39-year-old Ross Gardner was not always the fitness fanatic he is today. At one point the Florida native had nearly eaten himself to death, weighing in at 392 pounds with doctors warning him that he only had three years to live, if even that. Eating approximately 15,000 calories a day, Daily Mail reports that Ross struggled to fit into size XXXXL clothing and was so fat that airline attendants were forced to stop him and request that he pay for two seats on his flight due to his size. “I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror, I was absolutely huge” Ross admits, “one day at work, I bent down to pick up a napkin and my trousers ripped completely in half. It was awful and I had to go straight home to change them.”
Over the course of five years Ross put on 196 pounds, drinking almost an entire liter of Jack Daniel’s every morning and then bingeing on food until 2 a.m. prior to going to bed so that he wouldn’t have a hangover the next morning. In other words, Ross lived the life we all wish we could live, but suffered the consequences that prevent any rational human being from eating like the garbage disposal they wish they were.
Finally deciding that enough was enough, Ross cut his calorie intake from 15,000 a day to 2,500 and in 10 months he managed to lose around 189 pounds. “I finally realized what I was doing to my body and decided to make serious changes” he explains, “I now feel like a new man and want to encourage others that it is never too late to turn your life around.”
“In the first week I lost 14 pounds and from there the weight just kept falling off, it actually got to the point where I struggled to stop losing weight and I had to raise my calorie intake to maintain a healthy weight. My belly button was down by my knees and I had to tuck my skin into my shorts to hide it, it was humiliating.”
Opting to have his excess skin removed via surgery, Ross lost an additional six pounds after getting his torso nipped and tucked. He now goes to the gym six or seven times a week and weighs a healthy 203 pounds. As for what’s in the future for him, he’s gone back to medical school so that he can help others the way they’ve helped him. “I went back to medical school and I have just qualified as a chiropractic physician. I now help others and want to prove that it is never too late to turn your life around.”
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[H/T Daily Mail]