My first year with MyFitnessPal - From 250 to 150 lbs

I started MyFitnessPal in June last year while unemployed sitting in a trailer in rural West Virginia. I had no goals, I had been out of High School for 2 years and I was 250 pounds. I weighed the most I had ever weighed in my entire life. I was never "skinny" but at the rate I was going, 300 was a real possibility. I play video games in my free time, so as you can imagine I was the stereotypical fat gamer.

I would make family size lasagna's for myself for dinner. I would smother them in cheese. Cover them in generic doritos. I would have two cups of ramen on the side. While drinking a whole 2 liter a day. I was misinformed by the people around me. They told me being fat was just genetic and that my metabolism was slow so it didn't matter what I ate. But I saw stories about people losing weight so I knew it had to be possible. My real motivator was that I would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, or having a slight panic moment because I thought my heart would stop. It was not a good situation for me. I don't know if this was related to the weight but its stopped and I'm glad.

I discovered calorie counting, and by default that brought me to MyFitnessPal. I started counting calories on purely junk food. I would be so hungry I would have to drink bottled water to keep myself from eating more. (1800 calories on ramen doesn't go very far.) I know this wasn't an ideal diet but I didn't have financial options for anything healthier at the time. After about 6 months of eating junk food and counting calories I had lost about 60 pounds. I was down to around 220-230 when I moved back to the city and that's when I started walking.

We moved to the city in August of last year. At 220ish I already weighed the least that I had in memory. I don't even think I was 220ish in middle school. The weight loss slowed down at this point. I was started working at McDonalds and walking in my free time. The combination of standing at McDonalds and walking 2-3 miles a day helped keep the weight loss coming despite the slow down.

I reached 190/180 around Nov/Dec last year. Working at McDonalds and walking really sped this up. I had to start buying new clothes because my old 2xl/3xl and 38 inch waist jeans wouldn't fit me anymore. I was frustrated at this point because I still had a slight double chin.

I quit McDonalds in January and started working at Walmart in February. I was on the remodel team so we did a lot of physical labor. It helped speed up my weight loss as well. I still work there as a cashier to this day. Since being hired at Walmart and keeping my calorie goal around 2000-2100 a day (maintaining but not really because I do light activity. So more or less just losing very slowly so I keep as much muscle as possible). I'm trying to maintain but 140 would be a good starting point for me to start building muscle on these bones.


Weighing in today was 150.6 pounds. Ultimately I did some things wrong. I lost my weight too quickly (especially in the first 6 months) and ended up losing muscle mass as well. (A few people warned me about this.) I mostly ate junk food my entire time losing weight due to a lack of healthy foods being brought into my house. I could have potentially bought healthy foods but again this is another thing I didn't do ideally.

I've started looking into weights, weight lifting equipment, and different high intense workouts and the diets that are associated with them (such as lots of protein and watching carbs.) I'm planning on starting to build muscle around October and have a 5 year plan to get up to around 200 lbs with muscle weight. I don't know how well it will work out but its the next step in my fitness story.

If anyone has any questions let me know. I'll leave you with some pictures.
Disclaimer: I went from a 38 inch waist to 30. I went from wearing 2xl to wearing medium and small.
Before you look at these pics you should know that I am by no means "fit". I am partly skinny fat with loose skin.

The pics kept uploading too big so I put them in an imgur album.
https://imgur.com/a/6rJKjAF