Robs Introduction!

Hello everybody! I guess this post is to provide a bit of a back story about me, so here goes. I’ve been on the heavy side almost my entire life, dating back to kindergarten when I’d ask for an extra cookie for my invisible friend (or not so invisible on the days when I would take My Buddy™ to school). I was never incredibly active as a child, and graduated from playing right field/playing in the dirt to scorekeeper during my brief career in baseball. Size really came in to play during college, thanks to free daily access to ice cream and pizza. Raise your hand if you can or could eat a whole large Papa John's pizza plus cheese sticks on your own! This combined with an increasingly inactive lifestyle brought me to my largest weight in January of this year of 350 pounds.

When I first heard Ricky’s story on KLBJ, it inspired me to try out Workshop Fitness. After a few sessions, I determined that it was a bit too far of a drive going from north Austin to downtown during rush hour. Shortly thereafter a friend advised me of a more local trainer that did one on one sessions. I worked out with him for a while, and was doing pretty good, but I was having difficulty cracking the 300 mark. This was mainly due to poor food choices, which is eventually what led to us agreeing that until I could get my eating under control, we would keep going in circles. After that, I slowly ballooned up to 350 pounds.

Then, during my trip home for Christmas, my brother surprised me with the fact that he had been going through his own weight loss process, losing a little over 100 pounds. He did it through a program called Optifast. When I returned to Austin in January, I signed up for the program. Basically, while on the program, you are on a liquid diet with only 800 calories per day for 16 weeks. It can only be prescribed through a doctor, and you have to go in to get your vitals checked every week and your blood drawn every month. More on this program later. At the end of the program, I was down to 266 pounds and feeling good.

Afterwards, I was on my own with the food again, and while I was making smarter choices and eating healthier, those not so good habits were creeping back in. Cue the new job and that fateful morning when I discovered that Ricky, the guy who inspired my weight loss adventure, was in my training class. And the rest, as they say, is history.