At my most fit (late high school/early college before the beer really took over), I was about 230-240 lbs (I'm about 6'-0"). I had one of those caliper pinch tests done my freshman year at college and I was something like 13% body fat and felt great. Since then I've ballooned as high as 325, but have recently lost about 25-30 pounds and I'm hovering around 295. I started last June and had a pretty ambitious goal of getting to 250 by this March (30th b-day), but that's my overall goal, to get back down to under 250. As some others have mentioned, I actually don't really care about the number, I'm just looking to get back to feeling good again.
Here are a few tips I've picked up so far:
* Drink a lot of water. It's a good way to flush things out, keep you hydrated if you're increasing your exercise routine, and also a decent appetite/overeating suppressant. Try drinking a large glass of water right before a meal, and you won't be inclined to eat as much.
* Portion control, eat slow, and eat often. Avoid going back for seconds, try not to eat to fast to give your "I'm full" indicator time to kick in. If you can eat smaller meals more frequently or have a healthy snack like a yogurt or some carrots in between meals, you won't feel so hungry and gorge at mealtime.
* Try to add a few extra activities to your day, especially if you have a desk job. Take the stairs, park a little further away from the door, or get up and walk a few cubicle laps or flight of stairs every so often to increase your physical activity and metabolism.
* Track what you eat. This has helped me IMMENSELY to start losing weight - while I wasn't eating terribly, I was able to see that there were areas of my diet that were making it harder to lose weight. I highly recommend this website, it's a cool free utility to help track calories & nutrition:
http://www.thedailyplate.com/
* Don't starve yourself. The goal is to safely loose weight and be able to set up a lifestyle that you can maintain. If you're hungry all the time and don't occasionally treat yourself, you'll be more likely to have the urge to run to Burger King, order 3 double whoppers and a chocolate shake and gorge yourself.
* Get a good scale - some of the newer ones track body fat %, muscle mass and bone density fairly accurately (so does the Wii Fit). A good accurate scale is important to gauge how you're doing - just don't get too obsessed with it. Weigh yourself once or twice a week instead of everyday.
Best of luck to everyone!