I never thought I’d be where I am today. I lived with chronic depression & social anxiety for years. I thought I’d die fat either due to complications from my obesity or due to suicide. But the ego is a liar! The mind is an extremely powerful thing but ultimately we are the ones that choose how we want to feel. If we want to succeed at anything in life then we must first believe that we can. We must believe in ourselves and ignore the self destructive voice in our minds that will try to keep us down. Changing the mindset is #1. Everything else like diet and exercise will fall into place after that. Whether you need to lose weight, gain confidence, start a new career, WHATEVER it is that you want to do, always remember that the only limitations are the ones that you impose upon yourself with your own mind. If anyone’s interested I started a blog. I want to help empower others to take back control of their lives by helping them to change their mindsets, the foods that they eat, etc. It truly is my passion to help others to let go of their egos and become their best selves!

I’m 32 and 6’8” tall. And my leg was so swollen from a few battles with cellulitis.

Each day I move in a direction based on my choices. Each month is a new milestone. Each year I seem to have changed so completely I think I can’t change any more and yet I do.At this point, I truly realize that we are limitless. At any moment we can make a decision to change. No matter how difficult or challenging life is, we must remain steadfast in our aim and keep inching forward.
When I got started I never imagined I’d be where I am today. I just wanted to get my health back and get off my medication. Each door we step through leads to another door and then another. I hope you all keep choosing to grow! To learn to love yourself, take the best care of yourself, and dare to dream and love with your whole heart again

This is my weight loss progress. I went from 300lbs, to 150lbs. A size 24, to a size 8, the picture on the right was my outfit I wore to work today. Absolutely love my body now. I'm almost 40, and I wish I had started to lose weight sooner.

I lost 133lbs and have kept it off for 7 years by living a low carb lifestyle! Finally decided to share a before and after with the world! I’m 19 in the picture on the left. The picture on the right is a solo portrait from my engagement pictures a few months ago! (I’m 29 now).

I used to wear size 68” waist dress pants (currently wear 32”-34” depending on the cut), and went from wearing a size 7XLT shirt to wearing Small to Mediums. No surgery, or fad diets, just utilized exercise, and watched my calories in and calories out while making healthier food choices.

Have the courage to step outside the box and challenge yourself to change. It doesn’t matter how small or how big your goals are, if you taken the first step, then you’ve already won!

I spent 10 years living in depression, fail marriage and so on. But I have changed, if you're going through something just keep going, if a man like me did it I'm sure you can do it too.

Cuba 3 years ago and Cuba last week.

1. It took roughly two years for me to get down to the weight I'm at now, also I still have about 30-40 lbs to go until I'm happy.
2. Yes, I, unfortunately, have a ton of loose skin and that's just the nature of losing this much weight. It has gone down some as I continue to weight train and eat right but since the amount of weight I lost is so great it will have to be surgically addressed to completely remove it.
3 . In order to begin losing the weight I cut out all carbs and most dairy and stuck to just proteins and veggies and fruits. I ate about 8 small meals a day ( 4 oz of meat with about 1 cup of what ever veggie I felt like, usually brussel sprouts or broccoli or green beans were a favorite) I cut out all sugary drinks like sodas and juices and I don't drink alcohol and stick to water which I drink about 110+ oz through out my day. I had to lose 20 lbs before I ended up electing to get Gastric Sleeve surgery. For working out, I go to the gym twice a day 5 days a week. I go to the gym every day at 6:30am for an hour spin class at my local gym. Then I go home and go about my day and go back to the gym around 8:30pm and weight train. Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays I work arms, back and core. Thursdays and Tuesdays I do legs and butt. I give myself one cheat day a month but even then it's usually only some frozen yogurt or chocolate. I also don't go over board on my cheat day. Now I know cutting out carbs forever is unrealistic and once I reached what I thought was a healthy weight I had started slowly introducing small amounts of carbs back into my diet like sweet potato and quinoa and whole grain rice.
4. Yes in the 2 years it took me to lose the weight, I dyed my hair. Shocking, I know.

I told my parents that I was going to loose the weight and they bought me this awesome shirt that I still keep. It was a little mean but it made me laugh. " exercise?" " I thought you said extra fries! " . I told them I was going to hit 200 pounds. And I did. But this was the 8th or so time I had told them and like the boy who cried wolf nobody believed me. Not even me. I struggled with mental conditions. PTSD from things I saw at a young age that I can only hope all of you don't in your entire life... depression, anxiety, panic attacks, And to cope with that. I started binge eating. I started to completely detach myself from my weight. And from my life... and on 10/21/18. I plotted to take my own life. A friend of mine said something in passing to me that day before I got off work. That completely changed how I thought of myself. I thought I was a burden. Useless. Irredeemable. And he told me something that woke me up a bit... he told me I mattered. I told him nothing mattered and that I wouldn't be there tomorrow. And he said if i quit my job that he would find me at my new job and just drag me back here. That he would kidnap me if he had to. Drag me back in here with a blindfold and handcuffs, and chain me to the kitchen Because he didn't think he could do it without me. This was the first time in my life... I felt like I really had a reason to live. I had a friend. So... I didn't "quit my job" that night.
This is me today. It's just a selfie but you can see it in my face... Today is the day I made it to 200. I didn't do this to get fake internet points. I wanted to live a longer healthier life.... towards about January of twenty nineteen I started loosing weight. I wanted desperately to be somebody else. To not look in the mirror and hate what I saw. I don't hate what I see as anymore. And not because I look perfect either. But because I have found happiness, and have learned to if even a little... love myself. And now I want to if nothing else, convince you that you can too. And that even if you feel like you can't, or that it's not going to be the near fairytale ending that i got. Or that it's to late... That you can. I turned my life around, i was a loner. Maybe two childhood friends worth a dam. And in the end. When I was at my lowest, I had pushed them all away. Today I can proudly say I have more support in my life than ever before. I have like six friends... typing that seems surreal, because even now it seems like a impossible feat to have six people that care about me in any capacity. And two people that not only are my best friends, But my motivation in some ways. One of them used to be an addict. And a few days ago is 3 years clean. The other is two years clean. I'm proud of them both. They taught me a lot about life. They don't know about my past but hearing things from their point of view, while things were definitely worse on their end that wasn't all I took from that. They told me About overcoming hardships that I've never even dreamed of. They told me their stories, their dreams. The reasons they fight. Their inspirations.. I figured if they can come back from that, and get back to a normal healthy life. Even somewhat free of the mental burdens of their pasts. Into a world that welcomes them. Then I can come back from this. I've lived more since then.they know I was looking forward to hit this milestone. And has definitely improved my self confidence talking to them about my issues, I can go to a party and actually have fun, I would love to say that I don't still feel self conscious but I do... but its different. It's not debilitating anymore. I can function. I can take my shirt off and while there's still some fat and excess skin... I can still feel comfortable in my own skin enough to be shirtless. I can dance!!! I can fucking dance!!! I haven't ever been this happy to do something so mundane. ... happy... that word... it means so much to me, because it wasn't something i thought i would ever be again. And I am. I'm crying as I write this. Because I really am happy. I hit rock bottom. And the only way I could go was up.

No cheats just been eating the sheet. This dress has been in my closet and my secret goal for more than 15 years. Don’t give up on yourself. You can do it!!! Nothing in the world tastes as good as this dress feels?!

I was 460 lbs and she was 374 lbs. Now I'm 205 and she's 230. A year and a half later. My wife and I had gastric bypass which really helped “get us going”. That weight loss felt great at first but fell off hard at 6 months. Then we worked hard on eating 1 gram of protein for every 1 gram of carb. With a stomach this small that meant always monitoring our carbs and as a result, over the next year we continued to drop.

Top pic - 2018 my heaviest 764 pounds. Bottom - 2020 289 pounds. 21 months 475 pounds lost by Calorie Counting (CICO), walking and swimming. A rare trip to Chick Fil A (there aren’t any around me...thankfully lol).

It took 2 years - but they flew by! I went from 336 to 158 lbs. I was fortunate that my only health concern at that time was high cholesterol, which has completely resolved with weight loss. I went from a size 24/26 down to a 10!

One thing that hasn’t changed between now and when I started my weight loss journey is that face I make trying to squeeze in those last few reps haha. Another thing though is my work ethic and persistence. Through all the success and failure I encounter throughout my journey I always try my best to move forward and keep grinding.
Lost more weight or progressed faster than you were expecting one week? Great! Let’s keep working. Gained weight or fell off track on your diet and/or exercise? That’s alright. It happens. Get back up and keep working. There’s nothing wrong with rewarding yourself when you’re doing good or better than expected, but don’t let rewarding yourself turn into making bad decisions that may set you back since you are ahead or feel you deserve it.
Same goes for when you aren’t doing so great. Don’t let that turn into more poor choices but rather let it give you more purpose to get back on track and stay focused. Easier said than done but those are 2 things that you will definitely want to follow to stay on the right path in the long run.

I never had a weight problem until I reached adulthood. I struggled with losing weight for nearly a decade. After continuing to have limited results with popular diets and fads, I started doing research into bariatric surgery in 2013.
I started out with watching a lot of videos online from people who had the surgery. Many of them stated that the “mind games” are the hardest to overcome after surgery. I decided to start seeing a counselor who specialized in food addiction in hopes that he’d be able to give me tools and tips on how to overcome head hunger. I continued to see my counselor for the next four years while also continuing to research everything I could about the surgery. During that time I made a lot of progress and was starting to learn how to love myself again. He and I both felt that I was as ready as I could ever be to finally have bariatric surgery.
I went to my local hospital and attended a few seminars about the surgery. After meeting with a surgeon, he also believed that I would benefit from the surgery so he submitted a request to our insurance to see if they’d cover it. And of course they didn’t. I was shattered. I was 5’1″, 230 pounds, pre-diabetic, and my blood pressure was steadily rising as my weight increased. My local hospital submitted the request 2 more additional times to try and push it through, but they had no luck. I thought that this was the end of the road for me because I’d never be able to pay over $25,000 for the cash price in town. I, then, decided to try and research the cash price for the surgery in every other state that I could. Time after time, the price was too high and I couldn’t afford it. So, I gave up.
A few months went by and I had a friend tell me that she heard of a surgical procedure that they do in Mexico. She said they insert some sort of device into your arm and added me to a group on Facebook. Intrigued, I started to do some research. Turns out that she had added me to a different bariatric center support page. And it wasn’t a device that was inserted, it was actually “the sleeve” surgery that she didn’t quite understand. I followed the page for a few months and saw some positive reviews and some negative ones. But something didn’t feel right about that center so I stopped following the page.
In October 2016, I suddenly lost my father in law to a massive heart attack. His death wasn’t expected at all and hurt us terribly. He was young. Even though losing him was very painful, I do believe that his passing is what got me the most serious about my surgery. What would it be like for me in 20 years if I didn’t take care of myself now? Would I leave my kids behind without a mother? Then I thought to myself, “Maybe there IS a good surgeon in Mexico?”And that’s when I spent the next 6 months researching as many surgeons in Tijuana as I could. I kept hearing some really amazing things about one doctor in particular. And of course, his name was Dr. Ariel Ortiz. I focused my research on him and couldn’t find anything negative about him. That’s when I went to my primary care physician and told her that I was considering going to Mexico for my surgery. Obviously, she was reluctant but she promised me that she’d research Dr. Ortiz for me and let me know if there was anything I should be concerned about. A few days later she called me and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s the real deal. From what I can tell, he’s a great surgeon. I’ll support you if you choose him.” And that’s what sealed the deal for me.
I had to figure out a way to pay for my surgery. I’m not a wealthy woman, but I was determined to find a way to make this happen. My husband is extremely supportive of my health, so we decided to sell our home and use the equity to pay for my surgery. We were committed to making this life change and turn our lives into a more positive direction. Finally, after researching this surgery for the past four years, I was able to walk into the Obesity Control Center and have the vertical sleeve gastrectomy performed by Dr. Ariel Ortiz and Dr. Arturo Martinez on June 26, 2017. This is the day that I started my life as a new woman. I followed my discharge instructions to the letter. I worked hard and focused on making healthy choices for myself and my family. I work hard every single day to be the best that I can be and to support my body in a nurturing way. In a little over 7 months, I lost almost 100 pounds. I am currently 121 pounds (almost 3 years post-op) and feel absolutely incredible. I went from a size 3x to a size small or extra small. I am now able to walk up a flight of stairs without struggling to breathe. I can play with my kids at activity centers. I can touch my toes and wear leggings with boots that are not wide-calf. I can go into a dressing room at any store and pick anything off of a shelf and know that it’ll fit and look good. This is just the beginning of the list of benefits that this tool has given me.

First of all i want to say thank you to all of you. I did not expect this to get this kind of attention and all of you were so nice and genuinely supportive. To the people who wanted to know my "method" i make this post, or to whomever want to know i suppose.
Before i started i was eating VERY unhealthy and that is not something that is easily broken, at least not for me. I was chugging down 1-2 liters of cola and crisps, candy food, every single day. i knew i needed to start counting calories because all the fad diets had not worked before. They do work if you stick to them but it is my belief that the diet that is right is the one that you stick too, however crazy. Now with that said.
In the beginning i ate burgers, for two weeks straight. two slices of toast, 90g hamburger, lettuce, egg and dressing. They were about 600-700 calories each depending on what dressing i used. I eat one of those two times each day at 15.00 and 20.00. At the time i also ate a small breakfast to sate me. I no longer do. I was used to greasy food therefor i ate greasy food just WAY less.
I have a lot of recipes that i have made since then that keep within 600 calories in one meal.
Its very important that you eat the same time every day. When the body is used to get food certain times it releases a hunger hormone. This is what makes you get hungry and if you ignore this and be hungry for a while that hunger goes away in about two hours or so. Its hard those tho hours but after you go back to normal kinda. So what i wanted to teach my body is to be hungry only those two hours a day. 15.00 and 20.00.
It was very challenging but i managed to succeed in this and that made it so much easier.
I also made way more filling recipes than the burgers such as wraps, salads and more. I am careful about nutrients in my food, since i eat so few calories i need to make the calories count so my body works properly and does not go into weird cravings mode.
Training:
I do not train like crazy. First of all its very hard when you are this heavy and i cant find the motivation all the time. I have a rule tho. Always 30 minutes at least of being active. Most times this is a walk and it usually is more but if i have just sat on my ass an entire day i need to go for a walk before i go to sleep.
Regular sleep is also important.
Some rules that i follow:
Never eat over 1200 calories each day unless you "saved up" calories from the day before.
NEVER drink calories, only drink water. Calories in drinks will not sate you but you will get fat.
Always be active every day for at least 30 minutes.
Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night at the bare minimum.
You don't have to go as low in calories as i do but be prepared that it might go slower.
Find things you like to eat that you can eat in relatively big amounts without going over your calories. Its crucial that you look forward to your meals.
And if you want some weeks to go faster just train more but don't reduce the calorie intake too much because that increases the chances of you falling into bad habits again and binge eating.
And i have already said it but STICKING to it is the most important thing and if you would eat bad one day you need to go back into eating healthy the next day so you don't give up.
Hopefully you found this to not be a total waste of time. Thank you for your support again and go get em you beautiful beast you!

Purple shirt: an outfit I wore 3 years ago. Black shirt: what I am wearing today. From a 4X to an XS shirt, a size 30 jean to a 4. ~180 pounds gone since January 2016.