88lbs gone - pic/info heavy - warning: fat guy lurks within

Hello MFP.

At the time of writing, October 2012, I'm a 26 year old man living in the UK, but about to move to the USA. I started my health journey in July 2011. I was just about to marry my wife, a young lady who resides in the USA, and we had both decided it was about time to lose weight and get healthy. Unfortunately, a week or two after the big day in August, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to move back to the UK for immediate treatment, ruining my fiancée USA visa and being forced to restart the whole expensive, lengthy process.

During the 6 months of recovery while my wife was in the UK with me, we abandoned the healthy eating kick and just ate and did whatever we wanted to do. However, when she went home in February 2012, and I was left to (almost) my own devices, I realised there was no better time to start taking it seriously. I still weighed 258lbs in Feb, I had pretty much put on all that I had lost the first time. Understandable, and not even that frustrating, as I have been much, much more determined to do a good job of it this time.

Fast forward 8 months. Cancer and even treatment are all over with. My second visa was approved, in London, late in September, and I fly to the USA on October the 23rd. I hopped on the scales this morning the 08th, like I do each week, and much to my surprise, I was at my goal weight. Well, my goal weight was 176.4lbs, and I was down to 175.4, but nothing's perfect, eh?

I say surprise, but actually I had an assessment at the gym yesterday, and was told that my BMI and Bodyfat% were well within "healthy" and "normal" levels. Now, as a big fat gamer nerd, this came as quite a shock - much more of an impact than seeing my numbers trickle down each week - being told I was "healthy" was not something I think I could ever have been prepared for.

But that's enough backstory, here are some progress pictures:


This is me at the very start of being "healthy", back in July 2011. What a handsome, happy fellow I was. 260lbs.


This was much later in May 2012, the day I joined the gym. 225lbs.


And here's a comparison shot showing then and now. Picture is self explanatory.

And now for the less-squeamish, here's a body shot. Apologies to MFP if this is not allowed, it's not to show off my awesome bod (which uh.. still needs a lot of work), but it is the best way to show how much progress has been made:

Again, weights etc are explained in the picture.

So, now that that's out of the way, how did I do it? Gather around, and I'll tell you a story...

You've already made a big first step - you've admitted that something is wrong to the point of actually bothering to sign up to a website to try and fix it. That's good! But it is only the first step.

For the few weeks in July and August 2011, I tried to be a bit more active, I went for walks a few times a week, tried out the exercise bike my wife had gathering dust, and just generally winged it. We both logged our food, and tried hard to not go over, and tried to work it off if we did.

In Feb 2012, when I started taking it super seriously, I started off by going for walks 6 times a week. About an hour, usually, and I planned out and varied my walks to make them more interesting. First bit of kit I got, apart from some good trainers, was an Omron pedometer. It was very useful for guesstimating calories and fat burned, and even walking speed, as MFP's predictions were way off. I kept this up for a few months, and as you can see from pictures #1 and #2, I made a ton of progress with it.

My wife had, by May 2012, joined a gym, so I decided to do so too. I'd already been a gym member a few times in the past, but never really planned it out or got dedicated to it, two things that really helped this time.

I started off with just cardio - my gym has 5 types of machines, treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines, elliptical trainers, and a stepmaster. I used the first four of those religiously, 10-15 minutes each, 3-6 times a week. I started slow on low levels/resistances, and have slowly bumped them up since then. For instance, I started walking at speed 5 for 10 minutes on the treadmill, now I walk at speed 6.5 for 4-5 minutes and run at speed 10 for the remaining time.

After a month or two of just cardio, I introduced weights into my routine for multiple reasons. A) They help tone and shape, and They help break up the monotony of cardio. I got very, very organised with my weights, making my own split workouts based on that the trainers at the gym said and from reading many, many guides online. I ended up making and printing off a spreadsheet to take with me, dictating which days would do which weights: Tuesdays and Fridays would concentrate on upper body, while Wednesdays and Saturdays would focus on lower. Thursdays and Sundays were cardio/rest days, and Monday was a definite rest day. I kept up this routine from around June until a week or two ago (October). It worked for me!

Food wise, I've kept updating my goals on MFP, and lowered my calories from around 1500/day when I started to around 1350/day more recently. I had no dedicated splurge or "rest" days as far as food goes, however if there was a major event I didn't restrict myself. That being said, I never went over by that much - even at restaurants I ordered the healthier choices, or the smaller portions. At the end of the day, reaching my goal and having a longer, healthier life was more important to me than getting sick from eating too much fried chicken.

Which brings me to the motivation behind my weightloss and general healthiness. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what it was that kicked me into gear. As I said previously, we'd already started losing weight back in July last year, but I wasn't really in the correct mindset, and wasn't taking it as seriously as I have been since February. Perhaps a mixture of surviving cancer, wanting to live a long life with my wife, and being faced with 6+ months of waiting for my visa was the key? At the end of the day, it is up to each person to find their own motivation, and if you are ever having a day when you look at your efforts and ask if they are worth it, you need to stop and ask yourself if you are doing it for the right reasons. If you are, and you remind yourself of them, you should have no problems continuing. You only live once.

So, here's a bit of spreadsheety stuff for those interested in figures:

All weights are in pounds (lbs), and all measurements are in inches. W loss is Waist loss, T loss is Thigh loss, etc.

So.. there we go! I hope this helps inspire just as much as I was inspired by similar stories 8 months ago. I'll try to answer any questions if I get any, but I am only one man. Well, I'm almost half the man I used to be... and I'm not even talking about the whole testicle situation.