In high school playing basketball, my goal was to bulk up and gain weight to 200 pounds, my height then was 6'4". As a freshman in college playing basketball and now 6' 6" my goal was to increase my weight to 220 pounds. My best friend from high school, suggested maybe I should be content with what I was and quit trying to increase my body mass. I was a athlete and in excellent shape, working out, running and doing everything to be competitive at the highest level. After my freshman year I decided that there was more important priorities than basketball. I kept working out, running, and playing "street" basketball until I was thirty. This is when I went into management for the airline I was working for. The demands of the job left very little time for basketball or much of anything else. At my twenty year high school reunion, my best fiend asked me, "are you still trying to gain weight?". I was now well over 280 pounds and honestly felt like a slug!



That was my wake-up moment about my weight. I started monitoring my weight daily, eating healthier, and started making time to exercising daily. I started running every other day and power walking on the other days. The biggest change and what really brought my weight down, was eliminating sugar from my diet as much as possible. I quit drinking sodas completely, my parents never let us drink them at all when I was a kid. I must have thought as a adult, it was a free for all. Because I abused my diet consuming just about anything I wanted. It took me almost five years to get my weight back to 220 and I'm at 210 now.

I use a pedometer to keep track of my miles ran and walking. I average 15 to 18 miles with all of my combined activity daily. I also weigh myself every morning and eat three times a day, with very little sugar in my diet. My suggestion for all that need to loose weight, stop drinking sodas. A 12 ounce can of coke is 140 calories, 38 grams of sugar (about 8 teaspoons).