Jesse Shand: 700-Pound Man Goes On Bodybuilding Forum For A Laugh, Ends Up Inspired To Lose 300 Pounds

Jesse Shand hit rock bottom in 2013.

At that point, the 26-year-old weighed close to 700 pounds. He couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t fit inside his shower, and spent most of his time on the internet or playing video games while mired in negative thoughts.

But it was those negative thoughts that drove Shand to an unlikely place — a forum on bodybuilding.com, the place he would eventually find the power to turn his life around.

Jesse signed up for an account and started a thread titled, “Ask the fattest man on this site anything,” even posting pictures of himself.

But instead of being met with ridicule, Jesse Shand found hope.

He wrote, “The thread immediately took off and became one of the most popular threads on the site. To my complete surprise, rather than get a rise out of the community, they started to try to convince me that it was not too late to fix my situation. I had a million excuses and reasons that I couldn’t do it. I argued that it would take years of dedication and willpower that I simply did not have. Slowly, over time, the many voices wore me down and started to convince me that it was worth another shot.”

Jesse said he started with small changes to his diet, like cutting back from eight chicken quesadillas at dinner to seven. He started tracking his calories and recording his exercise, and stayed close to the body building forum for help, even posting stats of his diet and workouts.

“This helped me by holding me accountable for my actions,” he wrote. “Slowly, but surely, my stamina increased. Eventually (by day 26) I was able to walk laps around my mobile home. Though only a few at first.”

The work snowballed from there. Jesse eventually got down to between 1,500 and 2,000 calories per day, and he began reaching milestones like walking around his mobile home and taking his first shower in years.

Though he’s been on the weight loss journey for two years now, Jesse Shand is starting to get nationwide attention. He was featured in a story on Bodybuilding.com, and a thread about his weight loss hit the front page of Reddit.

Jesse Shand says he still has a long way to go, but he isn’t giving up his hard work and hopes to be in the 200-pound range very soon.

[Images via Witness The Change]