Courtesy of Fit2Fat2Fit.com

I recently discovered an interesting guy on the Internet who accomplished a very noble task.

A personal trainer/health guru decided he wanted to know what obese people deal with day-to-day and how difficult it is for them to lose the weight. So for a year, he dedicated his life to going form fit to fat to fit again. He created the site Fit2Fat2Fit to track his progress as he spent six months gaining weight followed by another six months where he would lose what he had gained.

Words cannot describe this at all, so here’s a video of this guy, each week for the year:

There’s so much that can be said about this– and yet it’s hard for me to find the words to even give this illustration the justice it deserves. What I really want to just emphasize is just how fast both sides of this coin can happen. You don’t just get fat overnight. But weeks of not caring can turn to months. In just six months, this man gained nearly 70 lbs! And it wasn’t like it was his “normal tendency” or just “his body type” or however you want to look at it. He was a fit guy who just…well…let himself go. And it wasn’t like he was “trying” really  hard to get fat. As he said in the introduction video on his site, he would just have “an nonrestrictive diet” and no exercise for six months.

Umm…he just described a lot of people who choose to live that way on a day-to-day basis.

This is how the freshman 15 turned into the freshman 50 for some people. This is why “letting yourself go” really does reflect the level of uncaring that is sad, unhealthy, and detrimental to overall quality of life and happiness. You need to care. You need to be aware. Or this could easily happen to you.

On the other side of the coin, you have the next six months on how he victoriously returns to the body he once head– through months of hard work and CARING.

He lost 70 lbs in six months. That’s awesome, even though to a lot of people, it can seem unattainable. But just as quickly as it was for him to gain the weight, it was just as quick for him to lose it. Why? Because he worked for it. Anything is possible if you’re willing to put in the time, energy, and dedication into it.

Isn’t it amazing how much impact a little caring and hard work about yourself can do? But more so, isn’t it absolutely terrifying how not caring at all can really have that much of an impact on someone’s body and health?

I encourage all of you– myself included– to stand up today and CARE about ourselves. We don’t need to go crazy and be obsessive about our healthy lifestyles, but we have to care. We need to be aware of how we’re treating ourselves, and we need make strides toward becoming happier, healthier people.

After all, if you won’t even care about yourself, then who will?

We have the power to be who we want to be. But it all starts with caring and committing to treating ourselves the way we deserve.