Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Breaking Point

Today's weight: 271.4 lbs, 112.4 lbs. lost total, 31.4 to go!

 Photo collage explanation:  Made this several months ago, picture on the left is at roughly 355 lbs, top center is around 380 lbs, bottom center is 316 lbs this past summer, on the right is about 290 lbs...eventually, I'll put together a final Before/After...

It was a tough day, when I stepped on the scale and 383.8 lbs. popped up.  It was a shock, yes, since I hadn't weighed myself in over a year, and the number was way higher than I was ready for, but after the initial surprise wore off and I had a chance to think about it, it made sense.  I could then admit what I knew all along, which was that I ate too much, I ate the wrong things and I wasn't enough exercise to keep up with my terrible eating habits.

That night, January 5th, 2007, I made the decision that has changed my life.  I decided that maintaining the lifestyle I was living was not going to be an option, and that I had to turn things around, undoing all the habits I had built up from my childhood until that point.  I was fortunate enough to have a friend with me at the time who help lessen the blow, encouraging me by telling me I could get the weight off, and he ended up working out with me 5-6 days per week for the first three or four months after that day.

The progress I made in the few months after that night was wonderful, by the end of the school year in April, I had lost 30 pounds, and by the end of that summer, I was below 350 lbs.

I had made great progress, and I felt for the first time that I was on the right track, but there was still a long way to go, and understandably, I think, after living the previous 10-12 years of my life quite overweight,  there  was some doubt..."can I really do this, is this possible?"

I was on the right track, but I made some crucial errors even while my heart was in the right place.  Essentially a two-year plateau happened between 2007-2009 because I still didn't understand how food affected my body.  I had finally grasped exactly why I needed to be exercising, and that had been paying dividends, but my progress had stopped by the fall of 2007.

Next post:  I'll explain why I could only maintain my weight from 2007-2009, even gaining a few pounds, and what I did to get through that barrier...also, I'll finish the background story, bringing us to the present, and how I've lost 82 pounds in the last 10 months!

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