In the year since I joined MFP (w/pics)

Sorry. This is long. And it seems more like a blog :laugh: oh well, here it goes:

I started MFP after deciding it was finally time to get rid of the extra weight I had been carrying around for the last 12+ years. I joined this site just over a year ago (Wednesday was my 1 year MFP-iversary). In that time I have had my ups and downs in motivation and speed of success. Sometimes it's been slow going and I even logged my gains (I like seeing the graph keep a downward trend even if there are ups every so often. It makes me feel like my bad weeks are normal-which they are)

I am 5'9" and my highest weight was around 275 after breaking my leg in 2006 and going from walking everywhere in a college town to being totally sedentary and unable to get up to take my dishes to the dishwasher. I still ate the same way but gained 30 lbs in just a few months (funny how that happens). Anyway, once my leg healed and I was able to walk again the weight started to come off pretty effortlessly. I got back down to 250ish for a while and bounced between that and 265 for the next few years. I didn't get serious about this whole weight loss thing until a last summer when my sister announced she was engaged and wanted me to be her maid of honor. My sister is a tiny thing, as is my cousin who I knew I would be standing up there with as well and as vain as it may sound, I didn't want to look like the chubby chick with all the cute girls in the wedding photos. There was the motivation I needed. I knew I had over a year and I set a goal of getting down to 215 by her wedding. I signed up for a boot camp class and started getting more in shape. A friend of mine told me about how she was using MFP on her phone to help her lose weight for her wedding. I joined and haven't looked back since.

So, what I realized today is that from the day I joined through today I have lost 49.8 lbs, 6 inches off my waist, 5.5 inches off my hips and 1.5 inches off my neck!! That just astonishes me. Next saturday is the one-year aniversary of my highest weight on MFP and I hope to be over 50 lbs lost and possibly even in ONEderland for the fist time in at least 12 years! I was down to 207 last weekend at my sister's wedding (I surpassed my goal! yay!) and I got SO many comments from our friends and family. It is so great to feel like the hard work has paid off. It hasn't been quick. Or easy. And I made it into a lifestyle change that was do-able for me (which is probably why I didnt have quite as much weight loss as I could have if I had gone a little more hard-core). I still have 15 lbs until I reach my "goal weight"... At that time I will re-assess myself and decide where to go from there. I have all of you in the MFP community to thank for helping me get this far and my MFP friends who have been so motivational and there for me every step of the way (especially BermudaBarbie and AJK828... and my boyfriend odevine1 who joined reluctantly at first but now is kicking butt... you guys have inspired me and been there consistantly from the beginning).

Anyway, I just wanted to share my one-year results because I know when I was starting out and feeling like I had SO FAR TO GO it was overwhelming and I came to the success stories a lot for inspiration. Here's a picture to show my progress. A picture at my highest. one near where I started MFP and one from just recently (basically my "where I am now")




as for "how I did it" since I get that question a lot:
I made some "mini goals" and tried that for a while, but I was never that good about rewarding myself when I reached them, so I dont know how effective they were other than the fact that it helped that I didn't have to think about the whole chunk of weight I needed to lose and just went 10-15 lbs at a time. I also believe in eating back my calories earned from working out and I usually had one day a week where I would go over my calorie goal (usually by 200-300 or so) but still log it. I figured that way my metabolism was kept guessing. I bought a food scale and measuring cups that I use ALL the time to get calorie amounts that are as accurate as possible. Also, at the beginning I just tracked what I was eating for about 2 days to see what my normal calorie intake was without worrying if I met my lower calorie goal. I had my goals set to 1.5 lbs/week for the majority of the year, but I played around with it a week or two at a time until I reached a place where I felt comfortable. I also listed myself as sedintary and logged (with my HRM once I got it in December) the calories I burned with working out. If I did something where I didn't have my HRM and had to rely on the database numbers I usually counted it as lower intensity and shorter (ex: I walk for 45 minutes at 3.5? I log it as MFP's walking at 2.0 for 30 minutes). I always try to err on the side of over estimating my food calories when guessing and under estimating when it came to exercise if I wasn't sure. I also even logged my bad days. You know the ones. The ones where you are shoving food in your mouth and thinking "I dont even WANT to know how many calories I am eating right now!" because I figured I was only hurting myself. I used those days to learn from and then it would make sense as to why I didn't lose that week or I might see a pattern like "Oh, I do this when I am stressed out/at this point in my cycle/on tuesdays"etc... and I drank my water! Lots of it (I average probably 100 oz per day. Besides all that I have no other tips or tricks other than to just commit and do it. Dont let one bad day or one bad meal ruin your progress or outlook. We all make poor choices sometimes, but the best you can do is try to make a better choice the next time you are faced with what to eat.

:flowerforyou: