I am 33 and since I was 25 (the very year I got out of the Army) I have been obese. I've always known that I needed to lose the weight, but as is the case with most of us fatties, we are masters at minimizing and procrastinating.At some pint, for some reason, I had had enough. I decided that I was going to take action! No more excuses! Guess what? I made more excuses, I procrastinated a little longer. Finally I forced my self into a crash diet. I stayed strong for a couple of weeks. I slipped up, felt guilty, quit. Three months later I had had enough. I decided to take action! No more excuses!:Lies:You see the cycle.If you are or were a fatty, you know the cycle very well. Here's the thing, I did finally lose the weight. I still have some to go (about 45 lbs), but I lost the majority. How much? I started my weight loss journey at 452 lbs, I weighed in last week at 298lbs. This has been a terribly tough and unbelievably rewarding journey. Here's a few lessons I learned that I am pretty sure have some applications to the fast lane business:1. Add artificial pain. If the pain of being over weight were enough to motivate you, you wouldn't be fat right now. I decided that I wasn't going to cut, trim or shave my hair or beard until I hit 300lbs. I hated looking like a hobo, my beard grew longer on the left side than the right, so I looked lopsided and unkempt. A stranger actually approached me at one point and offered to buy me a meal. When I wanted to quit, the damn beard and long hair kept me going.2. Tell everyone about your goals AND the pain you created. They'll think you're crazy. To hell with them. You are crazy, but that's what it takes to be successful. When you succeed, those people will no longer call you crazy, they'll call you inspirational. If you're like me, you'll want to punch them in the face.3. Surround yourself with people who ARE where you want to be. Don't have an "accountability partner" who is as fat as you are. Fat people like to be reciprocal in their excuse making. You don't need someone to make you feel better when you fail in the hopes that you won't be too hard on them when they fail. Don't expect people who ARE where you want to be to care too much if you get there. Just being around them helps to change your perspective.4. Backwards plan! I decided where I wanted to be, then I looked at the lifestyle ofwhere I wanted to be. How did they eat? How did they exercise? When did they eat? How often did they exercise and eat? I collected as much information as I could, and then I began to create a plan based on where I was going, which brings me to my next point.....5. Concentrate on the stair, not the staircase. All humans are programed for homeostasis, but fat people have reinforced that programing with years of habits. We are poster children for homeostasis. If you crash diet, you will almost certainly fail. Use the power of incremental changes. For instance, I created a seven day phase plan for myself. I knew that those I wanted to model drank water almost exclusively, that they ate 6-8 times a day, that they ate protein and slow burning carbs with almost every meal. They took these supplements, worked out this many times a week, did cardio x amount per week, so on and so forth. I knew I couldn't jump right into that, so I started small. For seven days I drank a glass of water first thing in the morning and a glass before I went to bed. If I missed a day, I started the seven day cycle over. Then I went seven days of water for every other drink. Eventually I ate 6 times a day. I didn't care at that phase what I ate, I just cut my normal three meals into 6 meals. A year and a half later, I live a lifestyle that is no different than those I modeled.6. Goals! Goals! Goals! In case I forgot to mention, GOALS!!!!7. Measure everything you do. Everybody is different and everyis different. There were things that worked really well, things that didn't work at all, things that stopped working. Measure progress, experiment, measure, experiment, measure, rinse, wash, repeat. The longer you're on this journey, the better you will come to know your body. Fat people are oblivious to their body. To succeed you will have to become an expert at, and to do that you must record and measure everything you do.If you're currently on or about to be on the weight loss journey I want to wish you the best of luck. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.Mee at 450lbs and me at 310 lbs. Same shirt, which probably means I need to rotate the wardrobe a little bit.