Wedding Madness and New Goals

Well kids it's been awhile since I posted any updates so hopefully this one makes up for it. 

I am not sure if I mentioned this in any of my first posts but right before I started this program I went wedding dress shopping. I was at my heaviest and definitely dreading the whole trying on dresses experience. Thankfully the staff at the bridal salon I went to (Hope's Bridal) was so amazing and had plenty for me to try on and really made me feel comfortable. It only took 5 dresses before I found "the one." I was the first person to try this dress on and it was a brand new designer to the US from Australia. I kid you not when I say that this dress fit me like a glove. Even the owner came up and looked at it and said, "It is like it was made just for you." Now if that is not a sign I don't know what is. The other great part is that I would have been happy wearing that dress even if I didn't lose any weight and that was a very been thing to me since I didn't know how successful this program would be.

I had my mom take a picture of me in the dress so we could use it as another way of seeing progress since you do in fact try on the dress multiple times before it's finished. 

So this was at the end of April:

If you've been following from the beginning you will remember that I spent my first month of the program down in Missouri with my brother and his fiance to help me through and give me that extra support and at the end of that month I had lost 11 pounds and 12 inches. Shortly after arriving back in Iowa I went back to the bridal salon to try the dress on again to see if there would be an issue with alterations. 

This is a picture from the beginning of June:

I was amazed at how big the dress was on me. I actually had to have someone hold the dress together in this picture because it just kind of hung on me and it was laced up tight. Needless to say you could say I was really happy with my progress.

Fast forward to end of August and my first official fitting for alterations. At this point I knew that I had to stop with the major weight loss because once the dress is altered it get's expensive and time consuming to continue to alter it. At this point though I was down 36 pounds and 32 inches (took 4 months) and pretty pleased with that. 

Here are pictures from that day:

At this point I could really see and feel a difference in the dress but it wasn't until Shelby (my brother's fiance) sent me this picture that I put it all together and had that wow moment.

So there we have it. The wedding of course was amazing and Blair and I had a great time. I am still in awe of how many people came from all over the world to celebrate with us we are truly blessed with a great group of friends and family. 

What's next you might be asking? Well after my hiatus from the program I am gearing up to jump back into things on Monday. 

My new goal is to lose 45 pounds by January 18. That's a goal of a loss of 3 pounds a week for the next 15 weeks. It's going to be tough but it's going to be so worth it. If I do reach my goal I will be at 179 pounds just in time for our trip to New Zealand. I don't promise that the posts will be pretty these next few months but hopefully they will be amusing and maybe  even inspiring. LET'S DO THIS!!