100 days, 34 lbs, no exercise. You can do it...

To the OP:

I just wanted to let you know ... that I really appreciate you posting this.

I am over 300 pounds and trying to get to 150 healthy weight for my height. It is a long and arduous battle that I have fought repeatedly and lost repeatedly, returning me only to higher and higher weights. I'm determined this time to succeed, but I've tried to avoid the reasons that I failed in the past.
I have read a lot of success stories about weight loss. I often find myself reading information on these forums and blogs and such trying to inspire myself and learn more strategies to lose weight.
But honestly, most of the success stories from people with big weight loss like what I'm aiming for mostly depress me.

The typical: I see a story that looks similar to mine. 20-something or 30-something, 300ish pounds, been heavy most of their life but used to be less heavy and wants it back... They succeeded and show these amazing pictures of how they look after having shed some 150 pounds of weight. It took them a year or two years and they are now a smaller, healthy person.

The pictures alone are encouraging... because they are something I could hope to achieve.

But then I read on to how they did it... and... it is the most depressing thing I've ever seen.

I read these incredible stories of working out diligently or eating Asparagus Parsley for dinner every night or combining some insane level of discipline with an insane level of depriving.

I tell myself "I could do this" but I know... I couldn't.
And that's where depression hits me.
Because all the people I see succeeding are doing something I know, truly know, I won't do.


That's where your post comes in.

Your post is not like those posts. It's not even a similar amount of loss to what I need. But it is the single most encouraging post I have ever read for believing that I can and will lose the weight I want to. Because this post doesn't tell me that the only way to win is to stick to some spectacularly high goal that I will not reasonably ever hang on to. It doesn't tell me the only way I can be thin is to eat Lettuce sandwiches for the rest of my life. It doesn't even tell me I have to find a way to force myself to perform hours of activities I don't enjoy at all every single week.

It tells me that I can succeed despite the fact that I've never been a gym nut, or a sports nut, or even very fond of going outside.
It tells me that I can succeed despite liking real cheese more than fat-free cheese, and that I can still enjoy the things I love.

It tells me that I can really do this. And I can really be the real me I know's in here somewhere.

Because I know myself too. And I believe that knowing oneself is the key to happiness.

And why I've never put this together for myself before is beyond me...

But your post helped me to realize I can do exactly what I want to do without hating my life for the next year or two.

Thank you for writing your story. It has made a huge difference for me today. It has inspired me.
And I have no doubt now that a year or two from now, I'll be writing a success story of my own. And by then, I will not have forgotten this one. Not at all.

Thank you.