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I hope this might inspire some of the people here who are trying to lose weight.
I started the year at around 250, maybe 255 or so. I am now 200ish, sometimes swinging up to maybe 203 or 204. I hope to be 180 to 185 by the later part of this year.
Here are before/after pics up until this point... I have a lot more if these two aren't good enough for comparison.
Those are spaced about 6 months apart.
My strategy for doing it was very simple. Just eat less calories and maintain a very basic workout schedule (ie, 2-3 days a week, 40-50 minutes per session, not too intense). Sure I could have done it faster by running 5 miles a day or something, but I wanted to do it my way... meaning...
a) Something I would actually DO. It's nice to say "I'm going to do this, that, etc, etc" and it's another thing to do it day in and day out for the rest of your life. I would never keep up a plan that involves something I absolutely hate.
b) Something that wouldn't be too stressful or intense. There's a reason why I got fat -- I tend towards laziness. I needed something that wasn't going to burn me out.
So I just sat down early this year and tried to analyze my diet from memory. I then figured out what I could do without and what I should add...
Cut out: The most obvious expendable source of calories was from liquids. I simply didn't need to drink 5000 calories a week (and I did, or more sometimes -- soda adds up). So I completely cut out drink calories. I now only drink water and diet drinks.
Added: I basically searched for things that taste pretty good but were still relatively healthy. Since I wasn't ever going to sit down to a dinner of steamed broccoli and cabbage, I realized that things like shrimp, chicken, burgers (no bun or cheese), hard boiled egg whites, baby carrots, chicken hot dogs, bananas and various other things were things I would actually eat. So I added a lot more of that.
Modified: My friends go to eat bad food way too often. I wasn't going to stop hanging out with my friends. What was I to do? I just modified what I ate. Let's say we were going to In 'N Out burger. Instead of a double cheeseburger with fries and a soda, I would get two hamburgers w/o sauce and a diet soda. My meal still tasted great, but I cut out over half of the calories.
In the end, I've found my quasi-diet to be extremely effective and easy to follow. I rarely find myself craving things like I used to and I can't say I've ever really wanted to return to my previous habits. I simply would never be able to survive on a diet where I ate an apple, a bag of nuts and a protein bar for a meal. For those of you who can, congrats. But for those of you who try those lifestyles and fail to keep up, try something like what I tried. It really works and it's easy to keep going.
I'll answer any questions anyone has and post more pics if anyone cares. Sorry if this whole thing is disjointed, I wrote it at 5 AM on a whim.
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Along with a lot of weight it looks like you lost 5 years. You look much younger in that 2nd pic. Well done.