I lost a whole person! 120 pounds lost! (pics included)

Hello everyone!

The journey beings in a land where tacos are sold at every street corner and we see a passionate guitar player strumming soulful tunes for spare change.... Ok, not really, but damn it, wouldn't that be an awesome intro?!

My name is Jason, I have lived in San Antonio, Texas all of my life and our culture down here tends to consists of getting together often with family to do one thing and do it HARD.... eat. I was no exception and raised in this long standing tradition and since I was not gifted with a super fast metabolism as a child, I quickly grew into quite the little fluffy chubbykins. I won't lie, I was a cute kid with cheeks that wouldn't quit, but having "baby fat" after puberty is a no go.

So, as I got older and was still rather large, I decided to lose weight. The sole reason for this? I wanted to meet girls and get noticed, this was my goal back then as I had yet to even have a girlfriend and pretty much anyone I was interested in, I was practically invisible. So, I exercised more and just generally ate more nutritious food to get there, low and behold, I reach a decent fitness level here:



This was taken around 2004 or 2005, and it was around this time that I met my first girlfriend. Yes, my first girlfriend, and I was 21 at this time.... hey, some of us are late bloomers, don't judge me! :P Anyways, the inevitable happened and I gained a bit of "relationship weight" or as some call it "retirement weight", as I achieved the goal in getting the girl, so I can relax the lifestyle a bit more, or so I thought. I am not sure as to how much I gained in that process, but needless to say, when you meet a woman and ALL she talks about in terms of why she is into you is purely things like "you're just so hot, you're body, blah blah" there may be a problem if that "hotness" goes. This is not always the case, but for me, sadly it was. My weight went up a bit, she stopped giving me such compliments and soon after, I was dumped.

So there I was, slightly just a little bigger than my last picture. I was alone, heartbroken (I almost proposed to this girl), and with easy access to food. As a wise man once said "Loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix" (high five if you get this television reference). If gaining relationship weight was any indication, you can guess what happened next.... RELEASE THE KRAKEN..... or, BREAK UP WEIGHT!!!

Guess you could say the song of impending doom was just beginning with the tuning of some strings:



This one I believe was taken around a year later, and you'd think the music would stop, but... umm.... yeah, no:



As you can see, I kind of threw the middle finger to grooming and let the pounds congregate. Eventually, I did get better in terms of dealing with my emotional state and got back to at least making an effort to look nice by cutting the hair and shaving:



Weighing in at 290 pounds, it was around this time in my life where, as you may notice the difference between these last two pictures, I was finally smiling again. I had woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and had the thought of getting back in shape again. The difference this time, rather than doing it for others, where I had just wanted to be noticed by women, it was now for me. I wanted to like what I saw in the mirror. I wanted to feel comfortable in my own skin. I wanted to not be pissed off after shopping for a new pair of pants or shirt, or heaven forbid, a BELT. I just wanted to feel good about myself and felt that getting healthy and changing my appearance would be the way to go as I did remember feeling great back then.

The steps were taken to educate myself on proper nutrition and effective fitness plans for gradual weight loss, rather than a faster method. I had looked up so many stories on people needing surgery after huge losses and I didn't really have that kind of money. So the gradual transition began:



This was taken June 2012 and I had lost about 70 pounds at this point. Around this time I had started obtaining an interest in bodybuilding and started adding resistance training to the mix, and GOODNESS this kicked started a chain reaction of EPIC proportions:



This was taken mid-February, and I continued with the lifestyle and that brings us to current day where I hold at 170 pounds consistently:





Too Long Too Read?

I was a chubby kid, I got thin to impress girls, I got one girl, I gained, I lost the girl, I gained some more, and then I lost it all. 290 down to 170, 120 pounds lost.

Thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing if you did. That's my story and I am sticking to it. Good night, everybody!