I'm new around these parts, so I wanted to say "hi" and introduce myself. I'm looking for some motivation to get "back on the wagon," and I'm hoping that I can find it around here!

All of my life I’ve been overweight. When I graduated from high school in 1995, I wore a size 18. When I graduated from college in 1999, I wore a size 22. Throughout my life, food has been where I turned during happiness, sadness, boredom, and stress. I come from a big Southern family, where folks eat - a lot - all the time.

Unlike a lot of other folks, though, I never tried to diet or change my ways at all. To be honest, I think that I thought I would fail. And if I didn’t try, I couldn’t fail. So I just resigned myself to being the “fat girl” - the one who would always be “the friend” and never anything more.
Then, during my final semester in graduate school in February 2003, something changed. I don’t know what did it, to be honest. I weighed 286 pounds and wore a size 24/26. And, all of a sudden, I decided that I wanted to change.

So, I started by writing down everything I ate and limiting my calorie consumption to 1500 per day. I also tried to walk a little bit every day - sometimes around campus and sometimes around my apartment complex. By the time I finished graduate school that May, I had lost 25 pounds. I bought a new wardrobe for my first professional position in a size 20.

In August, I moved to Knoxville, TN for a job at the University of Tennessee. I also joined a Curves facility. I was religious about working out - going four times a week and continuing to monitor my calories. By June 2005, I had lost another 70 pounds and was down to 180 pounds.

Also in June, I dropped my Curves membership in favor of a membership at the gym on campus. My fitness level was so high that Curves wasn’t really doing much for me anymore. The campus gym offered an array of cardio machines, an indoor track, and aerobics classes.
At the end of the summer, I had lost another 10 pounds. This made for a total loss of over 115 pounds and meant that I weighed 170 pounds - the lowest for me since I was in middle school. I was also comfortably fitting into a size 10 for the first time I can ever remember. I had even bought a couple of skirts in a size 8 (and cried giant tears of joy when I realized that I actually owned something in a single-digit size!).

Since the end of the summer, however, I’ve had a really hard time finding motivation to keep going. And I've regained a couple of pounds as a result. In total, I want to lose 20-25 more pounds (I’m 5’6"), but I’m finding it really easy to slip back into my old ways of binge/emotional eating and skipping workouts. I’ve stopped writing down what I eat, and I’m finding it nearly impossible to motivate myself to go to the gym.

So, here I am. I've started a journal and I'm hoping to find some extra support here in the forums. I look forward to getting know all of y'all!

Welcome and what a wonderful story! Congratulations on all that weight lost! It's also good to hear that you did it the right way: watching what you ate and exercising. You'll definitely find the support and information you need here to reach your goal. Have you used www.fitday.com ? It's a wonderful resource to track your daily food and activities. Good luck and I'll see you around!

Welcome to this site! We have similiar backgrounds (I graduated high school in 1995 and college in 1999). I never tried to lose weight until last year...being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes didn't even get me off my rear end. Finally something just clicked, like you said. Congrats on all of your success! It's hard to stay motivated so sometimes you just have to make yourself do it. some nights exercising is the LAST thing I want to do but once I get down there I start going and don't want to stop.

Welcome to our boards!
Amber

That's an awesome story! Even though you've gained a little back, holy cow you lost 115 pounds. At the very least you know that you are fully capable of losing weight!!! Getting motivated to workout is one of the hardest things to do. For me, I just had to make myself go and the motivation to go came later. I doubt that helps, but I know how you feel.

3FC is the greatest, and I know that you'll find loads of support here. There's a Decemer Exercise Challenge above under the sticky's. People join several days into the month all the time and I find it to be a huge motivator to workout. There's also an Exercise forum that has a ton of stuff that helps. Glad that you're here!

Welcome welcome welcome. I'm so glad you decided to join the forum. You'll recieve a lot of support here. You have already lost so much weight! It's incredible. I know you're having a difficult time getting back on track...but don't lose hope or get too discouraged. We all get off the track from time to time...but that's doesn't mean you can't make your goals!

Keep posting and let us know how you're doing. You know how to lose weight because you've done an amazing job of it before. Sometimes motivation comes from people that are on your side like good friends or family. Other times it just comes from getting off track and realizing how close you are to where you want to be...or how far you've come from where you used to be. But no matter what, motivation will come back to you. If it means a lot to you...it will always find you. You've already come so far and I know that there's no way you'll ever go back to your previous highest weight.

Good luck! Don't worry too much about the pounds you have gained back...it's not much. You can do it!