When you grow up in Florida, going to the beach is an essential part of your adolescence. In high school I would go to the beach at least a few times a month. It was always a fun experience, but I always felt like I was the fattest person on the beach.

I never made a big deal about it. I always pretended like it didn’t bother me. I just stayed covered up and tried not to move much from the safety of my cushioned beach chair. 

It’s a shame because I really do love the ocean. I think I would have spent more time there If I didn’t weigh over 300 pounds for most of my adult life. 

Today was my first time back to the beach since my Biggest Loser fiasco. While making the 80 minute drive to the coast, I had already decided that I wasn’t going to be afraid of the beach anymore. Maybe it was the Shredded Wheat I had for breakfast or maybe is was the balla playlist that scored my road trip, but I felt unusually BRAVE today. 

So after about an hour of internal debate, I decided enough was enough!

and then I did it.

For the first time in my entire life, I TOOK MY SHIRT OFF AT THE BEACH! 

Even In retrospect I can’t believe I did it! I’m so happy I did! 

It probably wasn’t a pretty site for the rest of Clearwater Beach, but I didn’t care!

I think thats a big step. Eventually you have to stop caring what other people think about you. You have to stop assuming everyone is looking at you and judging you. Your mind will play tricks on you and try to convince you that the worst-case scenario is a reality.

That’s just not true. 

Life is too short to be worrying about what people might think about you. Just live your life and make choices that bring you happiness. 

I may have been the fattest person on that beach, but for the first time I didn’t care. I was proud of myself! And that’s worth more to me than all the beaches in Florida. 

#bebrave

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(I’ve been procrastinating writing this one… it wasn’t easy)

CALIFORNIA:

The week before I left for California was a tough one. Never before have I felt such paralyzing loneliness.

For The Biggest Loser, there is a chance that you’ll either make the show or that they will send you home in a week, so you have to plan like your leaving home for 5 to 6 months. One of my biggest challenges was clearing my schedule from May through October. I dropped out of all my summer classes (my last semester mind you!) and I had to leave behind each and every person who matter to me without even telling them where I was going. 

Biggest Loser took confidentiality pretty seriously. So I was going through maybe the most stressful situation in my entire life without any one to talk to about it. 

That’s really when the loneliness crept in.

At night, I found myself cruising around vacant streets, taking good hard looks of everything familiar with the hopes that I wouldn’t forget it. I found myself going to shady bars with shady people, just so I wouldn’t be alone.

There was so much crap going on in my head that I just needed a distraction from it all.

Needless to say, I wasn’t really myself that last week. 

A left Orlando International Airport on a Friday morning. I thought that I would be filled with so much excitement that the loneliness i was experiencing wouldn’t follow me to California …but of course it did.

My plane ride was long and boring. It only gave me more time to think. One of the things I thought about was an email I got from the casting director saying that I was not allowed to talk to the other finalist once arriving in Los Angeles. Apparently this is to keep growing relationships fresh for when the cameras are rolling. I didn’t think too much about it at first. I didn’t realize this meant I had to be almost completely silent for a week straight.

I got off the plane at LAX and met someone from casting in a distant parking lot next to a big van that had “Biggest Loser P-6″ signs on all the windows. I was the second person in my van. There would eventually be five people in my group total and that group was to be the only group of finalist I would have interactions with that week.

My group was made up of an elderly woman, a middle age man, a middle aged woman, and a young girl with a cute hat. I didn’t say a word to any of them. I only offered polite smiles and cool guy head nods.

It’s sounds exaggerated, but I feel like I didn’t talk that entire week. Sure I would say stuff to people from casting or doctors or TV producers, but my appointments usually took up a very small part of my day. The rest of my day was spent watching NETFLIX in my Four Seasons hotel room.

Even around the other people in my group, who would occasionally talk regardless of any rules, I would usually stay pretty silent. And within that silence, the loneliness I felt at home only intensified. 

It got so bad that I thought maybe I’d be happy if I didn’t make the show. Which wasn’t true! I did want to make the show! More than anything! The pressure was just getting too much for me. I couldn’t take it anymore!

For 8 days I sat in a hotel room just waiting. 

I was losing my mind. 

And then it happened… Two people from casting politely knocked on my door and informed me that I did not make the show.

It’s funny… I remember the most ridiculous details of that week. I remember the D-List celebrities I saw at random restaurants. I remember watching House Hunters in the waiting room of the doctors office. I remember the filtered orangey smell of my hotel room. But from that moment on, from the moment I saw the faces of those girls from casting walk in my hotel room, I knew that it was all over… and everything else is a total blank. 

It felt like someone told me my best friend died. 

It just… It didn’t feel real.

It wasn’t until after I got home that it truly set in, that my mind was able to fathom that my once in a lifetime opportunity had passed me by. Biggest Loser was the only way I knew how to do this. Without Bob Harpers help, I would surely spend the rest of my life as a sad obese man.

UNLESS…

unless I could find a way to loose it all on my own. 

Could I find a way to do that? Was there really a way?

Was it possible that MAYBE I didn’t need Biggest Loser after all?

Perhaps all I really needed was just a push in the right direction….

#bebrave 

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I’ve never thought of myself as a shallow guy. Sure, there are plenty of girls who I think are hot. I mean, I live in Florida, pretty girls are everywhere …and I have a strong thing for brunettes. (mostly that harkens back to my childhood crushes on Kelly Kapowski and the pink Power Ranger.) 

But lately I’m finding that looks have less & less to do with who I crush on. 

I see these women at the gym working their asses off just for the sake of being healthy. I read dozens of blogs and Tumblrs of girls who have jaw dropping ambition. These woman are filled with exceptional character and dazzling inner strength.

THAT is what really attracts me. 

A dumb girl with a flat belly doesn’t stand a chance against a chubby girl with a pretty face who dreams of changing the world. That’s just the honest to zeus truth. 

Not to disrespect girls who hit the genetic lottery, but it seems to me that beauty earned is more attractive than beauty born. A girl who is healthy and strong and works out for all the right reasons is someone worthy of admiration.  

There’s just something so hot about a girl who’s been through hell and came out smiling on the other side. She’s got guts and perspective and a story that is just as beautiful as she is. 

After being blown away by so many fitblrs, it would be really hard for me to ever pursue a girl without that same level of passion and ambition.

So to all my female fitblr followers, please know that you are AMAZING and I admire the hell out of each and every one of you! Your dedication is inspiring and it has completely changed the way I think about women. 

You’ve raised the bar to astronomical levels and all of you are worthy of praise. Thank you for taking the time to motivate me and everyone else with your unique and brilliant story. 

#bebrave

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The worst thing about being obese is that even though I’m losing weight, I still look fat. 

Yes, I’ve lost over 60 pounds, but that still leaves me with a BMI that’s in the stratosphere! 

I just want to like the way I look. 

I know that’s an insanely generic, hypersensitive thing for an adult male to say, but its true. 

All of this brooding insecurity really stems from a highly unflattering candid that was taken of me the other day at work. I just couldn’t believe I was still that big. It just feels like this is a race that will never be finished. 

I look at that chubby kid in the photo and I don’t even recognize myself. My fat is a curse. My fat is a costume. Whenever someone looks at me, they don’t see ME, they see a poor interpetation of me. A grand disguise woven in lard. 

I AM MORE THAN THAT. 

Underneath my ill fitting costume is someone who is amazing! I swear it! 

It just frustrates the hell out of me because that kid has never been seen by anyone other than myself.

i think i’ve been in love twice in my life, I think, and in both of those circumstances my muses were not traditional bombshells. Don’t get me wrong, they were beautiful, but in no means perfect. But I was never looking for perfect, especially physical perfection. I understood that there was something more important than how thin a girls waste is or how big her tits are. I didn’t care about that. What I lusted after was someone who would challenge me. Someone who was passionate about life! Someone who I felt at home with. 

With my loves, I always understood that I had to use a little imagination when I looked at them. I couldn’t define them by external flaws. I had to understand the core of who they were to see who was hidden underneath the individual costumes that they wore. 

Sadly, I’m slowly realizing that my ability to judge a book by its story is a unique and unappreciated skill. And if I’m the only person judging others based on the content of their character, how the hell can I expect someone without this unusual gift to see the core of who I am? 

I’m use to being judged. I get judged everyday. I’m judged by my race, by my gender, by my income… those judgements don’t bother me. The only judgements that truly ruin me are the stigmas surrounding my fat, my inescapable costume, because those are the judgments that kill my spirit. 

I’ve got so far to go with my weight loss. I can’t even see the finish line from where I am. I can only hope that when I finally arrive at my destination, the world will finally see me for who I really am. 

Until then, I just ask that you look at me with a little bit of imagination. 

That if you Judge me, judge me not by my cover, but by my story. 

#bebrave