A picture is worth....

I promised some pictures, so here we go.
Coming up are my "before" shots.  I am willing to disclose a lot, but I am not getting in my underwear and putting it up online.  I don't like looking at myself in my underwear now and so I doubt anyone else wants to see it.  But you need solid "before" photos if you are going to a)stay motivated and b) really see the change at the end of the experiment.  So I picked a dress I wore to a high school dance (I looked and looked for the pictures from that dance but couldn't find them. What I did find is evidence of how ABSURD my high school body issues were.  I always thought I was so big and so fat.  It didn't help that I went to a wealthy private school in the South where we wore short skirts or that I chose to play volleyball, even though I was 5'7' and stocky, while everyone else was....well here's a picture (I'm the fifth one from the left, top row):

Here's a picture of me, junior year of high school, when I remember feeling like a "hoss" compared to the other girls I was going to the dance with:

Anyhoo, so I chose a dress that would be a good goal to get to and that would show off all my...curves? Lumps?  So here, without further ado, are the before shots:

You might be thinking, "Kate, a dress from high school? That is a bit unrealistic for most anyone" (or you might be thinking "If she thought she was a hoss back then....") I have some counterpoints to that argument:
1) I went through puberty EARLY and my body stopped changing around age 15.  I wore this dress when I was 17.
2) Study after study says that if you were a healthy weight and size when you graduated high school, you should stay as close to that weight as possible to remain healthy throughout your life.  I can't remember the stat, but its something like people put on an average of around 1.5 lbs a year after high school.
3) A couple years ago, I wore a dress from that same year in high school.  Here is what I looked like recently (disregard the drunk face--THAT is definitely different from high school): 

It can be done.  Maybe not in the three months I have set aside right now, but eventually I'll get back there.  The three month limit is just to have a determined date to measure myself against.  If I can change my habits for three months, I'm pretty sure I'll change them for the long term.

Someone wrote me and asked, "well if you liked the Paleo Diet so much, and it worked so well, how come you got so big, and why won't you just slip back away from eating right?"  You don't have to get as big as I did when you get pregnant, I probably could've held off about 10 lbs.  But seriously, it is one of the only times in your life as a woman where you don't have to worry about what you eat.
*ok that is not entirely true.  You can't go completely crazyballs with food when you are pregnant because there is a very real threat of developing gestational diabetes, which is very bad.  Also, gaining too much weight makes being pregnant that much more uncomfortable.
Also, the Paleo Diet restricts diary and most wheat products, and I didn't want to restrict the type of food my baby could be exposed to; cause who knows what can cause food allergies?  So I made a conscientious decision to not be restrictive and enjoy the only time in a woman's life when people are delighted at the size of your belly (and my boobs, holy hell).  Picture: