90 pounds in 8 months with MFP (and a little pharma help)

Hi everyone. I wanted to share my success story as an inspiration to those just getting started. If you are like me, you probably thought it impossible to lose any weight, much less lose 35% of your original weight. I am a 61 year old male who had been between 250 and 260 pounds since at least 2007. I had never tried to diet seriously, though I had tried cutting back on various things at times, never successfully. I don't exercise, though I am very active with home projects that occasionally involve strenuous activity. I figured I would be that weight up until the expiration date on my birth certificate.

However, I knew I had to lose weight when it started becoming difficult to do normal activities. If you are my old weight, you can probably guess the issue without needing additional detail... So I talked to my doctor about getting help. She said she could prescribe a dieting aid, but I had to get my blood pressure under control first. That took six months to dial in the meds just right. On my birthday last year (2021), she said I was good to go and prescribed phentermine. In the same visit, of course, she went through all the nutrition information for a good 10 minutes, all of which went in one ear and out the other. But both she and her new assistant, who was accompanying her on her first day of work, suggested MyFitnessPal. I knew I would have to count calories, and while I abhor phone apps, I took the plunge with MFP. Within a week, I had upgraded to the paid version and will continue to renew it, maybe for life.

The biggest benefit of MFP was to log each food as I consumed them, then plan for the last meal of the day to stay within guidelines. You can't wait until the next day to enter your foods because by then it is too late. And even though my doctor had repeatedly harped on me about cutting my beer intake - I think I am related to Kavanaugh! - it never registered how much of a hit I was taking until I started using MFP.

I think the key to a successful weight loss plan is to not change what you eat. I have heard of all the popular fad diets, and was also aware of their poor success rates. But if you can continue to eat the foods you love and lose weight by portion-sizing alone, I think you have a much better chance of success. I know I did. I switched bread to 45 calorie/slice versions, jelly to sugar-free versions, and finally tried light beer for the first time. (There are some really good imports out there, and there are even some really good non-alcoholic beers.) So I still eat (and drink) the same foods I always have, but I have smaller portions and plan the last meal of the day to ensure I stay within goal. Every food is weighed and measured and, most importantly, entered into the app as they are consumed.

The weight just fell off, almost effortlessly. I dropped between 7 and 15 pounds each month, still with no formal exercising. After four months, the side effects from the phentermine got to be too much, so I stopped using it. But the weight loss continued at the same rate as before for the next two months. Then I hit a plateau and went back on it until reaching my goal a week ago. Since then, sans-phentermine, I have maintained +/- 1/4 pound.

I had dropped from 255 pounds to 165 pounds, and all throughout that journey, I noticed very positive physical changes that kept encouraging me to go further. I dropped one blood pressure med and later cut the other in half. I stopped taking other medications (like Prilosec) as well, to the point where I am now taking only a blood pressure medicine and a vitamin each day. I never realized the limitations my weight had imposed on me, nor the extent to which I improvised to live with them. I can now reach every part of my back to scratch an itch without needing a post or a corner of a wall. I can bend down to touch my toes and still breathe. My balance has improved. I don't cut or bleed so easily. The list goes on and on.

I am now back to my college weight. Sadly, my body is not the same as it was back then, but the sagging skin I was expecting did not materialize; my skin conformed to my new figure without folds. My doctor says I am lucky in that respect as it is unusual to drop so much weight and still have tight skin. I still have a bit of visceral fat (my midsection is now only 1 inch more than my waist), but nothing like I had before, where I looked like I was about to give birth.

So it can be done, and for me, it was relatively painless. The phentermine gave me the confidence to start the diet and helped me to portion size until my body adjusted to the new normal; I get full (and satisfied) with much smaller portions than before. I still eat the same foods I always have, though treats like Whoppers and fudge and pepperoni rolls are now few and far between. Still, it hasn't been that onerous.

Good scales are important, one to stand on and one to weigh foods. The former needs to wiegh in tenths of pounds and the latter in single gram increments. Contrary to MFP recommendations, I weigh myself every day when I first wake up and keep a log. I think if I went a week between weigh-ins and didn't like the results, it could get discouraging. You just have to recognize that daily fluctuations are due to water weight changes and are not indicative of actual weight gain or loss - if you are staying within the guidelines on caloric intake, the weight will be coming off. (I focused solely on calories and looked at the nutrition information out of curiosity only.) If anything, a daily gain due to water weight, frustrating as it is at the time, is extra incentive to work harder that day. I got yelled at more than once by MFP for not consuming enough calories, but I ignored it. Take a good regular multivitamin daily, not something with excess ingredients relative to FDA recommendations, to ensure you are getting all your needed nutrients.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I have been looking forward to writing it for some time, and the ideas just flowed. I am proof that even the most skeptical can lose significant weight, and I am convinced I now have the tools to maintain this new normal. Just knowing how much better my life is now compared to all the limitations I was living with before is incentive enough.

I know this post sounds like I am a MFP advertising exec trying to drum up sales - I'm not, I assure you - but I do believe my weight loss success would not have happened without MFP. The pharma help was important early on, but MFP was the key - it appealed to my retired electrical engineer's data-driven brain, so using it became second nature.

Best of luck to everyone. If I could do it, you can too.