Thanks everyone. yes definitely keeping this hairstyle and color around for at least the next little while

I do feel so much better. I have so much more energy and can do a lot more physical acitivity before I feel like I'm about to die lol. I can run around at the park and climb the monkey bars with Hannah a lot more than I could before.

Thanks again everyone. It's actually been a lot easier than I thought... it was getting the right motivation to do it and sticking with it. I'd tried and failed many times before this but this time it wasn't a "Oh I should really lose some weight I guess" sort of thing... it was "I NEED to lose this weight or it's going to kill me one day and I want to be around for a long time" sort of thing. It wasn't an "I want" it was an "I NEED" and that made all the difference for the level of success I've had and it's really been a lot easier than I thought.

Portion control is the BIGGEST thing for me. I needed to get that under control and work on not mindlessly snacking all night every night. So we started a program online at sparkpeople.com and it's basically counting calories but this website keeps track of them for you so you know just where you are in your calorie goal for the day and now I don't put any food in my mouth without thinking about it first and thinking "hmmm do I have room in my calories today for this" or "am I really hungry or do I just want to snack" if I just want to snack I'll grab some celery and fat free ranch and that will satisfy the urge the just snack because I get that crunch that I want. Now that we've been doing it for a while we don't use the nutrition tracker anymore and we don't count every calorie anymore... n ow we just have a good idea of how much is in everything we eat and how much of that we can eat each day. So now it's just part of daily life.