Dang, when was that picture taken?

Those of you who have known me through the years have seen a definite physical transformation, during the adult stage of my life my weight has fluctuated anywhere between 185 pounds and a peak of 312 pounds.

My mom is an unbelieveable cook, during my childhood, my love of food coupled with my mom's ability, served to produce a very husky lad. I was heavy all the way through school, it wasn't until I hit about 18 that my weight came down into the normal-for-my-height range.

I did it through exercise, mainly swimming - oh, that and not eating mom's cooking certainly helped.

I did pretty well keeping my weight down all the way into my mid thirties, I was very active physically, participating in hockey at a pretty high level, and eating carefully so as to have the energy I needed to compete. At my fittest hockey condition I weighed about 200 pounds, which looks really skinny on my 6'-3" frame. I stopped playing hockey when me and the family moved to a tiny corner of Southwest Colorado, unfortunately I forgot to stop eating like a hockey player. My 8,000 calorie/day diet coupled with my slower-with-age metabolism quickly produced the 312 behemoth in the second pic, that pic was taken about 5 years ago.

The pic on the top was taken this fall, it's me sporting about 212 pounds of muscle on my big frame. It took me 2 years to lose the weight and I've managed - through meticulously careful eating and rigorous exercise - to keep my weight down for 3 years now. The worst seems to over now that I've learned to eat for fuel and recovery. There are the occasional falls from grace, but I get back on the bicycle. (Hence the bike pic - That's me on my daughter's beach cruiser she named, "Deborah".)

People who are locked in a struggle with their weight have my full appreciation. People who are blessed by the skinny gene - or whatever the heck it is that keeps em skinny - sometimes look down on us who have the food weakness, but let me tell you something, taking off and keeping off weight is a titanic struggle. Food isn't like smoking where you can quit and never touch a cigarette again, food is something that we must consume to survive. Learning to manage our eating is one of the hardest battles we'll ever have.

I show the people I work with pictures of the fat Trout and they stare in disbelief, like they're looking at an entirely different person. In some ways they are, but in most ways they are not. One interesting facet of being skinny then fat then skinny again is you get to see how differently the world treats fat people, like they're some kind of an inferior race or something.

Remember as you go through life not to see people as objects, inside every person is someone that wants to be loved and accepted, and YOU have the ability to make that core need a reality.