“Growing up I was a really active kid. My dad’s number one rule was if it’s nice outside, you shouldn’t be inside. We were always outside doing something. I had a very active lifestyle, but then my parents got divorced when I was 14. In a 2 year span, my parents divorced, we moved, I switched from private to public school, and I was becoming a teenager. All of that change, spiraled into me giving up on things. I became depressed pretty quickly. I went from being a kid who was in volleyball and basketball and always out doing something, to giving up all of the things that I liked. Slowly, over high school, I had gained 20 pounds each year. By the time I was 21, I was 100 pounds heavier than I am right now. I didn’t realize how far down in my depression I was. The whole time, I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t active. I slept a lot. I wasn’t happy. I was way heavier than I wanted to be. But then, two things happened that made me start working out again when I was 21. One was a negative and one was a positive. I brought a bag of fast food over to my friends house and she looked at me and said, you’re really going to eat that? I don’t think you need to eat that. Those were pretty harsh words, but it made me think about it. The other instance was when another friend came over to my house and she took the clothes off of the elliptical machine that we had in our basement and started working out. Once she got off the elliptical she said, that was pretty easy, and no one was around to watch, maybe you should try it sometime. It was a very gentle way of saying it. I thought, wow, that did look easy. So the next day I decided to start working out. It changed everything. It took me 8 months and I dropped 80 pounds. I dropped another 20 throughout the summer. In 1 year, I dropped 100 pounds. That was 8 years ago, and since then, I’ve kept it off. I just feel so much better. Not only does it benefit me, it benefits my marriage, my career, and my overall well being. If I don’t workout in the morning, I’ll be anxious the rest of the day. I make it a priority to keep exercising, because it’s my religion. It’s my time. It’s my space. It allows me to think through my life. I still have my moments, but I know that I’m at a place where I don’t think I could ever go back to where I was, and that’s a great feeling.”