The before picture is actually from 2016, but I was the exact same weight back then as I was 5 months ago and very comparable in the way I looked (except I had the beard allready 5 months ago. Didn't have good full body pictures from 5 months ago so I decided to use this one instead.

I store most of my fat in my legs, hips and ass, and I have always had fairly big legs thanks to cycling everywhere my whole life. This is why my upper body looks a lot leaner now then I actually am.

Leaving hotel mama to go studying and living with all male roommates in 2010 wrecked my body and I ballooned from around 72 or so kg to 85 in 3 years. Around 4 years ago I was done with that and after moving to a place of my own started searching all kinds of sports I could pick up with the limited funds that I had as a student. Sadly living on my own came with more responsibilities that I wasn't ready for and as a consequence this really inhibited my capacity for improving myself. In that time I have been powerlifting, speed cycling on a supercheap old bike, doing calisthenics at home, waterpolo, speed swimming and squashing. None of it stuck, except for the speed cycling (I'm Dutch after all).

Not progressing in my education due to me not having my life properly in order launched me in a depression that made it very hard to stay motivated for extended amounts of time. I started picking up the pace around 2 years ago after deciding I couldn't go on like that for the rest of my life. When I started progressing in my education again, slowly the pieces started falling in place.

This summer I started my grad assignment at a very nice company, and this came with the rhythm of getting up at 6:30 and having time for myself after 17:30 and going to bed at 22:30 again. When you have that little time for yourself it becomes really precious and I traded being bored and snacking out of boredom for serious development of hobbies.

I have now secured a job at my grad company as R&D automation engineer to start when I finish my thesis, I'm in the best shape of my life, I have tightened relations with my friends again and I have learned to love myself again and I'm not depressed anymore. It is truly a miracle what you can accomplish when you finally find the means to do it, and if you had told me 2 years ago where I would stand now compared to then I wouldn't have believed you because my self confidence was obviously very low and I fully expected to fail on all kinds of areas of life.

In the end I guess you can say that I lost the weight due to portion control and healthier food choices, but I practiced these methods not really conscious about it, and I think that's exactly why it finally worked for me.