made me stronger, I can do so many more push ups than a month ago even though last night was the first time performing them in 3 weeks.

Anyway this is getting more than just long, so the point is that today marked 100lb lost, 2/3 of the way towards that seemingly insurmountable target and just 53lb away from being at a "normal" bmi. I'm also down ten dress sizes from a UK 26 to a UK 16 and have lost a mind-boggling 108cm (43") from my bust, waist and hips combined. I also get random people stopping me in the street telling me how well I'm doing.