As a teenager, I was skinny and ate everything that was put in front of me. After I stopped growing upward, I grew outward and my weight ballooned to 230 pounds or higher for much of my adult life.

Fast forward to the summer of 2009: I was obese with a body mass index (BMI) over 30. At age 37, even a light jog or a climb up the stairs would leave me panting. I knew that if I didn't lose the excess weight, I would be on the road to high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes. But when I read that the ideal weight for a 6 foot adult male was 180 pounds or less, I got overwhelmed and didn't know where to start.

One day, I looked at a picture of myself and became totally disgusted at my lack of self control in regards to what and how much I ate. To be brutally honest, I felt like a pig. At that point, I resolved to lose 10 pounds and see what would happen from there.

I ate less food at my meals and cut out snacks. Within a month, my weight had dropped down to 218 pounds. From my previous failed attempts to maintain weight loss, I realized that I needed to radically relearn how to eat or else I would gain all of the weight back once my will to eat less got broken. That was when I read The Maker's Diet by Jordan S. Rubin. One of the major premises of this book is that the human body was not designed by God to consume the vast quantities of sugar and processed food that the typical modern person eats. The Book of Leviticus outlined what foods God wanted His people to eat and not to eat. It made sense that God would know what is good for the people He created. I became deeply convicted that I was ruining the body that God designed for me by ignorant and undisciplined eating.

I did not become a strict follower of The Maker's Diet. But I completely rethought the way I eat by treating food as a means of nourishment: eating to live instead of living to eat. I began to eat organic foods, avoid high fructose corn syrup, eat more fruits and vegetables and drastically reduce my consumption of processed foods.

By early summer of 2010, my weight was down to 205 pounds. My friends and family began to notice and complement me on my weight loss. That gave me the push to take the process up to the next level. I began to skip a meal each day, usually lunch while at work. That was the logical meal to skip because I usually got lunch at Subway or Chinese at least a couple days a week. That was tough and for about 2 weeks my stomach would rumble all afternoon. I drank a lot of water to quiet the hunger pangs. Over the course of the summer and into the fall, my weight dropped to 180 pounds by Thanksgiving. That alarmed a few people into thinking that I was €wasting away.€ In reality though, I was pushing my body back to where it should have been for the past 2 decades. My weight had dropped over 50 pounds in a year and I felt more energetic than I did in my 20s.

Now I usually maintain a weight between 180-185 pounds. It runs a little higher around the winter holiday season. Then it runs a bit less over the summer. I would like to weigh 170-175 pounds on a consistent basis, but I haven't found the key to that yet.

You can lose unhealthy excess weight and keep it off without surgery, going on crazy diets or becoming an exercise maniac. It is a matter of consistently making wise choices each time that your eat. The only regret you'll have is that you did not do this sooner.