Today I hit a few important milestones. I'm back at my starting weight from doing Weight Watchers years ago (yikes,) I'm 70lbs down, my BMI is no longer morbidly obese, (just obese, lol,) and most importantly, I have less than 100lbs to go now.
I've never been one for progress pictures. My social media presence is a complete farce. Flattering angles and Instagram filters abound. Every other time I've lost weight, you'd be hard pressed to ever find a "before" picture of me where I actually looked bad. I will sorority squat, hide my body behind other people, and skinny arm the crap out of a photo. If a bad photo existed, it was lost in the abyss of untagged photos anyway. DietBet basically forced me to document my progress through pictures, though. It's something I've never done before, and it's incredibly helpful. I can actually see my progress and it's made me a lot more optimistic about the process.
The times I've thought, "God I'm still so fat. I'm working so hard and I'm still just fat," and didn't have progress pictures, the negative self-talk was sometimes overwhelming and I'd cope with bad habits. When you look in the mirror your eyes can lie to you. Pictures always tell the truth. Now whenever I start that negative self-talk I can look at how far I've come, know I still have a while to go before I'm at maintenance, but I'm certainly better than I was before.
I am proud of myself, but sometimes it's hard when you're still embarrassed about how you look. The progress pictures are a great reminder of where I started and how hard I worked to get where I am now.