Proud stomach comparison photo

I could never image so many kind people would comment!! Thank you so so so much everyone! I only have two friends IRL (plus my boyfriend who is extremely supportive), and just one of them has noticed, or at least commented, on me losing weight. Your comments mean so much to me, because they give me a sort of reality check I wouldn't have otherwise

I saw I got a question about my measurements. I didn't measure myself until a few months after the before-photo was taken, and at that point I had already lost about 4 kg / 9 lbs.

May 2011
81 kg/178 lbs
Waist: 87 cm / 34.2''
Hips: 106 cm / 41.7''

March 2012
71 kg/156 lbs
Waist 76.5 cm / 30''
Hips 96.5 cm / 38''

I think that if I hadn't discovered MyFitnessPal I wouldn't have lost the weight. It is thanks to counting calories I've lost most of the weight. I'm 5'10'' tall and I'm on a budget of 1200 calories a day. But I make sure to exercise pretty much every day, and I eat all my exercise calories, which means I eat a total of about 2000 calories most days.

I do a split weight training program that I learned from Jillian Michaels (she mentioned it in one of her podcasts):
Day 1 - Chest, shoulders, triceps, obliques, quads
Day 2 - Biceps, back, glutes, hamstrings, abs
Day 3 - Rest day

A visit to the gym looks like this for me:
15 minute walk to get there
Arrival, change to gym clothes
40-45 minutes of cardio, most often on the elliptical, but recently I've been on the treadmill two times, I'd love to be able to run!
Short break in the changing room where I take some sort of carbohydrate restoration (most often candy
60 minutes of weight training (3 sets, 7 repeptitions per exercise, REALLY heavy, 100% of my capacity)
Protein shake (banana flavor!)
Lovely well-deserved shower afterwards, with fancy shower gel and luxurious body butter
15 minute walk home

On my rest day I am most often out taking a lovely 1-2 hour walk in a slow pace.

When it comes to food I eat anything I want, as long as there is room for it in my calorie budget for the day. I love potato chips and have it at least once a week and sweets/candy I'll have several times a week. I would never want to exclude anything from my diet and say that something is forbidden, because that would only make me want to "cheat" and get tired of what I'm doing.

Getting into "the shape" I'm now took me about perhaps 4-5 months. It's difficult to estimate because it's hard for me to see myself when and how my body changed.

What I'm the most proud of is, however, my lifestyle change. I get up early to go to the gym and I never ever think "should I go to the gym today?", that would give me the option of not going there, and I actually don't have that much self-discipline. So I just get up, have breakfast and head to the gym. 6 months ago I could hardly do stairs, heck I couldn't even walk the 2 minute walk to the local grocery store without breaking a sweat and having to pause (I'm serious!). But the other day I discovered on the treadmill that I can now jog for 20 minutes straight!!!! (Which took me 2.63 km/1.6 miles)

I feel so much more alive and all of a sudden no longer see the world filled with stuff I can't do, instead I see all the things I want to do! It only took MFP, learning to understand the energy in foods and determination. Is all