I lost 125LBS WITHOUT counting calories or dieting

A man who has struggled with his weight for most of his life shared how he lost 125 pounds and kept it off without counting calories or restricting food.

Chris Terrell, 38, of Jonesboro, Arkansas, changed his lifestyle, going from 290 pounds to 165 pounds in two and a half years after his father’s sudden death in 2019.

In an interview with Insider, he recalled being stuck in a cycle of gaining weight and crash dieting. It wasn’t until he changed his mind that he could change his body.

“Every time I lost weight, I always gained it back, plus more, because I never addressed the real problem,” he said. “I always gained weight because I was the same person I was when I started.”

Chris Terrell, 38, of Jonesboro, Arkansas, changed his lifestyle and went from 290 pounds to 165 pounds in two and a half years

The weight loss coach started working out and changed his approach to eating after the sudden death of his father in 2019

Terrell, who weighed more than 200 pounds by the time he was 15, explained that he’d developed some healthy habits over the years.

A self-proclaimed “workaholic,” he filled up on junk food and lived a mostly sedentary lifestyle. Instead of prioritizing sleep, he watched TV or played video games until two or three in the morning.

After years of waiting for motivation to strike, his father’s death was a wake-up call.

Terrell started swimming three times a week to build his stamina and change his approach to eating, focusing on losing one pound at a time.

Instead of restricting food or counting calories, he ate only when he was hungry and weighed only once a month.

“As long as the scale didn’t go up, I was moving in the right direction,” he said of his approach to weight loss.

Terrell also realized that his thankless job and unhappy relationship were additional stressors in his life that he needed, and he moved on.

He lost 30 pounds in the first six months and nearly 100 more pounds in the two years that followed. He has maintained his weight loss for the past year and a half.

Terrell recalled being stuck in a cycle of weight gain and crash dieting

“Every time I lost weight, I always gained it back, plus more, because I never addressed the real problem,” he told Insider

It wasn’t until he changed his mind that he could change his body

Terrell, who is now a weight-loss coach, shared his journey and the strategies that helped him change his mindset TikTokwhere he has more than 287k followers.

In a recent videohe shared the three character traits he needed to adopt to lose weight and keep it off.

“The first thing I had to improve was patience,” he explained. “I had to become much more patient than I ever imagined.”

It helped him realize that his actions make him a patient person – not his thoughts. He may want to rush and do it all at once, but he knows he’s exercising patience by staying on track.

Terrell also had to learn how to forgive himself when he makes mistakes.

“On a weight-loss journey, you’re going to screw up a lot — like a lot of times,” he noted. “You have to be able to sympathize with yourself in the moment and forgive yourself.”

Terrell lost 30 pounds in the first six months and nearly 100 more pounds in the two years that followed. He has maintained his weight loss for the past year and a half

Terrell shares his journey and the strategies that helped him change his mindset on TikTok, where he has over 287,000 followers

Finally, he had to teach himself to be skeptical of his own negative thoughts.

“Sometimes I can have an incredibly intense thought with so much emotion behind it, and I can be 100 percent convinced that I’m right, and I can be wrong,” he said.

Terrell remembered the times he became convinced he had gained weight, only to find out that he had lost weight. Other times he was sure he had lost weight, and he didn’t.

“My feelings and my thoughts are incapable of predicting the future, and neither are yours,” he said.

“I have to be skeptical of thoughts, especially if they’re s****y thoughts, especially if they’re doomsday.”

He added that learning to help him be more skeptical of his thoughts has also helped him become a more patient and forgiving person.