6 months in - 20kg/44lb down! (with pictures)

As of today, I’m 6 months into my weight loss journey and I’ve extremely pleased to say that I’m 20kg/44lb down! (I’m strictly a metric girl but since everyone else works in pounds I’m putting equivalents in) My biggest regret is that I didn’t actually weigh myself at the start as I was too afraid of seeing a higher-than-expected number on the scale, so I just guesstimated based on previously known weights. Now I wish I had weighed myself as, in all likelihood, I’d be celebrating losing an even larger number today!

I’m 5’9”, starting weight around 90kg/198lb, now sitting at 70kg/154lb. My original goal was to reach a healthy bmi, which I did at the end of April when I hit 75kg/165lb. My current goal is to reach the middle of the healthy bmi range, which will be 65kg/143lb.

I’ve been overweight for as long as I can remember; at the end of high school I used to weigh myself every day as some kind of weird self-torture. After moving away from home from university and later starting at an office job where I sat down all day, coupled with having more money to spend on tasty food and wine, the weight piled on. I didn’t own a set of scales, so I was largely oblivious until clothes started to not fit anymore.

3 years ago I split from my now-ex-husband and, to give myself something to focus on, I started going to the gym a lot, burning over 1000 calories a day. I drank Slimfast shakes for a few months and, for the first time in my adult life, got down to a healthy bmi. And then I never weighed myself again, stopped bothering to exercise and started eating all the pizza. No surprise that all my “skinny” clothes stopped fitting and I ended up right back where I started. I felt uncomfortable all time time, I was unable to sleep due to stomach pains from constantly eating too much, and even standing hurt as my body wasn’t used to carrying so much weight. I knew something had to change, so determined that in the new year I’d start a new regime.

This time round I didn’t have time to do that amount of exercise so didn’t think I’d lose weight as quickly. I did however use MFP to log my food; I’d tried MFP a couple of times in the past but hadn’t been stuck with it for more than a couple of weeks. Logging my food and reading the stories, advice and help on the forums has taught me an awful lot about diet, exercise and weight loss. I realise now that there was very little point tracking the calories I was burning if I wasn’t paying attention to the calories I was consuming. And so I hit a healthy bmi 2 months earlier than when I’d been doing about 3 times the amount of exercise but no calorie tracking.

What’s worked for me is consistency; I’m a very routine-oriented person so I find it much easier to stick to things once they are part of my routine. So going to the gym every lunchtime at work is no longer an effort as it’s just what I do every lunch time. I don’t take rest days or cheat days as I find it really difficult to come back from something like that; one day off puts me at risk of just abandoning the whole thing. It’s a lot easier to keep moving than to start again after you’ve stopped.

The success stories on here have really motivated me and shown me why it’s worth it to keep going, especially at times where the scale hasn’t seemed to budge. After reaching 75kg at the end of April, I seemed stuck there for all of May which was frustrating, but keeping going rewarded me with the scales dropping on an almost weekly basis in June.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on for long enough. Here are some before and after pictures, as well as some monthly progress pictures from April onwards. Good luck to everyone who’s on this journey too - yes it’s hard at times but you most definitely can do it!