How long did it take you to lose the weight?
What was your method for weight loss?
What did your skin look like afterwards?

not 100 lbs, but I've lost 80ish 3 times now (mid 20's, early 30's, over last year)...

FWIW, I played 5 sports in HS and was a 1A all-state offensive lineman at 5'10" 240 lbs. I had a good muscle base every time I started losing,and regained most all (or even bettered) previous strength attainment within a few months of picking up strength training again. Strength training is my catalyst for better health; if I'm putting in the work in the gym, it motivates me to eat right. The "3 times" says that maintaining myself hasn't been the easiest and usually it's a series of circumstances (not injuries though) that leads to me getting out of the habit of lifting that derails me. And I would like to kick my ass every time when I was probably only up like 20 or so pounds for not just at least eating like I know I should. No freaking excuse for not continuing to eat like I have learned how.

1. 9 months or so.
2. Calorie restriction with generally making healthy diet choices while maintaining 30-40% of my diet as protein. Lots of vegetables and some fruit (I hate when it's worded "fruits and vegetables"). I feel like crap on a ketogenic diet, so always included carbs as I restricted calories.
3. The saggy skin is the worst around my midsection. There's a ring around my love handles that never really tightens up. But I look just fine when I hit the weight where my body fights further fat loss (for me, that's around 210 lbs).

94 pounds from 2001-2003. A FAT and weak 296 down to a sickly weak 202.
Low carb and running 6-8 miles 5 times a week. Took about a year and a half.

75 pounds from 2015-2017. Very strong 340 to a still almost as strong 265.
Low carb, strong man HIIT training, divorce. This was in addition to continued powerlifting training. Took about a year to get 55 ish pounds. Took another 9 months for the other 20.

Skin was fine. I think mainly due to slow loss and continued weight training. I was still somewhat a monster at 265.

I need to get back on it and lose 50 ish pounds. After dieting - for weight gain and weight loss - for over 20 years, I am sick and tired of dieting, but you can't out train a bad diet. If I never drink another protein shake or eat a meal of chicken and broccoli again, I am perfectly fine with that.

60lbs about 12 years ago. Probably took 1.5 to 2 years. Did it mostly through running. Skin looks fine.

Consistency is key. I started running as a way to lose weight but discovered I enjoyed it. I found a running group that helped motivate me through the early workouts and signed up for races to keep me on track.

About 12-14 years ago I went from somewhere north of 350 down to 247. It took me about two years and I didn't have any loose skin. I say "somewhere north of 350" because the scale I had at the time only went to 350. For the first month or two of trying to lose weight it just grunted and said "Err" when I got on it. So, I don't really know how much I actually lost.

Lots of lifting weights, lots of cardio, and counting calories (I tried just about every "diet" in the book but ultimately it all came down to calorie restriction).

Unfortunately, I gained about 80 of that back and I'm currently trying to lose it again. I'm 12-14 years older now though so I expect I'll have loose skin this time around. Better to have loose skin than to carry around 100 lbs of fat though.

For reference I've lost around 80lbs over 6 months. Aiming to lose another 40 more before July but I'm worried about how my skin will look after losing so much weight in less than a year.

Lift weights, don't worry about it...it'll sort itself out. I always find my connective tissue lags behind and there's a LOT of visual "recomp" after i hit a weight and stay there for a bit after losing.

curious - no judgement - but how do you all gain 50-100lbs and then realize need to lose weight? I understand medical/pregnancy/emotional issues etc. But clothing wise etc and just overall appearance for me that seems like a lot of weight.

and i'm reading it takes a year to lose 60-100lbs how long does it take to gain that weight?

for me,

I gain it back about 20-25 lbs a year until I hit my "high normal" at about 270.

I'm strong enough to do everything physically I want to do even heavy, so other than clothes and looks, I just start liking food more than working out again and don't restrain myself.

However, if the goal is to be lean at a heavy weight (relative to BMI charts), it's MUCH faster for a strong, fat guy to get there than a skinny person who has never strength trained.

Matsui said:

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curious - no judgement - but how do you all gain 50-100lbs and then realize need to lose weight? I understand medical/pregnancy/emotional issues etc. But clothing wise etc and just overall appearance for me that seems like a lot of weight.

and i'm reading it takes a year to lose 60-100lbs how long does it take to gain that weight?

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I gained weight during the transition freshman year of college. Went from working out and playing sports in high school to a mostly sedentary lifestyle.

I had a bulb go off when one of my cousins called me a fatass. I started running and eventually lost the weight.

I can usually gain about 20 pounds without even needing to change my pant size. Can get around 40 when I either have to start wearing them lower/really having to squeeze into them. So denial/laziness alone can put me at about 30 pounds gained easily. Then you buy 2 or 3 pairs of pants one size bigger to be comfortable, and voila you've gained 50 pounds.

Matsui said:

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curious - no judgement - but how do you all gain 50-100lbs and then realize need to lose weight? I understand medical/pregnancy/emotional issues etc. But clothing wise etc and just overall appearance for me that seems like a lot of weight.

and i'm reading it takes a year to lose 60-100lbs how long does it take to gain that weight?

---

It happens over time until we have some sort of a wakeup call that motivates us to make changes.

I had bad eating habits growing up. I was always a "big" kid. Not obese like many kids you see nowadays, but what many would call "big boned". I was "stout like a bull" according to my parents and grandparents. I was very active though. The active lifestyle carried through college, so even though I was overweight I was very strong and carried it well so I didn't really LOOK that fat.

When I graduated college my lifestyle became a lot more sedentary and over time the weight started adding up. You realize it's happening while it's happening and sometimes you might even try to do something about it, but your "want to" just isn't there yet and bad habits keep going until it all starts to snowball.

When I graduated A&M in 2000 I was probably somewhere around 240-250. At 6 foot tall I didn't look that fat. By 2006, after 6 years of an office job and Dallas traffic and bad eating and a mostly sedentary lifestyle, I'd gained over 100 pounds (don't know how much exactly...see post above).

My wakeup call came in 2007 when I was denied for a life insurance policy at the age of 31 because I was too fat. It took two years but I lost over 100 pounds and started feeling like my younger self again.

Fast forward to 2015 and I got divorced. My "want to" disappeared for a while and slowly but surely the weight came back. Within a year or two I was back up over 300 lbs and have pretty much hovered between 300 and 340 ever since.

My second wakeup call came in October, when my doctor put me on blood pressure medication and told me I was well on my way to diabetes if I don't make some changes.

So, here we are...trying to make some changes. I would guess that most obese people have a similar story, just with different details.

5'11" - 175 as a senior in high school, by end of freshman year at A&M I was 6'-1" and 225, most of it not good weight, slowly kept gaining and was up to about 240ish by graduation. Over the next 6 years I slowly climbed up to my high of 295 when I saw a pic that shocked me. Over the next 6 months I got down to 195, but I certainly wasn't healthy about it and almost immediately rebounded to 250 and was climbing as of the summer 2009, that's when I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and decided to change my lifestyle. Did my first triathlon and got down to 210 over the next year. From there I continued with my new lifestyle and continued to lose weight. from 2012-2020 my steady weight was around 195. Early in covid it went back up to 225 and I decided to stop that train and started training again and was down to 185 when I decided to do another ironman, from there it went down to 170 in fall 2021. After Ironman I've been stable at around 180-183. It's been a lifelong battle.

1- been a yoyo, but the most success was when I did it slowly
2- triathlon/running
3- skin is mostly pretty tight. It's a little looser around midsection than I'd like, but that's likely from the stretch marks.

Progression:
1993 - 175
1994 - 225
1999 - 250
2007 - 295
2008 - 195
2009 - 250
2010 - 210
2011 - 195
2012 - 185
2020 - 225
2021 - 170
2022 to present - Three Jan 1 weigh ins in a row: 182

Thanks for the replies. I've too have spent most of my teens and 20s being "husky" fit. And struggled to adapt a permanent lifestyle that fits me now.

I watch my 600lb life and wonder how they got so big but I realized they have emotional issues that haven't been addressed.

Anyhow thanks for sharing ! Keep up the progress….as Denzel says it's progress not perfection.