Screw Jenny Craig!!

Since my post on Facebook about my weight loss (61 lbs in 4 1/2 months), I've been congratulated & questioned (even warned!) But the 2 things that I've been asked the most are:
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.........#1. How did you do it?
.........#2. Do you have pictures?
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Well... the pictures part is easy because I've been keeping a journal & putting my before/after pics in it has been a fun part of it! The "how" part is not so easy because I have a nearly 200 page journal chronicling "how" I did it. However, in a recent email to a friend, I gave her the short version of 200 pages without any specifics. It's probably exactly what everyone's already heard before but was hoping that I was going to say I discovered a magic pill (I know that until I started dieting, that's what I was waiting for!).
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So below are thumbnails to some of my before/after pics. There will undoubtedly be more to come! And as for "how", here is what I said in the email to my bud:
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"Losing weight is 90% diet & 10% exercise. You can work-out all day long but not lose a lb if your diet sucks. I haven’t exercised ONCE since starting & I’ve lost over 60 lbs. It’s all about food quantity & quality. To LOSE weight, you HAVE to eat less... or “diet”. To maintain your weight without gaining you have to have a good diet. That word is so subjective, don’t you think? In the beginning I ate less, or “dieted”, in order to lose the lbs. Over time I began to make small changes to WHAT I ate in order to make it easier to transition to a day-to-day (for-the-rest-of-my-life) healthful diet when I stop “dieting”. What I’ve learned along the way (research, trail & error, etc) has been astounding!"
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>> In the 1st pic (purple) I ended up wearing the exact same outfit on both of my little girls' birthdays! This was totally by accident but you can already see the difference between the 2.
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>> The 2nd pic was staged... @ least the second pic of the 2nd pic (swirly shirt). I was @ the zoo on the left, then I grabbed the same clothes I wore that day & went in the backyard, had my hubby position me & took the one on the right.
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>> For the 3rd & 4th pics (solid black shirt) the left side is Xmas day & the right side shows me in the 1st outfit I've bought in a "normal" store (i.e. NOT a Lane Bryant or other fat store). I then posed in my new outfit & felt the comparisons were pretty good... so there they are.
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