Hi guys,
I've been actively trying to lose weight since about the first week of June after moving to Japan and realizing "Holy crap, everyone's tiny!" quickly followed by "That only makes it more apparent that I'm an elephant TT^TT." So after two months of feeling awkwardly huge and one student coming up to me, patting my stomach, and informing me that I was much fatter than the previous English teacher, I decided that it was time to get off of my fat tush and make the fat part disappear.
I don't actually know what my high weight was...I think it was somewhere in the 200-205 range...but on the day that I joined this site (more on a whim than anything back in March), I was 197 and feeling pretty miserable about it. I've never been skinny, but with health issues making life sucky (IR, PCOS, extreme hypothyroid), I figured I should try to take some off to at least try to lessen the symptoms. My worst fear is having to take the full fistful of pills both of my parents take every morning one day...
In any case, moving to Japan and suddenly having to bike or walk anywhere that I wanted to go took care of the first 7 or so lbs. Since June...6th-ish? I've taken off over 20 more, bringing me to today's weigh-in number of 167.3 lbs (night time read 167.1
) I haven't been following a specific plan aside from watching my calories and working out a LOT. In a normal day, I bike between 1.5 and 3 hours and do a session of the 30 Day Shred, not counting all of the running around and jumping up and down like an idiot that I do at work while trying to entertain elementary school students. Despite pretty much all of my health issues impeding weight loss, I've been stubbornly bulling through and one day I WILL see 140. I've had a bunch of little victories this week (under 170 for the first time I can remember at my current height...weighing less than my boyfriend...fitting into some pieces of Japanese size M clothing down from LL), but halfway seemed like a big enough deal to actually make a thread
I know that people like to see pictures, so while mine aren't super impressive, here you are:
This is the biggest-looking recent one I found on facebook...this is from just before Thanksgiving (end of November, for those of you not from the US):
Here's a chubby picture from just after I got to Japan...yikes...
...but the outfit looks a little different now:
(I tried wearing the skirt today and ended up having to wrap it like I did the shirt with a band to keep it up...it slid completely down without even pausing at my butt when I took the band back off)
The shirt looks a lot nicer...
...and the obligatory attempt at being pretty...
In case you couldn't tell, the last one was supposed to be LOOK, I HAVE COLLARBONES. Look! Look!
...so yeah, today (at 167.3 lbs) I'm still a decent amount above a normal weight range, but it feels pretty nice to be down almost 30 lbs. I've set my sights on 140 lbs, and hopefully if I keep plugging along, I'll get there sooner rather than later. Thank you to everyone on this site for offering advice, support, inspiration...and even just a reason to smile or giggle at something silly during the tough days.
EDIT: For some reason the pictures don't seem to be rotating/cropping/showing up resized...if you refresh the page once or twice, it seems to fix it.
Halfway there!
Thanks guys. Everyone's so awesome and supportive on here! As an update, I made it to my first 30 lbs. You'd best believe that I did a happy dance for that too 
YAY! 
