245lbs to 182lbs in 7 months with a destroyed back.

245lbs to 182lbs in 7 months with a destroyed back.http://imgur.com/ZrsUjss before/after (still no oil painting). http://i.imgur.com/eFKMOwY.jpg (end of October), I wish I'd kept those jeans, I'd like to have them to put on every time I crave something sweet. Apologies for the shitty before shot I avoided the camera like it beat my ancestors. In early 2015 I was diagnosed with a rare spinal condition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringomyelia) at that point I was a few months out of a disastarous long term relationship and in 5 years I'd gone from ~190 up to 235lbs (combination of stress, unhappy home life), that relationship ended and then my health went in the toilet so I just gave up and ate shit all the time meaning I hit 17.5 stone (245lbs) by end of July 2015. I was ill for a couple of weeks and not really eating and when I got on the scales I'd dropped 5lbs, so I decided that was it I was going to lose some weight since I'd accidentally made a start. I did some back of the envelope calculations and worked out I needed around 2450 calories a day for basic metabolic needs so I set a hard limit of 1450 a day. I also looked into what running that kind of calorie deficit would do to me and the consensus was 1800 would be the lower recommended limit as it would be hard to get enough nutrients so I decided to supplement. Diet: Months 1-5: Breakfast: Porridge/Skim Milk Lunch: Tub Low Fat Cottage Cheese/Salad Tea: Chicken, Rice, Peas or Sweetcorn. Drinks: Sugar free energy drinks or water (so much water). This isn't a representative day, this is exactly what I ate 6 days a week, on a Sunday I'd have porridge, a sandwhich for lunch and a chicken dinner (chicken, veg, yorkshire puddings). Based on my adhoc math (and a very detailed spreadsheet, hey I'm a programmer we are naturally geeks) I estimated I'd lose 2.1lbs a week doing this and I did, I wish I'd kept the figures but it was 2.1 to 2.2lbs a week (faster at first as I'd really over estimated how much calories was in things, buy scales). Since I knew that running on 1450 calories a day for months would be unhealthy I took the following supplements, zinc, magnesium, cod liver oil, vitamin D and lysine and a general multivitamin (b12 etc). By Christmas this year I was down to 196lbs, I took a couple of weeks off for Christmas (after months of cottage cheese I needed the break). Once I'd got the weight off I spoke to my neurologist about exercise at the end of January, because of the spinal thing I can't lift ridiculously heavy weights but she told me I could do body weight exercises if I took each one slowly and monitored the symptoms to see if they increased and not do that, I could also swim. So I started doing that, initially I struggled to do 10 pressups in a set so I thought bollocks I'll aim for 10 in a morning and 10 at night, after a week or so that went to 15 and 15 and I took it really steady adding 5 per day per week and then increasing more rapidly (I do 40 in a morning, 40 after lunch, 40 before bed) and started adding variants, inclined etc, I got a yoga ball and started doing rolling pressups (no idea what those are called) as well as pilates off youtube. About a month ago I got a pull-up bar, I could only do two to start, I'm up to 10 now with good form and my goal is 20, I also do inclined chinups (using the yoga ball) as well as planks, I also use the pull up bar to do assisted dips (feet on floor). I can't do situps (that increases pain) but found planks and crunches don't (also a pilates thing called "The 100's" or something, hard to describe but it certain makes your abs burn). I don't really have a fixed routine I have to listen to my body really carefully as I risk hurting my back if I don't. Next up is some hand weights and again starting low and working up to see what I can handle. Diet now is high protein, lowish fat, low carb. I eat a lot of chicken (300-400g a day), eggs (scrambled, quick and easy) plus a tub of 0 fat greek yoghurt (500g), that takes care of protein, whatever calories are left I spread across whatever I fancy eating that day, I'm currently aiming for ~2000, some days up some days down. I now weigh less than I did at 25 which is a nice place to be at 36. As a nice side benefit, taking the weight off reduced the pressure on my back a lot and I'm down to half the medication I was on a year ago. submitted by /u/noir_lord [link] [comments]

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