"How Weight Loss Saved My Life"
The Story of Bill Smith
-- By Zach Van Hart, SparkPeople Contributor
Before Bill Smith (pictured to the right) joined SparkPeople in September 2002, his life was in disarray. He weighed 335 pounds and was an "eating machine." He loved buffets and would order an entire large pizza and finish it by himself. He did not exercise at all, was stressed out all the time, and just wanted to sleep all day. In his words, "I truly wanted to curl up in a corner and just give up."
Bill had tried numerous diets in the past, but to no avail. None of them involved goal setting, and diet alone just didn't work for him. Even when Bill first joined SparkPeople, he wasn't very active on the site. He would post on the message boards every now and then, and he did set some goals. But he didn't start using the site until the following month--after his wife told him she wanted a divorce.
She had recently lost a lot of weight and said that her life had changed because of it. Bill blamed himself and became depressed. "I began to hate myself for what I was and started realizing that I had a lot more I could look forward to," said Bill.
So he started to get serious. He re-started his SparkPeople and concentrated on his goals. And he started depending on the SparkPeople Community for support. He saw how much support the message boards provided and realized that, through the stories of others, he could make a difference in his own life.
