The Party That Changed My Life

My Story
I come from a family who has the "easy to get fat" genes. All my family members succumb to the fact that after a certain age there is no fighting it and just end up gaining all those pounds continuously.

Being a single parent and dealing with daily problems, eating seemed to make me feel better. Food was solace for my soul. After all, I had no one special, so what did it matter? That was the excuse I gave myself. My friends never commented about my weight. They seemed to accept it as normal.

Then, on my 43rd birthday, I was thrown a party. So naturally I partied away 'till dawn. We took some photos of ourselves. That was when I first discovered, to my horror, how I actually looked in pictures. I could not believe my eyes. I had turned into this matronly looking, middle-aged woman. What was happening to me? I could not bear to look at myself.

Then I decided to use those very pictures to motivate myself to lose weight. Prior to that, I always had this weight problem—since my teenager days. I was always dieting, starving, trying anything and everything. But after a while the weight rebounded. Then I started piling on all that I lost and put on more. I tried the gym, but after a while gave up, due to the traveling, distance and time needed.

This time, I lost weight at home with things I had around the house. Warm-up exercises from school-girl days can make you break a sweat. I climbed up and down a flight of stairs until I got tired, like 20 to 30 times. I did push-ups against the wall; butt lifts lying on the floor.

Every morning I did a bit of warm up before going to work. That changed my entire day. Those 15 minutes of warm-up woke up my whole body every morning. It got me all geared up for work.

After work, I came back and showered, then did another workout for 15 minutes to complete my day. It was not easy at all, but looking at my fat pictures motivated me to go on. Nothing is impossible. It does not happen overnight. But gradually it's proven to show results that stay.

We must love our bodies enough to care about being healthy. I learned that after over 20 years of all sorts of dieting, shortcuts to losing weight and weight problems all my life, it is an inherited problem. My mother was obese. My sister, who was slim, also ballooned after her second child, and looks like the image of what my mother was.

Just half an hour of discipline a day goes a long way now for me. I am not super-slim, but have lost 8 kilos [about 18 pounds] in a month. Now comes the difficult part: maintaining it and trying to lose more; as I know my fat is converting into muscle and now it will take awhile before I shed another pound.

But I am holding on to my determination this time. I know I will get there in due time. As we get older, it's more difficult, yes, but not impossible as I found out.

Losing weight was never easy for me but now that I have managed to achieve that, I am hoping to lose more weight. I have just finally discovered the gateway to healthy living and I am ecstatic about it.

Editor's note: Do you have a weight-loss success story of your own? If you've lost weight or are in the process of losing weight, email editor.neversaydiet@nbcuni.com with "Weight-Loss Success Story" in the subject line and tell us your story. You may be featured on NeverSayDiet.com!