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I Lost 230lbs And I’m Proud Of My Saggy Skin

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A 23-year-old from Texas dropped 230 pounds the slow way — and he’s not hiding what’s left behind.

Joel Reed weighed 467 pounds at 19. Four years of walking, weight training, deadlifts and pickup soccer later, he’s down to 264 pounds — and instead of covering up the loose skin that comes with losing half his body weight, he’s talking about it on camera. His story ran on Barcroft TV/Truly’s “Brand New Me” series in October 2019, and it’s less about the number on the scale than what he had to survive to get there.

• Reed lost his father to a stroke at age 10, then his mother to a seven-year cancer battle five years later — grief that pushed him into emotional eating and a peak weight of 467 pounds by 19.
• A doctor’s visit arranged by his aunt was the turning point; over four years he cut his weight to 264 pounds through walking, gym work, deadlifting and soccer.
• He met Katlin Casanova, 26, online in December 2018 — she’d lost 250 pounds herself, dropping from 400 — and their shared training routine helped him stop hiding his body.

Grief, Food and a 467-Pound Wake-Up Call

Reed’s weight problem didn’t start with bad habits — it started with loss. His father died of a stroke when Reed was 10. Five years later, after a seven-year fight with cancer, his mother died too. Isolated and grieving, Reed turned to food, and by the time he was a teenager he was noticeably bigger than everyone around him. By 19, he weighed 467 pounds.

The push to change came from his aunt, who got him in front of a doctor. That appointment forced Reed to confront where his body was headed, and he started the only way anyone realistically can from that starting point: walking. No crash diet, no surgery — just movement, building slowly toward gym sessions, deadlifting and eventually soccer games, the kind of routine covered in guides like building muscle while losing fat.

Four Years, 203 Pounds Down

The transformation wasn’t a quick fix — it took four years to get from 467 pounds to 264. That’s roughly 230 pounds gone through diet changes and consistent training rather than any single dramatic intervention, a pace that lines up with how sustainable fat loss is typically described in programs like HIIT-based fat-loss routines. What it left him with was extensive loose, sagging skin — the physical residue of carrying, and then shedding, more than 200 pounds.

Dating, Rejection and Katlin Casanova

For years, Reed avoided dating altogether, worried the extra skin would get him rejected before anyone got to know him — a fear plenty of people who’ve dropped major weight recognize, similar to accounts like Girls Rejected Me – So I Got Shredded. That changed in December 2018, when he connected online with Katlin Casanova, 26, who had lost 250 pounds herself after starting at 400. Training alongside someone who understood exactly what his body had been through, loose skin included, changed how he saw himself.

“This is a better body than I had before. It’s something I’m really proud of now.”

Reed still describes it as a love-hate relationship with his skin — it’s not something he pretends doesn’t bother him sometimes. But publicly, he wears it as proof of the work, not something to apologize for.

What sticks from Reed’s episode isn’t the before-and-after photo, it’s the timeline: four years of walking, deadlifts and soccer games to lose 230 pounds, and a relationship with Katlin Casanova that started because two people who’d both done the hard version of weight loss recognized it in each other.