Cool story, thanks for sharing. What dietary changes did you make to drop from 245 to 185? How long did it take? What do you eat now to maintain 185-190?
When you're playing a college sport and maintaining 245lbs. you eat everything you can get your hands on. I just switched over to a simple whole food diet, cutting out all the ultraprocessed stuff. So, it was all proteins (chicken breasts, cans of tuna, whole eggs, cottage cheese), tons of vegetables and greens, limited fruits, and little grains and starches (like a single small baked potato or cup of rice per day). Never had to count calories and the weight just fell off.
It's a lot more difficult now at 45, especially when I sit on my duff 8hrs+/day for work. I'm very regimented, eating essentially the same things every single day:
First meal (~12pm): 3 eggs over easy (in a tbs of coconut oil), 2 cups veggies (usually broccoli), one small potato or 1c legumes, and fill the rest of the bowl with greens. 1 scoop whey protein in water.
Snack (3pm): 1 scoop whey protein in water, 1c berries
Dinner: 8-10oz. whatever meat we slow-cooked that week, 2 cups veggies, one small potato or 1c legumes or 1c brown rice, and fill the rest of the bowl with greens. A tbs of olive oil and hot sauce. Ic berries.
It's somewhere around 2400kcals and ~160g protein per day. We have family dinner with my parents every Monday, and my mom makes something fancy, but it's always some version of a lean protein and vegetables. I train in the mornings 6 days a week (plus Wednesday nights - BJJ with my son). I'll have a little concoction (my company's greens mixture, NMN, creatine, glutamine) post workout (~6:30am); it's only like 80kcals total. I'm at deficit to give myself a buffer because, like every human, I'll have a rough day at work or my kids will stress me out so I'll eat more while wife and I are winding down at night. Luckily we don't really have junk in our house, so it's spoonfuls of natural PB or more fruit or my wife's sourdough bread. I estimate this is another ~300kcals/day averaged over the course of a week. I've had a few points over the last handful of years where I see "200" on that scale, and I have to dial back in.
Cutting to 160 was F'ing miserable. Down to 1400kcals for 10 weeks, not keto but very low carb, and then spent the last few days slowly dehydrating myself. I looked like death and felt worse, but I did win gold. No interest in doing it again.
Probably more info than you cared to see.