From 461# couch potato to 225# marathoner (pic eavy)

MissySpring · January 2014

Wow! You are truly an inspiring person of faith. Congratulations

statickey · January 2014

Great story!!!

TheRealJigsaw · January 2014

Well done! Congrats!!

docdrd · January 2014

I love seeing stories like yours. I so admire people who quite literally save their own life. GREAT job!!! Keep it going. And just for funny perspective, you have lost the equivalent of me 1.5 times over :-) Just astonishingly great!

bikermike5094 · January 2014

Holy weight loss batman!!!!!! You look freaking awesome!!!!

harphy · January 2014

Bloody epic, man! :flowerforyou: :drinker:

grillnchill · January 2014

You are AMAZING! Truly inspiring. Happy New Year and wishing you continued success.

DeputySox · January 2014

Hardcore! You rock my friend! Drive on!

phytogurl · January 2014

Truly amazing accomplishment!! Thank you for sharing your story...totally inspiring!!

farfromperfectdottv · January 2014

Very awesome!

I love running, it truly is a life changer. At some point I want to start a running therapy group to help people make the shift to "I CAN!" and grow their self esteem!

How did you make the shift into running after the knee injury/surgery stuff? It sounds like you don't have problems with it anymore?

Also, very personal question, but I'm curious (don't answer if you don't want)- sounds like you lost the weight very quickly. How did you deal with loose/excess skin issues? I'm down less than 10 pounds lost slowly and have issues with that!

My knee injury was about 10 years ago, so time helped out. The surgeon worked miracles, and the physical therapist worked wonders. Surprisingly, my knee held up much better than it should have under my weight at my heaviest, but it's so much better now that I've lost it. When I did start running, I started out slowly. I used the Couch to 5K program and made baby steps the entire way to get to where I'm at now. I focused on endurance and stamina first instead of speed, and once I built a solid foundation, I started moving faster.

I get asked personal questions all the time, so nothing has surprised me or embarrassed me (yet, anyways!) How am I dealing with the excess skin? I guess I just do. It used to really bother me and I would try to cover it up with long shorts and sleeved shirts. Now, I've grown to see it as a battle scar now and take pride in knowing that the only reason I have it is because I've come as far as I have. I've battled insecurity, but one day during the summer I took a leap and bought some tank tops. The first time I wore one to the gym, I told my trainer I was uncomfortable with how the flabby skin under my arms looked. He told me- "Dude, don't worry about that. Look at how far you've come, you should be proud of that skin!" That really helped to boost my self-confidence, and I started wearing tank tops regularly to the gym and then out in public until I was comfortable with it and got over caring what other people thought.

As far as I know, when you lose that much weight there's really no workaround for the skin, it just becomes a part of life. When I run, most of the time I wear compression gear to hold it all on in, like why a woman would wear a sports bra. I literally have handfuls of loose skin on my midsection, I have saggy man boobs (although, not near as big as they once were), and I have excess skin on my thighs. I've accepted that I'll always have this unless I have some sort of surgery to remove it, which I probably won't unless it becomes a health problem.

One day soon, I'll be blogging about this question, since I get asked it a lot. Hopefully this helped out and answered what you were asking.