1000-Lb Best Friends’ Vannessa Details Calorie Intake at 180 Pounds

1,000-Lb Best Friends star Vannessa Cross reached her weight loss goal and she’s breaking down how she was able to make the lifestyle change.

“My goal weight is 180. That has been a goal weight,” Cross, 46, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the Tuesday, October 22, season 2 premiere of 1,000-Lb Best Friends. “When [Dr. Charles] Procter set that goal and at first, if anybody pays any attention, I was like, ‘What 180? No!’ Alright, well let’s go on and say a girl reached that goal. OK, your girl has reached 180. I’m doing amazing.”

When the TLC series began in 2022, Cross weighed 448 pounds. Now that she’s reached her ideal goal, Cross is focusing on maintaining a “steady weight.”

“When you’re at this weight to lose weight, you have to kind of go extreme. You can’t just cut the food down and do your little exercises,” she said. “No, my body’s used to that and immune to that. Now I have to up it and up it and order.”

Cross is currently only consuming “soft foods” at the moment due to some “medical issues.” However, she broke down her go-to meals on a normal day.

“I would get up in the morning, have my coffee and have a protein shake. That was a big main thing,” she explained. “Then for breakfast, maybe one egg, if even that, and then the bagel thins.”

For lunch, Cross would indulge in her favorite meal: “grilled chicken and broccoli.” What she loved most was being able to give the protein some extra flavoring with spices and condiments like mustard. If she felt like a “sweet treat,” Cross would throw in an Atkins bar.

When it’s time for dinner, Cross would prepare roast beef with a potato dish. However, Cross has strayed away from the starchy side since it’s one of her weaknesses.

“Potatoes are, they’re OK to have in ration, but if my brain allows me to have it, I’m going to want it more,” she recalled. “So I did the cauliflower, so I’ll do cauliflower mash or cauliflower rice with a good roast or meats. Ninety percent of the food I eat in a day is protein or meat.”

Cross added that she takes “vitamins” daily as well. When cooking up her meals, Cross doesn’t count calories since her stomach will only let her eat so much following her bariatric weight loss surgery.

“Since I had the surgery, it’s been almost three years,” she shared. “I’m still only getting in around a thousand, maybe 1,500 [calories]. But I haven’t been able to reach the 2,000 calorie [mark] because of my stomach.”

While the surgery helped Cross, she has made a complete lifestyle change. She told Us that at one point eating some of her old favorite dishes has made her physically sick.

“I grabbed a big piece of fried chicken, took a few bites of [the] skin and I’ll get sick, the dumping syndrome for an hour,” she confessed. “You’re sitting there with your body doing like this, you’re sweating, you have headaches, you are physically sick.”

Cross shared that while she no longer feels ill after eating some unhealthy foods, she doesn’t want to take the risk. Instead, her “cheat days” look different.

“I can have 12 grams of sugar per serving; So I get my little puddings or my yogurts or something that is the candy bar flavor. Because right now they’ve got key lime pie,” she said. “They got everything in a yogurt. So those are my cheat days. I know it’s not really a cheater-cheater day, but sometimes I’ll have an extra piece of bread, and that’s me cheating.”

1,000-Lb Best Friends airs on Tuesdays on TLC at 10 p.m. ET

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi