Bryan O'Keeffe had struggled with his weight his whole life, trying every diet and workout regime under the sun but feeling like he was losing and gaining the same 40 pounds again and again.
So he decided to do something drastic.
O'Keeffe, 34, from Ireland, weighed 338 pounds when he moved to a small village in Spain, quit his job, and cut off all communication with his family and friends.
Seven months later he had lost 137 pounds, more than half his body weight, and went home to Ireland to surprise his loved ones, capturing their reactions in a TikTok video that has been viewed over 32 million times.
In the video, O'Keeffe said that after 15 years of trying fad diets and workouts, he decided to stop focusing on the scales and instead on being mentally resilient and building discipline.
Speaking to Insider, O'Keeffe said that losing the weight was incredibly hard, and he acknowledged that his methods were extreme.
New drugs such as semaglutide that have helped people lose weight after years of struggling reflect how being overweight isn't simply a problem of poor self-control and a lack of will power. And experts generally advise people to lose weight gradually by slowly building up healthy habits without too much restriction.
But a drastic, brief period of weight loss lasting one to three months can be beneficial for those who have a lot to lose and have lost belief in their ability to succeed, before transitioning to a more sustainable lifestyle, personal trainer and fat loss coach Jordan Syatt told Insider.
A healthy and sustainable rate of weight loss for most people is one pound per week on average, or 0.5% of your body weight, but obese and overweight people can safely lose weight faster due to having more to lose.
Personal trainer and dietitian Mike Matthews believes that people with more than 100 pounds to lose can safely lose up to four pounds of weight per week.
"I definitely wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it was the perfect scenario for me," O'Keeffe said.
O'Keeffe was an overweight child, but going to boarding school as a teenager and playing lots of sport helped him to slim down, he said.
When he went to college, however, the typical student lifestyle of drinking and eating take-out, combined with an injury, resulted in O'Keeffe gaining weight "aggressively," he said.
Throughout his 20s, he tried all sorts of diets and workout styles — from keto to Crossfit — went to weight management clinics, and even had a balloon fitted in his stomach that was supposed to reduce hunger, which he later had removed. He'd lose some weight for a few months but would always regain it, usually coming back up to around 330 pounds, he said.
"Dieting and weight loss is seen as a huge stress on the body, and the body works to eliminate that stress by shutting down and resultingly, ensuring you climb back to your starting weight," Dr. Nick Fuller told Insider.
Dietitians warn that fad diets like keto are too restrictive to be sustainable, while research suggests banning foods can make you more likely to crave them and less likely to stick to a healthy diet.
In 2017, O'Keefe lost 70 pounds in five months after moving to London and getting into a good routine with his diet and exercise. But he said everything fell apart after he celebrated earning his master's degree. He put the weight back on in half the time it took to lose it after he started ordering large takeouts most nights.
"Weight loss was the thing I wanted the most, but I wasn't willing to put the sacrifices in to get it long term," O'Keeffe said.
At the end of 2020, aged 33, O'Keeffe moved to the Spanish city of Palma, on the island of Mallorca, where his brother, who was working as a doctor, encouraged him to join him and make a change. But the cycle of weight loss and gain continued.
Around October 2021, O'Keeffe once again pledged to break it.