About Me

I was born on October 9, 1973 in New York City, New York into an Italian / German family, so as you can imagine, food was a big part of my family's traditions. Holidays were always the worst since my mother, who is Italian would cook almost non-stop for days on end before the actual holiday. We would have left -overs for weeks afterwards. Food was the livelihood of my house, as it is for almost any Italian family. Italians are KNOWN for their food.

As a young kid I wasn't really fat. I was you typical kid who liked to play outside after school at the local park. Though not ideal since I was living in the City that Never Sleeps at the time, it was still some form of exercise to help burn calories. It wasn't until around my 13th birthday that I started to put on weight. I attribute this to me focusing more and more on my school work like I was encouraged to do so by my peers. At first it wasn't a bad thing because I had not yet hit puberty so my parents figured that I would lose any and all extra weight that I had gained once I started really growing.

Puberty came and went, and I was still over-weight by about 85 pounds. I was about 5' 8" and weighed around 225 pounds. It was then where things began to spiral out of control when I started to turn to food for the answers for everything. Whenever I felt stressed out of frustrated, I would eat as a means to hide the other emotions that I was going through at the time. Just before graduating high school I weighed in at nearly 390 pounds - the largest that my high school had ever seen, and probably ever will see while its doors are open.