I like to recall when I originally discovered how I went from overweight to fit. Knowing, what worked, as well as what didn’t helps me to change and drive my improvement.

At my peak, just before losing weight, I was around 175 pounds. Not wildly large by any measure, but my feet hurt daily and joint pains were starting to develop.

After losing nearly 50 pounds in a year, my foot and joint pains disappeared. The asthma that I had for the past 20 years was gone as well.

I discovered weight loss by accident because one day I decided to not eat anything that resembled “sweets or snacks” for a year. Out of the blue. For no reason. Not even for weight loss or fitness. It was just to see if I could. For fun. — A little background might help. I had gone for an entire year with water as my only beverage. Just for kicks. But that’s another story. — So Cookies and donuts = nope. Chips and cheese puffs = no. Those were the easy ones. If I had to even think about it (e.g. pretzels), it was out. About a month later I felt my pants fit more loosely. I jumped on a scale to see what was up and it was 169. Periodically I would get on a scale because we had one and I hadn’t seen a sub-170 reading in a while. “Interesting,” I thought. By the second month it was 164. A second similar drop in weight was no coincidence. This hit me like a ton of bricks. Immediately I felt that I had discovered a leprechaun pot of gold. I knew instantly that I was on to something and that if I was careful, I could mine it for all it was worth. Perhaps for the first time in my life I understood what people meant when they said, “if you can believe it in your mind, you can make it happen.” Sayings like this always sounded hopeful, at best.. and glib, at worst. On that day, in my mind, the loss of all excess body fat had already happened. I was merely waiting for time to pass and catch up to this fact. Truly, this was my experience that day. The very next thought was, without hesitation, “fight club.” This, I decided, would be my final form. Actually.

So, the reality is that it took me about 8 months to lose a ton of body fat, and my prescience was accurate to that point. Also the reality: merely losing body fat will not automatically give you the physique of an underground street fighter. That pursuit is another story.