Two Years Later (and still going) My Success So Far With Pics

So mine is a rather long story. I have always been over weight, ever since I can remember. The picture above was from when I was about 17 or 18 years old. In the picture is my father and you can see that being over weight was a trend in my family. Therefore, I never had the tools or knowledge to manage my own weight. I always thought it was some far off dream and because I was not naturally skinny, I had just accepted the fact that I would always be fat. I was lazy, stuffed my face every chance I could and used food as a coping skill because I was so miserable with my life.



Fast forward two years, I was 22 and I went out with my parents on New Year's Eve to celebrate. The picture above was the first picture I had allowed to be taken of myself in years. The following day when it was posted on Facebook I was horrified. I didn't know who that person was because although I had always been overweight, this was a new low (or high) for me. I literally broke down in tears. Once I was done wallowing in self-pity, I decided I was going to try to lose weight.

I went online and began looking up fad diets and I even tried diet pills for a while. The one thing I have always prided myself in, though, is my information gathering ability. Therefore, even though I was trying these other methods, I kept on doing more and more research. Eventually I stumbled on MFP. I created an account and began counting calories, albeit very sloppily. I became a voyeur on the forums and tried to get as much information as I could. I went out, bought a food scale and really buckled down on my weight loss.



This picture was from May 2015. I went on a vacation with my parents to Washington state. While on this vacation, my father and I hiked a lot. We even climbed to the top of a mountain. My father had been working on losing weight as well due to his diagnosis with diabetes, so both of us were ready to get some activity in. I was amazed though, I had only lost about 15 pounds at this point, but I felt better than I had in years. I had never had so much energy and life. This trip really re-enforced why I was doing what I was doing.

I found an app called C25K and I began working on running. I spent that entire summer watching my calories, exercising and losing weight. When I returned to college in the fall, my roommates did not recognize me at all. I was ecstatic, but I realized that the journey I had taken over the summer was a lot easier when isolated from my friends.



Returning to college so much smaller than before had its perks. Boys began to notice me for the first time in my life and I felt like a whole new world opened up. I got so distracted by partying that my journey fell by the wayside. I didn't lose any weight, but I didn't put any on either. It went on like this for about the next year. I wasn't concerned about reaching my goal and didn't really try to stick to any of the new habits I had spent so long forming.



Eventually, as adults must do, I got a job and it was very physically intensive. I ended up dropping more weight as I was eating like I did before, but my exercise nearly tripled. I was really happy with the change, but still not too concerned about seeing what I needed to do about keeping it going. I ended up being the lightest I had been since I was bout 12 years old.



Eventually, I moved in with my new boyfriend and got a less physically intensive job. I began packing on the weight again. It didn't hit me how bad it had gotten until last month when I only had one pair of jeans that still fit. I decided that I needed to get back to my journey and I needed to stick with it this time before I ended up all the way back at the beginning. I am a month back in and back to where I was when I stopped almost 2 years ago. I still have a way to go to reach my goal, but I have come so far and learned so much that I believe I can stick to it this time and get to where I want to be.