I was born and raised in the New York City metropolitan area, and have lived in Manhattan for over 30 years. Presently, I work as a senior attorney for a large multi-national corporation, and have an undergraduate degree in engineering. This site has nothing to do with my work as an attorney, and was simply created to share my experiences and observations about how I transformed my life so that others might be motivated and inspired to make meaningful and lasting changes in their own lives.
Briefly, in 2008, my girlfriend of 24 years passed away from cancer, and during the time she was sick, my weight ballooned to around 460 lbs. – although I was not exactly sure of my weight at that time since my scale only accurately measured up to 450 lbs. It took me roughly two years to recover from her passing, and as I turned 50, my weight was still over 400 lbs. (416 lbs. on my birthday, to be exact), I had Type II diabetes, I was not dating, it was difficult for me to travel and play sports, and my life was not moving in a positive direction. So I decided to reboot my life, with the first step being to get down to a normal weight – what I weighed in law school when I ran the NYC marathon.
Over the next two years, I was able to reduce my weight down to a normal range in the high 180’s/low-mid 190’s (what I weighed when I ran the NYC marathon), and which was all accomplished without surgery, medications, or a trainer. What it took was hard work, discipline, dedication, strategies for exercising and eating, and lifestyle changes. In the process, I got rid of my diabetes, started to play sports again, traveled more of the world, checked off a bunch of bucket list items (skydiving, racing cars, attending the F1 GP race at Monaco, attending tennis grand slam tournaments, etc.), and started dating.
During that two year period, I kept a weekly journal of what I learned, observed, and experienced physically, mentally, sociologically, and emotionally, with the journal eventually growing to over 150 pages. Excerpts from that journal will be appearing in this site, mainly through my blog entries. Also during this time, and subsequently, I kept (and still keep) a spreadsheet that records my weight for each week of the year. Portions of those spreadsheets have been incorporated into this site so that others can see exactly what it looks like to lose weight, and then maintain the weight loss.
Since I have been able to sustain these benefits for three years after my weight loss, I now feel sufficiently comfortable to share what I have learned and experienced with others. Hence, I created this site.