John's Back Story

JOHN

For all of my life I have always seen myself as the fat kid. Looking back, I can see that I was never as fat as I believed myself to be. It not only crippled my self-confidence and hinder me in forming all kinds of relationships because I feared rejection because I was fat, but it shaped my self-perception to the point that, as an adult, I eventually became the fat person I always believed myself to be growing up.

Since then, I have struggled with consistently getting larger and larger until I topped out the scales at 400 pounds. Diets have always either made me ill or caused my body to go into starvation mode and pack on fat rather than lose it. Once in a great while I would change my activity patterns and could lose 30 pounds or so, almost spontaneously, but could never get past that first weight loss surge.

Then my health began to take a downturn shortly after my 25 birthday. The new health concerns exacerbated my obesity and my obesity added greater complications to my health problems.

In 2002 I had rotator cuff repair surgery and needed to go onto an antidepressant shortly after that caused me for the first time ever to pass 359 pounds on the scale. I shot up to around 375-380 and could never seem to shake off the extra 30 pounds the medication had caused me to gain.

My health problems continued to get worse and worse, due to my ever increasing obesity and in November of 2008 I went to a doctor's appointment and discovered I had reached a milestone I had no idea whether or not I could come to terms with or back away from either--400 pounds.

I gave up all soft drinks, at home, cut almost anything pleasurable from my diet and began to really hate eating in general. I started to lose weight and then would gain it back almost as quickly as I could even think of celebrating the achievement.