After posting a couple of times about my weight loss and fitness goals here, I am very pleased to report that I met and exceeded my original weight loss goal yesterday. 

Since today is my 40th birthday, this was a terrific gift.

I started out at 248 pounds (my heaviest ever) and today, I weighed in at exactly 208 pounds.  Needless to say, I was truly excited.

I've worked very hard at getting this weight off and the speed with which it happened surprised me, frankly. 

When I wrote about my goals publicly, I promised to update my profile picture when I got to 210 pounds or less.  As you can see, I kept my promise.  :)

For the sake of comparison, here are my "before and after" photos:

Since this is the first time I've seen them side by side, I am astounded at how much healthier I appear to be now.  This is the result of (almost) daily exercise, along with much better eating habits.  I'm pretty sure that I am almost unrecognizable to my friends, unless they've known me since college, since I was this weight as a sophomore in school. 

I plan to continue my fitness journey, mainly to see just how much more I lose, then to gain muscle on top of that.  I feel amazingly good and I have more energy than I can remember having in the past 15 years or more.

THANK YOU to those of you who have encouraged me and sent me emails and messages of support.  If you are interested in knowing all of the details of the applications I used, along with a general idea of my calorie consumption and exercise regimen, let me know.  Basically, I ate less without horribly depriving myself, and moved my body a whole lot more. My exercise included walking (lots), running (less than walking), some biking, calisthenics, and, as of 2.5 weeks ago, the P90X workout system.

I hope this doesn't come across as bragging - I truly managed to surprise myself, too!  Basically, I wanted to share the fact that, even though I was a very sedentary almost-40-year-old man who ate whatever he wanted for many years, I was able to make a change for the better.  If I can do it, you probably can, too.  :)

Thanks for reading!