Biggest losers

I lost 100 pounds over about 2.5 years. I am just under 5 feet tall and I went from 215 to 115. I now maintain at 112-115. I’ve been in maintenance for about a year and a half.

I lost weight by tracking all my food as accurately as possible, consistently staying within my calorie goal. I began exercising, and I ate back my exercise calories.

Weight loss is training for maintenance. I had already made all my dietary and exercise changes while losing, so I didn’t make any more changes when I got to maintenance, except to slightly increase my calories.

I have some loose skin but not much. There isn’t much you can do about loose skin. This is largely determined by genetics. I was also relatively young (early 30s) when I lost weight, so that might have helped. Some people find that strength training makes them happier with their appearance after losing weight. It’s good to start a strength training routine as early as you can to help preserve muscle mass.

I've lost 200ish lbs. From 385 to 185 or so. I've been maitaining for the past year or so. Took me 18 months or so to lose all the weight.

I've dropped 108.6 lbs since Oct 30, 2016. Working on the last 5 or so. Gone from 254 to 145.4.

I initially lost 60 pounds over 3-4 months and maintained about 50 of that for several years before starting to regain about a year ago. I'm down another 60 (around 100 lower than my all-time heaviest) since the end of April 2018 and still have 90 to go to my goal.

Since I'm not at maintenance yet I can't really say for sure what I'll be up to, but so far it's primarily been dietary changes with sporadic exercise. I expect I'll continue tracking food indefinitely, unless I stumble upon a way of eating that works well enough for me that it isn't necessary. My SO and I actually just started a new bodyweight workout routine today that we can do at home, since we're both absolutely horrible about getting out of the house for activity this time of year.

Diet-wise, the first round of loss I went fairly low carb. Nothing too strict, mainly cutting out packaged stuff and cooking a lot, planning menus, meal prep, etc. but it was a sudden dramatic change. I felt so much better being low carb but my head really wasn't in the right place to sustain major lifestyle changes and I gradually fell back into old habits. This time around it's been pretty basic: counting calories. Eating whatever, just less of it, and tracking tracking tracking. I'm easing back into low carb eating this time around so it isn't so jarring and will hopefully be easier to change my habits long-term.

As for loose skin... too soon to tell, really. My inner thighs have some wrinkly tell-tale signs, and some other areas are really squidgy compared to my higher weight(s), but that's to be expected. Even if I do reach my goal looking like a shar-pei, it's still going to be better than all of the garbage that comes with being morbidly obese, right? I know building/maintaining muscle mass will help minimize it, but beyond that I don't think you can avoid it. You'll either end up with loose skin or you'll win the genetic lottery and not have any.

Honestly, the BIGGEST change between now-me and old-me is my mindset. My head is in the game like I flipped a switch this past spring and I'm determined to see this through. I don't know what changed or why but I was suddenly really and truly ready to make changes and stubbornly keep going.