Matthew Samples
I have struggled with being overweight or my favorite big boned since I was a kid. I remember playing football when I was ten and having to play with the bigger kids because I weighed more than the kids my age. I was probably 140 then. The weight class was 135 and I had to work hard in order to make weight just to be able to play. I did however get taller as I got older but still in fact was bigger than others. In April of 1997 I wanted to join the military and decided on the United States Navy, I was nineteen at the time. However, I was overweight and in order to be able to just join I had to lose some weight. The recruiters informed me of this before I would be accepted. I weighed 280 pounds at the time. I lost about forty to fifty pounds before they would even consider sending me to bootcamp. I ran and excercised for weeks to lose this weight. Finally in December of 1997 I was able to join with the consideration of losing the rest of my weight in bootcamp. They had to measure me around my belly and my neck and take my weight in order to get my body fat percentage. I remember thinking to myself wow I cant wait until I lose the rest of this weight and not have to deal with this emabarrassment anymore. Once bootcamp was completed I had lost and additional forty to thirty pounds and was down to a wopping 200 pounds. I remember when my parents first saw me they said I looked sickley. I just remember feeling great about myself. I still had to be measured and weighed even though I lost all that weight. Once I got settled into my first duty station I began to workout and add muscle and gained muscle weight and got to about 225 to 230 pounds. Then I injured my knee in December of 1999 and had to have knee surgery. My active life changed and I began to gain more weight. I eventually got out of the service on a medical discharge and moved into the civilian world in February of 2001. I loved the military and the way of life and would have stayed in if it wasnt for the knee surgery. My knee has never been the same since, and my weight slowly increased over the years. I knew I needed to do something to make a change in my life because it had seemed that everyone else around me was taking notice and I was just not willing to accept the fact that I had nearly doubled my weight from the time I left the service which I weighed about 250 at the time when I got out and right before surgery I weighed 473 pounds, at one point I weighed 480 plus. My journey began in February of 2006 when I had my first appointment with the nutritionist.
