300 Pound Weight Loss: “I’m Like A New Person”

(Photo Credit: Jermaine Gause/Instagram)

In 2016, Jermaine Gause was a whopping 639 pounds, had a number of health problems and honestly was afraid of dying. He went on the show The Doctors to find some help. He has now lost over 300 pounds naturally!

“I’m not ready to leave this planet,” he said at the time. “And I know the way I am now, I probably don’t have much time.”

“I felt bad about the way I looked and what I let myself get to,” Gause explains.

Gause’s mother, Gretchen Barrow, expresses her concern over her son’s extreme weight gain, especially in recent years.

“It wasn’t until the past three years that I said, ‘Oh my God, how did I let this happen?’ ” Barrow says, adding that she will lose her son if a major change doesn’t happen soon.

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A health check-up reveals Gause is ingesting five times the amount of recommended sodium per day, putting a huge strain on his cardio vascular system and eating ten times the recommended level of sugar. He also fits the symptoms for fatty liver disease and suffers from malnutrition.

(Photo credit: Instagram)

Gause, who’s originally from Ann Arbor, Mich., also learned that his daily sugar consumption was ten times the recommended amount.

But, with determination, a mindset of overcoming and a with loss and fitness coach, Gause lost an incredible 303 pounds–and counting.

“Since losing this weight, I’m like a new person,” Gause says in this exclusive clip from Friday’s episode. “Every day I wake up and I can move.”

People who have 100 pounds or more to lose like Jermaine know all about…

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… what they should be doing to lose weight, says Gail Curtis, assistant professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. In addition to nutrition and exercise, Curtis says it is important to consider stress, your sense of fulfillment, your work and home environment, and even people in your life who may be sabotaging your best diet efforts. Then you can concentrate on developing and sticking to a weight-loss plan.

How to Lose 100 Pounds: It Starts With Counting Calories

Counting calories is going to be a part of this process. Here are guidelines to follow:

• If you want to lose 1-2 pounds a week, you have to cut out 3,500 calories, or roughly 500 calories a day.
• You never want to eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day, “and that’s on the low end,” says Curtis. You can always increase your physical activity, however.
• You can safely aim to lose 1 percent of your body weight per week; a woman weighing 250 pounds should aim for a 2.5-pound loss per week, eating about 1,250 calories less per day.

Counting calories involves not just the food you eat, but also the calories you burn through exercise.

• Keep a journal of what you ate, how much you exercised, and your thoughts and feelings at those times, and limit yourself to one weekly weigh-in to avoid focusing too much on the scale.
• Good nutrition is key, says Curtis. Many people who want to lose 100 pounds are used to eating foods that are high in calories and low in nutrition. The challenge is to practice the reverse: Learn to eat the correct portions of foods that are low in calories but high in nutrition, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy.

HINT: Many have lost large amounts of weight by eating the same foods they used to each, but just smaller portions AND moderate exercise. The key is consistency.

“The best part of losing this weight is it was all-natural,” he says. “It’s all based on healthy eating. It’s all simple and easy to make. We’re not starving. And working out a lot.”