[FiatLux]

Hi, everyone! I'm not sure what exactly to say here in my introduction post, so I'll give you all the basic run-down, shall I?

I'm a nineteen-year-old student in my second year of college. I'm majoring in English with a minor in philosophy and another minor in education. I want to become a high school teacher, but I'm debating whether I want to take the LSAT. I'm forced to concede that writing poetry and fantasy novels probably isn't going to be thing to pay the bills once I'm out of school, but writing is my passion. I also enjoy knitting, reading, watching old movies, and not playing the guitar. I'm kind of boring.

And why am I here? Long story.

I've always felt like the heaviest girl in the room, even when I knew intellectually that I wasn't, but here's the incident that stands out the most in my mind: In May of 2009, I went to buy an outfit to wear to my sister's college graduation. It was a humbling experience to realize that the store carried nothing in my size while my thinner friends found what they were looking for with ease. It had happened before -- cutecutecute, I'd pray, looking through the scant pickings that would fit me, while they cheerfully grabbed outfit after outfit from the rack -- but I'd never before felt so frustrated by it. At Torrid, I was dismayed to find that size eighteen pants were too tight.

Over the summer, I started to eat healthier, but it wasn't until August that I really commited myself to losing weight. (I have to pause here to acknowledge that my best friend, who weighed more than three hundred pounds, was a huge inspiration to me. She had a gastric bypass in the middle of July, and her excitement was definitely infectious and inspiring.) In July, I got out of a poisonous, negative situation, and that helped me to overcome my binge eating disorder, although I still struggle with it. I became determined that I would lose weight in a healthy, natural fashion through diet and exercise rather than surgery and crash dieting.

My heaviest weight ever was 230 pounds. At the beginning of August, I weighed between 215 and 220 pounds. (I want to say 218, but I don't know if that's accurate.) Yesterday, I stepped on the scale and discovered that I now weigh 172 pounds. My BMI has gone from 40 to 29.9, and I feel so much healthier and happier, although I know I have a way to go. I want to loose about thirty more, but I seem to have reached a plateau.

This forum seems great and supportive, and it's been recommended by a few other communities I watch.