A Story of Inspiration.

I've been waiting since almost the first day of starting this blog to write the post I will write tonight. I hope you'll humor me for a few minutes as I tell you about someone else's story... a story that was part of the big reason I decided to start this journey for myself.

Through the magic of Facebook, I recently rediscovered a woman I was friends with in college, whom I met in the first month of my freshman year. Lisa, a sophomore at the time, was someone I liked instantly. She was very smart, very funny, and just plain likable from the get go. We eventually faded, as lots of friendships in college do, and, though I'd thought of her from time to time in the past many many years, it was only when I saw a picture of another friend, tagged in an album of Lisa's, that I was reminded of her.

I was curious what she was up to, and looked through the album on FB, and then googled a bit more. I found that Lisa has a blog. A blog about weight loss. She was heavy in college, and I guess she'd stayed heavy after college, too. Apparently, as her 40th birthday loomed, 18 months ahead of her, she decided to launch a massive campaign: lose 100 pounds before her 40th birthday. And she blogged weekly about it, in what seems to be a nationally syndicated column.

Now, I'm pretty sure Lisa would say that losing 100 pound by her 40th birthday would be "a good start". It's not her ultimate goal, but it was an amazing feat to take on. I read through her weekly blog, learned a few things about how to approach my own plan, and know that I'll continue to revisit it at I need more motivation, or tricks and tips to get through the months. But ultimately, what it gave me the most was an example of someone who struggles and chose to make her health and weight loss a priority, even if it took a sensible amount of time to do it.

Well, today is her 40th birthday. And though a week ago, she still had 3 pounds to go, she worked hard to make sure her last weigh in was a great one, and it was. She lost 104 pounds in 18 months! Even if she didn't hit 100 pounds, she would not have been any less of an inspiration to me, nor would she have felt like a failure. But I'm still very excited for her and I'm happy to write about her and her accomplishment today.

If you're interested in checking out her story: Results Not Typical


Thanks for reading!