What made me do it? God, I wrote and deleted this answer five times with five different answers before realizing that fuck, it's just a lot of things. I look better, for one. I can walk and ride my bike a lot easier, which were things I liked doing when I was overweight but were a lot harder.

And like, some ridiculously shallow and ridiculous shit, like: I love Diet Pepsi but it's always kind of embarrassing to drink diet soda when you're overweight. Yes I know drinking Diet Soda isn't going to make a difference when I'm using it to wash down a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, I'm not stupid. I want the diet soda because I grew up drinking it (lol at my shitty dad) so it's what a soda is to me, I like it. And as a thin person I can just enjoy my damn diet soda, but when I was overweight I worried too much about what other people thought I was thinking about it.

Same with crushing pizza or whatever when I'm drunk. When a chubby girl does that, people think it's gross. When a thin girl does it it's whatever.

People are nicer to me as a slim woman than they were when I was chubby. It's sad but true. I'm still the same person, in fact I'm actually probably less interesting and funny now because more of my brainspace is taken up with calorie counts and food obsession. One of my hobbies and most impressive skills is cooking/baking/food in general, but I had to really rein in how flexible I am with all that in exchange for a smaller body, which is something I still feel conflicted about.

As to how did it, the only way you can really do it: I ate fewer calories than I burned for a long time. I accomplished it by strict calorie counting. I didn't cut out all "bad foods" or whatever because let's be realistic about the rest of my fucking life, right? I still love Taco Bell and beer, I just enjoy it in much much smaller amounts than I used to. It was tough, but worth it. I lost forty pounds in about six months.