I know John Tacket through doing triathlon and running events. He’s always been relatively thin as far as I know, but I learned recently, thanks to comments he made about my efforts to unfat myself, that he too used to be rather large.

John is the kind of guy you really want to have in a workout group. He is kind, he smiles a lot, and he shows up regularly. If you do a local running event, he’ll be there to chat with. He is also a cycling advocate, and supports local advocacy efforts. I’m glad I met him.

It’s amazing, outing yourself as someone who was formerly 320lbs. You find out that there are a lot of people in your life who have gone through very similar transformations. I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about sharing what we, as humans, are going through and thereby making valuable connections with one another.

For instance, I am going through remorse at using the words “farts” and “crap” in front of my oldest niece yesterday. A clever and observant child, she repeated those words immediately to her mother, who, in turn, then had some stern words for me. Crap and farts, indeed.

But back to our friend John Tackett. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind going into greater detail about his transformation, and this is what he had to say:

On losing weight to begin with:

I actually went on the South Beach diet to support my wife – she wanted to lose a few pounds to fit in a dress. I had tried diets before and they never worked. I never imagined that it would be a life changing event for me.

On his discovery of himself as a runner:

I wanted to start exercising so I started by walking around the block. That lead to longer walks and then slow jogs and then into running. It was during my first half marathon that I had the ‘runners high” and realized how much I enjoyed running.

On diet and exercise:

While exercise is good; all the exercise in the world won’t work if you don’t control what, and how much, you eat.

On mental attitude:

“Do that which you think cannot be done.” I may feel some aches and pains along the way, but knowing that I have tried is more important than succeeding. I still cry when I finish a marathon knowing I have finished something that just 10 years ago was nothing more than a pipe dream. That mantra has been with me as I hiked and climbed my way through Yosemite, as I learned to scuba, and as I returned to college to finish my degree (30 years after I started.)

This is exactly the sort of thing that I wish I could say to my former self. Of couse, I would probably add some stronger words when talking to myself — e.g. “crap” and “farts” — but I wish I’d had the presence of mind to reach out to people. I might have gotten some really excellent advice.

Thanks to John for answering my questions, and I think I speak for him when I say that either of us would be glad to talk anytime if you’re going through something similar!

I’m going to have to skip writing a lengthy post today because I’m spending the day with my grandfather, but I did get a chance to ask him about his life philosophy. He’s a pretty interesting character, though a man of few words.

He’s 84 years old. He served in World War 2 in the Pacific, although I’m led to understand that the fighting was mostly over by the time he got there. He only ever had one job, outside of the Army, which was working for the phone company. He loved that job; he still talks about what a great gig it was.

Grandpa and my oldest niece Annabelle

I just asked him what he thought about wireless cell phones, since he spent so much time hanging telephone lines.

“I think it’s all right,” he said.

Really, though, what I want to get out of him is some nugget of wisdom. I want to collect everything he learned about happiness over his life into my brain and use it as a foundation for my own fulfilling life.

“Hey Grandpa,” I said “If you could go back in time and tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?”

He looked at me. I rephrased the question.

“You know, I mean, what’s the most important thing in life?”

Finally he spoke. “Well, I’d say it’s knowing Jesus Christ so you can get into Heaven.”

It’s not exactly what I was looking for, but that’s what he had to say. My first instinct was to say “Well, yeah but besides that…” but I thought better of it. It seems disrespectful to do anything but take his advice however he prefers to give it.

In a few minutes I’m taking him into town to meet and have lunch with two of my old friends. We’re going to a Mediterranean style cafe. I asked him what he thought about Greek food.

“Well,” he said, “If you can eat it, I can too.”

I remember stepping on the scale for the first time and seeing the needle swing all the way around past 300 into some incalculable territory that it was never meant to measure. I tell people now that I once weighed 320lbs but there’s no way that bathroom scale was accurate. Could it have been 340… 350?

I don’t really have a good excuse for how I got so big. I just stopped looking at myself in the mirror and didn’t think about it. I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day — the hard core, full power ones too. Not the light ones. The light ones are for children.

Time to Change
When I saw the scale indicating over 300lbs I said okay, that’s about enough, and I decided to change. I remembered how much I enjoyed riding my bike to school as a kid, so I bought a BMX bike just like I’d had back in the day. I started riding it to work every day and immediately lost a good bit of weight.

Have you ever lost 60lbs and still been fat as hell? I have!

I also remember the first time I ever ran purely for exercise as an adult. It was on Monroe here in Atlanta, heading north from St. Charles. I made it to the intersection of Monroe and Virginia, or about .4 of a mile, before I had to stop because I had a splitting headache. I didn’t even get far enough to be out of sight of my starting point. I felt like the fattest, most useless lump of lard that ever gobbled a cheeseburger that day.

Reasons for Not Starting
I had a lot of reasons for not starting. I thought people would laugh at me.

“Look at that fat douche,” they’d exclaim from red convertibles stacked high with buxom blondes, “Let’s all laugh at him!”

That never happened. Not only did no one ever make fun of me for attempting to improve myself, most people who saw what I was trying to do were approving and supportive. Some were extremely helpful and shared stories of their own trials and tribulations.

Time Travel
If I could go back in time to deliver a message to myself of ten years ago, I would say something like this:

Hey, no one is looking at you. They are busy with their own lives, and if they want to laugh at you, let them. It’s better to be laughed at than to die young and miserable, which is where you are heading.

Get up and start. It doesn’t matter what you start, just start, right now, today.