Throughout my life I’ve struggled in two major areas of my life. Academics and my weight. I’ve always have been the stupid fat kid in Elementary, Middle School, and High School. I was the happy go lucky kid who didn’t care and just embraced the narrative that I was portrayed as. Fast forward to my Sophomore year of high school, I finished our football season and really took a turn for the worst in regards to my weight and grades.

I was gaining weight at a rapid rate and I had less than a 1.0 with 4 F’s. At the end of the year I was ineligible for the following football season. I weighed 407 pounds and after the school year was over I went to the doctor and I was told that if I didn’t make a drastic change that I wouldn’t make it to my 30th birthday. It was the day after that, that I would begin to change my life, it was rock bottom for me. I harnessed all my built up anger, stress, anxiety, depression you name it, set it aside and put all my focus into myself and being positive. I trained all summer, lifted and ran everyday but wasn’t seeing results, and I realized it was because I wasn’t changing my diet enough.

The beginning of my junior year all I had to focus on was my weight and grades and that’s what happened. I set a goal. Simple. Be better. Over the course of the next nine months I lost 70 pounds and reached 335 pounds and maintained a 3.5 GPA and my motivation that whole time was to get back out on the field with my brothers. And I was going to do whatever it took to do just that. So I played out our senior season and at seasons end I put everything into training and became obsessed with the process and by the time I graduated High School I weighed 278 pounds and had a 3.67 GPA. During that low point of my life was right around the time Lone Survivor came out and I researched more and really used what Marcus had to say as motivation and to truly never quit and stay the course. So here I am, 3 years later healthy and happy and about to graduate college in the top of my class. NEVER QUIT!