"Honestly, I don't know," I responded. Embarrassingly, I really didn't know the answer.
"Go step on the scale," my father prompted.
We were in the middle of loading everything I owned into the moving truck. I'd just graduated college, and spent the last few months enjoying the summer. But, now it was time for me to move to Greenville, SC to start my first grown-up job.
I walked into the house, and stepped on the scale. It read 225 pounds...
While I've never considered myself to have been in great shape, I'd never been outright fat.
That's me second from the left...with the belly and the nice manboobs
I didn't realize that it had gotten this bad. In high school I was pretty active, playing both football and baseball, keeping my weight around 185 lbs. Even in college I stayed active, and did a good job of avoiding the "freshman fifteen," managing to keep my weight around 190 lbs. That was, at least for the first four years of college.
The problem was that I stayed in college for a fifth year. Some call it a victory lap, but I prefer to call it my redshirt senior (r-SR) year. While I did manage to pick up a minor in business during this extra year, I also managed to enjoy myself quite a bit. Mainly not worrying about eating, and drinking quite a bit....which usually lead to more eating.
I can guarantee I ate a sub from Jimmy Johns on the way home, maybe even two
By the time I graduated college, things weren't pretty.
Graduation Day at Virginia Tech, May 2007
So now that my dad had brought it to my attention, I had to face the reality that I was fat. I knew that I needed to buckle down and lose the weight for a few reasons. First, there are tons of obvious health issues associated with carrying that much weight. I didn't want any part of that. But what was my biggest motivating factor? Vanity, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
Deep down I knew that if I ever wanted to have a girlfriend, and eventually a wife, that was as attractive as I had always imagined, there was no way that I'd be able to get her attention if I was this fat. This was an incredibly motivating factor.
So I joined a gym. I almost passed out halfway through the first free workout with a personal trainer. There was literally nowhere to go but up. Luckily, I found the TNT Diet, and decided to follow it. I started reading various fitness websites and magazines, gaining as much knowledge about nutrition, supplementation, and exercise as I could.
For the next year it was simple. Go to work, go to the gym, go to sleep - rinse and repeat. The pounds started coming off at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week. By the time that I moved to Birmingham, I had lost around 40 lbs.
About a year later....40 lbs less (April 2008)
For the next two years, I went to the gym pretty regularly, and kept progressing. Summer of 2010 brought the end of a 1.5 year relationship, and therefore the loss of another 10 lbs over the next couple months, mainly from the Velocity Diet. This is by far the best shape that I've been in. I'd like to think it's no coincidence that around that time I met my future wife, Leah.
I'm sure being able to see my abs didn't hurt my chances the first time we hung out! (June 2010)
My fitness journey will continue on through the years, but one way or another I feel pretty confident saying the fat boy only lives on in my heart.
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