4XLT

Hi, my name’s Will, and this is my weight loss blog, 4XLT. Thanks, not just for dropping by, but taking the time to check out the About section of the site.

I hope that 4XLT can be an encouragement and challenge to you in your own journey of weight loss and lifestyle change. If I can loose a hundred pounds in eight months, I’m proof that absolutely anyone can! Don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the blog or send me an email if you have any questions.

I’ve always been a big guy; even as a kid I towered over my friends. Though I may rightfully be considered “big boned,” the truth is that over my big bones and large frame is a considerable layer of polar bear fat.

By the time I graduated high school, I was wearing size 44 pants and between 280 and 300 pounds. Things went downhill from there…

College

Not was I just no longer playing any sports, but once I was in college, I pretty much stopped doing anything physical. I watched my clothing jump a size to 3XLT early on as I sat around, played video games, and did little more.

However, my sophomore year saw a brief stint at health and weight loss as I was drug to the on-campus gym by a friend of mine in his own attempt to slim down. Following the break-up with my girlfriend at the time and once my friend’s wedding day passed, my commitment to getting healthy and a brash claim of losing a hundred pounds in a year quickly passed.

By the time I graduated, my weight had ballooned significantly, and I had hardly noticed it. Fed by a horrifying diet of constant soda drinking and fast food, I stood at the cusp of 4XLT clothing. But beyond the weight gain, my senior year of college was when I first noticed the darkening skin, particularly on my cheeks and neck.

This turned out to be a medical condition known as Acanthosis Nigricans. It’s a prediabetic condition marked by insulin resistance – and a bright red warning sign to me that I was going to end up like my dad as a Type II diabetic if I didn’t change my ways.

Getting Even Bigger

I didn’t change my ways.

In fact, after I graduated college, things became even worse. I continued to drink Dr. Pepper and root beer in ridiculous quantities. In fact, it was not rare for me to go through a two liter bottle in a day and a half.

Then, to add to my love affair with pop was the poor eating habits that just got worse. Being back home while I raised my budget to work with the nonprofit campus ministry Chi Alpha, I often ate lunch with my dad if I was home for lunch and not at a meeting.

As a rule, these lunches were either barbecue or a two or three plate trip at the local Chinese buffet. As a rule, it was always bad news.

I moved from Oklahoma out to Portland, Oregon in November 2006. By 2007, I started wearing 4XLT shirts and crossed the threshold of a four foot circumference by wearing size 48 pants (later up again to 50s).

I had a sudden realization of the lunacy of what I was doing. I was buying 4XL shirts. That’s four letter X’s in front of that L. XXXXLT – how pathetic.

I got so sick and disgusted at myself that I knew I had to change. I had no idea how much I weighed – not even a mental guess – as the doctor office’s scales had been unable to weigh me for a few years.

After some searching on the internet, I read about other similarly obese guys weighing themselves on the laundry scales of local hospitals. I knew what I had to do, even if I died from shame and embarrassment.

The shame and embarrassment was there in heaping amounts, but when I saw the number on the scale come around, disgust joined the other two in equal amounts.

I didn’t even weigh in the 300s. I was 437 pounds. I had gained almost a hundred fifty pounds since high school.

Soon thereafter, I plopped down the cash for a gym membership and a few sessions with a trainer. I even signed up on a weight loss tracking website and invited a few friends to keep me accountable. I was going to change!

But much like my brief flirtation with weight loss in college, I soon lost all drive to make any change and had resigned myself once again to being the fat guy.

The Change Begins

But in December 2007, I stumbled upon a group of weight loss bloggers who called themselves the F.A.T. Coalition. Inspired by a number of guys who began in the mid-to-upper 300s and had lost 90 pounds or more, I knew it was possible and I had to try again.

And even though I was more than 60 pounds away from the biggest guys in the Coalition at their respective heaviest weights, I knew that I had to start somewhere.

Their stories, combined with a number of radical weight loss stories other’s had shared on the Men’s Health forums (including one 125 pounds lost in a year story) made be realize that if others could do it, there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t.

The weight loss began in earnest the following January. A friend and fellow 400+ pounder and I agreed to a 20 pound weight loss race. As we’re both poor, the loser was going to face public humiliation of some devious sort.

We had initially thought to force our opponent to walk a certain number of blocks downtown without his shirt on, and before he could put it on or get in the car, he had to make a pass at a girl! Talk about brutal! We later reconsidered and agreed to make the loser host a poker game… shirtless.

Though my friend quickly dropped out of the race (I never had the heart to force him to live up to the bet), I kept going. At first, I had no idea what to expect.

I set my first goal in January to be under 400 pounds in time for my twenty-fifth birthday in late March. I didn’t even know if that was a realistic goal, but I was going to go for it.

Celebrating with friends three months later at 397 pounds was a great feeling.

I See the Future

In August 2008, I began stepping out into three digits of weight loss. I still have a hard time fathoming that I’ve lost so much.

Still, there’s so far left to go. To start with, I’m setting my sights on being under 300 pounds for the first time since high school in time for my sister’s wedding in December. That ends up being 140 pounds total of weight loss! I have to shake my head in disbelief when I think about that, because the number just seems so ludicrous.

I couldn’t have fathomed aiming for a weight in the 290s by 2009 back in January, but here I am, eight months later, and that’s what I’m gunning for.

Past that, I’ve set 250 as something of an arbitrary and completely mythical goal. I’ve never weighed 250 pounds as an adult, so I have no idea what I’ll look like at that weight.

Once I get there, we’ll see where I should go from there. But regardless, I see the future, and it looks great.