So... my story. By the time I started school (kindergarden) I was a chubby kid. There are pictures of me younger, 3 or 4 years old where I was skinny but by the time I started school I was bigger than the other kids. A little overweight, but also quite a bit taller too. By the time I was in 8th grade I was in size 14/16. I don't know what I weighed, probably a little less than I do now, but I still have some of the dress clothes from 8th grade and I can wear them again. I bounced around 14/16/18 all the way through college, depending on how stressful the semester was.
I graduated college in May 2006 and moved to Knoxville, from there my husband to be (now husband) was unemployed for 5 months while I worked 50 hours a week and started gaining (size 18/20). He cooked, cleaned, all the household stuff but didn't cook anywhere near healthy. We got engaged and then moved to Charlotte when he got a job offer here. I found a job in Charlotte and the whole planning a wedding, being hours from friends and family, and starting a new job that was very stressful brought me to my highest weight of 271. I was my high weight on my wedding day June 2007... I was terrified my dress wouldn't fit (it was an 18). Thankfully it was an empire waist... The embarrassment of it though is that I look pregnant in it. I stayed at my high weight for about a year, and then started loosing weight last summer. Last fall my Mom found out she is diabetic. It made everything more real to me, that I can't just do this to look better, that I need to really consider my health.
I'm in a pretty good spot emotionally right now about weight loss. Some days I'm impatient, most days I'm just grateful to be as far along as I am. It's terribly strange to be able to wear clothes that I've got pictures of me as an 8th grader in. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think, but I believe that's partly due to me spending all my time as a teenager worried about how I looked and what people thought of it.
I have slowed my weight loss a little, just because I've eaten so strictly for almost a year now. Now my goal, because I'm at a weight where I'm no longer completely miserable, is to loose 3 or 4 lbs a month and still do everything I enjoy. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life, and I feel like I should just go slow and enjoy it. Doing this I am also in the process of reaching fitness goals and upping my exercise. I know a size 14 is too large for most people here, and it's definitely not where I'm stopping ( I'd like to be an 8.... don't know what it would take weight loss wise to get there even). Size 14 for me means that I'm out of a crazed danger zone health wise.
WEEK #1 WINNER IS DELPHI WITH AN INCREDIBLE #7.8 LOSS!
RUNNERS UP ARE
girls! 
I was a skinny little thing, very energetic and active....until I turned 8 and my mother met my stepfather. You can actually see it in my school pictures, I was skinny until around 2nd grade, then every year after that, you can see me getting fatter and fatter. I became very depressed (whoever tells you a child can't get depressed is a fool) and lost interest in everything I loved before: the outdoors, karate, baseball, digging for worms. I withdrew from everyone and stayed in my room, engrossed in books. The following years, I was broken down little by little and I grew fatter and fatter. I started dieting in middle school. Never healthy though. Any get slim quick scheme I tried never worked. My body just refuses to lose the unhealthy way. I just kept getting more depressed and fat. 
's!
I was soooo excited. I came home and rode it around the block and HOLY MOLY! 
My thighs hurt soooo bad AND my butt hurt even worse. I had to go buy a new seat for the bike yesterday. My bottom is still quite sore...LOL! But things are working much better with the new seat. I rode around the block twice yesterday and through the yard some. 
You really can't beat that. So, I think I'm gonna go try it. I'm really excited about everything right now. I'm really disappointed I have let a whole month go by out of school and I haven't made any progress. 
and dizzy and feel like I just need to lay down. Of course with no healthy insurance and NO money to go to the doctor I am just going to have to lose weight and eat healthier to get rid of it 
it increases your chances of Type II afterward!!! GO NOW!!!! 
There's a TON that you can do just in lifestyle changes that will help manage it - but you have to stick to it. Sorry - touchy subject... type II runs rampant through my family - and I've had 2 family member lose limbs due to not caring for it. It makes me want to kick them in the head!!!
Anyone have any great arm workouts to tone and rid of fat - that do NOT require weight lifting??? I'd love the advice! 