Male, 17- Lost 50 pounds 5 months

by Connor

Hey guys/girls, I am a 17 year old male from Canada, and I was over weight. I was 220 pounds at 6'2" with a mesomorph body type. I decided that I wanted to lose some weight, I wasn't outwardly obese, I looked like a normal guy that was slightly over weight, but when I took off my shirt... well that was a different story.

I had a considerable amount of fat around my stomach, and as if that wasn't enough, the main bulk of my fat resided in the pectoral region. Five months ago I met a girl that I liked (may) and I told myself that the next year I would ask her out if I was more confident with my weight issues, and so all summer I made my best attempt to lose weight. I first cut back on my diet, not how much I ate per-say because I'm not so much a food type of guy, I much prefer drinks. And so instead of drinking 6 cans of coke a day, I drank 6 glasses of water a day, which helped my energy levels throughout the day, and cut me back about 1000 calories right then and there.

I knew however that this couldn't be the extent of my plan, and so I decided to work out. I was however way too self conscious to go to a gym, and I don't have a stationary bike or treadmill at home, so I decided to go mountain biking.

Every day for the whole summer I went on a 15k mountain bike trail. For the first week it took me an hour and a half, and I was EXHAUSTED by the end of it. But nearing the end of the summer I was doing it in half the time, and barely breaking a sweat. I decided that since the exercise was getting far too easy that I would give running a go. So I started to run in late August, and to my surprise I was amazing at it, I had impeccable breathing due to the mountain biking, as well as very strong leg muscles, however after about three kilometers I would start to get terrible cramps that would end my run. As time progressed I worked my way up to 5 kilometers, and I once even did a 10k run, but am now back to 5-8k on average, but the cramps persisted no matter how slow a pace I went, or how fast a pace I went (I average 4:45 per kilometer).

By this time I had lost an amazing 40 pounds, my stomach was not flat but it was very very close, and yet my problem with the pectoral region persisted. So I started to do weight training with 8 or 20 pound weights, I did flies and curls and many other things, mainly focusing on my pectoral region because I figured that I could feign great pecs without actually having them, and so far it is working. More importantly however, I started to do sit ups because I still had this problem of a not quite flat stomach. So I did sit ups and crunches and to my amazement my cramps and stitches while running went away, which made it a much more enjoyable task.

So come October, I now weigh 175 pounds, so you do the math; I still have a slight pectoral region issue, and I am yet to see a six pack but I can now take off my shirt with pride, which I regret to say I could not for the last 5 years of my life. And as of October I asked out that girl that I liked so very much in May, the same girl that motivated me in so many ways to do this transformation, and she said yes.

I still work out every day (weights every other day) but my philosophy on dieting is this: unless you drink copious amounts of soda or otherwise "bad" drinks, or eat a lot of sweets, or pastries, do not change your diet. Keep eating the same amount of food, try to eat out less, but hey I still have pizza 2 or three times a month, I am only human. But don't do a radical new diet, just cut back on the things that are really bad for you, in my case it was soda, and replace it with a better alternative.

And after you have done that just devote an hour of your life to working out, whether it be going on a run, or a vigorous bike ride, it will change your life, and all though you may think it is a lot of work doing an hour everyday of your life, it will in actuality give you more energy throughout the day. Find your motivation, set a goal, but do it for yourself and you will feel so much better about it.

Thank you for reading my story, I hope I have either inspired you to lose weight as I have, or maybe even given you a tip or two on how I lost weight so quickly and easily.

Quick side note, DO NOT drop your caloric in take to extremely low levels, drop it by 500 or 1000 tops! If you do any more than 1000 less calories (unless you are morbidly obese and consume about 5000 daily, then your body will accommodate itself too quickly to the new metabolic rate of digestion and you will not get the best results, what ever people say about a 500 calorie a day diet, it is NOT true, you will lose fat undeniably but also muscle, and overall energy and then you can never go back to eating normal amounts of food or you will gain weight from your original. Just drop your caloric intake slowly until you are around 1800-2500 (male) or 1200-1800 (female) daily, and WORKOUT 3-5 times a week, preferably every day if you can.