I opened my eyes but still couldn’t breathe. Every detail in the forest canopy above me blazed with midday brilliance. On my back lying on the trail, suffocating panic subsided as my breath returned, though it was quickly replaced with the realization that something else was wrong with my body.

I was mountain biking with some friends on a Saturday in August of 2004. I had just ridden my bike off a ramp that someone (with more skill than me) had built onto a downed oak tree. I hit the jump wrong and ended up in the air with my feet over my head and hit the ground in similar fashion.

“Oh man. Tim, are you okay? We gotta get you out of here.”

I didn’t know what my buddies knew. As I took inventory of my body, aside from the sheer pain of the fall, I noticed my left hand wouldn’t move, nor would the arm it was attached to.

What my friends saw was my sunken and misshapen left shoulder. It would take a hike out of the woods, a drive to and subsequent hour long wait at the local ER to determine that my arm had come out of its socket. All totaled, it was dislocated for over two hours before finally being reduced. It was some of the worst pain I’d ever endured. The kind of pain where you try to escape your body, like watching Rosie O’Donnell talk politics and world history.

The recovery involved lots of PT and a Percocet prescription. I didn’t finish the medication regimen mostly because of an experience I had when Beth was gone one night. Partially hopped up, I slipped “The Passion of the Christ” into the DVD player. Laying on the couch half out of my mind, watching a maggot crawl out of Satan’s nose was messing me up. I decided I’d trade comfort for lucidity.

Even though my shoulder mostly recovered to its original range of motion, it was still prone to pop out of the socket from time to time; a painful event for me, an unattractive sight for those around me.

The end result was that I became less active, spending less time biking and playing hockey and more time racking up kills on Xbox playing Halo, all the while eating as though I was still active and 18. Did you know a bag of potato chips can serve as an entree? I did. Soda, multiple fast food visits per week; it all added up to a perfect, chunky storm.

The fatter I got, the less I cared about defattening myself. I stopped weighing in when I crested 240. Who cared? I had already tricked Beth into marrying me, so that piece was tied up. Anyways, the general trend for humanity was that we get heavier as we get older. This was the natural course of things. Who was I to upset that delicate balance?

The problem was my weight had isolated me from the things I was passionate about in life. Going for a hike was painful. Lacing up my skates was a joke since I was nowhere near as fast or coordinated as I used to be. Life was more difficult all the way around.

Now you’re probably thinking, ‘Wait, you’re not fat, Tim. You’re fit and have a rugged symmetrical face and a deftness about your powerful movements unrivaled by men 10 years your junior. A real mountain of a man.’

Well, that’s very kind of you and I don’t know that I would go that far, but it is true; I am no longer fat. What happened? Read the second part of this series to learn how I dropped the weight (and kept it off), got healthy and achieved the highest level of fitness of my life.