Some encouragement
 

I checked history and back 13.5 years ago I went from 224 to 185. (I was part of Clydesdale back then) Today's weight is 189. As I am sure you all are aware, keeping it off is the goal.

I suspect what has helped is the hills around here are brutal!

Yes, you can lose it, and not find it again.

That's good stuff! Yes, keeping it off is the challenge. Around 11 years ago I was 380 lbs, and briefly got as low as 245 or so during intense exercise and calorie control. In the intervening years I've struggled with consistency and my weight has fluctuated pretty radically between the 260s and 280s with some brief forays up to around 300 or so, which is a number I'd hoped never to see again. At the start of the Covid thing I'd gotten down to 255, then massive disruption to my exercise routines and some spectacularly poor quarantine eating choices saw me put on the dreaded "Covid 15", which for the last several weeks I've been increasingly good at chipping away at again. My goal is to be back down to 255 by the end of June and then press on getting down to 230 or lower if possible by the end of the year. I ate badly several times during May, but those were individual mess-ups, while my calorie intake was generally much better and I rode around 460 miles during May, a nice step up from the 160-something miles I did during April. I've kept most of the weight off that I lost starting in 2009, but not all of it, and it's been a wild ride throughout those years seeing some big 30-40 lb swings over just a few months.

Congrats on keeping your 40 lbs off and shucking off the Clydesdale status. I'm tall enough that with my build becoming a non-clyde is probably not an achievable goal, but for right now just going below what I consider Superclyde territory (I consider that anything over 250 lbs) and pushing down into the 220s is what I'm focused on.

Surprisingly, I am losing weight during the pandemic. Then again - I am not stuck inside a house.

I lost over 80 pounds through fasting and did not lose strength in fact gained it. I did longer fasts mostly but now I do alternate day fasting. I was eating nothing every other day for a long time but now I do one ~500 calorie meal every other day and it works just as well with fewer hassles. The idea is your body does not shut down the metabolism from short term deprivation like it will from longterm deprivation in fact in the short term it increases the metabolism, so you can lose weight without tanking your metabolism and gaining it all back like all the people from that show the biggest loser did.

@crtreedude Like crtreedude, I too have lost weight. I could not get bellow 238ish (as high 250lbs. I’m now at 225. I think it is a lack of convenient food, stress, and rationing food. By teleworking, I have no temptation / opportunity to stop and pick up junk food. But I am concern, when I go back to commuting, I’ll go back to an opportunistic eating patterns.