Hi there anon! Thanks for your kind words! Losing weight was hard, but keeping it off is even harder. You make a conscious choice every single day to choose yourself and your health. And sometimes, you just don’t wanna.

So you wanna know what made me hit “rock bottom”? Or perhaps what “rock bottom” was? To be completely honest, it was when my friend/co-worker looked at me, (while I was eating a juicy cheeseburger) and said, “why are you eating that crap?”

It shook me to my core. No one else had EVER dared to say anything about what I was eating–they won’t say it to your face, but they will silently judge you, or talk about you behind your back! 

It was the push I needed to start eating better. I started by eating salads with chicken each night. Then I cut out sweet treats that I was buying myself every day. I cut down on pop. And the weight just started falling off. I was very heavy, so it came off fairly fast. At 5′9 I was 295 pounds. That is morbidly obese. There’s no way around it. 

All I did was eat better for the first few months. That’s all I could do. I think if I would have made too many life changes at once I would have failed. But I did it in steps. About 6 weeks later my bff got engaged and we started going to the gym together. The weight kept melting away. I started eating better in June and by the time her wedding hit in April I was down about 60 pounds. At that point, I became single-minded in my focus. I want to get to 100 pounds lost. Then, I wanted to get to a normal weight for my size. Then, I realized I could get down to half my size, so I did, and then some more to hit 150 pounds.

I hit my goal weight in October of 2011. I’m part of the National Weight Control Registry (they track people who have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for at least a year). I totally changed what I ate and exercise habits. Tell your friend it is hard and it sucks and is TOTALLY WORTH IT!!

Some photos for a little perspective: 

On the left Jan 1, 2009                                    On the right Jan. 20, 2016

Left:2005                                                             Right: June 2015