Lucas Irwin Surprises Parents by Showing Up a Year Later 130 Pounds Thinner

Lucas Irwin Surprises Parents by Showing Up a Year Later 130 Pounds Thinner
Zachary Stieber
1/8/2014
Updated:
7/18/2015

Lucas Irwin surprised his parents by arriving home for the holidays 130 pounds thinner.

The 300-pound Irwin, 25, sometimes goes home twice a year but vowed to stay away until Christmas so his parents wouldn’t see him.

In a now viral video, Irwin walks into the home and his parents can’t believe it.

“When I saw my parents for the first time, I was really nervous,” he told TODAY. “I was shaking and … it was very surreal.”

All of the sudden, down the stairs he came,” his father, Jeff Irwin, said. “And he looked just fantastic. I was more stunned than anything else. But inside, I was just beaming. I was just ... I was over the moon.”

“Just picturing it in my mind again, it brings back tears to my eyes again,” Susan Irwin, his stepmother, said. “I am so proud of him.”

Irwain says that he lost all the weight by following a strict diet--eating 1,350 calories a day--and writing down everything he ate. Exercise had little to do with it, he said.