And it begins...

Hello friends and family and followers,

I created this blog along with other tools to help me document my change, measure my progress and obtain the support I now realize I will need to change my life and have it last for the rest of my life.

For those that don't know me, I was a skinny toe-head boy as active as you could be.  I put some weight on in jr high and then thinned out in high school with 5 years of swimming, playing tennis and running track.  I continued to be active through college backpacking, mnt biking, and running.  My best half marathon time was 1h 52min.   I met the love of my life Jaimi, we married and all was well until I started working.  We moved to Chicago where sold medical devices and I burned the preverbal which way doing it.   I like to be successful and I think I must have started measuring my success with work alone.  I found myself working longer and longer hours, eating out on the road more and slowly packed the weight on.   Family then became my focus in providing for them the basics and opportunities for growth.  I think I have worked a part time or an additional full time job for the last 9 years. Over that time I went from 210 lbs to 390 lbs, which is crazy and my heaviest.  I have had temporary success with personal trainers and gyms and monitoring programs like Weight Watchers, but that success ran out when the $$$ ran out.  I most recently had some profound success training for my first sprint triathlon and working with a trainer buddy Ryan Quilter, but I was spending more in driving than training.  Soon enough the $$$ ran out, I crazily started my MBA and I started packing on the weight again staying up late working on school.

I do not want to hit 400, I do not want to be at 390.  I am angry with myself for abusing my body, this wonderful gift from God.  Many people talk about being disgusted with themselves being this overweight, but I am not.  Regardless of how I look, I realize who I am, who I have been, and most importantly I know who I can become. What I am is scared.  I recently found myself in the doctors office for the first time in 5 years thinking I had broken my foot trying to keep up with my 4 younger brothers.  I'm a nurse and have known I was a ticking time bomb, but finally hearing that I was as close to being diabetic as one could be without being diagnosed it scared me.  I have 4 beautiful daughters at home that need a fun, confident, loving, and living father to be there for them. With this my father of 59 has been fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer with liver mets the last year and it has brought a new sense of mortality and the value of life to me and my family.  This also has scared me to action.

 I wish I would never have let myself become so complacent and casual with this wonderful life and this amazing body.  As I diligently work to rid myself of this self induced prison of over 180 lbs, I hope to become that much stronger, more confident, and able to inspire and help others.

I believe I know what to do and roughly how to do it.  It's the doing it day in and day out for a long time that is the hard part and for that I ask you for help.  Please encourage me.   I am going to do my best to take what I have learned and any suggestions from you to make this happen.  So in advance I thank you for all you love and support because I will need it as I work to become Fit4Life!

                                                      J. West Brewer IV