10 things that happend when I lost 70lbs. The good and bad.

Over the course of a year I went from 250 pounds to 176 pounds. I thought life was going to be so much better once I had lost the weight. Boy oh boy was I wrong. While there is no doubt there are many positives to getting rid of some weight, there many unexpected negatives that have been hard to deal with.

I'm going to list the negatives first and then the positives so this post ends on a good note :D

1. The world is a cold place. When I was larger, the colder times of the year really didn't bother me very much. I never thought about how cold it was. Now, I feel like I'm freezing all the time! In fact, yesterday I took two showers just to stay warm!

2. Sitting. I use to be able to sit for hours on end playing videogames or watching TV. Now I can hardly sit for an hour before my butt starts to hurt. Less cushioning down there.

3. I figured out I have clinical depression. When I was larger I would mask my negative feelings and thoughts with food. Emotional eating. Food made me happy and I didn't really realize how bad of a mental state I was in.

4. I developed body image issues that I still deal with. I'll look in the mirror and see little things about my body that I don't like while no one else notices them. I have gotten better at this but it sometimes still creeps its way back into my mind. I still do not feel comfortable with taking my shirt off when other people are around even though I have nothing to worry about.

5. My relationship with food got worse and then better. For a while I was always thinking about food. When my next meal will be, what I will eat, how much I will eat, will it be satisfying. The thought process never ended. I don't have as many problems with this now but sometimes it does come back.

6. People now treat me differently. This is both a positive and negative. The positive is that it helped my mental state. The negative is that I really hate why the treat me better. It's really sad that we live in a world where we automatically treat people differently because of their size.

7. Clothes fit better! No more shopping for husky pants. I could actually buy normal clothes. The only problem now is being 6' 2" nothing is long enough. The clothing industry assume since you're tall you must be large. Wrong!

8. My numbers at the doctors office are amazing. My resting pulse is normally around 60 and my blood pressure is always way below the recommended.

9. I sleep much better. This is probably more from training for marathons and being more active but hey, sleep is good!

10. I changed my profession. I got my associates degree in Computer and Information Technology and worked full time in IT for about 2 years. I've now gone back to school to get my bachelors in Health Science. The effect this has had on my mental state is amazing. While I still love working on computers an building them, I learned it was more of a hobby than a profession.

There they are. The good, bad and ugly.