My story started when i was in the military, hard times, no confidence, zero will to really go on, eating myself to death. burger king every morning 3 breakfast sandwiches with double large order of hash browns. lunch taco bell, usually the biggest burrito they had and 3-4 tacos along with a large baja fresh. dinner was usually the gallon of vodka i had left over from the night before ontop of pizza hut delivering stuffed crust. i started smoking spice back then to get past the drug tests, which put me in even more dire circumstances, i had a suicide attempt, i was up to 280, i wasn't anywhere close to passing a PT test and while my leaders gave a shit, i didn't. i did my time, managed to get out with an honorable discharge. got picked up for marijuana possession and got put on probation for 2 years, they sent me to AA NA and i was in addiction counselling for nearly two years because i kept having the spice thing come back and beat me up, yeah had some scary times on that as well, laying on the floor thinking i was dying, heart beating out of my chest. i gained another 50 pounds just like that, i somehow managed to keep my wife through all of that and we had children together during this time. then the abuse started happening, i have borderline personality disorder so things started escalating to me accusing of cheating and the whole nine, i had to do something about my confidence. i gained some more weight as my marriage and my mental health deteriorated some more. then my daughters first birthday happened, i made a joke to my wife the morning of the party about how much i probably weigh because i hadn't weighed myself in a while, i guessed 340. i hopped on the scale and my heart shattered, i was that guy, i was 356 pounds, i was the guy who let himself go, i was the fat guy at the party that no one wanted to look at, i was the guy everyone talked about behind their back about gaining weight, and i was the one who did it to myself. i stepped off the scale, i made a joke about it because that's what i do and i walked away from my disappointed wife. I stopped everything, i stopped eating, i would skip meals, i didn't count calories because there was nothing to count, i starved myself on scraps and would eat it all back on the weekend hating myself, i didn't have the heart to get back on the scale. it took me 5 months to get on teh scale again, all while being unhealthy have basically having an eating disorder. i was 322 pounds by the time i took a walking for health class in college, i was happy about the weight loss, but i wasn't i felt like i had lost nothing, that i still looked like the monstrous blob in the mirror. i tried to be happy about losing 34 pounds in 5 months and let tried my best to lose the wieght, my confidence started coming back, i was getting an extreme amount of help from my teacher and a friend i had made at teh gym, you know, one of those buff guys that just look like an asshole and wont help anyone? well he helped me, all i had to do was ask. i was working out 2 hours a day. i was also taking a self defense class, not like i needed it, im 6'1 and apparently huge, with military training and a former boxer when i was a teenager, but it really helped. while still eating like a jackass i would work out super super hard, tear my knees and ankles up because i weighed entirely too much to be running that fast or hard. tears, ibuprofen, water, and myfitnesspal helped me get from 322, to about 255. So i though im doing this great thing right? im getting my health back under control, im handling all this cool shit, im seeing progress, im building my confidence, but that didn't fix the problems that i had created in my marriage. i probably shouldn't go on after this point, my wife wouldn't appreciate if i shared the rest of that story on the internet. but anyways, i kept seeing my wife drift away from me, i threatened to take the house from her, i tried to call the cops on her to get her to leave, and me being borderline, you know, i was like wait don't leave me, i love you. but it was too late ya know? i had another suicide attempt, at 101 pounds lost total, i tried to kill myself again, at least the bearers wouldn't have too hard of a time lifting me this time. well it was too late at this point, i finally got my borderline diagnosis and started working to make myself better and to stop the abuse, but you know, it was too late. I had lost 31 pounds and dropped down to 224 by the time i had found out she had been cheating on me with a guy we raided with on World of Warcraft. not going to go into details on that part, but i magically didn't try to kill myself this time, the training that i had been doing to keep myself in the moment really helped out. i was absolutely destroyed. but i had the possibility to be okay, we managed to work it out but the stress of everything made me lsoe hope, i was playing a dangerous balancing game of which is more important, current happiness or comfort, or making myself better. i ended up gaining 16 pounds in 6 months, all while trying to get myself out of this huge hole i had built for myself. when i plopped back on the scale it was 244, i literally broke down and cried. big ass, tough, military vet, boxer, who can throw you across the room crying about a fucking scale. it was more than that, i was healing still but i couldn't let myself go any farther back up. i started getting my running legs back, i started running every single day, i started eating protein bars so i didn't lose weight unhealthily like i did before, im trying to keep my calorie count up high enough to compensate for how hard i beat myself up when i run, i'd like to say that this story is over, but it is far from over, i may be close to what i was at before she cheated, but i am far from the person that i want to be, on the scale and off.