Seeing is believing

When I first started this blog, I made one mistake. I forgot to take a picture of myself. I wasn't really thinking at that point about how much I was willing to share what I look like. 

Here I am with a family friend in 1992 at my high school graduation party, I weighed maybe 160

You see, when I got fat, I never really spent much time thinking about it (because I was spending too much time thinking about double cheeseburgers). It happened over years, slowly, from the time following probably my sophomore year of college (summer of 1994) through that day in August of 2006. 

This is me in 1996 with my oldest niece, you can see the added weight starting to show in my face.

That means it took 12 years to pack on 220 pounds. So the fact that it's taken only 4 years to drop almost 70 pounds is on track to take about the same amount of time. Obviously, I'll have to speed that up, so I'm in the low 200's well before I turn 40 (which is just a little over 4 years away now)

Between travel, 2 family Christmas meals, cold weather and icy roads to limit workouts; I knew December would be a tough time to lose weight. I got serious about the next phase of weight loss and triathlon training on New Years Day, the day of the Lowell 1st Run. The race offered free race photos, which is a rarity. As I came in last by a good stretch, the photographer had actually stopped taking pictures before I finished. However, after doing some digging, I managed to find a shot of me. 

I'm finishing the first loop here at 337 lbs on 1/1/2010

It's now not quite two months later, and the weather today was nice enough for a stroll around the neighborhood. I used this as an opportunity snap some a photo to mark my progress.

Me at 319 pounds with the Charles River and Cambridge, MA in the background on 2/21/2010

So while I'm going to have to fight hard to hit my goal of 10 pounds lost this month, progress is definitely being made.