Today marks 365 days of logging into MFP.  I haven’t missed a day so it was exactly 1 year ago that I decided enough was enough, got my a** into gear, and changed my life.

Let me back up a bit and explain what led me to that point (but feel free to skip to the pics)

I’ve struggled with weight all my life.  About 7 years ago though, I was put on Phentermine and lost about 30 lbs.  For one all too brief year, I enjoyed being skinny (I wasn’t in the least bit fit) but after I got married, I got lazy and gained all that weight, and a hell of a lot more of it back.

April 2012, I went to India for 3 weeks on a business trip.  During the trip I met many amazing people.  One of their favorite things to do was to take pictures, chuckle about how white I was compared to them (I’m Irish-Scottish, I can’t help it), then post the pictures up this side of Facebook and down the other.  One night after work, I was back in my hotel room logged into Facebook, and I got an eyeful of just how viral these pictures went… I cried myself to sleep that night and a couple more nights following.  Here are just a few of them…

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After this, I cancelled my FB account so I wouldn’t be face to face with reality and went on with life.

I got home from India May 5th, 2012 but it took me until May 30th to find and get on MyFitnessPal. Once I did join though, I joined with my full heart. I am lucky enough to have an amazingly supportive husband who when I flipped our lives upside down in pursuit of a healthier life and weight loss, he just said “Okay, what can I do to help?”
I started out with the 1200 calories MFP allotted and lots and lots of cardio. Then I found the group Eat More 2 Weigh Less which had me doing just that.  I figured out my TDEE, subtracted 15%-20% and got heavily into weightlifting, starting with the program in the book New Rules of Lifting for Women.  After I finished that program, I moved on to Cathe Fredrich’s STS and am currently in the middle of my 2nd round.  I absolutely love it and the results are freaking awesome.

I was also very fortunate to develop the best friends list on MFP.  I freaking love you guys.

Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way that helped me succeed….

1. The scale is a dirty rotten liar and cannot be the only method of tracking progress.  I learned to check and monitor progress by how my clothes feel, how I look in the mirror, pictures and measurements, and not just by the reading on the scale.

2. Setting and sticking to a rigid pound goal didn’t work for me.  I originally set my goal to 120 lbs which, come to find out, isn’t what I want because to get there, I would either need to fall into the low teens in BF% or sacrifice lean mass (no thank you).  Instead, I’ve focused on a goal BF% of between 18-20% which using the ideal body weight calculator on Fat2FitRadio.com, gave me a pound goal of 130.  I started back in May of last year at around 35% Body Fat or more (I’m guesstimating).  Today, I’m happy to report after getting my BF% tested in a BodPod, I’m at 20.9%.  I’m so close I can taste it.

Here are how a few of my measurements changed:
Natural Waist = 36.5 to 26.5 (- 10 inches)
Thigh = 25.75 to 20.25 (- 5.5 inches)
Chest = 37 to 31 (- 6 inches)
Hips = 43.75 to 31.75 (- 12 inches)
Bicep = 13.5 to 11.25 (- 2.25 inches)

3. I don’t have to starve to lose weight. Thank god because I have a very VERY healthy appetite.  I’m very grateful I found EM2WL only a few weeks after deciding to change my life.

Okay, enough blabbing. Here are my progress and NOW pics!

This first one is 25 lbs down…
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This one is 36 lbs down, what I thought at the time was my ½ way mark…
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This is a difference of 50 lbs… and the pic on the right is somewhere around 35% body fat, the pic on the left is 24.5% body fat…
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This is 60 lbs lost…
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These are a couple tummy comparison pic from about when I started to this past weekend.

And here are a few more now pics just for fun :)
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I remember just starting out and spending a lot of time looking at others success stories. I hope this provides motivation for someone somewhere to not give up, to keep going, to get it done, like so many success stories did for me.

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