I am just a normal dad, who has spent most of his life overweight. There was one period in high school from freshman to sophomore year, that I was not, but those times were fleeting as I stopped growing up and started growing back out again. This continued all the way through college as I would constantly yo-yo back and forth between being overweight and being never in-shape, but in-shape enough not to feel too bad about myself.

The moment I had children everything in my life changed, and not always for the better. Don’t get me wrong, having children was the greatest thing to happen to me... or second greatest after meeting my wife. But after having children, and during each pregnancy, I felt myself let go more and more each time. This wasn’t anything I had planned on doing, but honestly it was fun. The late night craving meals during pregnancies, the ice cream runs with the kids, and the “Friday Nacho Nights” we had are some of my greatest memories. But as the kids grew older, toddlers turned into teenagers, and more toddlers came, I began to look at those memories in a different perspective. These memories I had with my wife and kids over the last fifteen years were amazing, but I wanted to build new memories with their kids over the next fifty years, and with the way things were going with my weight, I wasn’t going to be along to make those memories. I can remember coming to that realization on Thanksgiving 2023, and at that moment I decided over the next year, I was going to make a change.

Once that realization happened, I set a goal for myself to lose 100lbs. Starting on January 1st, 2024, weighing in at 270lbs. It took me a little longer than that to achieve this goal, but that is because no journey is completely linear, and sometimes the path veers a little. The important part was that I stayed consistent, I continued to show up even when it was hard, and I consistently reminded myself of the “Why” of this whole journey.