I Broke My Plateau! (before and after pictures included)

Last week I managed to shock myself.

My weight had been sitting at the same 2-3 lbs ever since the holidays.  I hadn't been able to budge for over three months. Pretty darn frustrating, if you ask me. I started to get complacent, which is what usually happens when I don't see any progress on a diet.  What typically follows the complacency is me giving up and gaining all the weight back plus some. 

The shocking part, to me?  This time I dug in my heels and refused to let that happen. 

In the 32-plus years I've been alive, I've been on one form of diet or another, all the way back from when I was in first grade.  I've never managed to stick with anything. I didn't think I had it in me. 

It's nice to be wrong.

Last week, I woke up the day after my cleanse, ran to the bathroom and hopped on the scale.  I had lost half a pound. HALF A POUND, people!  That's huge, considering the three long months I've struggled!  The extra exercise, the stricter adherence to the diet, and a near-perfect cleanse all paid off.  Just in case it was a fluke, I decided to sort of tamp down my excitement until the following weigh-in, which happened to be today.

What did it say this morning?  That I've lost 51.5 lbs now.  Definitely not a fluke. 

This diet is actually working for me.  Or, more accurately, I am actually letting it work for me.  Better yet, I am working hard to make sure it doesn't stop working for me.

And since so many of you have asked, I finally have some pictures to post.  The first two are pictures that my fiance took of me on May 31st of last year, just weeks before I started the diet.  The following are two sort of terrible pictures I just took with my phone about an hour ago.

Me at 275.8 lbs. I look really, really unhappy. That's a men's 3X t-shirt I'm busting out of.

Profile view isn't much prettier.  This was the most I've ever weighed in my life.

Me at 224.2. I'm not ashamed to write down my weight (even though anyone with 2nd grade math skills could have figured it out by now) because I know that won't be me for much longer.

Sort of an awkward profile shot.  It's easier when someone's taking it for you.

The next time I post pictures I hope to be at least another ten pounds down.  But for right now, this should satisfy those of you who've been pestering me to put these up for months. You know who you are, and I love you for it!