Transformation: Brandon Solomon Sheds 108 Pounds

February 2014 to February 2016  |  2 years  |  Ocean City, Maryland  |  @Bsolomon4540

A friend told Brandon he had lost 35 pounds in four months. That night Brandon looked in the mirror and decided if his friend could do it, so could he. He started the next day.

Where he started

Brandon was a college student living at home, eating as much as he wanted whenever he felt like it. He got winded walking across campus and up the stairs to his classes, and he was drinking several nights a week, which he says is what really put the weight on.

The turning point

His friend Mauricio mentioned he had dropped 35 pounds in four months. Brandon had always hated his weight, so it landed. He went home that night, looked in the mirror, and decided that if Mauricio could do it, he could. He started the next day, and joined a local gym with Mauricio and another friend, Vance, about a week later.

What he changed

For the first eight months he did no cardio at all. He was dropping weight quickly and figured he did not need it, so he just lifted five or six times a week for around ninety minutes. He has since shortened sessions to about an hour and added twenty to thirty minutes of cardio three or four times a week.

Food started as a strict low carb, higher fat and higher protein approach, which he ran for about eight months and lost roughly 60 pounds on. After that he switched to counting calories across four or five meals a day: lean red meat, chicken or turkey breast, lean pork, fish, brown rice, sweet potatoes, egg whites, vegetables, bananas, oats and peanut butter.

The hardest part

Summer. Brandon lives in a beach town, which means roughly four months to earn before the place empties out, and he was working 80-plus hours a week across two jobs. He managed to hold the training together; the diet was what suffered.

His three mistakes are unusually useful. Skipping cardio for the first eight months meant that even after the weight came off, he had no cardiovascular endurance. Staying low carb for too long, when he thinks he would have lost more efficiently by moving to calories sooner, and he has more energy in the gym now. And running the exact same routine in the exact same order every session, which meant he stopped getting anything out of it even as the weights went up.

Where he is now

He set 215 as the first target and hit it by September 2014, then 200, which he reached in January 2015. At the time of writing his goal was visible abs by the two-year mark, and he was clear that he was not finished.

What he learned: the work is the work, and he treats training and diet like a job where he is his own boss. Patience, because nothing happens overnight. And that food is fuel, so better fuel gives better output.

It's never too late to begin bettering yourself. It's a decision only you can make for yourself. Brandon Solomon

His advice if you are starting today

Make the change for yourself, not for anyone else, and treat the negative comments as fuel. His own metaphor is worth keeping: getting fit is like a train journey. There are stops and delays, and every milestone is just you getting back on board.

Results vary. This customer's results are not typical and depend on individual effort, training, nutrition and consistency. Statements on this page describe one customer's personal experience and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. No product mentioned is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.