Photos

The only thing I regret not doing was to take photographs of my progress, but when I started my weight-loss journey in late 2012, I had absolutely no hopes of succeeding so why take photos of what I expected to be my failure yet again.  After all, I had more than 30 years of historical proof that I was a failure when it came to my weight!  I never had any inkling that I'd be where I am today.  In any case, there are a few photos I want to share.

Meet "My Fla."  Her true passion is fashion photography and she has her own studio in Los Angeles.  Her work's been published in magazines in  the U.S. and overseas, too.  This photo appears on her photography website (which I'm using with her permission). 


If I had seen this photo before meeting her, I would've been intimidated because, "She's too trendy for old conservative me!"


I didn't allow photos of the old me to be taken because it was horrifying to see what I looked like, but here are some I found: 

These were taken in May 2011.  I used to volunteer at a dog rescue and we attended a dog adoption expo.  At this time I weighed 300 lbs. and I was wearing a 3XL shirt, pants were 24-28, depending on the cut.

                     For a work ID card                      At a dinner around 
                     around June 2011                        September 2012

Fla tagged me her "personal project" once we clicked and I started listening to her.  I made up this T-shirt as a joke and wore it to our training sessions.  She loved it and so did the other trainers.  She posted this photo on her Facebook page.

I weighed about 241 lbs. in this photo taken on January 6, 2015.  Notice how I'm pulling the shirt away from my body as far as possible?  Part of it was so the words could be photographed but mostly because I was accustomed to not having photographs taken of my body.  This was the first photograph of myself that I actually felt good enough about emailing to friends in many, many years. 

            

"Don't be a ravioli!" 

Fla hates it when I go out to eat.  She says, "No, no, no!  They're messing with my personal project!"  The first time I went out to dinner with friends on January 17, 2015, to an Italian restaurant no less, Fla was really worried I'd lose control (so was I).  

She forbid me from eating anything other than a salad.  I told her I was going to order ravioli.  On the way to the restaurant, she texted me this poster.  In the end, I had a salad with a tiny bit of dressing.

What she didn't know is that I was planning to send her a photo of my own.  I took to the restaurant this little cutout I made from our earlier photograph and put it by the bread basket.  I sent it to her with the caption, "That's you joining us for dinner!"  She loved it.

The next time I went to one of my favorite restaurants, The Cheesecake Factory, I took these little cutouts I made (at this point Fla was with me all the time, even in spirit!). Needless to say, Fla forbid me from eating cheesecake. She was always threatening me with push-ups, my most dreaded exercise, if I ate badly - she still does.  The word bubble on the left reads, "Nooooooooo!!!!!!!" and the bubble on the right reads, "THIS = 150 push ups!"   (January 23, 2015)

Speaking of push ups, Fla sent this to me.  She was so proud of herself, too!  My blue-haired tormentor!

On April 22, 2015, I met a friend for coffee. I sent Fla this photo with the caption, "Coffee with my friend at Cheesecake Factory!"  She texted me back, "That better not be your dish!!"  It wasn't!  I only had a tiny bite and I was so proud of myself for not having more, but when I told Fla later thinking she'd be proud of me, too, she actually tortured me over that tiny piece for months!  Had I known, I would've had more cheesecake!

   
This is my first selfie ever.  Fla took it on April 29, 2015, after we finished training.  I weighed about 218 lbs. here.

In this photo, taken on May 2, 2015, I weighed 218 lbs.

A friend took this photo of me on July 24, 2015.  I weighed 201 lbs. here. That means I had lost a total of 105 lbs. at this point.  Here I'm wearing a large shirt (down four sizes from 3XL) and pants are a size 16 (down at least five sizes from 24-28). 

Another selfie Fla took of us on August 3, 2015, just after she finished torturing me for 30 minutes.  I weighed 196.8 lbs. here - 110 lbs. lighter and seeing a "1" in front of my weight for the first time in decades!!!

This is Fla torturing me (again) ... long distance.  She went to Palm Springs and had a nice dinner with a friend, replete with wine, champagne, and desert - all the stuff she won't let ME eat! So what did she do? She sent me a photo!  Notice her evil smile?  That's my "warm and fuzzy" Fla!   (August 9, 2015)

This is what losing 115 lbs. looks like!  I wore these pants (size 24) to work for a few years until they became way too tight around mid 2010.  They sat in my closet while I hoped some day I could wear them again.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed that some day they would become elephant pants on me.  In these photos I weigh 191 lbs. - and by the way, I'm wearing pants underneath, too!  Fla took these on September 12, 2015.  Although I've gotten rid of every stitch of clothing several times over during my journey, I kept these to show me how far I've come - and where I never want to be again!

These are the critters I've mentioned so far in my blog:  Mitzi, my mother's dog (German Shepherd mix) that we rescued as a puppy in early 2012 and my beloved, adored Chaos who passed away in December 2014.

"Dramatic Vilma"
Whenever I train with Fla and I groan or collapse onto the floor in a heap of sweat, Fla says, "Now you're being dramatic!"  I keep reminding her that I'm twice her age and fatter than she is so it's harder for me to do some things.  She says, "I don't care.  Chop, chop, let's go."  After one of our training sessions, Fla took this photo of me.  Here's evidence that I was being "dramatic" again.  She sent it to me with the caption, "For your blog!"  (September 19, 2015)

A few months ago I found myself in a sporting goods store looking for boxing gloves.  Once a week Fla has me boxing for cardio.  Your hands sweat a lot in the gloves so I decided to get my own pair and I settled for bright red.  I actually enjoy it although Fla makes fun of me because my left arm (I'm right handed) has very little strength.  She often tells me a 5-year-old kid would hit harder than I can with my left arm.  Oh, well, at least I'm trying!




Now that I'm getting better in spin class (I can actually stay up with the entire class now, including standing up), I went out and bought my first pair of cycling shoes.  Although I was doing okay with my regular sneakers, sometimes my toes were going numb so I decided to invest in some good cycling shoes because I want to be able to do more.  Me, the person who hated bikes.  Me, the person who hated spin.  Me, the person who hated ALL exercise.  I found a cycle shop near me and although I felt out of place in such a store because all the customers in there were buff and heavy duty cyclists, the salesman who helped me (Ulysses at H&S Bicycles on Victory Blvd. in Burbank, California) was fabulous to me!  He sat down and explained everything about cycling shoes, answered all my questions, and made suggestions, too.  He made the entire experience completely enjoyable.  I finally settled on this pair and we'll see how they work out on my next class.  (September 23, 2015)




This was taken at the Italian restaurant where Fla took me for a combined celebration of my birthday and finally being in the 100s for the first time in decades.  I weighed 188 lbs. when the evening began, but I left the restaurant weighing a ton more that's for sure!  (October 21, 2015)

I took these on November 1, 2015, using a self timer after fighting with my tripod and digital camera for over an hour!  I almost gave up but I didn't want to waste my good hairdo and make up.  Here I weigh 185 lbs.  I'm still carrying excess weight from my waist down, but from the waist up, I'm pretty boney.  I have another 25 lbs. to go to reach my goal weight and hopefully I can make it.  I'm going to keep trying!

I included this face comparison on my November 2, 2015, post titled "Best compliment ever:  who are you?"  One of the most surprising reactions I've been getting lately is that people don't recognize me sometimes.  I couldn't understand it until I reviewed old and current photos of myself.  Suddenly, I realized just how much my face has changed:

                   Left photo:               11/01/2015 (185 lbs.)

                   Upper right photo:    06/2011 (about 300 lbs.)

                   Lower right photo:    09/2012 (about 300 lbs.)

  

Here's proof of how strong I'm getting.  This is an exercise I actually love doing because I can lift/pull 130 lbs.!   Considering I never had much upper body strength, it's pretty amazing.  Even Fla couldn't believe it the first time we did this exercise and I kept increasing the weights because I told her it wasn't challenging.  It's a type of arm curl that uses the abs and arm muscles.  I start out laying on my back, knees bent, arms stretched out in front of me while holding the bar.  I pull myself up (the weights pull me up easily), I stop in the position you see in the photos, I bring the bar to my chest, then I stretch out my arms again in front of me, lower my back to the floor momentarily, repeat.  I can do this exercise in 3 sets, 15 repetitions each.  (December 20, 2015)

From a size 22/24 to a size 14!  This is a jeans jacket I wore for years.  Although it was never tight on me, I could only button it.  There was no overlapping the front panels at all and the cuffs didn't go below my wrists.  Look at it now, I can wrap it around myself!   (December 20, 2015.  The shadow taking the photo is my Fla.)

 





Fla moved to New York in January 2016.  This was our last photo together in Los Angeles as my journey with Fla came to an end.  I weighed 175 lbs. here which means I'd lost 131 lbs. total at this point.  (January 8, 2016)

 

When Fla got to New York, she sent me this selfie.  It's one of my favorite photos of her.  I called her "My little Boy George" although she probably doesn't even know who that is. (January 9, 2016)







As I explained in my April 28, 2016, post titled "My new workout look," I've dispensed with my former baggy workout clothes and have been wearing activewear capris pants which are body hugging.  I still like my cotton T-shirts although they're now in a medium size, down from my former 3XL/4XL.  The more splashy the capris pants, the more I like them.  I now have a vast collection of them since these are all I wear nowadays.  Below are photos of a few of them.  These photos were taken between March and April 2016.  My weight fluctuated between 169 lbs. and 177 lbs. in these photos.  Despite the fact that the scale didn't change much, my body continued to shrink nonetheless, proven by dropping clothes sizes, smaller body fat percentages, and smaller measurements, too:

Fla was in Los Angeles for a couple of days in June 2016 and we had dinner.  We hadn't seen each other since she moved to New York five months earlier.  Although my weight remained virtually the same since she left in January (it's fluctuated up and down the same 7 lbs.), I've lost inches, dropped over 2.5 body fat percentage points, and dropped one size.  When Fla moved to New York in January 2016, I was wearing size 12 jeans.  When we had dinner in June 2016, I was wearing size 10 pants.  After dinner Fla took a selfie of us:

 
It's a funny thing, but the more I shrink, the shorter my hair gets!  When I was morbidly obese, I was too embarrassed to wear a short do.  I envisioned the last scene in the movie "Beetlejuice" where he's sitting next to a hunter whose head was shrunken by a voodoo doctor and all you saw was a huge torso with a tiny head on top.  I kept thinking, "If I cut my hair, I'd look like that hunter!"  But now that I'm a fairly "normal" size, my hair keeps getting shorter.  In June 2016, I got the sudden urge to chop off my hair and made a special appointment with my hairdresser.  I took several photos with me of what I had in mind and told him to cut it as short as possible without making me look like a man.  He became excited at using me for his canvas.  He even used clippers in the back where he cut the hair close to the scalp.  Clippers had never been used on my head and I was excited, too.  I just loved it and can't stop playing with it, especially the back.  I told Fla that when I go visit her in New York in the future, I'm going to have the clipped part tinted blue in honor of my blue-haired tormentor!

 

Here's my new toy!  I bought a bicycle in June 2016 and although I feared it'd become an expensive dust collector, I actually ride it to run all my local errands when it's not too hot outside.  Sometimes I clock up to 15 miles a day on it.  After ensuring I could actually ride it more than a block without falling over in utter exhaustion, a friend and I went riding by the beach one day.  This particular friend calls me "Vilma 2.0" because of how much I've changed.  Just 3 years ago she would never have anticipated that I would be the one asking for us to go biking on one of our monthly get togethers.  Who would ever have guessed!  I certainly wouldn't have believe it myself either.   



August 19, 2016, marked the 2nd anniversary of the day I met Fla.  I detail this event, our meeting and subsequent budding connection, in my post "The omens and the blue-haired tormentor."  After we clicked a few months later, she started calling me her personal project, and, as I posted above, in January 2015, I made up a T-shirt that read, "Fla's Personal Project" as a joke.  To wish her a happy 2nd anniversary, I made up this poster board as a big greeting card and texted her this photo.  It still amazes me how much I've changed, evidenced in comparing these two photos. 

As I explained in my October 7, 2016, post titled "Good Lord!  Is that really me?" I came across this photograph in my computer that I didn't even know existed.  A friend took it in June 2008 when we went to the zoo.  When this photograph popped up on my screen recently, it was horrifying to think I lived like that for many years.  I would have been about 300 lbs. here.  The woman in this photograph is smiling, but I know she was unhappy and miserable.  I know life was difficult for her, and that she felt self conscious every time she walked out her front door.  Thankfully, this is the old me, and after a lot of hard work, things have changed a great deal for me.

More photos to follow as I continue on my journey....