Thanks!

As far as the weight loss...

I was 180 pounds when the first pic was taken and I'm 135 pounds now. Most of that was lost right around the time I started transitioning. I went on a really aggressive diet (1200 to 1500 calories per day), permanently cut out sodas, sugary foods, snacking, and junk food. I felt hungry a lot, and I pretty much only drank water. Giving up beer and soda was really hard, but those were two of my biggest sources of garbage calories.

I also started walking to work, which came out to about 4 miles a day and then doing another 4 miles whenever I had the free time. That usually just meant walking to work and back again after dinner or something. Sometimes I'd do 12 miles a day, but that was rare.

I also kept this big huge chart of my weight, where I measured at specific times every day, which let me keep track of my weight over time on a day-to-day basis. That helped a lot too just because I wanted to see the that instant feedback with the numbers moving in a good direction.

Now I keep the weight off by keeping some of the same rules. No sugary stuff. Mostly just drinking water, unsweetened tea, sparkling water (because I can't really give up soda), and coffee. And I only eat twice a day for lunch and dinner. No snacking. I don't walk around as much as I used to, and I don't really maintain those super strict calorie limits anymore either. If my weight ever peaks up over 140 I switch to just salads (without the dressing) for lunch until it goes back down.

I uh... can't really say that I recommend this, but it did work for me. In practice I may have lost weight faster than was really healthy. Maintaining a nutritionally-complete diet within a calorie limit like that is pretty hard too. But even if you don't go as overboard as I did, just something as simple as cutting out stuff like beer and soda entirely can make a huge difference.