Gabe Evans used to weigh 435 pounds.
“That’s not a little overweight, like, that’s almost 3 times what my weight was supposed to be,” Evans said.
In 10 months, Evans has lost 204 pounds.
He has been overweight since elementary school, but said he hasn’t always been concerned about his size. Then he noticed he began using his weight as an excuse.
“I can’t hang out. Why? And then i would look down at my tummy,” Evans said.
Evans lost about 75 pounds three months into his weight loss. It was then that he began to film his weight loss documentary, “Why am I So Fat?”
Evans, who is based in Southern California, is raising money through the website indiegogo.com to fund his documentary, which features four other people.
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The project has 46 days left to reach $10,000, a goal they are more than half way to reaching.
Evans has been establishing a new relationship with food by working with Tony Hale, a personal trainer and nutrition specialist who said people need to pay close attention to what they are eating.
“I would say – coming from a guy who gets paid to train people in a gym – its 90 percent what you eat,” Hale said. “It’s not a lack of willpower. It’s usually a situation where our body is missing things that it needs to have and it’s screaming at you to give it something else that can replace that.”
Evans said he wants to show that what he’s doing – changing his diet and going to the gym three times a week for an hour at a time – isn’t over-demanding.
“I’ve been eating healthy and whole foods and I’ve been cooking for myself a lot,” he said.
While he doesn’t have a goal weight in mind, Evans said he’ll know when he’s hit the mark.
“It’s not going to be: I get to my goal and I stop,” he said. “‘Cause that’s not the mentality you have to have of being happy and healthy.”
If he inspires others along the way, that’s fine with Evans because he is losing the weight in a way he believes in.
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