198 lbs lost in a little over a year :D

Shetchncn1

If you are going to eat below 1200 a day you did it better than anyone I heard of yet. Congratulations!!!

LovelyVegetarian

Well done! Everyone has their own way and one person's method is not necessarily what works for another person.

Congratulations! I think you look amazing but more importantly, you look like you are HAPPY (and healthy I hope)! Well done.

for what it's worth, IMO, avoiding major surgery is always a plus!!!

mcrumpsf

Congrats on all your hard work. You look amazing!

beautyneyes

Totally awesome!!! I think you made the best choice to forgo the operation. That doesn't teach you how to eat and how much. You did it!!! thanks for sharing. You are inspirational. Who cares about the skin thing. You have just gained many many years of life!!! Congrats.

amynicole0410

you look years younger! congrats!

TitaniaEcks

I am a bit camera shy and tend to feel that I am ugly.

That is some warped definition of "ugly" you got there. OP, you are one sexy beast. I'd hit it, LOL

Also, this cult of silence around VLCDs has to stop. What is bariatric surgery except a forced VLCD? And doctors *still* endorse it, and MFP has no problem with threads about it.

I have followed nutritionally dense VLCDs for up to 2 months at a time with no significant muscle loss or other "starvation mode" symptoms. I don't endorse it just like I don't endorse any other diet - what works for me may not necessarily work for you, plus IANAD - but why shouldn't we be allowed to discuss our own strategies that worked? Why must we silence everyone whose experiences don't conform to the groupthink?

Jerijoh

You pictures are so inspiring!
Big *high five* to you!!!
=D

tannadine

That's a phenomenal amount of weight to lose in just over a year - like a few previous posters have pointed out, you look like an entirely different guy!

Great work!

vitaxo

amazing ! great work (:

BattleTaxi

Will you be showing successful before and after pictures of your "meat bags for legs" as you called them, or perhaps pictures along the way as you transform? Were there any exercises you could have done along the way to avoid that happening or did you check into it when you saw it happening? I'm also curious how you felt if you ever exerted yourself too much exercising on the low calorie intake and if you have had any numbers run to see how it affected your metabolism and immune system?

Umm no, I will not be showing my legs, ever. I called them "meat curtains" anyway; different visual; think of drapes. I didn't take a lot of pics before I got thin, and I still don't do that many. I am a bit camera shy and tend to feel that I am ugly. I never felt that I over exerted myself because I made sure not to. I had more and more energy as I went along and as I lost weight I began adding more calories back into my diet.

Don't feel ugly!!! You look amazing!! And you've been a beautiful person regardless of your weight!

Pearsquared

You dropped 198 lbs. and 20 years. I hope you have a new license and passport, lol. Nobody will believe you're the same person!

jade2112

Total transformation. You look happy in your afters and so unhappy and a little angry in the befores.

Be proud of yourself.

Jameson1984

Great job! You look fantastic!

AnthonyKolka

Don't feel ugly!!! You look amazing!! And you've been a beautiful person regardless of your weight!

:blushing: Thanks

AnthonyKolka

I am a bit camera shy and tend to feel that I am ugly.

That is some warped definition of "ugly" you got there. OP, you are one sexy beast. I'd hit it, LOL

Also, this cult of silence around VLCDs has to stop. What is bariatric surgery except a forced VLCD? And doctors *still* endorse it, and MFP has no problem with threads about it.

I have followed nutritionally dense VLCDs for up to 2 months at a time with no significant muscle loss or other "starvation mode" symptoms. I don't endorse it just like I don't endorse any other diet - what works for me may not necessarily work for you, plus IANAD - but why shouldn't we be allowed to discuss our own strategies that worked? Why must we silence everyone whose experiences don't conform to the groupthink?

You are right, I believe the fear of VLCD is liability because the results of doing it wrong are catastrophic. However if you where held liable for someone doing a diet wrong no diet could ever be promoted or shared by anyone. For instance, how many people do Atkins completely wrong? If Atkins was held liable for all of the people that never bothered to understand the diet before "doing it", they would be out of business right now. Also there is a couple of commercial nutritionally dense VLCD's out there that I have heard of. They are slimgenics and Body by Vi. I have never attempted either, I am not into supporting corporate backed diet plans.

Thanks for the complement :blushing:

just_me_mindy

Wow you look amazing. Great job!!

lighteningjeanne855

Such willpower! Great results!

What is your strategy for maintaining your epic weight loss?
Folks who do get the bariatric surgery lose great amounts of weight,
but gain it back because they haven't learned better eating habits.

What have you learned about the way your body handles food, over the past year?

AnthonyKolka

Such willpower! Great results!

What is your strategy for maintaining your epic weight loss?
Folks who do get the bariatric surgery lose great amounts of weight,
but gain it back because they haven't learned better eating habits.

What have you learned about the way your body handles food, over the past year?

Thanks for asking! My strategy is to slowly add more calories to my diet, about 200 calories a day each week. So this week I am at 1400, next will be 1600. I will take a look at how the caloric increase affects me each week and make decisions based on data, the same way I did it when dieting. I had a metabolic assessment done at the hospital and my resting MBR is about 1800, so I am reticent to go above that. If I continue to have some loss after doing 1800 for a few weeks then I will bump it up to compensate. I have been eating a healthy vegetarian sugar free diet for so long now that I am not worried about gaining weight from poor dietary choices. My only concern is my slow metabolism.

I actually have been tracking every detail of my diet for analysis, most diet sites do not provide the detail of reporting I wanted so I used google docs. You can view the data here: http://bit.ly/16mRP4h

t1954

Great Job! That is an incredible amount of weight to lose. I agree with you on the surgery.

coffeecoco83

That's INCREDIBLE! You're like a super-hero Congratulations on your amazing success!

klaff411

CONGRATS!

Amazing job! You look like a totally different person!

Buuut.. this is something to take into account -- when you get down to lower weight/bmi you need to stay on your diet because you want to kill the fat cells off - for good. Right now they are just tiny and waiting around for something to put inside. That means eating low fat. Now of course you can eat treats and be a little easier on yourself. But if you want to be able to eat what you want. That's the trick and its the hardest thing of all.

AnthonyKolka

CONGRATS!

Amazing job! You look like a totally different person!

Buuut.. this is something to take into account -- when you get down to lower weight/bmi you need to stay on your diet because you want to kill the fat cells off - for good. Right now they are just tiny and waiting around for something to put inside. That means eating low fat. Now of course you can eat treats and be a little easier on yourself. But if you want to be able to eat what you want. That's the trick and its the hardest thing of all.

Oh yeah, I am being very careful and low fat is the name of the game. Check out my food diary

shmatichka

Well done you, great will power I admire you!
Annnnd I keep going because of fabulous people like you

MyChocolateDiet

Congratulations! You seem to have self-imposed your own bariatric surgery to the results those people expect who do that surgery. As some of them are still yet unable to have success on it, I guess you have proven that the mind is stronger than even the body sometimes.

I am curious, unsure if this question has been answered or asked yet....What was it specifically about dieting or the typical weight loss methods that you found ineffective or inadequate for you &/or why you opted for this instead of those?

MyChocolateDiet

From the OP on page 5...

Hello everyone.

This thread was deleted (locked I guess because itr is back) for some time today because of complaints that I am endorsing a VLCD. I am not. I am simply saying "this is what I did and it worked". It doesn't work for most people. You have to be very careful what you choose to eat, if you are not going to do the research on everything you eat and ensure that you are getting the nutrition you need do not come anywhere near attempting a diet like this.

Doing this diet wrong can and will kill you.

I obtained advice from a nutritionist at the University of Colorado Hospital when starting this diet. I based my diet plan on the diet plan that they ask you to follow for 3 months prior to bariatric surgery. I gave my food logs to the nutritionist once a week for 3 months; she and I where both pleased with the results and I kept doing my diet. I do not know how anyone can think what I did is worse than the surgery. You are entitled to your opinion and I respect that you have an opinion and would not try to silence your opinion. Please do not take your opinion to the next level by trying to silence my reality.

I just want to quote this update you made on page 5 because the bolded part seems pretty serious and important and I guess if people missed it on the first 4+ pages that's sad. Maybe by quoting it here anyone who reads and replies will see it when checking back on their own reply. Again congratulations on successfully mimicking bariatric surgery using nothing but spreadsheets and your own mind.

ShantiGetsFit

Wow! You look amazing! Congratulations on your weightloss!

rachdun

You look great - well done

BattleTaxi

Don't feel ugly!!! You look amazing!! And you've been a beautiful person regardless of your weight!

:blushing: Thanks

You are welcome!!

Flab2Thin

When I started my weight loss journey I was miserable. To make matters worse, standard dieting and exercise was proving to be less than effective. I went to the doctor and they tried to push me into bariatric surgery. I REALLY didn't want to go there.
So I asked them "What is it specifically that makes bariatric surgery successful? What about a smaller stomach makes you lose weight." They responded "Essentially it forces you to only be able to consume 700-800 calories a day." So that gave me my action plan, I thanked them and left the office.
I am a vegetarian, have been for almost 7 years. I began searching for the most nutritionally dense low calorie vegetarian foods I could find. I made a requirement of never eating more than 3g of sugars in any meal. I decided that eating 4 meals a day at minimum would be best so each meal had to be under 200 calories.
My diet for over nine months was 800 calories a day, it mainly consisted of spirutein shakes and protein bars. I made sure to eat one "real" cooked meal a day. I use a lot of vitamins. I worked out, cardio only twice a week. The weight started melting. Now that I am at my goal weight I am going to focus on maintenance and building up some muscle to fill all this loose skin

Before:




After:

(ignore the dirty mirror lol.

I will post better pics later

Quoting for inspiration

fufi04

Kudos for going the natural way. You look awesome! Amazing job! :flowerforyou: