This guy was 500 pounds. Then he cut calories and lost half his body weight

“I just let myself just go,” Morris told MensHealth.com. “It was tough to get around. Just putting on socks was a three or four minute job. I couldn't tie my own shoes. I had to wear Crocs during the wintertime.”

His wake-up call came a year-and-a-half ago, when Morris took his wife and son to Universal Studios.

They had all been so excited to go on the Harry Potter rides - "but I couldn’t get around," Morris recalled. “We had been planning this trip for months, and we finally got there, and after about half a day, I'm like, 'I need to go sit in a restaurant.'"

The next day, as his family enjoyed themselves at the park, Morris spent the day in a movie theater.

He left that vacation knowing he had to make the change, but losing a large amount of weight is easier said than done. Like most people, Morris found excuse after excuse to not get started.

“I'm like, ‘Well, I have all this food in the freezer. I don't want to get rid of this’; or, ‘I'll start after that birthday party coming up’; or, ‘We have the holidays coming up.’ I was kicking the can down the road.”

Eight months after his journey to the Wizarding World, he looked back on the trip and the disappointment he felt, and decided he’d enough. So he began tracking his calorie intake, practicing intermittent fasting, and trying the ketogenic diet. (Are you cutting calories too? Here are eight strategies to combat hunger on a daily basis.)

“No one will ever believe it. Losing the weight was the easiest thing to do. The hardest thing was actually just starting,” he said.

Morris doesn’t know what his exact weight was before he began his transformation - his scale would simply say “error” when he stepped on - but he estimates it was somewhere around 500 pounds.

In October of 2017, five months into his new routine, Morris - who stands at 6’3’’ - stepped on the scale and saw 386 pounds. That was enough for him to keep going.

Now, he weighs himself once a month to ensure he’s staying on track. On June 1, Morris said he weighed in at 229 pounds, which means he approximately halved his body weight.

There were a few delicious items that helped him stay on track with his weight loss. Cauliflower rice “was a godsend,” he said. He also likes to indulge in Shirataki noodles, a zero-calorie noodle that help bulk up his meals. He adds in some Rao’s Pasta Sauce and maybe a little Butt Rub, which he calls a “great spice.”

Morris also credits his 8-year-old son for keeping him honest throughout his journey.

“He knows what I can and can’t have on my diet,” Morris said. To this day, Morris hasn’t had a single cheat day because of his tiny supporter.

Now that he’s lost the weight, Morris will make his first attempt at gaining muscle by hitting the gym this summer. He has a lot of excess skin - though he says he wears it as a badge of honor, because it simply reflects the changes he’s made. (If you’re like Morris and just stepping in to the gym for the first time, check out our best gym routines for beginners.)

Morris also posted about his extreme weight loss on Reddit, which garnered more than 11,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments supporting his goals.

“When I reflect on my weight loss and where I came from, I think of a movie line from Apollo 13," he wrote. "It's when Tom Hanks is talking to Kathleen Quinlan after their party looking at the moon, and what it took to get there: 'It's not a miracle. We just decided to go.'"

"I just decided to go," he said.