Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.~ George Santayana

When I started my weight loss plan, I made a conscious decision not to take measurements or weekly pictures. The primary reason initially was so that when I failed and gave up I wouldn’t have memorialized the beginning of my failure. After some initial success, I told myself that I wanted this to be a forever change and not something that had a beginning and an end and still never took pictures or measurements.


The only measurement I can tell you for sure is that I lost 16 inches from my gut between June 2009 and October 2009 from measurements my doctor took. When I went in for my appointment in June, I had already lost 50 pounds and in October, I had lost 110. I have no idea what the true inches lost were by the time I got to 135 lost. I was wearing a XXXL shirt and pants with a 42-inch waist and a belly hanging over. Now I wear a M/L shirt and pants with a 30-inch waist.

What got me thinking about this was the Biggest Loser episode this week. During the challenge they had to strap on all the weight they had lost. They shed the weight they lost at each weigh-in over the course of the challenge which was 500 step ups and a 1 mile run. Each of the contestants kept saying how horrible it was and that they didn’t want to remember how big they were and how difficult it was being overweight. One guy said it was like strapping a 14 year old to your back, which I can relate to.

I feel quite the opposite. I want to remember EXACTLY what it was like as a constant reminder of why I don’t want to go back to that point in my life. So now I feel like I should have taken the pictures and measurements for that reminder as well as a way to celebrate my successes along the way. I have seen a number of video transformations that are very inspirational too. I saw this one today which prompted this post…. 266 One Year Anniversary .

I think I need to go through the pictures my family took during this time frame because I was normally taking our pictures and not in very many of them. These two are from June 2007 and February 2010....