Photos

Then and Now

For those who like to cut to the chase, here's the ubiquitous Before and After photos.

Left:  December 2000 - 159.2 kilos, size 28 (351lb, US 26)
Right:  August 2006 - 79.6 kilos, size 14 (175.5lb, US 12)

Sorry about all the watermarks - my photos keep getting stolen by dodgy people to flog their highly questionable diet products. If you see my ginger gob on another website, testifying my love for green tea supplements or acai berries - it ain't me!

Scroll down for more progress pictures throughout the past seven years.

Happy birthday 1998

These were taken at my 21st birthday party in Australia, November 1998.

Left and Right:  November 1998 - many kilos, size 24 (US 22)

For some the photos may have been a signal to put down the chocolate, but I continued my unhealthy ways for another two years.

December 2000 and April 2001

On the left we have my fattest photo. I cleverly hid half my body behind my sister, so it's hard to get a true sense of my dimensions. I remember the size 26 trousers I was wearing were almost threadbare in from where my thighs rubbed together.

My lard-busting mission would not start for another six weeks, and in that time I stacked on a few more kilograms of festive cheer to wind up a whisker shy of 160 kilos (351lb).

When I first posted a photo on my blog I was painfully self-conscious and thought it best to hide my face behind a Gaussian blur. When I posted the second photo five months later, I decided to keep the pixellated veil. I'd lost about 25 kilos and was having a bloody bad hair day by the looks of it.       

   
Left:  December 2000 - 159.2 kilos, size 28 (351lb, US 26)
Right:  April 2001 - 135 kilos, size 24 (291lb, US 22)

August 2001 and December 2001

On the left I'm about 128 kilos (280lb) - 32 kilos/70lb gone. The chins were slightly smaller and there was the faintest hint of shape emerging. I was euphoric coz I'd just squeezed into size 22 pants for the first time in years. Four months later on the right, I celebrated a size 20 skirt from the Fat Shop, weighing in at around 116 kilos.

    
Left:  August 2001 - 128 kilos, size 22/24 (280lb, US 20/22)
Right:  December 2001 - 116 kilos, size 14 (256lb, US 18/20)

March 2002 and August 2003

Behold, a neck!

The left is about 114 kilos, the right about 98 kilos. At the time I was crushed that I'd only lost 16 kilos in that 17-month stretch. But of that time, there was a six-month+ period where I had a severe bout of depression, completely fell off the wagon, rediscovered Cadbury's and regained almost twenty kilos.

By the time we get to the August 2003 picture, I'd managed to bounce back and had also bounced to the other side of the world, to live in bonny Scotland!

If you look closely, the neck is smaller in the second picture, so are the old boobs and arms and stomach. If my jeans weren't so baggy, (I keep expecting to see a baby joey poke out of that pouch)  you'd be able to tell the legs had shrunk a bit too - the August 2003 jeans are actually two sizes smaller than the March 2002 jeans. They were also the first pair I'd bought in eight years that weren't from a Fat Shop!

Left:  March 2002 - 114 kilos, size 20 (251lb, US 18)
Right:  August 2003 - 98 kilos, size 18 (216lb, US 16)

Intermission!

There's no pictures from 2004 as I spent the year working two jobs, traipsing round Europe, falling in lurve, and alternating frantic exercise with long periods of sitting on my arse. The overall result was that I maintained my loss, woohoo!

June 2005 and August 2006

The first photo was taken for Grazia magazine in June 2005. Once my mug had been in print there was little point in hiding the eyes anymore!

June 2005 - 85 kilos, size 16 (187lb, US 14)

Below it's August 2006, sadly without the benefit of a professional photographer and hair/make-up artist! That mysterious blue growth extending from my thigh is Valentino, my beloved bike.

I was down another five kilos (11lb) down and feeling fab. I later decided that I was happy with this size, and that's where I've been ever since.

August 2006 - 79.6 kilos, size 14 (175.5lb, US 12)

Haphazardly Ever After

If you've got a hankering for more recent photos, there's quite a few floating about on my Flickr page. I was also tarted up to the max for a photo shoot in UK ELLE magazine.

BONUS FEATURE! Here are some delightful pictures of me climbing into one leg of my size 26 Old Fat Jeans! They were taken during a trip back to Australia in October 2005.

You can also see me in motion on CBS The Early Show, pimping my book and singing the praises of weight loss blogging.