Howdy Chicks,
Today is the last day I "start over" with losing weight. Because I'm not "on a diet", I've chosen to change my lifestyle which means permanent positive changes to my eating, exercise and attitude habits.
Since 1st grade I was always a little heavier than the other kids in my class, but I wasn't what you'd call fat. Chubby, perhaps. I've been overweight since I was in my mid-tweens.
In junior high I lost 45lbs or so and was down to a normal weight for my height/frame. It was the best feeling in the world being healthy and not having to worry that my peers wouldn't automatically ignore/condemn me because I was fat. The "thin" me lasted about 2 years before my weight started to creep back up.
I rode the diet roller coaster all through college and a decade after...which leads us to now. Recently I've started getting horrible side effects from my being overweight. I am in pain on a daily basis, and some of it I cannot stop/treat. Burning pins and needles in my legs, sciatica, chronic migraines...you name it. It's miserable feeling like this all the time, and on top of it I'm 95+lbs overweight.
Despite my declining health, I was able to kid myself about my weight for a long time...not in the "I'm not fat" or "it's not that bad" kind of way, but rather in the "it's just my cross to bear", "I can put up with it" way.
Well I can no longer put up with it. I refuse to put up with the pain, the embarrassment, the misery of being this fat any longer. I have lost out on so many things in life because I didn't love myself enough to stick with it and keep on with a healthy lifestyle. I didn't believe I deserved to be happy, whole and healthy. I don't believe any of those things anymore.
I was 245lbs at the start of this year. I am now at 220. My immediate goal is 135, with a view to getting between 125/117.