2 and half years and one marathon later...

My journey started at the hill that took me 10 minutes to walk up and resulted in me being stupidly out of breath and sweating really badly. That was the point I decided I needed to change my life. I was 302 lbs on that day, 18th October 2010.

The very next day I was at the gym signing up for a years subscription and booking in 3 personal trainer sessions. Within just a couple of weeks I had seen results and that motivated me even more to get off my *kitten* and make a real effort to do it. The other thing that helped me through this was having a gym buddy. A really good friend who switched gyms and was loosing weight as well. Because there was some one waiting for me to meet them and go to the gym I felt that I had to go in order to not let them down.

One day in early 2011 we challenged each other to jog from about half way between our houses and the gym to the front door of the gym. It killed us. More than the workouts we had done up to that point so we decided that we would start running. Picked up the Couch to 5K program and went from there. After successfully completing our first 5k in May 2011 we decided to keep it going and progressed to 10k and a half marathon in 2012.

In 2012 I decided to leave the gym and go fully in to running. Joined a local club and started to make massive leaps in to improvements on speed and distance. My gym buddy at that time went more in to weight training. However we both agreed to try and complete a marathon. I had applied for the lottery that is London but my buddy had missed to cut off so we decided to look else where. Rome was the marathon we ended up agreeing on and on 17th March 2013 we both very proudly completed that marathon. Today I weigh in at 211 lbs.

The weight loss hasn't been easy though. There were cheat days that turned in to weeks / months. There were times when I felt like giving up and just admitting I was a failure. But those days always passed as the thought of going back to that hill and being in the same situation that started this whole journey was enough to snap me out of whatever state of mind I was in.

I'm plateauing at the moment so I decided to come back to this site where I can closely monitor everything and see where I can change things to help me lose the final pounds I want to get me under 200 pounds.

Here is the before and after pic: