It's finally official.....80 baby!!!!

This is totally how I roll!  I celebrate every 5 pound achievement!   So I bet you can guess what today is......happy dance time!!

Starting weight (Aug 2011) - 281.0

Today's weight - 200.6

Weight loss to date - 80.4 pounds

HOLY MOLY!!!!  It is finally official....after a couple of weeks of flirting with it (seriously I was within 0.2 pounds, but I like to keep things exact around here), I have finally officially hit the 80 pounds GONE mark!  Man does that feel awesome to say!!!!!  It is hard to actually wrap my brain around it though.  The more weight I lose and the closer I get to 100 pounds, the more surreal it feels.  The more I look in the mirror and see a new person.  I am actually starting to like the way I look in photos and not be completely negative and be uuber critical/pick apart all of my flaws.  It is AMAZING to finally get to that place of self love & respect.

I didn't do a post when I hit 75 pounds because quite frankly it snuck up on me so quickly.  But I will tell you that 75 pounds brought me to tears.  After it had had a couple of hours to sink in, I found myself sitting at my desk sobbing.  It was a mixture of emotions that came over me like a wave - disbelief, pride, accomplishment, strength, and even some mourning (the loss of and saying goodbye to the broken and sad person I once was).  It is crazy to think that 15 YEARS of my life was spent being so heavy.  I am soooooo blessed to have the chance to take back control of my life and begin living again!  I truly do feel like a completely different person.

As I thought about hitting the 80 pound mark, I wanted to do something special to really help truly grasp how much of a loss that is.  I am a very visual person, so for me seeing is believing!  I hope you enjoy my little experiment!  (I actually did this a couple of weeks ago in anticipation....I am thrilled that I FINALLY get to share it with you!!!)

I started by taking a laundry basket and filling it with items from my pantry and around the house.  My goal was to come up with items that would total the 80 pounds that I have now lost.  Mind you, this ended up being a pretty good sized laundry basket (it comes up to my knee)!!  As you can see in the pic, it was mostly full too!

I put it on the scale until I reached 80 pounds (80.6 was what I ended up with)

Here is the inventory of the items I ended up with to make the 80 pound weight:

• 10 pound bag of potatoes
• 6 pound jar of peanut butter
• 1 gallon jug of vinegar (not quite full)
• 1.32 gallon jug of floor cleaner
• 5 pound jar of honey (about 2/3 full)
• 1 bottle flavored coffee syrup
• 2 - 5 lb hand weights
• 2 - 3 lb hand weights
• 16 cans
• 1 can pineapple
• 4 cans soup
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1 can water chestnuts
• 1 can cranberry sauce
• 2 large cans of crushed tomatoes
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 can green beans
• 1 can peas
• 1 can mandarin oranges
• 2 cans manwich

I really wanted to fill a backpack with 80 pounds and force myself to wear it for a full day to really get the experience, but I couldn't find heavy enough items that would fit in a backpack!  I guess I need to get some more hand weights??  I can tell you that hoisting that basket on and off the scale to keep filling it and weighing it was a lot of work.  Honestly I am not sure I would have made it a whole day of carrying around that much weight again!  I seriously wonder how on earth I carried all of that weight around for so long????  I definitely do not wonder why I never had any energy to do anything but sit around all the time!  Again, I am soooo grateful to be regaining my life and my health!

A fun list of factoids for you...it also looks like I have lost the world's largest ball of tape :-)

What have you lost??  Leave a comment so we can celebrate your success!

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