I was overweight for most of my adult life... actually I should say morbidly obese. I never dreamed that I could lose weight and maintain the weight loss for about two and a half years so far. After losing the weight, I've come to this conclusion: losing weight is the easy part!
This is just my opinion, of course, everyone is different. I have a much easier time shedding the weight than bulking up. The muscles are developing and my abs are tightening further, but still, muscle seems to come a lot easier to others.
If your goal is to lose weight, it seems simple enough... make sure you eat less calories than you burn. If it's so easy, why did it take me so long to get into shape?
I think is because I always procrastinated. I knew being obese wasn't healthy. I put off going to a doctor for years, not wanting to hear how unhealthy it really was. By avoiding the doctor, I denied how heavy I had become. I even avoided the scale to not see the numbers hit over 350 pounds.
Once you hear the news that you're pre-hypertensive, it makes you realize you need to make changes, at least it was the case for me. I have become a healthy eater, adapting a diet that involves lots of veggies and fruits, nuts and seeds, peanut butter and almond butter, turkey and Greek yogurt. I've been eating every couple hours for the past couple years and it works for me.
Muscle building and skin tightening take time. I'm happy with the results so far and will keep going. I do have lots of protein (most vegetable based) and muscle growth is happening, probably at a slower rate than those that have whey protein. But I don't have the digestive problems that I had when I tried whey, so I'm not complaining.
Here are some updated photos and hopefully you can see the progress!