300+lbs & need to lose

groove2rude

Hey hey, everyone.

I'm back on MFP after a 8 month hiatus, but new to the forums.
I'm 34 and I've always been a big dude. I'm 6'1 at 337 lbs and my immediate goal is to crack the 300lbs barrier by the end of the year. Ultimately, I want to get down to 275lbs which was my lowest from about 10 years ago.. and keep on lowering it!

Last year I was on a combination of Weight Watchers at work and used MFP and I lost 18 lbs by tracking my calories and drinking water without much exercising. This year, I plan to resume tracking & water consumption and include walking for 30/min a day, at least 3 time a week. That should work out as we go on family walks at my son's school when we pick him up. My wife is also determined to lose weight and she is also using MFP. My plan is to keep each other in-check by sharing our recipes and meals with her as MFP friends, since I'm the one that's more consistent with logging calories and meal/recipe creation.

My reasons for weight-loss are for health improvement and also for my son. I've come to the realization that I cannot (will not) have my son follow my bad habits and suffer a lack of activity due to his obese dad. He's turning 6 and there's plenty of activities that I want to do with him where I'll need my stamina and mobility. There's also the obvious benefits of health improvement.. I'm tired of knee & back pain and medical issues due to weight & eating habits. I had surgery 2 years ago due to emergency diverticulosis complications.. and that's something I didn't even know was a thing or something I had! Colon resection surgery at 33 is unheard of by the doctors that helped me.. and my crappy eating habits (lack of fiber) are to blame.

I'm posting for accountability purposes and I'm also looking for any encouragement, success stories and new friends to make during the journey. Thanks and good luck in your own endeavors!

Matt

asyk805

Welcome back Matt! Good luck to you and your wife on your journey.

rankinsect

Good luck! I started in early summer of 2015 at 320 lb, and rang in the new year of 2016 at 250 lb

You can definitely do it, and your goal of 37 pounds in the first year is definitely very achievable - in fact if you track everything you can probably lose quite a bit more than that; the more obese you are, the faster you can lose it without killing yourself or losing a lot of muscle.

What I mainly did to be successful is pre-plan my meals the night before, and then just eat what's in the plan. I leave a few hundred calories for snacks that I eat on the day of, but my goal is to come in just under my calorie limit each day, and be as consistent as possible.

For reference, I'm eating 1800 per day on most days, 2200 on workout days. Walking is a great way to start, but as you get more fit, you may want to do cardio and strength training too. I do no more than one hour, three days per week, and it's about half resistance training and half cardio (HIIT, but I worked up to being able to do as much as I do now). The cardio gave me the biggest noticeable changes to my fitness - four flights of stairs don't even register anymore, when before two flights would leave me gasping.