However after making his highschool’s soccer crew, he started to develop confidence in his bodily talents. He attended Lane Faculty in Tennessee on a soccer scholarship, earlier than transferring to Central Michigan College, the place he majored in train science. “I used to be like, perhaps I’ll lastly learn to work out and lose this weight,” he stated. “After which I can lastly be accepted.”
In 2012, Mr. Evans and his then girlfriend (now spouse) moved to Connecticut, the place she had gotten into graduate faculty. He took a job promoting fits at Males’s Wearhouse whereas he found out his subsequent transfer. The job, which required him to decorate males of all ages and physique varieties, would supply an unlikely path to changing into a health influencer.
After months on the storeroom flooring sporting stiff costume sneakers, he started to really feel an ache in his hip. The ache introduced him to an orthopedic surgeon, who, he writes in his ebook, took one have a look at him and instructed him: “Mr. Evans, you’re fats. You could have two choices: Shed some pounds or die.”
Mr. Evans remembered holding again tears whereas, “with a half-cocked smile,” defiantly telling the physician, “I’m going to run a marathon.” He stated the physician laughed and instructed him operating a marathon would additionally kill him.
He left the appointment offended and nonetheless in ache (one other doctor later recognized him with hip bursitis) and drove on to a operating retailer to purchase a pair of trainers, decided to show the physician flawed. For additional motivation, Mr. Evans began a weblog he referred to as 300 Kilos and Working, the place he started to chart each his operating progress and weight reduction. After just a few months, he was shocked to find strangers had been studying and cheering him on.
He discovered that he loved operating, regardless of the passers-by who would sometimes hurl insults at him. Greater than as soon as, Mr. Evans stated he has additionally been stopped and questioned by police whereas jogging. When he felt defeated, he’d look at a tattoo on his proper wrist that reads “no wrestle, no progress.”
