I honestly never thought it would happen to me. Actually I believed it _couldn't_ happen to me. Growing up, I was always the smallest kid in the class. I was never short, I was average height, but I was very thin.

My thin weight continued that way though, on into my teen years. When I was in high school, I was still always the smallest guy around. I also always looked younger than I really was, which didn't help either. At this point, I was kind of supposed to be growing and beginning to look like an adult, but I wasn't. Some people were kind of concerned with me, thinking that maybe I was unhealthy or something. But I was in good health and everything.

After high school, I continued working for a couple of years, and my weight stayed down. I was working at a job where I was sitting down all day in front of a computer, and it was beside a convenience store so I was always buying candy and junk food, well those are the same thing I guess. I always felt lucky, that my weight wasn't increasing. I would even joke about it with friends. I wondered how I could be doing so little, being so lazy, and eating so poorly, and not gaining any weight. I wasn't complaining though. At a time when a lot of people I knew were beginning to get fat, I was still tiny.

After a couple of years, when I was about 20, I noticed my stomach starting to increase in size. Where it used to be completely flat, it was starting to expand a little. I really noticed when I looked at myself sideways in the mirror. I didn't make any changes, I just kind of continued to live the way I'd always lived, and hoped that I wouldn't gain any more weight. I thought the problem would work itself out on its own.

Then, I went away to college. People talk about the "freshman 15" -- I always thought that was garbage. But, I think I may have actually hit that mark after my first year. I don't know what it was really, probably a culmination of a number of things. First off I wasn't getting any exercise. Second, I was eating terrible foods, because for the first time I had to buy my own stuff. I wasn't very careful. I was always getting junk food and fast food and stuff like that. It was only a matter of time before my metablolism slowed down, and it did, during my first year at college.

As I was going into second year, I devised a plan to get the weight back off. I lived about a 40 minute walk from school, and I decided not to buy a bus pass, just to force myself to do the walking. I also planned on eating healthy. But those were just plans. As it began to get cold, I started riding the bus. And the eating healthy... well that was just a pipe dream. I needed more than just a plan, and I needed more than just me trying to stick me to it.

As I got back home after that year, I had gained 25 more pounds. My parents noticed right away, and they were concerned. They were of course happy to see me, but they definitely saw that I was bigger. I tried to eat well over that summer, and I did pretty well, but I still couldn't get myself out to do exercise.

The next year of school, the same thing happened -- I tried to diet, and it flopped. Boom, another 27 pounds. I was carrying more weight than my frame was designed for, and I was really concerned. I no longer believed that any conventional diet would work for me. So I decided to do something crazy.

I read on the internet about a guy who rode his bicycle all the way across the USA. He went from New York City to Los Angeles, and it took him 2 months. I know it sounds crazy, and it is a crazy idea, but I decided to make the trip, starting here in Springfield. I didn't know what I was doing. I left pretty much right away when I got home from school that summer. I didn't listen to anyone, obviously my parents didn't want me to do it. I brought some essential supplies, like a tent, and some money. My plan was to keep going as much as I could tolerate, and to eat only healthy meals from grocery stores -- no fast food. I stuck with it -- I had to, I had no other choice. I had no one to help me. I couldn't afford to eat at restaurants, and I stayed away from the greasy stuff. I could write a book on the details of the whole trip, but suffice it to say it took a very long time, it was very gruelling, and I lost a lot of weight. No diets, no fad diets, I just took a hard left turn with my life. After the trip, I ended up in Los Angeles, having lost 70 pounds. My body was also toned quite a bit from all the activity. Well, that's how I did it, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It was a drastic solution, but it worked. The weight hasn't come back, because I developed a work ethic and a new attitude towards food during that journey.