15 years ago I lost a car payment worth of weight.

[Robpocalypse]

Well, calling it a car payment is a bit subjective because it depends on whether you measure it in terms of inflation adjusted dollars in 2013 or not.. but that's a boring conversation no one wants to have.

 

This is half woot/half re-introduction.  I joined the site a couple months ago but work reared up and my participation grew limited, I work in fiance and the end of the year is always the crazy time. 

In the midish 90's I was pushing 380 pounds and likely on a path to early death.  At 23 my physician suggested blood pressure medicine!  I was not by any standard what could be considered healthy.  It was shameful, but I had not reached my line in the sand. My personal tipping point was when I went to Six Flags (locally it was called Riverside) and upon trying to get on the rollar coaster, it was discovered the safety bar could not be closed down over my bulging gut.  I had to disembark and take the husky walk of shame past everyone else on the ride. It was possibly the most humiliating event in my life, but it kicked me in the rear to get my weight in order.  I was 23 years old and in horrific shape, I smoked, I drank a liter of soda every day and I broke my fair share of office chairs.

 

Diet was my biggest change.  I dumped soda, I ate better and stopped consuming McDonalds, looking back I started eating more akin to Paleo than anything else.. but back then Paleo did not exist. The biggest thing was getting off my rear. I started in Winter and began with just walking around the basement in circles, each week I walked a little longer, added some light weights and pushed myself a bit more.  The biggest motivating factor was dropping my first 10 pounds; it energized me.  I wanted to build on my effort, lose more weight and ride that frigging rollar coaster.
 

I just eclipsed my 15 year anniversary of making what was for me a life saving change.  I found the site last year when I began looking for beginner weight lifting programs.. so I'd like to woot a comparative picture, 1 from 1994 (ish.. it was a long time ago) and one from 2013.

 

I hope that later this year I'll have third that's slightly bigger.. but with muscle this time.

 

[fudweiser]

Holy crap that is amazing! Great job! This is really inspiring to me, thank you for posting this.

[Guzzi]

Wow, that's amazing.  Congrats on not just losing the weight, but keeping it off for good.  That's the thing we're all hoping to achieve so it's great to see someone who has actually managed to do just that.  What kind of exercise do you do now, if you don't mind me asking?

[Norgaard]

very good progress!

[Gilgamelissa]

That's awesome, Rob! Grats on your progress to-date, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading about your muscle-building venture

[SLB]

This is amazing, thanks for sharing Rob - it's always good to see long term change work out for someone, it gives us all hope!

[Naaria]

Holy shit!! WOW!! You're so inspiring! You look amazing!

[Guest]

Awesome!

[p2tog]

Awesome job! Did you make it back to dominate that rollercoaster yet?