Obese Man Gets Engaged And Is Inspired To Lose 317 Pounds


Most people have an ongoing struggle with their weight but when they fall in love, the weight just seems to disappear.

John Allaire was in a similar situation. He got engaged and decided to drop some pounds. It turns out that getting ready to say ‘I do’ to his childhood sweetheart caused this 540 lb man to say, enough is enough.

“Even though Caila loved me as I was, and she was ready to commit to marrying me at 540 pounds, I was like, “There is no way that I can, in good conscience, drag this woman through the difficulties that I am going to go through the rest of my life if I don’t lose weight.”

Looking back on his weight gain, he realized that he was using food as a crutch to deal with problems in life. It started with his parent’s divorce when he was very young and then later when his dad got sick. By the time he was 18, his father had passed away and he was morbidly obese.

He had moved to Florida and within a couple of years, he had to use a commercial scale at a local fish house to weigh himself. Eventually, he gave up checking on his weight out of embarrassment.

That is when he got engaged to Caila. He realized that he was now dealing with more than his own problems, he was making them her problem.

Within a few weeks, he had dropped 20 lbs by juicing and walking. It came just in time for them to exchange vows. Caila’s job in the Navy then had them moving to San Diego and John decided to take the next step. He joined Camp Transformation Center, a weight-loss boot camp.

He was now committed to living a healthy life and in only 15 months, he dropped 300 lbs.

“It has been a long and grinding process. For the last year and a half, I have put in work every single day towards losing the weight. Even when I chose to take rest days, nothing was done without clear intention to succeed. The results of this laser focus? Losing 297.4 pounds since August 2016. Overall, 317 pounds since my heaviest.”

It’s hard to imagine how much willpower it would take to lose that much weight.

The problem at this point was his sagging skin. It didn’t spring back so he needed to have surgery to remove all 13 pounds of skin that was now hanging on his body. He and Caila were planning on heading to Japan and he started a GoFundMe to help cover the cost of surgery.

He was talking with Caila about how much skin there was. It was much more than they expected.

“I think his loose skin affects him in a lot of different ways. Definitely self image. The surgery is just going to improve his overall quality of life. He’s finally going to feel completely free, like there’s not going to be any baggage from his obesity.”

“It is a blessing to be able to move freely,” John said after the surgery. “There are just so many constant little things throughout the day that I think most people take for granted.”

Would you like to see what he looks like now? Check out this video:


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