Yeah Ryan - we need to see your pics so that you can show the naysayers that you DO indeed know what you are talking about!

Fair enough. Right now I am down 20lbs from a high of 250. The first picture is me in Costa Ricca, at 250. The second was three weeks ago at 240.

Warning, there is a picture with my shirt off. This may be a disturbing sight for some viewers. Parental guidance is advised.

Well congrats on what weight loss you've managed although I recall you had made a heftier goal way back when..

And also congrats on the new baby... if that little bundle of joy is yours.

I set a much loftier goal, and ended up letting myself lose focus due to some family issues. Not an excuse, I still could have chosen to eat better, just did not make the best choices.

Baby is mine, he is a wonderful little bundle of spit and poop! The kid has his dads attitude and uses the weapons he has. Never been happier.

Wow Ryan, you look great......20 lbs can make a difference!!
(Gotta get that laptop/treadmill combo going)

Your baby is a doll

Wow - that is a difference! Good job!

BTW, have you heard about the 'study' that says you can 'catch' obesity from someone who sneezes or by shaking their hand? Yeah, rightttttttttttt... only if that hand is holding a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Just another way for someone to say "see, it ISN'T my fault."

Cute baby!!

You look great Ryan! Good looking guy!

What an adorable little baby you got there.

I sure miss having little ones like that to cuddle. In a year he'll be squirming to get down and get on with his busy day of playing and running around! (til he's tired and wants to be loved on again).

Happy times for you Ryan.

In my opinion obesity is contagious, but only as a sociological group think type of way, not in a virus/bacteria kind of way.

Enough about my pictures. I'll update pictures when i am down another ten. For everyone else, post them if you got them.

Before 562.3

After 215

49 year old 6' 2" tall.

I wish everyone the very best!

Charles

Wow, Charles. Amazing!

Ryan, congratulations on the baby and what a cutie!

Before: 250 lbs (May 2007)



After: 137 lbs (May 2008)



I did gain some weight back. Right now I'm at 170 lbs (lost 10 lbs since Jan 1st) and working very hard to re-achieve my goal weight.

Great job Amanda!!

Very impressive Amanda. I think the most important part is that you did it once and know you can do it again.

Thanks everyone!

Before/After face shot in my sig.

I'll have to see if I can round up a full body shot somewhere. I lost 75-80 pounds a couple of years ago, after gaining it back. Originally I lost it in my early 20's, and kept it off for 10 years.

Moral of the story: You can never get to comfy kiddies. It sucks, but it is always easy to slide back down that slope. Losing it the second time was any harder in my opinion, but it sure was a lot harder to start the second time. Once I got rolling and back into my habits it was cake. No pun intended.

Here's mine: and FYI, I'm 5' 1 1/2" tall.

Before - 241 lbs. Size 22 Feb 2008


After - 224 lbs. Size 18 Sept 2008


Sept was when my knee started acting up and made workouts difficult. It's since been diagnosed as arthritis (in both knees), so now I know how to manage the pain better. Right now I'm at 229, so I'm up 5 lbs, but for the most part, I was at least able to maintain what I already lost (I had to really watch what I was eating). Now I'm determined to get the scale to start moving down again.

I'm gonna make 2009 my skinny year!

Before: August 07 @ 259 pounds




After: May 08 @ 170 pounds

And The Obligatory Jeans Shot



I'm 5' 11"

^^^ Great job on your weight loss!

Congrats Ryan. We had our baby boy 8 weeks ago. Our first child, and I can surely say it is really hard to maintain the exercise regime with a young one. I can't wait for the weather to improve so I can get out and run at lunch.

Wow congrats to all of you!! SO INSPIRING! Here are mine (I've lost over 60 lbs, kept it off almost a year now.)




I love reading success stories

Great job everyone! Thank you all for sharing and inspiring me to continue!

The photo on the left is me at 367, on the right is my current 317

Congrats to everyone on their weight loss. Ryan your little man is adorable!

Fantastic pics everyone! Everyone looks so great.

Wow, you guys all look amazing!!!!! I love seeing emerging waistlines.

you guys keep on the good work! you look great. Congratulations on the new babies

Wow! Everyone looks great! Keep up the hard work.

Congrats Ryan and Gooch on your babies! Ryan, he is adorable. And I see you already have him watching the Chroni-WHAT-cles of Narnia! I don't know if you have seen that SNL skit, but I can't see that movie no without thinking about it.

As for me, I am working on an after, but right now, I would have to post the pictures as after and then before to get the proper order. One day at a time...

A more accurate representation. The last photo, the bigger picture was taken at 255Ibs. This new picture has me at my heaviest, which was 280, and me now at 225. I'm finally seeing the differences. It feels good, knowing that I'm doing good and getting healthy.

Congratulations on your weight loss! You look great! Keep up the great work!

Congratulations! That really is a big milestone. You're doing it! My biggest was 35 lbs. several years ago. I'd like to lose 50 this year - but would be happy with 35.

Grats! Wonderful job! You should be very proud

Congrats. You look fantastic. Keep up the great work and post your next milestone.

ATHENS, Ohio -- He lost more weight than Jared the Subway guy, the record holder for The Biggest Loser or anyone on the Web sites for Weight Watchers and NutriSystem.
In about two years, Darin Dillinger of Athens dropped 365 pounds -- from a peak of 525 to the 160 he has maintained on his 5-foot-9-inch frame since January 2008.
His methods: diet and exercise.
And he never wavered from his weight-loss plan, never even consulted with a physician through most of his bodily changes.
"Ninety percent of maintaining and losing weight is mental," said Dillinger, 24. "I really believe people can do anything if they really want it."
His story:
Conflicted childhood
Pizza, french fries and cottage cheese made for primary food groups when Darin was growing up in a heavyset family near Athens.
In infancy, he developed spinal meningitis -- which hindered his development and left him struggling to digest certain foods.
"So we just kind of let him eat whatever he wanted," said father Gary, who weighed 458 pounds before undergoing Lap-Band gastric surgery in 2007.
"We didn't ever try to deter him through his life, I guess, so that kind of added to his weight problem."
Heavy by the fifth grade, Darin suffered depression and made a first attempt at suicide.
He tried to leave the world again, as a teenager, when he realized that he is gay.
The attempts failed, so he ate -- a lot.
Such as a whole pizza almost nightly or a bowl of pasta topped with bacon, croutons, pickles, mayonnaise, ranch dressing and a container of cottage cheese.
Dillinger didn't consider dieting even at the end of high school, when he weighed 414 pounds.
He was the chatty fat kid who joked constantly, often about himself.
I'm always going to be fat, he thought. At least I'll die happy.
Friendly facade
Despite gaining a "freshman 100" during his first year at Wright State University near Dayton, the outgoing Dillinger still attracted friends and attention.
"But if you knew him," said Nicholas Squillace, a resident assistant in the dorm where Dillinger lived, "you would think it was a facade, covering up for insecurities."
At 525 pounds, Dillinger couldn't tie his shoes, buckle a seat belt or withstand the duration of a shower.
Any public activities -- walking, eating, trying to fit into a chair -- caused embarrassment.
"It was debilitating," he said. "You get to the point where you give up. There was no use in trying (to lose weight)."
In June 2005, family physician Penny Shelton told Dillinger that his diet and obesity could significantly damage his heart and kidneys.
"Certainly, an early death would have been likely," she said.
Dillinger didn't take the message to heart until that December.
After a typical dinner -- a large pepperoni pizza, a pint of cottage cheese, a bag of potato chips with a container of sour cream -- he rolled himself off the couch, using the only method he had to lift himself from a seated position.
This time, though, he couldn't move or breathe.
His heart had stopped -- just for a moment but long enough for him to realize that he had to change.
He didn't want to die.
Enlightened eating
At first, Dillinger made subtle dietary concessions -- tacos instead of pizza, maybe.
The changes became far more noticeable after May 2006, when health-minded friends urged him to walk on a treadmill three times a week, if only for 10 minutes.
By August, Dillinger had lost 100 pounds -- motivating him to use an elliptical machine daily and walk up to 3 miles on campus .
"I think the results he saw were so drastic, that was all the encouragement he needed," said his friend Squillace. "I think he realized that . . . (losing weight) was realistic."
Dillinger began to part ways with carbohydrates, asking his mother's cousin, a dietitian in California, about eating fruits and vegetables.
He had hardly touched such foods before.
Yet he became as insistent about proper nutrition as he had been about junk-food consumption.
"It was just like, overnight, he started eating vegetables and fruit," said his mother, Darlene. "He just went cold turkey."
Diana Shore, the dietitian, recalled his determination to complete a lifestyle reversal.
"It was like a religious conversion; it was enlightenment," she said. "That's how strongly committed he was."
Excessive exercise
Dillinger almost became too dedicated to the cause.
Fitting into his thin friend's jeans became a goal.
His daily mantra: I'm going to be skinny.
His walking progressed to running -- from 30, 45 and 60 minutes to 2 1/2 unbroken hours on a treadmill or an elliptical machine.
Meanwhile, his 900- calorie, carb-free diet remained geared toward weight loss.
The regimen worked too well: By the end of 2007, weighing only 147 pounds, he continued exercising through fatigue and body aches.
"Once you get into the mode of losing weight, you focus on it and that's all you focus on," Dillinger said. "You don't realize that you're overdoing it."
A doctor advised him to stop his exercising for two weeks and to start lifting weights to gain muscle mass.
Shore recommended that he add grain-based foods such as rice and oatmeal.
"I had to learn balance," Dillinger said. "You can go from one extreme to another."
Sensible sustaining
To stay at 160 pounds, Dillinger exercises on a machine up to an hour a day, lifts and stretches.
His daily calorie consumption ranges from 3,000 to 4,000.
Breakfast, for example, might consist of oatmeal, tofu, yogurt and nuts plus an apple, a pear, a banana, a mango and some papaya.
Lunch features a similarly long list of vegetables; and dinner, a Lean Cuisine meal.
"He eats twice as much as I do," said his father, at 280 pounds after his gastric surgery. "It's ungodly what he eats in a day; he just exercises so much."
Dillinger, unemployed since his graduation last year with a degree in mass communication, doesn't have a car and spends most of his day walking the hilly streets of Athens.
Someday, when he has the money, he hopes to undergo surgery to remove the final reminder of his former body: at least 10 pounds of extra skin below his stomach.
Career possibilities include teaching English in Korea, becoming a flight attendant and studying nutrition in graduate school.
And then there's his ultimate goal: hosting a TV talk show that would inspire other people to change their lives as he did.
"I'd be the gay, white Oprah," Dillinger said. "But I'm not going to gain the weight back like Oprah did."
asaunders@dispatch.com

oh SNAP!

but seriously, that's insane. kudos to him.

It's official! As of this morning I'm down 25lbs since starting!!

I suppose it would be a more important milestone if I were aiming for 50, but there's just something about 25 that seems AWESOME

Here's my before/after (so far )



Before = 202 (or so) lbs Now = 177lbs!!
Down 25lbs and 19.5" so far! I'm so excited about the difference it has made!

Congrats!!!! You're looking mighty fine.

CC, you're doing great!!!!! Work it girl!! Strike a pose!

Thanks guys It really feels good... Now if only my tummy-pouch would go away a bit faster

And striking a pose has never been a problem for me, I'm just less likely to have a double chin when I do it now

Fitting into old pants that I had "outgrown" is always an entertaining milestone for me. When I know I couldn't even button a pair of pants a few months ago, that I am now wearing, and they aren't even tight, is awesome!

Ryan can you give us an updated pic of your baby ?

Before:


After:


We owe it all to Tosca Reno's Clean Eating Book! Over 90 pounds lost for him, and 35 for me.

I have dieted since I was 11. My mom spent over $125,000 dollars on diets for me over the years, and nothing ever worked. Over the last year and a half, I completely changed my lifestyle. Here are some tips I can give you that helped me:

1.In order to lose weight, you have to love yourself BEFORE you lose weight.
2.Losing weight will not make your life seem better. That's up to YOU to make your dreams come true.
3.You're beautiful no matter how much you weigh.
4.Drinking lots of water helped me lose weight. I love Nestle Purelife Water. I drink that and milk only.
5.I made my weight loss as part of a lifestyle change.
6.I parked my car in the last parking space at work and whenever I went out.
7.I can now climb stairs without getting our of breath.
8.I got rid of all the negative people in my life, including overweight people who were negative. Not trying to be harsh. There are probably of plus size princesses who are sweethearts, but some of my friends weren't so supportive, including a best friend of 18 years. I nixed our friendship.
9.I cut out ALL junk food, and stopped eating so much bread.
10. I LOVE vanilla cake. I eat that as my treat.

Anyways, if I can do it, you can! Love yourself and be inspired!

Congratulations!

Other than parking your car at the last parking space I don't see any other exercise. Was the majority of this done by diet?

Congrats on the weight loss. I know it is a journey as I have been battling my weight for many years, and now I have it under control the best it has been since I was a teenager.

congratulations honey

Congratulations!

I started in October 09 and hope to lose 130 pounds in 2010. I started about 330 and want to get to 200.