Hello everybody!

I am a male/25/Oklahoma. And I have an interesting story.

I have been overweight all my life, and have been gaining weight steadily since I was a child. I was 524 pounds before I recieved gastric bypass surgery a few years back. While the surgery helped for a while, I was not exercising, and my mind still wanted to eat like I used to. Eventually, I gained most of the weight back. The last time I weighed myself, I was 508 pounds. Thankfully, I’m still able to walk for a mile or two, and I have a strong interest in weight lifting.

I have decided that my first goal will be 458 pounds. I am confident that I could shed the weight if I replaced a few habits, namely:

- Staying up too late, waking up too early

- Eating unhealthy meals, especially right before sleeping

- Getting over my fear of healthy foods

- Not exercising regularly

I really would like to lose about 300 pounds ultimately. Other than my weight, I am still healthy, but diabetes, heart disease and cancer run in my family, and time is running out. I hope that by being in this community, I can find the support and motivation I need.

Now for my motivation

Other than a guarantee of an unhappy and incredibly slow death as my body shuts down to any multitude of diseases that run in my family, I want to lose weight because I feel like I have so much to offer the world. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen me perform. I’m a musician. Right now, I am in a music education degree, but lately I’ve been thinking that this is because my mindset was that I couldn’t be a performer until I lost weight.  I want to lose weight so that I can have a personal victory that will hopefully change how I approach other aspects of my life. My weight has a real handle on other things that I may not even realize.

I have good friends who want me to succeed! I’ll tell you more about them later.

I want to be an example and inspiration to the rest of my family!

I want more than anything to be happy and healthy!