How My Drastic Weight Loss Changed the Lives of Those Around Me (Written by My Wife)

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The following post contains honest, unedited opinions from my wife on how my drastic weight loss has affected her and our relationship.  I told her not to hold back on this — she didn’t disappoint.  I’ll be back again tomorrow (sorry):

In 2009, while I was still pregnant with our first child, my husband of 4 years came to me and told me he’d decided to lose weight.  He joined a gym. He started counting calories. Painstakingly counting calories… down to using measuring spoons for peanut butter. (That type of counting did stop as he eventually learned to count the calories without constantly measuring and looking at packaging. He still counts, but does so through eye-balling and rough, but honest, estimates.)

At the time we’d been married for 4 years. Although silently skeptical, I always tried to be supportive both vocally and physically. Our lives were changing rapidly with the birth of our new child. Now, all of a sudden, instead of spending his evenings playing Call of Duty while I took pregnant naps on the couch, he was at the local gym he’d recently joined. He was relentless. Going to the gym took top priority over anything else that was going on (which isn’t remotely the case today).  Even after the baby was born, nothing was important enough to skip the gym.

So while I was on maternity leave, at home all day with the baby, he would come home from work, change clothes, and head out to the gym. These are the times I was probably less vocally supportive.  However, he was persistent, and over time, the pounds melted off of him.  I remember all of the milestones.

When he lost his first 25 pounds.  50 lbs.  75lbs.

Before we knew it, he’d lost 100 lbs. His body was changing so quickly that it was hard to keep up with. I know this is a rare case in which the change is a positive one, but like anyone who marries one person and finds themselves waking up next to someone else, it was a lot to take in in such a short period of time.

Next week, we will celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary. We are expecting our second child in November. I have had some time to get used to the new man in my bed, and the differences are amazing. The important thing to understand is that while I love him more today than I did then, it’s not because he lost the weight. I was in love with him then. When he was over 300 lbs, he was still my best friend, my lover, the father of my daughter, an extremely smart conversationalist, and has one of the best senses of humor I’ve ever known. None of these have changed.

A lot has changed, though.

He spends a lot of time on this blog. It’s very important to him, and he comes home and works for hours at times. I believe it was the blog, the accountability, the fact that so many of you were looking to him for hope and inspiration, that ultimately pushed him to succeed.

He has become such an athlete. Constantly physically challenging himself to do something faster or heavier than before. He enjoys pushing his new body to the limit to see what it can do. In a lot of ways, it’s like watching a child learn to walk, then run, then skip, then jump, then run and jump, then run backwards while hopping over obstacles. He plays about an hour of basketball in the driveway every single day before bed. He gets up early in the mornings, often before 5:00, to lift weights. He insists on cutting the grass with a push mower and refuses to use the self-propel feature because he enjoys the harder workout.

The list is endless.

He parks in the back of the parking lot, because he enjoys the extra walk. He refuses to use drive-through windows and insists on walking inside instead. He does NOT stick to a strict diet. Even now, he eats what he wants to eat. When he wants to eat doughnuts for breakfast, he does. When he wants to have a cheeseburger, french fries, and an ice cream after dinner, he does.

He just always plays a little harder afterwards.

More than anything, he has a new lease on life. A new body to live in.  He can do things that he wouldn’t have tried before.

He’s happier now, because he’s more free than he’s ever been in his life.