NKOTB

New Kid On The Blog.
Yup...that's me!

My name is Melissa…but will be better known as iheartbread on this blog. I’m a 29 year old woman living in Garden Grove with my husband and the most adorable dog in the world, Halo. I wasn’t fat all my life, so I don’t have any of those “Ive been fat since birth” or “Ive been fat for as far as I can remember” lines. Nope…I did this all on my own.

I think I started packing on the pounds in high school...I wasn't huge then...but I was by no means small. I guess I never looked back after that. When I met my husband back in 2003, I was around 180 lbs….I haven’t seen that number in almost 7 years! I managed to put on close to 95 pounds during that time. I obviously took full advantage of the “we’re comfortable with each other” stage of our relationship. Haha I made sure that stage lasted a rrrreeeallllyyy long time.

So I ate and ate and ate and ate. I became so unhappy, so I ate more. Then I would diet and lose 3 lbs, so I rewarded myself with eating. Food tied into every single aspect of my life. I ate for EVERY emotion and I didn’t know how to direct my feelings towards anything else other than food. My fat ass was too lazy so I rarely exercised. My knees hurt, my ankles hurt, I always had to catch my breath after one flight of stairs and STILL I chose food. Me = miserable.

I tried all kinds of diets! No carb, weight watchers, nutrisystem...and YES! They work! BUT! They aren’t realistic and long term (well Weight Watchers might be if you're into writing things down…which I'm not). My weight loss isn’t going to be a temporary fix or something to drop a few pounds. Im changing the way I love day to freakin day! I need to do this FOREVER! I need something I can live with…and dammit I need to be able to have cake sometimes!!!

So on February 10th of this year, myself and 3 of my girlfriends came up with a Biggest Loser Challenge...a 6 month challenge where we put money in the pot, made up our rules, weighed in every week and the person with the greatest percentage lost would win the pot!
And the end of that 6 months, I lost a total of 51.8 pounds! This is the most I have ever lost EVER. And I did it all by myself! I’m becoming a different person and I’m loving every moment of it.

In the blogs to come I will be sharing some of the tips and tricks that have worked for me these past 6 months, as well as blog about weight loss in general and how much it can really suck sometimes but how hard work is truly the most rewarding!!
I know I still have a LONG way to go (I hope to get back to around 180 and decide WTF to do then!) but I look forward to sharing this journey with you…the setbacks, the triumphs, the struggles and the FOOD 