Spotlight: Ethan L.

As a kid I used to fly up to Kentucky every summer to visit my grandparents, we’d go fish every single day, ride four wheelers, a lot of physical activity. But you know how grandmas and grandpas are, they always want you to be eating something. So there began a cycle, of me going to Kentucky every summer, gaining weight, and then flying back to Texas and losing it during the school year, just to do the same thing next summer.

Well, once I hit middle school the weight never left. One summer I went up to Kentucky, came back, and it just stuck.

I wasn’t the active kid playing football anymore, I was the 260 pound kid who was only 5’1 freshman year. And the bigger I got, the more I got made fun of for it. And what makes you feel a little bit of comfort when you’re sad and fat? More food.

I learned to accept that I would be fat forever, and there were just certain things I’d never be able to do because of my weight. I laid down, and didn’t even try to fight it for a long long time.

Skip forward about 3 years, I’m a senior, still really big, pushing 260 still but a little taller. I woke up on the third day of school senior year and looked down, and couldn’t see my toes. I broke down, cried, didn’t even go to school. Knowing that I was squandering my opportunities, that I was the one ruining any chances I had of living a happy life, tore me up. So I decided to do something about it, after being a miserable oaf for years (my own fault).

After that day, I decided I was gonna challenge myself and start doing 100 pushups a day. I got down on the ground into push-up stance, and to this day I still remember how hard it was to even do 1 push-up. But I kept with it, every time I went to the restroom I’d do 5 pushups, because I couldn’t do any more than that. Couple weeks went by, I could start doing 10 at a time, I was seeing some progress in how strong I was and it felt good, but no progress on the scale, it was discouraging. I even gave up on it a couple times.

One day something just clicked.

I was about two months in and normally broke the pushups into 10 sets of 10, that day I decided 5 sets of 20 or bust. And I did it, it took all day, but I got it done. After knowing that was possible, Every week I would keep adding more pushups to each section, and by the second month I was finally starting to see a change on the scale. Started at 268, was down to 260, and that was HUGE for me. I almost cried just because I finally knew that I could do this, it was possible. The very next week, I went to the doctor for an unrelated injury where I almost cut my thumb off, they drew blood, and all that good stuff. My doctor didn’t sugar coat it, he told me that I was prediabetic, and about 100 pounds overweight for my build. He told me if I didn’t change my ways, it would catch up very quick. Needless to say, that scared the absolute shit out of me. I went right back to it with another type of motivation, I wanted to be healthy when I’m old. I wanna grow old.

This is where things really shifted, where I finally realized that I could do anything I wanted, and it’s on me. No one else can do it for you. I started waking up earlier, started breaking the pushups into two sets of 50, eventually one set of 75 and another 25, and then eventually 100 in a row without stopping. In the first month that I actually committed myself to living a healthy life, I lost 36 pounds. I could look in the mirror after 29 days, and see the weight of a medium sized dog disappeared from my gut. That felt good. I kept it going, and eventually my metabolism caught up with my activity.

In 6 months, I went from 268 pounds and pre-diabetic, to 165 pounds and 7% body fat. People that haven’t seen me since I was big do not recognize me, people that do recognize me congratulate me, because they remember how fat my titties were.

And it damn sure feels good, not only to see what I’ve accomplished in the mirror, but to know that my health is better. And to know that maybe me losing weight could inspire someone else to lose the weight and change their life.

In the end I realized it’s a game of accountability, and self responsibility. No one else is gonna hold you accountable. No one else is gonna have that dialogue at 3am about if you should eat that slice of cake or not. It’s only you.

-Ethan L.