My fitness origin story: I was born the middle child of a family of athletes. They were all lean. I was not. I was one of the few fat kids in grade school. Yea, I’m 32, when I grew up classes weren’t exactly filled with fat kids. Back then I didn’t really understand why I was so much bigger than my siblings who were all lean. Now, looking back with my understanding of nutrition and calories it’s all too obvious. I’d put down a good 16 oz of milk (2%) right from the jug. I used to grab about 8-12 Oreos at a time and eat them with a tall glass of milk. Now here’s where it gets really bad; I remember sometimes going into the fridge and eating icing and raw cookie dough. I never paid attention to servings or calories during my teens and early twenties, but whenever I got a bowl of ice cream (which was too often) I’d get probably a good 4 servings worth. With cereal it was probably more like two servings worth of something like Cinnamon Toast Crunch that was overflowing with milk. When I finished that there was a good chance I’d grab another bowl of the same or a bowl of another sugary cereal we had. So yeah, now I see why my siblings kept in great shape and I put on a lot of weight. I consumed tons of sugar. just looking back during this 2016 journey I remembered the fact that I weighed 270 lbs for my physical going into my freshman year of high school. From there I gained about 20 lbs every year. So, in my second year of high school I was 290, and 310 in the third year. I guess I decided to slow things down a bit because in my senior year I was 315. Thankfully I was about 6’0” - 6’3” through high school. I was pretty much a giant compared to my peers. It definitely made for some pretty odd times. On one hand you’re not really turning the ladies’ heads, but coaches are breaking their necks when they see you. Crazy times. With that said, being an athlete worked out great for me. Most of my athletic life was played as an offensive lineman on the football team. When you’re pushing around other 300 pound guys having all that extra weight helps. So, through high school and college I wasn’t really too concerned about my weight unless i started to head a little too far north of 320. After college, however, things were different. I knew I didn’t want to keep all that weight, it was just no longer necessary. The only problem was just that I got burnt out on training from all the days of training for football. So, on one hand I wanted to drop the weight, but on the other hand I just wanted to sit back and play video games not worrying about training of any kind. That lasted for a good 6-7 years. At some point I did at least start looking into nutrition, but I still mostly refused to workout. I looked into raw and vegan mainly in the early days. I can’t remember how much I truly committed to a vegan life, but I know I didn’t do a good job of getting a proper amount of protein. I had dropped down from about 330 - 275 over one year, but I felt really weak at 275. Fast forward to 2014 and I was back up to 315 and looking to get into real shape. That year and ever year since I have entered bodybuilding.com’s yearly transformation contest. The first year my bad habits fought with serious aggression to keep me from getting lean. While I wanted to change things around i still found myself going to grab a burger and fries for my meals, and I had plenty of excuses to miss gym time. By the start of the next year’s contest I was only down to about 306. I felt like crap achieving so little that I deleted my pics from he previous contest. I’m not sure I even have them left anywhere in any of my digital libraries. It’s ok though my 2015 pics are basically the same. In 2015 I did a bit better. I wasn’t eating fast food as much and i had a much more regular gym routine. This time the results over the year were a little more noticeable. However, I still only went from 306 - 280 over the year. This year however, this year is the year I achieve the physique I’ve wanted all my life. With the momentum I’ve been building of good habits and my belief in myself at an all time high I just know I got this. Oddly enough though I told Scott Herman at the end of 2015 that I would be in the bodybuilding.com challenge, and his response was “you’ll probably win.” He probably doesn’t know this, but that was actually a huge boost to my confidence. It was a weird feeling though because I was certain that I had the utmost belief in myself already. I guess it’s like getting investment an invest tip from a friend that does pretty well in the stock, and then getting the same tip from Warren Buffet. Anyway, I’m not certain I’ll win any of the contests I’ve entered, but I’m really happy with my results so far, and I can’t wait to see what I look like when finally done with this cut. Stay tuned.