Losing It

For all of those July brides (and grooms) out there, we have officially hit the 6 month mark!

For me, this means that it's finally time to start a health and fitness routine that will turn me into one hot bride. But before I tell you about my plans to achieve my most hottest self, I think that we should flashback to 2008, just before Mr. Pudding and I got engaged, and became legally married.

Even though we didn't consider our civil ceremony to be "the real deal", I still wanted to be a smoking hot "non-bride".  The problem was that after my first year of working, I still had not lost the weight that I gained in college.

Now, when you are a tall girl like me (5'9), you realize that there are pros and cons to your height.  First of all, you must come to terms with the fact that no matter how much you diet or work out, you will always be "bigger" than your girlfriends.  Miss Samantha Jones demonstrates this quite accurately:

 (source)

Both ladies are beautiful, no doubt, but Kim is very clearly "bigger".  Just look at their legs!  Sometimes, my "bigger" form gets to me a little bit.  In a world that is obsessed with numbers - pounds, dress sizes - it's hard to keep the fact that as a "bigger" girl, my numbers have to be "bigger" as well.  This does not mean that I am any less beautiful or attractive! 

For the most part though, I am happy with my body type.  The true plus of being a tall girl is the fact that you can easily gain 5, 10, 15 pounds, and nobody will notice!  The extra weight distributes itself proportionally, and no one is the wiser.  From day to day, your body looks like it hasn't changed much.

That is, until you start looking at pictures.

I entered college looking like this:

 

My college besties and I....see what I mean about being "bigger"?  I think that I look fantastic in this pic, but let's compare my hips to those of the bestie on my left, shall we?

And by 2008, one year after finishing school, I looked like this:

The changes in my body crept up slowly, fueled by a lack of exercise and a diet of french fries and Ben and Jerry's.  I didn't notice my body changing, until one day, a couple of months before our engagement, I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn't recognize.

The weight was stored mostly in my upper body.  My face became chubbier, my breasts ballooned, and my love handles got bigger.  My legs, butt, and thighs remained pretty much the same, though.  My pant size didn't increase much, which is probably why I didn't notice how much weight I actually gained.  Although no one would call me "overweight", I was about 10 pounds over what would be considered healthy, and 20 pounds over my ideal weight.

The photo above was taken in June of 2008.  By September of that year, I would look like this:

I was able to loose the weight that I had accumulated over 5 years in less than 3 months - actually, it took about a month and a half.

How did I do it?  Well, around the same time that I was realizing it was time to make a change, my FMIL was on the MediFast program.

(source)

She was loosing weight very rapidly, and I thought that I should give it a try.  I have to admit, I did not do a lot of research on this diet before I started it.  My FMIL works in the medical profession, and I trusted her judgment.

Now, let's just get something very clear:  this diet is not easy.  The food is...well...flavorless at best, and sticking to the diet takes an extreme amount of discipline.  But if you follow the program, the weight melts off quite quickly, or at least it did for me.

Did anyone else try the MediFast system?  Are there any other successful diet stories out there?