Here's how I lost 80 pounds, kept it off for a decade, and completely transformed my health since 2014. I used to weigh 250 pounds and felt hopeless about my body; today I weigh around 170, with good muscle, energy, and a body I feel good in. I'm not a doctor and this isn't medical advice — it's my experience. I have nothing to sell, everything I read is in books, and everything I eat is in a regular grocery store.
Childhood and weight as protection
As a kid I always cleared my plate on a strict three-meals-a-day schedule, ate a lot of meat, animal products, and sweets, and carried a little extra weight — which, looking back, genuinely helped me take the rough-and-tumble of childhood. I was athletic and in good shape through high school and early college, passing Army ROTC fitness tests with energy to spare.
A decade out of control
Then I started drinking in college, dropped ROTC, sat around gaming more, and picked up high-calorie habits (a single 1,000-calorie smoothie put 10 pounds on me). That began a decade of feeling my body was out of control — a lonely battle I tried to hide. My weight tracked my environment: it dropped 20 pounds almost effortlessly whenever I lived somewhere I felt safe (like back with my parents), and crept right back when I moved out and returned to fast food and drinking. I tried a paid health-coach program, personal trainers, eating less, and working out to exhaustion — and my drinking sabotaged anything that worked.
Hitting bottom and getting sober
I hit bottom on April 22, 2014, at 250 pounds — sick, broke, and hopeless. I prayed that I'd do anything to get sober, because I had enough honesty to see that as long as I kept drinking, nothing else could change. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and getting sober was the foundation that made everything else possible. Just stopping drinking dropped about 20 pounds, but I plateaued at 220 and realized I had much further to go.
Radical honesty and the book that changed everything
Borrowing the AA idea of a fearless inventory, I tracked every single calorie on MyFitnessPal for a year — no diet, no deficit, just radical honesty, aiming for around 2,800 calories while exercising. Just seeing the numbers made me stop sooner, and I lost another 30 pounds. Still, I kept getting sick and felt my health wasn't right, so I asked everyone for advice. My uncle, a doctor, recommended How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger. Around then, I noticed a heavy fast-food breakfast crashed my mood within 30 minutes — a shocking realization that what I ate affected how I thought. I read the book with an open mind, felt certain it would work for me, and committed on the spot to a whole-food plant-based diet: fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and beans, minimally processed.
Plant-based, fasting, and the muscle lesson
The first week was hard — I didn't know what to buy and got badly bloated throwing fiber at my system. I settled into a giant daily fruit-and-vegetable smoothie plus nuts, hummus, beans, and whole grains, and went very strict, also cutting ultra-processed foods and adding intermittent fasting. I got down to 160 — but dropped too much muscle by stopping weights, and fasting left me irritable with big energy spikes. The last few years have been about balance: I added vigorous exercise back (tennis, power yoga), and my weight has held in the 170s.
The emotional side and what's sustainable
I dug into the emotional side of overeating — eating from boredom, loneliness, and stress, and weight as protection going back to childhood. Reading How Not to Diet, The China Study, Intuitive Eating, and Mind Over Medicine deepened it. The key insight: moderation doesn't work for me with addictive foods, so I keep my house clear of cakes, cookies, candy, and chips and stock only foods I can eat as much of as I want — because whole plants are so filling it's hard to overeat them. Before I eat something like cake at a meeting, I honestly ask whether I'm okay putting that in my body, and usually my mind says never mind. The goal isn't to impress anyone; it's to put the right fuel in my body so it feels good.
If you feel hopeless, I know what that's like — and you don't have to fix everything at once. I fixed the top problem first (sobriety), then how I ate, then what I ate. Real change is possible, and it starts with deciding you'll do whatever it takes. Having my health under control has also made everything else easier, including dating. If you want help applying this, you can find more on my life playlist here — and I'd read the books from the doctor himself and do your own research.