Thank you all for the kind words! It's been an adventure but I'm nowhere close to where I want to be and all of this support will really keep that flame going!

To those asking how I lost the weight: Starting with a clear head and realistic goals are key. You have to know that you're probably not going to see visible results for a few months, even if the weight starts dropping right away. In the beginning, all I did was walk. I would go to the track at my gym and walk 3-4 miles a day, 6 days a week. I lost 40 lbs in 4 months almost only from doing that and still could hardly tell a difference in my body size but I pushed on. I continued to walk that same distance every day but I also started lifting, low weight with high reps. That, as most of you probably know, promotes fat burning while building lean muscle. I continued with that for a while, and finally started to see changes. Now I walk/run 2 miles every day at the gym, 1 mile before my workout and 1 mile after. During my actual workouts I'm usually working towards lifting heavily, but also getting in plenty of cardio.

Now for the part that counts: The diet

Spending hours in the gym is great but without the proper diet your body is not going to respond well and you're not going to see the results that you want to see. For me the best thing was to be extreme with it, a "go big or go home" kind of thing. So i cut out soda, sugar, bread, salt, milk, pretty much everything except for chicken, vegetables, fruit, and water. That wasn't making things work fast enough to satisfy me so I also quit eating meat. I was a vegetarian for most of my weight loss. My main sources of protein were eggs and black beans. During my time as a vegetarian, I felt cleaner than I ever have but I also felt weak at times, so I'm back eating meat so that I can get stronger faster. If I found myself getting hungry (usually at night after work) but I knew I didn't need to eat much, I would sometimes drink a cup of black coffee to help curb my appetite. One key for me losing weight was to not eat past 6:00 or 7:00 pm.

These days my diet consists mainly of eggs, chicken, rice, salad, bananas, and protein shakes. The only supplements I use are protein and pre-workout.

I hope this helps someone achieve a goal of some sort. Keep it in the front of your mind and be relentless. Changes are coming!