Here at LittleThings, we love a good transformation story.
We often cover wardrobe or hair makeovers, but it's even more meaningful when we get to write about people who have completely overhauled their lives in order to be healthier and happier.
One man recently got to see a lifestyle makeover in action, when his older brother realized he needed to make a change. He wrote about his brother Rick's story on the social platform Imgur, where people immediately fell in love with Rick and his impressive mental and physical transformation.
Within two days, the story had been seen over 209,000 times.
When Rick started out, he was desperately unhealthy, and doctors were begging him to break his bad habits.
He ignored their advice for a long time, but after a wake-up call, he started doing research and figured out a powerful plan to live a better life.
Scroll through to see how different he looks now.
He writes:
This is my brother, Rick. He’s about 5 years older than me. In this photo he’s 29 years old and right around 400 pounds.
He parties a lot, drinks a lot, gets depressed a lot, and thinks often about suicide.
A few years later, 2010, Rick is diagnosed with type-2 adult onset diabetes and is told he has to make a drastic change, several in fact, or he's a dead man on borrowed time.
He’s a smoker, he has high blood pressure, and his smoking habits leave him with chronic bronchitis and an inability to perform continuous physical activity, precluding him from exercising his way out, for now.
6 months in, he ignores his doctor's orders and is told, "Remember the '80s, when people went blind, lost feet, and died in pain to diabetes? You're headed there. Make a choice."
Those are the words his doctor gave him and sent him out to think.
This is rick. The photo on the left is as we found him. The photo on the right is him in 2016 at Disney World in Florida for my wedding, the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
Over the past 6 years Rick decided to live. He started by switching from cigarettes to a vape pen. I know, vaping is a pariah habit, but exactly that was the problem — the habit. He couldn't kick the habit until he made that change.
Over the next year, he started walking.
Slowly, at first, he couldn't go for very long, but as his lungs recovered and his body grew more accustomed to movement he began extending his exercise period and intensity to walking and running, and eventually just running.
Another before and after photo, this time from the first day he decided to start weight training, to the day he felt comfortable enough to share an “after” photo.
No description can enhance what you see here, but at the point of the lower picture he was deadlifting around 500 lb daily.
Rick with his friend Rick, a fellow partier from the old days who wanted to take Rick’s advice and change his own life. He has, by the way, but this is about my brother.
There he is. That is the man I am proud to call brother. I was never what I should've been to him, but I'm trying now.
He still has his low moments and he still wrestles with depression.
But he's on track to live a long and healthy life and thanks to his efforts, my parents each shed 100 pounds (in their 60s!) and are living at the prime of their physical fitness for the first time since the 1970s, my severely obese aunts have each shed 80-100 pounds, and I have lost 70 and kept it off.
He’s saved so many of us already without even realizing it or setting out to do so.
His example has inspired dozens in his hometown.
If you're blown away by Rick's transformation, please SHARE this article with your friends!
