Occupation: Musician
City: Fredericton N.B.
Age: 26
By The Numbers: 432 pounds at my heaviest, currently 246 pounds, for a total weight loss of 186 pounds.
The Weight Gain: I always struggled with my weight from a very young age. I'd say that I was obese by the age of 10. It started out as most things like this do: I never really paid much attention to my weight growing up, and the next thing I knew I weighed 285 lbs at the age of 15.
I started to abuse alcohol from a very young age (around age 11 or 12). I used it as another way to hide from the things I didn't want to deal with, but also as a form of acceptance. My drinking was at its heaviest from the age of 18 to 25, and in the later years of my addiction, I started to notice a lot of related health issues from it. In the last year of my addiction, I would experience withdrawal after drinking for days on end. I would get "the shakes" and can remember even vomiting blood at points.
In addition to these addiction side effects, I'm also quite confident I was an undiagnosed diabetic. I had every symptom, including blurred vision, wounds that wouldn't heal for weeks, frequent bathroom use, and extreme fatigue after eating.
Final Straw: All my friends and family were very scared for me. My father had passed away in June of 2013, and that only furthered my health problems and addictions.
The final straw was when I had to go and get weighed at an experimental farm where they weigh livestock and dead cattle. I knew that weighing 432 lbs meant that I could literally drop dead at any given moment. My music career had just started to progress and the thought of losing that really scared me, but more importantly, the thought of leaving my mother without a husband and her youngest son was something I couldn't bear. That's when I decided to make the change.
The Plan of Attack: On Valentine's Day 2014, I started living my life as a vegan. I gave up drinking alcohol, didn't consume any refined sugar or junk food, started to do at least 30 minutes of yoga a day, and began living a very active lifestyle.
I just had my one-year anniversary of clean living and in one year I lost 186 pounds. I went from a 5 XL shirt to a 1 XL/ LG and from a 50" waist line to a 34".
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