Today is my one year surgiversary and as of my weekly weigh in yesterday, I have surpassed my goal by one pound. My starting weight at the beginning of this process was 260. I was 236 on my surgery date. And I am now 164.

It's been a long road. The early days/weeks/months were rough. But for a long time now, I've just felt "normal". I eat 5-6 times a day. Always Protein first, but I occasionally have some treats. Juts yesterday I shared a piece of cake with my husband. I love not feeling deprived. If I want a treat of some sort once in a while, I have a little bit of it. I don't track my food or calories. The big thing to really get my head around through this whole process is that this is not a "diet". This is the rest of my life. I don't have any deadlines to meet with my weight loss. The goal was just to eventually get down to a healthy weight and stay there.

Were I on a "diet", I would have been tracking every calorie in and every calorie out. Sharing that piece of cake with my husband, I would have tracked those calories eaten and then tried to make up for it in calories burned so as not to "fall behind". I would have to "make up" those extra calories. Now... if I eat half a piece of cake, I don't sweat it. If it takes me a week to burn off those "extra" calories, what does it matter? What's a week in the grand scheme of things? It's definitely been a real change in thinking for me.

As for exercise, I've been killing it in that department. I've run several 5k races over the summer and plan to continue with my running and working on improving my time. I was pretty hard-core about strength training as well until my sister and her four kids moved in with us temporarily. That makes getting time to myself to SAFELY do strength training a real challenge, but I plan to get right back to it once they move out later this month.

So now, what you've all been waiting for: PHOTOS!

I can't see pics.

Hmm, they are still showing up fine for me. Did you try clicking into my profile and then my gallery instead?

Congratulations!

you look fantastic!! you had a great shape at 260 and you still have it now! what an inspiration. have you had an plastic surgery? you don't seem to have loose skin. you are an inspiration. thank you so much for this post!

you look fantastic!! you had a great shape at 260 and you still have it now! what an inspiration. have you had an plastic surgery? you don't seem to have loose skin. you are an inspiration. thank you so much for this post!

Yeah, if you read back through this thread a little, I explained more in detail about my plastic surgery. I had lost 90 pounds "on my own" back in 2010/2011 and had plastic surgery in August of 2011. I had an extended tummy tuck and breast lift with augmentation. Over the years since my plastics, I had regained 80 if the original 90 pounds I lost, so I then decided to have VSG in September 2014. So the "before" photos in my original post were post plastics, but pre-VSG, thus my flat stomach and perky boobs! Somewhere in this thread I posted the "before" pictures from 2010, before I lost the 90 pounds on my own and my shape was much less pleasing at 270 back then!

Luckily, my tummy tuck held up incredibly well through my weight re-gain and re-loss, so my stomach looks amazing now. I do have significant amounts of loose skin on my thighs and hope to have a thigh lift at some point. I also have a little loose skin on my upper arms, but not bad enough to justify an arm lift.

Congrats. You look wonderful.

Amazing progress.

You have done really well !!!!!!

You look great! Congrats!

Great job! Thanks so much for sharing!

@@donnag53 @Dub @sherabear @bibleajosc Thanks guys! So far so good with maintenance over the past month. I've lost a little more weight and I hope to slow that down or stop it completely. It's trickier than you might think to stop losing weight after a full year of losing!