This is going to be a really long post, but I feel it necessary to vent, and maybe someone can understand where I'm coming from.

I was a fat kid all my life. I was relatively inactive, and ate nothing but junk, and lots of it. To cut to the chase, this stunted me in all kinds of social development ways my entire childhood.

February of 2001, at 6'3", I weighed 320 pounds. I finally decided to do something about my weight problem. Starting with cutting back from 3-4 Cokes a day, I went cold turkey on soda and lost 12 pounds in a month.

I then proceeded to work out 6 days a week my entire summer vacation. 45 minutes of high incline treadmill walking, and circuit training on weight machines. Diet-wise, I was eating a small or no breakfast, a couple of turkey sandwiches for lunch, and a decently large dinner (chicken, tacos, hamburger helper, whatever we had around home). Drank a ton of water, too.

Come September of 2001, I weighed 230 pounds. Barely anyone recognized me, I got all kinds of props, etc, from people. It felt really good. I kept this all up, and in February of 2002, a year after beginning, was down to 195 pounds.

Since that point, through both some muscle growth and just dietary neglicence, I've reached an equilibrium point of 215. I call it that because no matter what I do lately, it will not go up or down, for any reason. I've weighed 215 pounds for close to a year now.

My issues:

1) Due to not doing any research into it, and just crash-dieting, I know I cost myself a ton of muscle. I know this beacuse my arms look weak and flabby unflexed, and because people my size or fairly smaller can lift more than me on almost any lift at the gym. I'm big, but weak, despite having been lifting seriously for two years now.

2) I have enough loose skin on my body to make the loose skin joke in Austin Powers 3 about Fat Bastard seem almost realistic. I'll never be able to take my shirt off at a beach, point-blank, unless I pay for surgery. And that's seriously disheartening. To have put as much insane effort into fixing my body as I did, only to still never be able to be happy with it.

I want to, while maintaining what little muscle my body actually builds, cut down to around 200 or 195 again and see how I look. The problem with that is that no matter how much cardio I do, how staunchly I reject snacks, junk food and cheat meals, my weight just doesn't freakin' budge an ounce.

I am doing cardio 5 days a week. 45 minutes, 65-70%MHR on either inclined walking treadmill or the elliptical. I do it fasted on days I don't have work, and after work when I must. I also lift, each body part once a week, on Max-OT-ish principles (3 sets, few reps, heavy weights). Depending on my split, I do either 3, 4, or 5 days of lifting. I like to mix this up a lot.

I try to eat around 2000 calories. All the calculations and whatnot say I need something ridiculous like 2600-2700 to cut. I cannot believe that I need to cram even MORE food down my throat to lose weight. Furthermore, even 2000 calories involves a lot of eating and food preparation. I fail to see how I could get that much more food in me every single day. Being that I am broke and living at home, even buying the food would be a problem.

But considering I lost weight off a 1200-1600 calorie diet at my fattest, 2000 should be doing me just fine, I'd imagine...

In conclusion, I don't know what to do. What I do know is that it's discouraging to have worked out religiously for the last two years only to have my body nearly identical to how it looked when I started. Since first dropping down to 195, I look the same today as I did in February 2002. Part of this is loose skin. The other part of it is that I apparently have no idea what I'm doing in the gym and dietarily (I invented a word.)

Before anyone asks, I have no idea what my BF% is because, quite frankly, I am horrified to find out. Also, the loose skin would probably obscure any tests I could take.

You know, honestly, I lost whatever point I had with this post, so if nothing else, thank you for the opportunity to vent. If anyone has anything helpful, that'd just be a nice side-bonus. Attached is a picture of my transformation for reference.

http://img20.exs.cx/img20/7317/transformation.jpg

Relax... take deep breaths...

Your transformation is incredible. Be proud of it. You are a different person from picture to picture, and it was a serious improvement. Somebody chime in here, this sounds like ... clinical depression to me. My dad had that...

-R

first of all, let me just say, you look amazing. really. you've come along way. second, i say you should just take a month completely off from dieting, exercising... you've earned it. eat good (bad ;) )for a little while. laze around. take some time to collect yourself. during this time, research as much as you can about dieting, nutrition, exercising, weight training, etc... and create a gameplan.

I don't know if this will help, but I hope it will.

Your childhood sounds eerily similar to mine, especially:

I was a fat kid all my life. I was relatively inactive, and ate nothing but junk, and lots of it. To cut to the chase, this stunted me in all kinds of social development ways my entire childhood.

As someone who not only shares that experience, but is still in the early stages of trying to get healthy once and for all, I can only offer a limited perspective on your struggle. But I would recommend that you try this:

Imagine that you, as an outside observer, went back in time and talked with that young man in the "before" picture. You show him a picture of the "after", and convince him that this will be how he looks in a few years. I guarantee you that he will be ecstatic!

Think about it: how many times when you were a kid did you think "If I can just lose the weight, get into shape..." etc, only to be disappointed and left feeling miserable & like a failure? Now you're at that point, you've achieved great things at your young age, and I should think that taking these accompishments into account would make it easier to overcome existing obstacles.

Having said that, I would suggest getting in touch with a counselor, advisor, clergyman or some such person qualified to deal with people suffering from depression. It's a serious matter, and I wouldn't presume to think that it would just go away by any method I came up with on a message board. If nothing else, consider that you have some new online comrades to lean on.

Whoa, I really wish I'd used the word "frustrated" in my thread-title instead of depressed. I chose poorly on that one. Overall, I'm a very happy dude. Life's pretty cool. I am just frustrated with this one aspect of it, is all... didn't mean to make people think I'm re-enacting a Linkin Park video here or anything equally angst-ridden. ;)

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS. You have come so far and done so much good work.
Second, i know where you are coming from. I was also a fat kid, I also lost a ton of muscle during crash diets and I dont think i'll every take my shirt off at the beach. (see my posts in the media gallery for my lovely stretch marks)
But dont let it get you down!
I agree with legend, except maybe just take a week off from exercising and dieting. Jack that metabolism up with some high calorie intake, and maybe you will find yourself dropping again when you go back to 2000 cals.

Hey, fellow goon. I saw your picture on that SA thread.

You look very, very good and your transformation is amazing. I don't know much about loose skin, but you look young; I'm sure you could do something.

First of all your arms don't look weak and flabby to me! Everyone gets frustrated sometimes. Just think about how much happier you are now than you were at 320. Keep going, and in another year you will be even happier than you are now. You have made great progress that you should be very proud of. Don't dwell on you past mistakes. The important thing is that you realize you made some mistakes along the way and going forward you can correct them. :gl:

You look great for a guy who used to weigh over 300 lbs.

Don't think that the past two years have been a waste. I'll tell you I've been working out for the past decade and I look VERY similar now to how I did about 8 years ago. The reason is simply that I've not consistently applied myself. I'll go in spurts of interest where, in a trough of interest I'm only working out 2-3 times/week, not really watching diet much, and then at a peak I'm working out a lot and eating properly. I've always throughout, worked out to some degree, but with varying degrees of interest, so my results are mildly up and down all the time.

To think I've spent all these hours working out to look the same way I did when I was 18 one may think is totally insane, but then I realize that if I'd not worked out at all during this time I'd look like the typical pot bellied 26 year old who can't run a mile and sure as hell can't do a pull up.

You can reach your goals if you continue to think on it and tweak what you're doing, but my point in the above is that the best thing is progress. The next best thing is not regressing (20 lbs, some of which is muscle, is not a big regression). Without these past two years you'd have regressed substantially.

Congrats on your transformation thus far. You have come a long way!

What does your diet currently look like? Tweaking your macronutrients may be the answer.

Congratulations, man. Awesome work!

I'll share some of the stuff I've learned from my brief stay on this forum.

About the loose skin, never say "never." There are a bunch of different ways of dealing with loose skin that don't involve surgery.

I've heard a lot of guys who've lost a lot of weight but aren't quite done cutting despair over loose skin; the answer is almost always to keep on trucking. A lot of the time, something that looks like "loose skin" is really just smaller fat deposits that look more disconcerting than the familiar big, round gut. A lot of the time, they'll go away. They just go away slowly. You want to think "I've worked hard for a very long time, and people are noticing my success! I'm done! I did it!" You're not done. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and if you aren't happy with your body now, there's no reason you can't keep working on it. You're here because you decided to do something about your body. You have the tools, you have the talent, you know you can do it, just stay the course.

Don't try to do more than one thing at once. If you still want to cut body fat, don't worry about loose skin. The best way to combat loose skin is to build muscle, and you really shouldn't focus on building muscle until you're content that you're pretty much done cutting (which it seems you aren't, by your own estimation, and that's cool).

Also, none of these things happen over night; they take persistence. I mean, of course, you know that already; you've done it, and you've been very successful! I hear that young skin is very elastic. If there really is some loose skin, you'd be amazed at how much it can tighten up in a year or two. Maybe it won't be quite in time for this summer, but it's still a heck of a lot different than "never."

Way to go man. What an awesome transformation. I definitely feel ya on the whole fat kid issue, I was up at around 280 at age 18. Like these other guys are saying though, keep at it, and the loose skin and stretch marks will probably disappear.

Dude you are a frickin' STUD! People like you inspire me. You've lost over 100lbs and added who knows how years to your life. Plus, those years will not be spent in pain or discomfort but you'll be active and having fun. YOU ROCK!

Taking some time off to regroup is a great idea. Maybe not a month but a couple weeks would be good. You could also try mixing things up a bit. If you're at a plateau then that's sign that maybe you should try something different. Try different types of cardio, do some stuff outside. Have fun.

My recommendation is to find something you love and do that. For me it's trail running. I don't know why, I just love it. Every workout is a ton of fun for me. If you could find something like that it would be time well spent. Not sure why but I see you as a boxer. Find a boxing gym and do that. Or what ever but make sure you have fun.

EXTRA SKIN: So you're broke now and living at home. But what does your transformation say other than the fact that you weigh less now. To me it says that you have desire, you can stick to a plan, you're in things for the long haul and you are successful. Those are all great qualities. So eventually you're going to get a great job making good money. When that happens, have that skin removed. Next thing you know you're hanging out at the beach with everyone saying DAAAAMN!

So here's what you do:
1. take some time off to re-group
2. Find something you love as your workout
3. Get a good job
4. Bye bye skin!

I'm not trying to make it sound overly easy but this is what I do when I don't know what to do. I then take each major goal and break it down into small attainable ones and then get started. Might take some time but it IS easy.

Good luck man. One more time, You're a STUD! :tu:

Thanks a lot for the responses so far, everybody. This is truly a great community on this here Internet.

I'm more or less taking the long weekend off, seeing as how I'm going to be around friends and celebratory food, and all. :eat:

I went ahead and did all the Harris-Benedit calculations and whatnot from the stickied Weight-Loss Nutrition thread. Starting Tuesday, I am going to be making myself consume ~2600 calories, an increase from my 2000 or so lately. According to the formula, even eating 2417 calories a day I would be on track to lose 2 lb/week! So that 2000 can't have been a good idea any way you cut it... way too low. We'll see how things go here.

Time to figure out how to not suck at Excel, so that I can begin tracking things using John's pretty little meal-planner!

Thanks a lot for the responses so far, everybody. This is truly a great community on this here Internet.

I. According to the formula, even eating 2417 calories a day I would be on track to lose 2 lb/week! So that 2000 can't have been a good idea any way you cut it... way too low. We'll see how things go here.


Look for another set of posts dealing with Spreadsheets in Nutrition, there are two there, both should be stickyed, but haven't been so far. They will start you off, following diet.

Won't even suggest a diet, look at what John Stone has done and others. My belief, eat clean, lower calories to a point where you stay on diet. Not sure there are magic percents, just don't overdo. And Don't fast.

The important thing get a good resistance training program started. My suggestion think about doing fullbody workouts, drop splits. Train Big muscles first, legs, back, chest, shoudlers, arms, and abs. Do no more or less than 8-12 reps with sets of 1-3, with a weight that brings you to momentary failure, increase it 5-10 lbs when you can do 12 and go back to 8 reps. Perform 12 or less exercises covering body parts, under control and slowly. This should take 30 -40 minutes not more than 3 days a week.

Cardio, you can fill in on off days. Why not walk for 30 minutes after supper. No big deal. You want to build strength and muscles and you want to rest and give yourself time to repair. Get 8 hours sleep.