lightening the load: any extreme weight loss stories?

[divadolce]

On my quest to create a more whole healthy body, I'm just wondering does anyone on here have any experience or stories they would like to share about significant weight loss, as in like 50 or more pounds?

 

Particularly anyone who has sculpted their body on a more natural path like raw food and such?

 

Thank you!!

[Guest]

I've lost 80lbs but I was heavy on purpose and lost the weight with just eating less of the good vegan food I was eating for the purpose of becoming a cyclist. I was actually 320lbs on multiple occations before too but I was around 280 when I decided to give cycling a try.

[cubby2112]

I started out at 270 lbs and began to work my way down, becoming closer to being vegetarian and eventually vegan. I began by cutting out certain kinds of meat, then meat altogether. I then went completely vegan. In this process, I got down to 165 lbs, a loss of 105 lbs. This was over a span of roughly nine months. Possibly dangerously fast weight loss, but something snapped in my personal life over that summer almost two years ago and I decided to make positive changes in my life and do things I have always dreamed of. As close to raw foods as I have gone is by eating around 60% raw and almost entirely whole foods.

[kjtten]

I very slowly (over the course of two years) went from 191 to 134 (at 5 foot 6). I wasn't even vegan at the time ... I did that with exercise and moderate calorie restriction.

 

Now, I weigh between 140 and 145, but I have a lot more muscle that I did at my lowest weight.

 

I'm currently cutting bodyfat, I've gone from 21% to 16% in the past 6 months, while staying the same weight.

 

I would recommend, in order of importance:

 

1. Vegan, whole-foods, quality diet (of course!)

2. Eat 5-6 meals per day and watch total calories (experiment to get your ideal amount, but do not trigger a starvation response!)

3. Exercise (both weights and cardio are necessary.)

[mipooh]

I lost about 30 kgs in 6 or 7 months mainly with exercising (I did not do anything before). Sometimes I drank water instead of coke or did not drink one beer or one instead of two and things like that. Nothing complicated or forced. This is a year ago now.

 

Since this time I came to healthier food, fruit, vegetables, and since some weeks I eat vegan. And I like doing some sports about 2hrs every day. A big mix including cardio, weights, bwe, juggling, whatever... even standing on one leg...

 

My weight will go down further, I know that. But I don´t force it.

[Matty Cakes]

In Fall of 2002 came in at 330 something. I was not vegan and had never even heard of the word. I really never realized I got that fat because it happened so fast. When I graduated from High School I was some where around 270? a fatty still at 5'10'. Real it seems odd but the fatter you get more comfortable you become.

 

Late Fall(end of Oct.)2002. I went to a party with my friends and people that I knew from school where treating me weird like I was an alien. I bought a bathroom school and well I MAXed it out

[sydneyvegan]

About 10 years ago I lost 90lbs in a year.

Although my weight wasn't that high to begin with, I was all fat and no muscle, it was horrible. Then I started exercising and counting calories and the weight just fell off me. At the end I was really skinny, so I started going to the gym and learning about weights etc. I can remember at the begining I was lifting about 100lbs on bench and didn't even know what a squat looked like. I have continued to go to the gym since then and now I am not that much lighter than when I was a big fat thing, all those years ago. The Difference now is that it is mostly muscle, I can bench around 260lbs and have never looked back.

[veganmomma]

45 pounds in 8 months after I became a dietary vegan, went to Muay Thai classes 3 days/week for 6 months, weightlifting 3 days/week, BJJ classes 3 days/week for 2 months until I injuried my knee in MT class.

[pamela]

I lost and have kept off 20 pounds, which doesn't sound like much but I only weighed about 140 to begin with so it was really about 15% of my weight.

[Matt]

I've lost 30 pounds after being on a no-exercise, fast food diet for 8 years. So that extra weight was all fat. I went vegetarian and I'm now about 99% vegan (traces of dairy in some processed foods), and I'm commuting to work every day. I tried doing stupid things like fasting and drastically cutting calories and upping exercise, but it simply doesn't work because your body compensates in other ways and your biochemistry starts to change.

 

I agree with kjtten's approach and that's worked well for me. I'm gradually losing weight by eating as much as I want but aiming toward a more unprocessed diet, somewhat raw. I notice less cravings when I avoid processed food (even vegan processed food) or food high in salt or sugar, so I'm working on keeping these to a minimum. The resulting reduction in cravings helps keep the unneeded, low-nutrition, extra calories off. I still like having warm foods because it raises my core temperature, so I go raw for dinner every other day now.

 

As for exercise, I stick with the "no more that 10% increase" from the week before that's stuck with me when I was a racing cyclist and runner. This works really well, but I do it more now so I recover more gracefully and don't get sick which tends to happen more if you are out of shape when you get older.

 

So in a nutshell, I suggest: Get daily exercise (or 5-7 days a week) to increase metabolism (and build a bit of muscle), even if it's at low intensity, go unprocessed vegan and raw if possible.