I think this is a brilliant idea Kyp. It's important to know what happened so you won't do it again. Here I go. When I was a kid, I was raised by southern folk. Country fried food with extra everything. My grandmother was obese as long as I can remember and she would never hold anything back from the "youngins" so far as delicious food went. You want 3 grilled cheese sandwiches? (Or more appropriately for the south "3 grill cheeses?" lol) No problem! Maw would whip it up in heavy butter and you could have a big bowl of home made mac n cheese with it too! My mom would say "No, you can only have 2 oreos." I would eat half the pack and she wouldn't stop me, partially because she couldn't. My mom was handicapped physically and while I was a stubborn child, she didn't have any personal will power and would never exert any effort to actually holding rules over me. (The rebel nature really sprung heavy roots in me as a child due to bad treatment from my dad so I never listened to my mom really. ) So I was a chubby child. Never TOO huge, but "overweight" was the right category. As I got into preteens and early teens, I slimmed down with my mom telling me that boys wouldn't like me if I ate too much and that I should lose weight or I would never be happy. (She was a wonderful person... -_- ) This only resulted in my getting a little heavier when I decided a little further onward that I didn't care what people thought of me because they were all mean to me anyway. Then when I was 13, my grandfather died.... As a brief explanation, my grandfather was the only part of what I consider my truly horrible and immoral family that really loved me and was a good person. He took care of me when I was little and made me feel loved and happy like no one else did, just by paying attention to me and being there for me when I needed a hug. He was the best. I found him dead in his favorite chair in the sun room and it nearly destroyed me. I didn't speak or eat much of anything for 3 months... it only slowly inclined for the NEXT 3 months and I was very slim by the year after that happened... at my thinnest appearance since I had been a small child. I was about 145 to 140 at any given time and my eating habits had not improved, but I ate LESS because I had spent the whole summer eating one bowl of Ramen a day and playing on the computer because this was the first summer of my life that people would leave me alone (because of how the tragedy of my grandfather's death had affected me). At 15, I met Rohan... (my husband) and I was in love with him from the start. He told me I was beautiful and I never believed him. (oooh why did I not believe him???? I look back at pics now and drool with wishing I was that size again!) I was with Rohan constantly and my physical activity picked up. We would walk around together, spar together (martial arts), swordfight, etc. We were on the go all the time. No one EVER understood us lol. I married Rohan at 17 (long story) and we moved in together. Things changed only a few months later with our roomate and we had to move suddenly. The only place available was my grandmother's basement apartment so we ended up in a miserable, dank and mildewed single room space that had barely room to walk in after the two couches that were there and our few scant belongings. I got, for lack of a better word, sick. Spiritually as much as physically, I was dying while living in that tiny, wet, sun lightless space. I spent all my time on the computer while Rohan was at work and I did nothing of importance. I couldn't make myself get up and DO anything without the light of my love beside me... He was keeping me going. Nothing else was worth it. When he got home, I'd get up and clean the place while he sat down to relax and then we'd go up to my grandmother's kitchen to make some dinner. I'd have eaten little all day... cept junk food. Here is where my weight gain began. All day long I'd eat little bowls of Ramen noodles, cheese and salsa dip with tortillas, a pan of taquitos and chicken fingers (all greasy fried foods that come from the frozen section) and drink sodas. I didn't know, is the easiest way to put it. I didn't KNOW what was wrong with eating like this because no one ever warned me or told me much of anything and I simply never put two and two together.... I was ignorant and young. Another key factor: Rohan was TINY and had a HUGE metabolism (growing boy!) and was working as a carhop at Sonic which meant running orders from store to car to store all night. He was the best they ever had, fastest running, hardest worker. He'd run 200 orders a night. He lost weight while piling on the chili and cheese and extra layers of meat... He got to a point of skinny that if you put a pic of him now (quite healthy) next to a pic from then, you'd say "oh he looked sick..." He did. I didn't notice. We somehow overlooked these things in each other... But I was getting bigger and bigger. My mom had made the kind mistake of buying me a lot of lounge pants for Christmas that year too. I wore them all the time. I loved them. They were so comfy. I never noticed my waist expanding... honestly, I never did. My grand mother barely HAD mirrors in her house and the only one we were commonly near was one that barely showed my face for how high it was mounted. I didn't know I was getting so fat until I hit 257 and we went on a trip to the Botanical Gardens and took pictures of ourselves together. I came home and cried. I never knew I was this huge until that day. I didn't know what to do. But Rohan, in his infinite love for me, told me that I was still beautiful to him. This was what I needed from my love, but at the same time, I didn't push myself to fix it immediately. I cut back a little on my food and drinks but I didn't really push myself to change. Many emotional problems arose in me after that which I don't want to get into but I got off my arse and started doing Weight Watchers with a friend after we finally moved out of the basement apartment and into my parent's old home (they'd built a new house). I lost 40 pounds and felt MUCH better but I was still too heavy and didn't like myself anymore. Yikes! Remember this was me at 19 lol. I figured out some new ways to dress that didn't show my fat off quite so much. The fluffy ears are wolf ears. So I'm an anime geek okay? lol That is also the only period in my life when you'd have seen me wearing glasses consistantly. (I barely needed them at all but I thought they looked good on me at the time.) At about 217-212, I was feeling a little better but I had hit a HARD plateau and the weight wasn't coming off anymore. I can't remember which holiday broke my diet but I think it was Valentine's day. I stopped trying after I gained a few pounds back. I felt like it didn't matter. A little further down the road and Rohan had to quit Sonic. (He has severe social anxiety disorders, to a disabling point.) So we went on to yet another stage in our lives, the stage in which we learned a lot about ourselves by becoming destitute. Eating extremely cheap food didn't help my diet, but we didn't have much money for anything, less entertainment, so we spent most of our time walking the track at Dora Park. We would go out late at night when no one was around and walk back and forth down this 3 mile track. No flashlights. Just us and the creepy darkness. It was great. I still didn't lose any more weight though. Then, skip a couple years that didn't see my weight changing much at all... I was on and off of Weight Watchers with little success the whole time... Rohan and I were still walking and had become a LOT more conscious of what kid of food we ate. We decided together that I would GET healthy because I had developed Asthma, Allergies, aches, pains, etc... And we wanted to be able to do stuff together without me getting tired so easily! So we walked every morning for 9 miles on the track and would come back most evenings for a second round. I have no idea how I didn't lose weight, going from eating whatever I wanted to really watching it and walking this much... but I didn't. 212 I stayed for months. Until the morning I couldn't keep walking for feeling nauseous. It's funny that we were in the habit of walking 9 miles a morning at this point in my life. Otherwise I might not have realized how seriously bad I felt that morning when I felt I couldn't keep my stomach inside itself and had to sit down on the track. I found out later that day that I was pregnant. So of COURSE my weight inclined again, but this time very naturally! I was careful as I could be about what I ate during pregnancy. Honestly? I barely ate because my morning sickness lasted dawn to dawn through 8 of 9 months of pregnancy! It was HORRIBLE! I barely ate! But if I could eat anything and keep it down, it got eaten! Bisquits with gravy were a common factor. They were one of my only saving graces. What a miserable time it was for me! I gained back to 257 (baby included!) by the 9th month. (Lol Rohan tried on the belly and boobs to see how it felt to be pregnant at a class. He said he knew it had to be worse than that. lol ) After giving birth naturally, my weight was probably about 240. I was careful after that to eat well. While my husband and I are bad to grab a burger out, I would try not to over eat and well as soon as I'd recovered we were active again, having moved to an apartment in Jasper the week the baby was born and now being in the middle of down town, and easy walking distance. (Or in many cases, not-so-easy walking distance but we did anyway because gas is expensive and walking on sidewalks is fun! (see also: Jasper is 15 miles or so from our home town and the home town had no side walks. lol )) But somehow I came to notice after a year since the baby was born, that I still hadn't lost any weight... I had tried and tried to go on Weight Watchers again with friends but they never stuck with it and when they just gave up, I'd just give up... My motivation faltered and I was at 257 again before I knew it... Then one morning, I got on the scale, looked down and say something that changed my life: 261 I was heavier than I had been with baby and all! NO!!!!! I ran downstairs and got on the computer and looked up diets. I had asked a dear friend (a naturalist doctor in the making) how to lose weight and she'd said "Throw out your bread for a while. Yeah, carbs. That's the secret. Just get rid of your bread and pasta and potatoes." So I looked up the Atkins diet (which I had always avoided due to bad rep and all...) and said "I will try it starting tomorrow." Period. And here I am. 8 days later, 252.5 and declining! I know what I did wrong. I ate really junky food for TOO long. I was too inactive, too SEDATIVE for too long! And when I needed to make a change, I made the wrong changes. Junky frozen foods, fast food, lots of carbs and no exercise. There are my culprits. I will never forget their faces! lol I don't have a full body shot of me recently, but this is enough to glance from face to face and see that my current weight is treating me better than old weights have! I won't forget and go back to those old ways! I like this picture better! And I want to see even better pictures soon! I am motivated to stay away from the bad stuff. Shei