When I graduated high school, I weighed 510 lbs and was 6'4". Well, honestly, the scale at our house capped at 510 lbs and I hit that number and wasn't sure how much over it I actually went. A bit of a back story- when I was a young kid I was fairly active but still had a weight problem. As I grew, that problem only exasperated itself due to the fact that I could eat, boy could I eat. I rode my bike everywhere and played basketball constantly but was still obese. It came down to basic thermodynamics, I was eating more calories than I was burning.
When I was about 15 years old, I decided that I was going to lose weight. My parents bought me a stationary bike for Christmas and I set the thing up and started doing cardio. I also just kind of started not drinking soda and eating less food and no desserts. Amazingly over the course of about 6 months, I lost ~50 lbs and went back to 10th grade weighing about 230 lbs. That year, in November, I was starting driver's ed and remember sitting on the sidelines during an optional PE day. Towards the end of class, I decided I wanted to play indoor soccer, so I ran down and started playing and I jumped to hit a ball off my chest and landed on one leg, someone came from the side and hit my knee and completely blew it out. I ended up having to have a few ligaments repaired. I also had a complete lateral release done, which to this day leaves a divot on the outside of my left knee.
That knee injury is where my true struggle with obesity took over. After I had the surgery on my knee, I laid in bed and my family helped me hand and foot with everything I needed which included food. In the few months I was recovering from my knee surgery I gained an easy 100+ lbs, which led us to the day I graduated high school, well over 500 lbs.
After I graduated and was just working and trying to figure out what to do with my life, I decided that I wanted to change. And change I did. Over the course of roughly two and a half years, I went from 510 lbs all the way down to 235 lbs. This was in the early 2000's and even then a lot of the mainstream was incredibly skewed and we didn't understand near as much as we do today. The belief then was that you had to eat 6+ meals a day to "stoke the metabolic fire"; you had to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner-- with a snack in between each meal or it was impossible to lose weight. So, for two years, I didn't see the inside of a restaurant. I didn't eat a single meal anyone cooked beside myself. I controlled every single gram that entered my mouth. I didn't drink a single soda. It was at this time I started weight training and doing cardio 5-6 days a week and it worked!
I wish I had pictures from when I was 510 lbs to compare, but after that entire 2.5 years was said and done, I had lost the weight and felt good about myself. I realize now that I typically refused to take full body pictures- but for reference:
It was around this time that I started dating Leslie and we eventually got married. Obviously, the steps that I had taken to lose the weight were not sustainable for any long amount of time. I could easily do what I did for a short spurt and get the weight off, but when I went back to normal life and started trying to enjoy holidays or go out to eat with family or friends, I couldn't control every gram I ate. In the 9 months Leslie and I were dating before we got married, I went from 235 lbs all the way back up to 285.
I kept training 5-6 days a week but went back to normal habits of eating. As life moved on, after we got married, it didn't help that we didn't make that much money so it was easier for me to justify eating cheaper foods vs buying higher priced foods that could help me to sustain a diet. Suffice to say, over the course of 8 years or so, I would gain 40 lbs, lose 30 lbs, gain 40 lbs, lose 30 lbs, etc etc until I found myself almost tipping the scales at 400 lbs again.
To add insult to injury, I justified the weight gain. At the time, I was still training constantly and consistently and getting quite strong, at least in my mind. At my now heaviest again (385 lbs) I was benching ~335x3, squatting 465x3, and deadlifting around 505x5. Not going to be on WSM stage anytime soon, but I was happy with those numbers. I started working at Microsoft in 2016 and after I got settled in and was working in this new role, I told myself I wanted to lose weight again, and for real this time. Sometime in 2017 I told myself that if I got down to 300 lbs again, I would start training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu-- something that I had been interested in for years, so I got to it. But this time, I went about it in a bit of a different manner (maybe I'll do a longer post on this specifically in the future.)
Instead of trying a crash diet, I wanted to sustainably lose the weight and keep it off. I did a ton of research and landed on the fact that I would start tracking macros again, but be more lenient in what I ate. If I wanted to have some ice cream, I'd have it, I'd just track it and make sure I stayed under my calorie goals for the day. Your body requires a certain amount of energy (calories) to just live and be sustained. 1 lb of fat is roughly equivalent to 3500 calories. The traditional math is such that, if you want to lose 1lb/week you will cut 3500 calories from your diet a week, which conveniently comes out to 500 calories a day. I'm a bit larger, so I went with 1000 calories/day or 2lbs/week as my weight loss goal. Over the course of 2.5 years, I ended up going from 385->235 again. But, I looked quite a bit different than I did when Leslie and I got together because I had been consistently training that entire time. I had built a decent physique:
-- Jeff
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