This is going to be a rambling and at times long winded blog about my life long weight loss journey. I'm mostly just writing this for myself but if you want to read along that is fine too, and who knows, maybe it will end up helping someone else with their own weight problem.

I figure he best place to start is at the beginning.

My mom's side of the family are all on the large side, in weight and stature, so right from the get go I was predisposed to be big. I didn't start out fat though. I didn't start gaining weight until I started kindergarten at 6 years old. I was an only child and we lived far away from other people, so I think the stress from being around a lot of other kids for the first time had something to do with getting the fat ball rolling. I was picked on a lot and that did not help.

I was the largest kid in school from kindergarten all the way through middle school. It wasn't until high school that others started to surpass me in height. The taunting and bullying about my weight was a constant fact of life. It caused me to have pretty low self-esteem and depression that never seemed to fully go away. Something I still deal with to this day.

I had always tried to go on diets but it was always for not. Nothing ever stuck longer than a few days. Then in 9th grade something changed. I went to the doctor's office one day and the scale read 287 pounds. Yeah, I told you I was big. It was time to do something.

My mom and I decided to try going on the Adkins diet, you know, low carb and no sugar. I also tried some diet pills from the doctor. They helped give me energy but also made me too jittery so they did not last long. Anyway, over the course of about 6 months on the Adkins diet I lost a little over 60 pounds. I got down to around 225 pounds. The 44inch pants I had been wearing were falling off me and I could squeeze into 40s. It was great and I felt like I was heading in the right direction to turn my life around for the better.

Now the bad part.

I remember the turning point like it was yesterday. My dad and I were invited to go on a weekend long hog hunting trip with my cousin. The food we packed was most definitely NOT on my diet plan. Cookies, chips, pies, sodas and who knows what else. Comfort food mostly. After that it was never the same.

For whatever reason I gave up on being strict with my diet. I had always been the strict one. My parents were of little help. Going to restaurants my dad would say things like "oh just eat the hamburger, you can go on your diet tomorrow". He could never comprehend that weight loss does not work like that. It was only through pure stubbornness on my part that I managed to lose any weight at all under those circumstances.

I don't know if it was the return of depression or just loss of motivation that stalled me out. All I know is I stopped caring. My eating habits became worse than before the diet and the weight came back with a vengeance. You know when the say if you backpedal on a diet the weight will come back worse than it was before? They are right.

Fast forward a few years past high school. I don't know exactly what I was at my worst. Suffice it to say it was something over 350 pounds at 6ft 3in tall.

The summer of 2013 I went in to have a wisdom tooth removed were they have to put you under. A day or two afterwards I noticed an area the size of your hand on my right thigh just below were your pants pocket would be had become numb and slightly tingly. I thought it must be some lingering aftereffect from the anesthesia so I tried to ignore it. But it never went away and only got worse. It slowly went from being numb to a deep, dull, aching pain. This lasted for months.

The fall of that year I went on another hunting trip with my cousin to Colorado. The pain in my leg became much more acute during that trip. It was at this time I also noticed the little toe on my right foot felt like it had a splinter or thorn in it. Once again I ignored it but it got worse. It went numb and tingly shortly after. This lasted a month or more. Least I forget my hands. My hands have always gone to sleep fairly easy but now they were aching and going to sleep much more often.

It was becoming clear to me what was happening to my body, the onset of type II diabetes.

This scared me. It still scares me. It runs in my family and my mom has it now.

I didn't want it!

That's enough for one entry. Continued with blog entry number two.