100 Pounds Down, a Tribe Found, and 32 Miles on the Road



July 19, 2026

I knew I was in trouble when Vicki took my hand and led me to the front of the meeting. If it's possible to be two completely opposite things at once, I was: a) terrified, and b) so happy!

Yesterday at WW, I received my 100-pounds-down award. As it turns out, that award comes with giving an impromptu speech from the front of the room to the entire group.

It isn’t the first time I’ve had to speak on the fly, and I think I did okay. I spoke straight from the heart about my WW journey.

I decided 325 days ago to join WW again. The last 325 days are only a part of my total weight loss story, but honestly, it is the first time I started a journey where the results on the scale weren’t my main objective. I distinctly remember telling people back then that I was going to WW for community. I wanted to find my tribe.

And I did.

If you would have told me 325 days ago that I would lose 100 pounds, I would have said, “Great!” If you would have told me I would find my tribe, I would have been more skeptical, but incredibly pleased. I feel like I have been searching for a group of like-minded people for so long and just hadn’t found them. But things in this world are cyclical; I know that now. Exactly 325 days ago, I wrote down that my goal was to find community. Six of one, half a dozen of the other—you get it.

What WW and my community have helped me truly understand is that weight loss doesn’t happen in the stomach. It doesn’t happen at the gym. It doesn’t even happen in the kitchen.

Weight loss happens in the mind.

I think that is the biggest lesson I could ever share with anyone. It is what I have learned since this macro-journey started for me back in 2020, when I weighed 538 pounds. 264 pounds later, I have literally lost almost half of myself. Can you fucking imagine?

To make it even more cyclical, I am exactly 10 pounds away from my goal weight—which just happens to be 264 pounds. While the physical weight loss started in 2020, the real work started long before that, when I began to fix my mind.

We all have shit. We do; it’s just part of the human condition. I have my own laundry list of it, just like everyone else—my OCD, my anxiety, my depression, and my limerence. I chose to face them head-on, even though it took a long time to get there. But once I started to heal my mind, the body fell into place.

I can sit here today and say that I am literally not the man I used to be. I mean that from my head to my toes, and that is an amazing thing to be able to say.

100 pounds down! It is a true accomplishment, but I could not have done it alone. It took my mind, but it also took my tribe—not just my WW group, but my entire support community. If you are reading this, you probably know exactly who you are. Thank you.

What a wonderful weekend. 100 pounds down yesterday, and then today I ripped off a 32-mile ride over 3 hours with 1,467 feet of climbing!

It doesn’t get any better than this.

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