My Story

How does someone go from Fat to phat.  Well, it is a work in progress and I will start with a general overview that began in '02.

Wow, Here I am writing about my journey back to health but I suppose you need to know where this began. My goal in documenting this journey is  to see the progress that I have made for myself and more importantly to hopefully help anyone who is in my shoes and desires to change. If I can make the changes that I have anyone can. The first step was to figure out where I was in all of this. To be able to reach any destination you must be able to define your starting and ending points. The joy will come in the journey. Everyone is pedaling somewhere in life, you can arrive there on purpose.

I knew I had been gaining weight and I wanted to be able to do the activities I loved to do, wear the clothes that I liked etc etc. I had not been on a scale for years and I was about to have my first physical in several years. I mentioned in the introduction section that I was watching video of me from a trip and   I said WHOA I'm fat. Geez how did this happen. Well I can tell you this.... It did not happen by accident.   I never ate anything by accident. Whoops...how did that Big Mac get in my stomach...hmmm I wonder.

The first thing to do was find out how much I weighed. To be honest here, I really didn't want to know. So, I went on a fasting crash diet for two weeks just to drop a few pounds. I figured I had reached maybe 250 lbs. Well I missed that by a couple of pounds. I know your thinking wow he was only 236. I only wished. When I went for my physical I was glad I was at the doctor's office. Because I tipped the scale at 336lbs.  I about fell over.

I immediately started to change the way I was eating. I knew I would need help in releasing this weight.

Jan. '03    By only changing what I was eating I got rid of 33lbs. I was now at the lean weight of 303lbs.      ( I will be posting a few pictures) I met a personal trainer that went to my church and we got talking about how exercise would help me with my core desire of wanting to be a lean machine.

We put together a program of weight lifting and riding.  During  October/November '03 I did two long bike rides. The Ride for the Roses in Austin , Texas which supports the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Ride through the Country  Century in Claxton, Georgia. I did the century in 6hrs 12 minutes.

April. '04 I had dropped another 56 lbs. a total of 89lbs from the time I had started. I was pretty happy and proud about what I had done thus far. You  know what happens with the wrong type of pride. Yep slowly I started cheating on the very steps that had got me to where  I was.

November '05 I could see I was gaining again and pissed off at myself for doing so. I knew I had to get back on the program. I was back over 300 lbs. this time I caught it at 306. Arrrgh! I knew what I had to do. So back to eating healthy.  By the end of January '06 I was down to 278 lbs. and it was time to start exercising again.

January '06   The end of January I joined the YMCA ( a gift from my sister). I wanted to start riding again and outdoors was out of the question. I started going to the spinning classes. Almost all the people there were already in good shape and I know a few of them must have thought... look a fat boy riding. Thus the seeds of a dream.  Many days during the class I could see myself riding across the country.  This had been a dream for sometime as well as Riding across China. ( Will that be the next long trip?) Stay tuned.

May '06    I launched this site to chronicle my journey back to health.   I   have set my sites on the Pedal With Purpose Tour '06.  I also will be riding in several Century rides. For anyone that is not familiar with that term it is 100 miles. While putting together things to do this...April  19th brought a bit of a scare with a visit to my doctor. ( Read more here )