I Keep It Off.com — Weight Maintenance. Defined.

Russ Version 1 | a 350-pound North Carolinian Russ Version 2.0 | A 350-pound rock critic changing his life from the outside in Russ Version 3.0 | A 180-pound food…

Wayne Vandenlangenberg will step on the scale on a special live broadcast of The Biggest Loser Couples on Tuesday. Weighing himself is common practice since he woke from a coma and resolved himself to weigh something, to be something, other than 647 pounds.

From lifting a tomato juice can in his wheelchair to walking five miles and plunging into water aerobics and kickboxing, Wayne’s resolve resulted in a staggering 400 pound weight loss, inspired by the long-running reality TV weight loss competition.

Touched by his story, NBC re-edited Tuesday’s show to include Wayne in a rare live broadcast, celebrating his do-it-yourself weight loss and The Biggest Loser’s role in it. Wayne will take his first plane flight to Los Angeles, eat healthfully at Gordon Ramsay Restaurant at West Hollywood and finally enter The Ranch to tell his story and weigh on live television.

  As of December 23, 2009, with nearly 180 lbs gone, my BMI is now miraculously in the “healthy” range and under 25. My weight is under 160 and heading…

  Dr. Barbara Berkeley constantly explains that weight management isn’t like a balloon; you don’t just deflate to a new body and that’s that. The process is closer to exchanging…

The comments, veiled criticisms or outright attacks on someone’s weight aren’t exactly news to someone who’s overweight or obese. But one thing “weight loss success story” tales don’t mention are those comments aren’t banished with the weight loss.

You could say the food fights with loved ones simply advance onto a new, slimmer battlefields. One of Boston native Carla Marie Ciampa’s biggest hurdles – and oddly, motivators – are the food fights waged with her loved ones. These didn’t melt away with her 40 pounds, but they haven’t stopped her from keeping those 40 pounds off, either.

We don’t have time for cynicism here at Second Helping. Want proof that people can be extraordinary? Here you go. This article is part of an ongoing series highlighting how…

Amid the clamor of her traditional step class, Evelyn Wells looked around. She was stepping with all the same people for 10 years, who were no thinner. And then she looked inward. She ran through the litany of all the “right things” she had been done while struggling with her weight. All the things she studied at Howard University and practiced in residency. The group classes, the endless dieting … Lots of stepping but no actual climbing. It was like some decade-long tithe to the Fat Gods.

The diagnosis was decisive.

“This sucks!”

And in New Jersey that means: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It took a total of 12 years, 300 pounds and 33 years of life for Mark McCarley of New Orleans to get asked on a date for the first time.
And he laughed. It wasn’t until Mark’s suitor made a second request that he realized it was serious.
Towering over a small table in a New Orleans coffee shop, it can be universally accepted Mark’s a handsome guy. Amid the college professors and college dropouts passing by on bikes and cars, the well-dressed, 6’1″ 33-year-old didn’t stick out like a sore thumb in a quirky neighborhood. It’s more like he stood out among the crowd.

We don’t have time for cynicism here at Second Helping. Want proof that people can be extraordinary? Here you go. This article is the first in an ongoing series highlighting how people adjusted to their weight loss successes and answered “Now what?” for themselves.

Although Jackie Ramerez’s before and after photos triumphantly declare “I did it,” there’s volumes the Empress’ new clothes keep mum.

Jackie downgraded her size 20 clothes for size 12s and finally size 8s following an 80-pound weight loss. But the 26-year-old Los-Angeles-based sociology student found letting go of her previous wardrobe as complex as ushering in the new, svelte wardrobe of sleeveless dresses.

She had to fit the emotional demands into her new clothes, as surely as she did her legs.

  Using portable butane burners in a tiny makeshift kitchen, Kevin DeMarco skittered franticly at DeMarco’s Café in Little River. His blue jeans chef’s jacket uniform was a blur as…