You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
- Margaret Thatcher

2011 was a year of ups and downs for me, in terms of weight loss and health. I had lost quite a bit of weight between August and December 2010 when I started my first full-time job after university in mid-January. After that, I quickly gained back all the weight I had lost and a few kilos on top of that.

In June, I found out that I had PCOS – explaining all the symptoms I had been experiencing since I went off birth control in October 2010 (a very irregular cycle, acne). About a month after finding out about the PCOS, I was also diagnosed with insulin resistance. While I knew I was to blame for most of my weight gain, i.e., my lack of activity and eating too much junk food at work and at home, the insulin resistance must’ve played a role as well.

August is when I everything changed. I started taking Metformin, and I decided that if I was going to take a medication like that, I would do my best that I wouldn’t have to take it for long. I decided to try something new and signed up for MyFitnessPal. Probably one of the best decisions I made in 2011. At the end of August, I canceled my Weight Watchers Online subscription, and I never looked back.

Since August, I have been using MyFitnessPal to count calories, journal my food and my exercise. And I’ve made a few new friends too. I have come to really appreciate the support network that MFP, or rather other MFP members, provide and I love the clean interface of both the MFP website and the iPhone app.

I also had two appointments with a nutritionist in the fall. She gave me some very helpful tips and also reassured me that I was already doing very well. My 3-month check-up, roughly three months after I got my RI diagnosis and started taking the Metformin, went very well, and I got praised by my endocrinologist for having lost so much weight already.

It’s been nearly five months since I joined MFP and started exercising regularly again. Five months since I turned my life around.

On August 3, I weighed 97.4 kg. Probably my highest weight of all times. Since then, I’ve lost 19 kg – putting me at 78.4 kg at my most recent weigh-in this morning, my lowest weight of recent years.

At some point in the fall, I set myself a goal of getting to under 80 kg by the end of the year. I made it. At my last weigh-in of 2011, I weighed 78.6 kg.

I also started running again and have made huge progress since then. I started fresh with Couch to 5K in August and ran a 5k race in October. Unlike all the other times I had done C25K, I didn’t stop running, though, when I finished the program this time, but I kept running following a 10K plan by Jane Wake. Two months later, I ran my first 10K (race) ever.

Now that 2012 has begun, I can say that 2011 was a really successful year for me. After a rough patch – that lasted 7 months, hah – I turned it all around and I can honestly say that I am in a much better place now, in terms of weight, fitness, physical and mental health.

Here’s to continuing on this journey and making 2012 even better!