200 pounds lost

WOW! You are such an inspiration to us all! What was most helpful? I noticed in one of your photos you look like you were standing near weights. Any other helpful hints to pass on as to how you kept going for so long? You look fantastic...

Well, the way I got started was looking at a picture that was taken of me (which is the before picture here). I was a very athletic person growing up, which seems weird to say since I'm only 21. My junior year of high school I ended up getting injured in football which I did not recover from until after my senior year (fractured L4-L5 vertebrae). Sports were such a huge part of my life at that point that once I got hurt I became seditary and gained over 100 lbs in a year. After I saw that picture of myself I realized i was going down a bad road and needed to change the things I was doing. It seems that I almost completely changed my lifestyle overnight, cut all processed and refined food out of my diet and eliminated anything with sugar in it. I was in the gym every day doing intense workouts like I would do in football. I ended up losing the taste for pretty much all unhealthy foods, and started cooking every meal myself. That being said, I do believe that one of the main things that needs to be watched in the diet is sodium, it is snuck into foods as much as it can be. It took me 2 years total to loose the weight, and I have been maintaining it for the last 2. I am very OCD about the things that are going into my body and have a consistent exercise routine. I firmly believe that weight loss is 70% diet and 30% exercise.