285-190. warning i wrote too damn much.
brdnw
Posts: 565 Member
i've been somewhat fit now for the past 3 years but i was reading success stories and i enjoy reading them and find them motivating so i thought i'd share my progress and maybe get a few mfp adds out of it, or hopefully help out someone that resembles where i started.
When i started i weighed 285lbs and hadn't been in a gym in 3 years or so. I had the worst diet, i'd eat a breakfast burritto on my way to work, i'd go out to lunch with coworkers every day, i ate fast food on my way home, i drank a lot of soda and i barely knew how to cook.
I finally joined a gym and said i was going to go lift 7 days a week (something i've now done on average i'd say 355/365 days a year for the past 6 years now).
I set 3 goals, i wanted to lift essentially 7x a week, i wanted to bench 300lbs within a year. My lifetime max bench was 185lbs and my current max was only 140lbs, so i set this pretty ignorantly but i'm stubborn. And my 3rd goal was that however long it takes, if it takes 10 years, i'm going to have abs. So i set 3 goals. short term, medium and extrodainarly long goal ha. I also decided to not do any cardio or alter my diet for the first year as i felt like i wanted to somewhat ease into fully adopting this process.
The bench goal was great because it motivated me daily. I thought about it every single day that year. I'd look forward to milestones. When i got up to 185 and had reached my lifetime max i was super excited. This meant whenever i was able to add more weight, even if it was 2.5lb plates...i would be setting a new personal record. Then i finally benched 2 plates on both sides, 225lbs. That's suddenly when you start to feel a bit strong. 225lbs is a great early milestone for lifters. It was 5 years ago, but i remember the exact bench i used when i benched 185lbs, 225lbs and of course when i hit my goal the 300lbs that i got with just a few days before my goal deadline. The 300lb memory is forever a day i'll remember. It's such an amazing feeling to set which seemed like an entirely unrealistic goal and to reach it. I gained a lot of confidence that day.
Hitting goals and milestones are such momentum builders. I think it's a great idea to set short term and long term goals to keep yourself focused.
So there i am a year later. I'm certainly stronger and my moobs are looking less mooby. Now i decided i need to work on my diet and cardio.
I decide to join myfitnesspal and start tracking my calories. something i knew very little about. I establish i want to be perhaps around 1700-2000 calories daily. I also decide that any fruits or vegetables i eat will not contribute to that calorie #. I also stop eating fast food entirely and instead start order salads any time i go to a restaruant or need something quick (like a salad bar or a salad from panera). I also start cooking and expirement alot of with lean proteins such as chicken, seafood, 99% lean ground turkey.
I still drank some on weekends when my friends would go out and i just tried to really keep it in moderation, sometimes i even ordered water at a bar. I didn't expect to eat 100% perfectly but i certainly wanted to eat as healthy as possible and just choose my bad calories really wisely. Eating 1 bad meal won't make you fat but eating one good meal won't make you fit either. It's just about establishing consistency.
2 months in, I've established healthy eating habits, lifting every day and running 3-5 times a week for 10-20 minutes each time.
From january 2012 to april 2012, almost 3 months to the day, i lost 40lbs and i've hit 225lbs. This was a great feeling number for me to get down 60lbs in total and i get as low as 220lbs 2 months later.
And then I start to get lazy on my diet and on my cardio. I got too content and started to eat less healthy foods more frequently. Then i've gained 10lbs and i am so irritated with myself for wasting my recent progress and then suddenly i've gained 10 more pounds and i start weighing myself less often and within 3 months i'm at 265lbs again
wtf did i just do.
I'm still lifting every day though so i find positive on that. I know i still made progress these past few months as i was at least gaining muscle and since i previously lost 45lbs i knew that i certainly capable of doing it...so lets do this again.
I was really curious how i would respond to getting to 225lbs. Previously it took me 2 more months to just lose 5 more pounds to get to 220 (45lbs in 5 months) and couldn't get under it and I just wondered how i'd respond as i approached it this time.
This time i was motivated and focused on truly moving towards my goals. I hated being overweight and always adjusting my shirt to make sure my fat was being covered, i hated when summer came around and i'd find out my previous years shorts didn't fit. f that life.
Soon losing weight was enjoyable. I ate really well, had very few bad food choices. I didn't want to get in the way of my own progress. My work has free pizza on mondays, brownies once a month and free donuts on fridays. I used to eat it every time and now i ate it 0 times. If i ate bad calories it most certainly had to be worth it and then i'd still probably run a little harder the next day.
I'd spring out of bed each morning to weigh myself knowing i would be fractions of a pound less. And if i didn't lose any weight or it trended upward slightly i didn't worry a bit because i knew i wasn't making any mistakes and that i was determined.
From 1/5/2013 i weighed 265lbs and on 4/21/2016 i was back to 225lbs. I took a progress picture in the same shorts i weighed 225lbs a year earlier. I felt like i looked slightly better a year later, so not a waste of a year perhaps.
I exploded through this previous 220lb barrier and on 7/3 i weighed 203lbs. I lost 62lbs in 7 months.
Losing weight is an empowering feeling. All my life i hated having my shirt off. When i took this progress photo. It was the first time in my life that i was like i look somewhat good without a shirt maybe. With this new confidence i was like alright i'm acceptable looking enough to mow the lawn without a shirt. Still insecure i decided...maybe only the backyard though ha. It's funny how insecure you can remain as you adjust. Eventually i felt ok enough to run outside without a shirt.
10/28/13 i reached a low of 192lb.
2 years later i was maintaining at 200lbs:
Since then i've maintained around 200-210lbs.
boom, warned you it was a super long post.
When i started i weighed 285lbs and hadn't been in a gym in 3 years or so. I had the worst diet, i'd eat a breakfast burritto on my way to work, i'd go out to lunch with coworkers every day, i ate fast food on my way home, i drank a lot of soda and i barely knew how to cook.
I finally joined a gym and said i was going to go lift 7 days a week (something i've now done on average i'd say 355/365 days a year for the past 6 years now).
I set 3 goals, i wanted to lift essentially 7x a week, i wanted to bench 300lbs within a year. My lifetime max bench was 185lbs and my current max was only 140lbs, so i set this pretty ignorantly but i'm stubborn. And my 3rd goal was that however long it takes, if it takes 10 years, i'm going to have abs. So i set 3 goals. short term, medium and extrodainarly long goal ha. I also decided to not do any cardio or alter my diet for the first year as i felt like i wanted to somewhat ease into fully adopting this process.
The bench goal was great because it motivated me daily. I thought about it every single day that year. I'd look forward to milestones. When i got up to 185 and had reached my lifetime max i was super excited. This meant whenever i was able to add more weight, even if it was 2.5lb plates...i would be setting a new personal record. Then i finally benched 2 plates on both sides, 225lbs. That's suddenly when you start to feel a bit strong. 225lbs is a great early milestone for lifters. It was 5 years ago, but i remember the exact bench i used when i benched 185lbs, 225lbs and of course when i hit my goal the 300lbs that i got with just a few days before my goal deadline. The 300lb memory is forever a day i'll remember. It's such an amazing feeling to set which seemed like an entirely unrealistic goal and to reach it. I gained a lot of confidence that day.
Hitting goals and milestones are such momentum builders. I think it's a great idea to set short term and long term goals to keep yourself focused.
So there i am a year later. I'm certainly stronger and my moobs are looking less mooby. Now i decided i need to work on my diet and cardio.
I decide to join myfitnesspal and start tracking my calories. something i knew very little about. I establish i want to be perhaps around 1700-2000 calories daily. I also decide that any fruits or vegetables i eat will not contribute to that calorie #. I also stop eating fast food entirely and instead start order salads any time i go to a restaruant or need something quick (like a salad bar or a salad from panera). I also start cooking and expirement alot of with lean proteins such as chicken, seafood, 99% lean ground turkey.
I still drank some on weekends when my friends would go out and i just tried to really keep it in moderation, sometimes i even ordered water at a bar. I didn't expect to eat 100% perfectly but i certainly wanted to eat as healthy as possible and just choose my bad calories really wisely. Eating 1 bad meal won't make you fat but eating one good meal won't make you fit either. It's just about establishing consistency.
2 months in, I've established healthy eating habits, lifting every day and running 3-5 times a week for 10-20 minutes each time.
From january 2012 to april 2012, almost 3 months to the day, i lost 40lbs and i've hit 225lbs. This was a great feeling number for me to get down 60lbs in total and i get as low as 220lbs 2 months later.
And then I start to get lazy on my diet and on my cardio. I got too content and started to eat less healthy foods more frequently. Then i've gained 10lbs and i am so irritated with myself for wasting my recent progress and then suddenly i've gained 10 more pounds and i start weighing myself less often and within 3 months i'm at 265lbs again
wtf did i just do.I'm still lifting every day though so i find positive on that. I know i still made progress these past few months as i was at least gaining muscle and since i previously lost 45lbs i knew that i certainly capable of doing it...so lets do this again.
I was really curious how i would respond to getting to 225lbs. Previously it took me 2 more months to just lose 5 more pounds to get to 220 (45lbs in 5 months) and couldn't get under it and I just wondered how i'd respond as i approached it this time.
This time i was motivated and focused on truly moving towards my goals. I hated being overweight and always adjusting my shirt to make sure my fat was being covered, i hated when summer came around and i'd find out my previous years shorts didn't fit. f that life.
Soon losing weight was enjoyable. I ate really well, had very few bad food choices. I didn't want to get in the way of my own progress. My work has free pizza on mondays, brownies once a month and free donuts on fridays. I used to eat it every time and now i ate it 0 times. If i ate bad calories it most certainly had to be worth it and then i'd still probably run a little harder the next day.
I'd spring out of bed each morning to weigh myself knowing i would be fractions of a pound less. And if i didn't lose any weight or it trended upward slightly i didn't worry a bit because i knew i wasn't making any mistakes and that i was determined.
From 1/5/2013 i weighed 265lbs and on 4/21/2016 i was back to 225lbs. I took a progress picture in the same shorts i weighed 225lbs a year earlier. I felt like i looked slightly better a year later, so not a waste of a year perhaps.
I exploded through this previous 220lb barrier and on 7/3 i weighed 203lbs. I lost 62lbs in 7 months.
Losing weight is an empowering feeling. All my life i hated having my shirt off. When i took this progress photo. It was the first time in my life that i was like i look somewhat good without a shirt maybe. With this new confidence i was like alright i'm acceptable looking enough to mow the lawn without a shirt. Still insecure i decided...maybe only the backyard though ha. It's funny how insecure you can remain as you adjust. Eventually i felt ok enough to run outside without a shirt.
10/28/13 i reached a low of 192lb.
2 years later i was maintaining at 200lbs:
Since then i've maintained around 200-210lbs.
boom, warned you it was a super long post.
153
Replies
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way to go! super dedication0
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Dang... great post and nice work!0
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Amazing transformation!0
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You look so hot in the second to last pic.11
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Wow, you look amazing. Thank you for sharing your story, I love that it wasn't linear but you didn't give up.2
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dayum!! from rolly-polly to holy moly!9
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Amazing! ! And that u documented it too! Huge applause for working so hard! Now go out and get the world u earned it!1
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Also i wanted to say if anyone thinks i could help them please feel free to message me with any questions. i love talking fitness and don't have nearly enough fitness friends. It may feel daunting at first, but it's just all about consistency and then you'll start to really get some momentum going. And if i can do it twice, surely you can once.
A guy at my work weighed 270lbs and i got him to start going to the gym with me and he was terrible with his diet but we just did short term goals and he went from eating 2 chipotle burritos (both double meat!) to enjoying healthy eating and weighing a lean 210. It takes months...but you gain so much out of just committing to it.12 -
Awesome work man!! I have gone from 275 to 214 in the last year. Slow and steady but seeing this definitely provides inspiration, thanks for sharing!2
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CONGRATS! 85 lbs is a lot of weight and you worked very hard to achieve the look you have now! Inspiring! yay you!!!0
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Wow, awesome transformation! Kudos on your hard work!0
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You look amazing. Persistence, I like it!0
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Totally worth the long script to get to those photos. Great job!! O.O2
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Da-yum.
Nice work all around.0 -
I am in awe of you, and people like you, that have the determination to transform yourself this way!0
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wow holy crap that's an amazing transformation! you look great! well done!0
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Wow! Good job!0
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Good job and amazing story! You look awesome btw ;-)
Starting at 266, I joined MFP on June 20th and so far have loss 15 lbs. Been overweight for as long as I can rememberm feel great to see the scale going down for once! ;-)
Your story is so motivating. Thank you so much.2 -
Damn man!0
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Wow!0
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No words.
0 -
Wow great transformation0
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Loved reading all of it. Do you attribute some of your success to going slowly and adding in new habits? Even when you got lazy you were able to pin point what you had stopped doing and get back those habits, or so it appears to me.
Anyway great job on getting fit and staying that way!2 -
Holy hotness, Batman!
you look awesome and great job on the dedication! 1 -
Nice! This kind of fabulous inspiration is why I signed up here in the first place.0
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Oh my o.O Well done!0
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Amazing journey!0
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Montepulciano wrote: »Loved reading all of it. Do you attribute some of your success to going slowly and adding in new habits?
I wanted to be successful. I went from being inactive to having to lift every single day. So that already was a big change and adding cardio made me feel like that would just be too much to take on at once. Plus i had a lot of learning to do. I had to read up alot on lifting, excercises, ideas, etc....so i wanted to really get a hold of one area, the lifting, immerse myself in it and then do the same with cardio and diet.
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Duuuuude... Dang. Really well done! This is the post I needed to see.3
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It wasn't too long if you got to your goal! Great job1
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