Before she died, my grandmother constantly commented on my weight. She wasn’t doing it to be cruel, but out of love and concern. Much like other folks around me, she was worried that my weight would eventually kill me.

My grandmother was one of many people concerned about my weight. Her comments and thoughts were echoed by other family and friends throughout the years. And while a few of the comments sent my way have been hurtful, all have been out of concern for my well-being.

I never realized how scared my family was until this week.

While driving home from Charleston from my dad’s funeral my wife and I started talking about making a will. We currently don’t have one, but know we need one. We need to know what the other wants to happen in case the other one dies. We also need to know what music we’d like played at our funeral.

My dad chose Eye of the Tiger. I’d prefer Farewell Ride. But I digress.

Our conversation strayed into our life insurance policies. My wife reminded me of something she had done every year since we got married — increased my coverage through her job.  It’s something I already knew, but forgot.

She bluntly, but truthfully admitted:

I’ve increased your life insurance the max allowed through my work every year since we’ve been married except for 2010.  You were eating yourself to death, nobody in our families thought you would live past 40.

It was a good idea.  And it was the truth.

The truth hurts, folks. I was a selfish, stupid kid who cared about nobody but himself. The five-second thrill I derived from food was more important to me than all the friends and family members that pleaded with me to change.

It took 23 years, but I finally changed.  I hope you decide to do the same.

If you need help getting started or are struggling in your current journey, please post a comment and I’ll be glad to answer your questions.  I’m sure many of the other wonderful people of 344 would be happy to help, as well.

I plan on owning a Mustang Convertible — maybe even this one.

I’m working toward my goal.  I think about it from time to time, but I don’t dwell and dream of the possibility — I dwell on what will get me there.  I’m working hard.  I’m working long hours.  My wife and I are saving.

I’m not dreaming.  I’m planning.

I also plan on taking care of my mother when she gets older.  She bought me my first computer and I plan on paying her back.   I haven’t forgotten what she has done for me.  I don’t dream of buying her a Rolls Royce and giving her a mansion, but I plan on making sure she doesn’t have to work past a certain age.  I plan on paying for any medicine or medical bills she might obtain.

I plan on making sure her lawn is always mowed.

We’re not talking about pie in the sky ideas here, but simple goals that can be accomplished with a lot of hard work and a little bit of planning.

I have more plans.  They include:

• Allowing wife to stay at home and raise our children
• Building an incredible amount of muscle
• Teaching Natalee how to be an athlete (basketball, soccer, everything)
• Learning how to dance
• Writing a book

I don’t like dreaming.  Dreams will keep us happy and satisfied as we sit on the interstate every morning, waiting in traffic to only arrive an hour later at a job we hate.  We’ll do it for the next 40 years because we were too busy dreaming about winning the lottery and moving to the Bahamas.

We were too busy dreaming and not planning.

I dreamed for 23 years.  I dreamed my entire life about having a six pack, flexing big and strong muscles, being chased by the girls, etc — the dreams of an overweight teenage boy.  But, just like we’re not going to win the lottery, quit our job and move to the Bahamas, I wasn’t going to wake up one day and be shredded.  I was morbidly obese and it took years to reach 344 pounds — I wasn’t going to lose it all overnight.  Muscles aren’t grown like a beanstalk.

Meeting our goals requires planning, not dreaming.  Start planning.  Not tomorrow, but today.  Get started with whatever it is you want to do in life.

Share your plans with me in the comments below.

I lived with obesity for the first 23 years of my life.

As most of you are aware at this point in the story, I decided in January of 2009 at the age of 23 to lose weight.  I was tired of being obese.  I was tired of being sedentary.  I was tired of being tired.

Obesity prevented me from doing a lot of things in my life.  I’m not a person to regret much — whether good or bad, the things that happen to us in life shape us and make us into who we are as a person.  With that being sad, it’s hard not to think back and wonder how life could have been different.

Some of the regrets I have include:

• Being constantly afraid of the next episode of angina
• Always lying about my weight
• Not being able to buy any clothes from the mall
• Sweating all the time
• Always sucking my gut in
• Being the target of jokes and having to laugh at my expense
• Having to constantly jump out of camera shots
• Setting and constantly failing to meet new goals/resolutions
• Fearing I’ll never lose weight
• Fearing I’ll never be able to chase my little around the playground
• Fearing I’ll die because I’m too stupid and selfish to change my ways

I told my wife about one specific regret I had last night.  My wife and I went to pick up my tux ($160, I might add) for my sister’s wedding and was asked to try it on before we left.  After putting it on I stepped out of the dressing room to greet a mirror and my wife.

It seems like they both were smiling at me.

I’m not superficial.  I’m not stuck up on appearances.  It’s just hard to be 344 pounds one day and 200 201 the next and not linger in front of the mirror the first time you put on a tux.   I like what I saw.  My wife liked what she saw and she let me know it.

I just regret not being able to give her this more quickly.

I look nothing like I did in 2005 (pictured right) when we got married.  I wish I did.  While my wife loved me how I was and let me know that as well, I know she’s much happier knowing that I decided to choose life over death.  Make no mistake, I was killing myself with every new pound that was deposited on this body.  I might as well been taking a sip of poison along with those french toast sticks every morning.

I regret not giving her a body she could show off to friends.  I regret not giving her a body that could protect her against harm.  I regret being selfish and thinking my temporary satisfaction from a bag of grease was more important than seeing our babies get old.

What do you regret?

I was one of the many overweight (okay, let’s not kid: obese) kids in high school that feared taking the mandatory semester of PE class.  We can save the debate for later whether or not gym should be more than a semester, but after quickly realizing I wouldn’t make it a day in gym I opted instead to do what all the other overweight kids were doing:

Join JROTC.

While my motivation for joining JROTC was simply to avoid the physical “rigors” of joining gym, I still respected what I was taught and discovered about the military.  I didn’t have any plans to join the military after high school, but I still took the basic training and information bestowed upon me seriously.  I realized a few, perhaps many of my classmates around me would use the class to launch their military careers — I didn’t take that lightly.

As you might imagine, JROTC did have physical training (PT), but it was only once every 9 weeks.  This was a relief for someone who couldn’t complete a single pushup, but fortunately I only had to go through one PT test.  I was spared the first PT test because I was “sick” and the second went by fairly easy.  Of course, I had to endure public humiliation for the first 30 minutes or so as I attempted physical activity, but after that I was pretty numb to the stares.

After all, I had been overweight growing up in a public school system — I was pretty used to being embarrassed by being overweight.

Ironically, the most humiliating experience in NJROTC wasn’t the PT, but fitting into the uniform.  NJROTC didn’t have pants that were large enough for me and I had to wear them below the bellybutton to fit (sagging, basically).  I remember being told by an officer a few weeks into the program that I should “consider dropping the class because I couldn’t properly fit into the uniform.”

I teared up after being told that — criticism about my weight from an adult, whether it be an uncle or a stranger, is much worse than from a kid.

While I enjoyed NJROTC, I wish I would’ve faced my fears and took gym.  It might have ignited this weight loss journey a little sooner, but then again, maybe not.  Regardless, taking NJROTC did teach me something that I was able to use later on in life, specifically this past January:

How to do an about-face.

My wife and I were cuddling and watching television a few nights ago and she was complimenting me on how skinny I looked.  She started reminiscing on the days when I used to be morbidly obese and the “experiences” we were subjected to on a regular basis because of my weight.

I told her I didn’t remember too much from my days of obesity, as if my brain had blocked it out of my memory to protect me.   My wife seemed offended by this, perhaps thinking how I didn’t appreciate how much things had changed.

She posed a series of questions to me to help me remember:

Do you remember what it was like to have to sit in a booth at a restaurant because you were too self-conscious to sit at an open table?

Do you remember having to sit at a table because the booth was too small?

Do you remember having to wedge yourself into a movie theater seat?

Do you remember at the concert last Christmas not being able to fit into the seats at all?  Your stomach was hanging over both armrests.

Do you remember having to drive to specialty stores to buy your clothes?

Do you remember White Water and having to keep your shirt on?

Do you remember having to wear shorts to go swimming because we couldn’t find any bathing suits your size?

Do you remember when you stopped breathing in your sleep (apnea)?

These questions quickly helped me remember what it was like living with obesity.  They made me remember why short-term pain and long-term gain is a good choice to make.  They made me realize why I choose fruits and vegetables over a bag of grease and why I go to the gym almost every night.

They made remember what it was like to die a little every day.