Chuck Lost 189lbs with Just One New Behavior

Meet Chuck, a Substance Abuse Grant Coordinator from Oklahoma who lost half his bodyweight by starting a positive relationship with food.

Chuck Lester

From: Perkins, Oklahoma

Occupation: Substance Abuse Grant Coordinator

Start weight: 375lbs | Current weight: 186lbs | Pounds lost: 189lbs!

Chuck’s epic weight loss story.

Somewhere around 8 years ago one of life’s confluences started me on a journey.  First, my doctor informed me my cholesterol was high and I’d be a candidate for a medication. I was already on one for my blood pressure and really didn’t want to add another so I asked him to give me until I was 40 to prescribe it.

Around the same time I mustered all the courage I could and stepped on a scale for the first time in maybe a decade. I weighed 375 pounds

I started with some incredibly small baby steps without having any plan whatsoever with predictable poor results.

Then my wife got into grad school at NYU and I got a job at OSU (and therefore access to a great gym). I started working out…a lot. I still hadn’t done anything to fix my broken relationship with food but I lost 125 pounds over those two years anyway. Which was great.

Except it also wasn’t sustainable. When Jess finished grad school and my time at the gym leveled out the weight started to come back. All the way back to 317 pounds. I was frustrated, angry at  myself and feeling like achieving health was hopeless.

That’s where I was when I was fortunate enough to get accepted into the COSMOS weight loss study at OSU. They told us early on, “we couldn’t outrun a bad diet” and sure enough when I committed to making a food lifestyle change by truthfully logging my food with the Lose It app and sticking to a calorie limit the weight started to come off again.

Which brings me to today and another confluence of events. As of my weigh-in this evening I am officially half the man I used to be, 186 pounds. More importantly by every trackable measure, Body Fat Percentage, Waist to Height Ratio, SBMI, BMI, and blood panels I am at a healthy weight.

I absolutely could not have done this on my own so a huge thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way. It’s comforting to know I have such an incredible support system as I meet the next challenge of maintaining the change.

What did a typical day of eating and/or exercising look like before your weight loss? What does it look like for you now?

Before I lost weight, I was consuming around 3,000 calories a day and sometimes more than that. Now I plan ahead using the app, and stick to the calories I need.

Chuck’s advice:

1. Be open and honest with yourself.
2. Seek support, and accept it.
3. Actively work to stay hopeful.

Ready to share your story? Give us the details at loseit.live/story. Get the Lose It! app: loseit.live/getapp.