Major Milestone Met (+pix)

What can I tell you about this journey that hasn't been written better already on here, not much I guess. I've been "big" all my adult life, stout some would say, well built was popular, robust, rotund, portly or when my ego allowed it "powerful". Once the shirt was off however there was only one word that I can consider honest - fat.
In the first photo, the green t shirt, I think this was my heaviest point, couldn't tell you exactly what the weight was but it was well up over 21 st so 300+ lbs. Wasn't exercising, was grazing constantly and I was extremely unhappy, with me & nearly every aspect of life.


Around my 40th birthday I had dropped a few pounds, I reckon I was about the 300 mark and in the shot below you can see that I appear to have voldemort in my belly...


January 2011 I had enough of myself, another Christmas holiday had gone by of eating too much and feeling sick most days, daily knee pain getting in and out of cars, chronic backache and some other warning signs that my weight was causing me physical damage as well as mental damage. Enough was enough, so I resolved to do something about it. I started cutting back on what I was eating, cut out diet drinks in favour of water and got my old mountainbike out to get some exercise on. First time out I burst the suspension on the back, a massive blow to the ego but it strengthened my resolve to shift the weight. I got a robust hybrid bike and started getting some miles in. Throughout spring, summer & autumn of 2011 I built up my milage and ate salads for most meals and sure enough the pounds dropped off. The loss slowed around November 2011, coincidentally at the time the bike went into the shed, and I was told about this site, got the app and started logging my food. This has become an obsession & the community and support here is simply outstanding.
At some point I set myself a target - lose 5 st, or 70lbs at a rate that was healthy...and I have just breached that goal...

This was me, last night, just before kicking off an hour of football (soccer)


I feel I still have a way to go to be at the weight destination, whatever that ends up being! From now I want to focus less on "weight" and more on body fat, currently sitting at 27% - I want to get that down to 20%, ideally 15% but that will depend on how I feel as time goes on. I have reset my goals, to drop another 28lbs, which would take me to 20% give or take, dropped the rate from 2ppw to 1ppw and increased my daily cal allowance.
Now is a good opportunity to review where I came from - "Well built" , renew focus on where I want to get to ^^ and take a second to reflect on some of the things I have achieved on the way - 5 stone lost, C25K Grad, 2 x Super Sprint Triathlons, dropped 3 waist sizes, 45 miler on the bike....I can look at myself in the mirror and not be ashamed anymore.

Thank you for this site, the app & the tools & thank you for all my super-supportive MFpals.

I hope to post an "arrived at destination" type post later this year and more importantly, I hope to see many more like it from all of you! C'mon people, we got this!