Your have completely transformed! You look amazing! I started this life turn around last January. I was always athletic and never really overweight, but I never liked my stomach. When I graduated HS I stopped team sports and started becoming an adult...5 year later I realized that I was 20lbs overweight, even though I didn't look it (5'9"). At that point I knew that I couldn't diet but needed to change how I looked at food. I have lost 17lbs since last January and I finally feel comfortable with my body! I still want to lose 5-9lbs but I am working on toning as I go. Again, you look so amazing!

Cue long life story:

I'm one of those who gained weight as an adult, though in reality I'll never have been healthy. We lived in poverty when I was a child. Our weekly meals consisted of fish fingers, cheap burgers, cheap sausages, chips and pizzas in small portions for the most part, because it was all that could be afforded - that and budget brand sugar-loaded soda.

When I got to fifteen and started being able to pay my own way, I bought convenience foods for breakfast on the way to school because until then I'd been starving in lessons, getting my lunch early and eating it in class - trying to hide the fact I was eating a sandwich at 10am and having the other kids in class laugh whenever I was caught (which happened quite a lot!). Cue a very unhealthy relationship with food - I was living off junk but constantly hungry, and when I got hold of food I learnt to eat it fast to ensure I got it before the opportunity went away.

Add to this the fact that I'd always been taught that it was rude to leave food on your plate and brought up on the 'no treats until your meal's completely gone' approach, and it was a recipe for disaster. I didn't gain weight as a child because of how little I had to eat, but the food I ate won't have been good for me.

Here's a picture of me at about 17 years old. Just a face shot, and not very flattering, but it shows I was thin.



The only thing standing between me and obesity was money...

Which I got, when I moved to university. Things started off the same as I'd grown up with them being. I bought cheap junk and ate it in small portions. Then, I started visiting my best friend regularly. He'd cook huge portions of junk food - the same stuff I was used to eating - but in abundance! At first I'd eat portions that I thought were 'what normal people ate', because I figured it would be rude to leave any. Eventually, I got used to those portions and could easily have a huge pizza or roast dinner, followed by a bar of chocolate or two because why would I say no when he offered? I was getting food! Before long, those portions were normal, daily occurrences. I'd visit his apartment, eat all day, return to my own apartment to sleep, then go back to his. Of course, the weight piled on. Now, I know that those big portions were about five times as much as what I should have been eating, but I didn't know that back then. Eventually, I moved in with my best friend, he became my boyfriend and my weight rocketed up to 174lbs at its highest:



That was when I found my motivation at 23, and changed my lifestyle. I dropped down to 155lbs from 174lbs within about 5-6 months. I don't have an 'after shot' of me at 155lbs because, annoyingly, I was taking one every 10lbs, but I do have my 164lbs one to show:



Unfortunately, at 155lbs in May last year, I slipped up on the exercise side of things. I thought walking five miles would be enough to continue losing weight, so I traded my Kinect exercises in for walks and the weight piled back on. Since I was still burning plenty of calories I struggled to see the problem and I waited it out thinking things would go back to normal with patience. I got back up to 163lbs towards the end of last year before I worked out where I was going wrong. Now, I've got things under control again. I'm walking still, but I've added cycling and I'm back to doing Kinect, and losing again at a steady rate with my health better than ever. I've got three years before I want to be at my goal weight of 120lbs, and all seems well so far!

This if my first attempt at pictures on here... so if I mess up, I'm sorry.
This is me close to my heaviest (and it is a drunk photo, so go easy on me)

And this is 2 years ago. Not my thinnest, but damn close.
I'm trying to get back to this only more "fit" and "toned". I'm currently about 138.... trying to get down to 125-130.

BTW: You all look great! Good job!

Okay...maybe I'm not internet saavy, but how do you post pictures on here!