I wish I knew where to start this story. I really do. It'd make telling the story that much easier. But telling this story won't be easy and I guess it won't have a beginning, to boot. The best I can offer is to throw out as much information (as I want to divulge) as possible and you can put the pieces together. That'll have to do.

Let's get this beginning-less story started.

Let's start by me telling you what this story is, generally, about. It's about my weight-loss goal. Or, to put it more simply, my challenge to lose weight. Y'all have heard stories like this, right? Well let me throw you a few twists to really spice it up.

I've always been overweight. I never, ever remember being skinny. I don't remember it because it never happened. I was always the big kid in class. Or if you'd prefer, the "fat" kid. I've never liked that term. I don't call other people fat either, for obvious reasons. But that was me and I can't deny it or hide it. Hell, I'm still the fat kid -- but I'm starting to shed that label day by day.

To give it all some context, I'm 22 years old and I just graduated from college in May. I drank a lot of beer in college, too, just like most college students. That was my thing every weekend. I wasn't as bad as a lot of buddies of mine, but I admit to binge drinking. Haven't we all done/do it?

But beer isn't really the story here. It's a factor, I guess, but the bottom line is I've been overweight my entire life. And no, I was not drinking Bud Light when I was 5 (well, maybe I was. My dad liked to give me beer, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't getting drunk on it every Friday night. No, I definitely wasn't).

I've always been a very determined guy. That probably stems from me being overweight as well, because people always doubted me. People never thought I could do anything. I would always tell people, "I am the most athletic big man you'll ever see." And I believed it. I still believe it. I could move, man. I played almost every sport and I was pretty good, too.

And when it came to the classroom? Eh. I wasn't the best student in middle school and high school. I just kind of sucked. Bottom line. No excuses. But in college I graduated cum laude. Something just clicked, I guess.

So what does this have to do with weight loss? Well, since I loved to prove people wrong, I did it all the time. But the only thing I couldn't prove people wrong was about losing weight.

I tried. I failed. I tried again and I failed again. I could do whatever I put my mind to, it seemed, except lose weight. I have been playing this failing game for years on end. Too many to count, really.

But that all changed in April ... and January, too.

Let's start with January. My friend Janet* (name changed to protect the innocently guilty) told me she was going to be a vegetarian. I laughed at her. I told her there was no way she could do it. She told me that she could. So I said something that would forever change my life: "I bet you I could be a vegetarian longer than you."

The birth of a bet. Isn't it a beautiful thing? Our friends put money down on who would last longer. Since we are both stubborn people, I knew this would go on for awhile. But "a while" was what I expected to be a couple of months. That was a severe understatement. To this day, I am still a vegetarian (the first meat I ate was Halloween weekend. It was two "insanely hot" chicken wings that I had to have).

Becoming a vegetarian -- something I want to keep up for the rest of my life -- was big event No. 1. Big event No. 2 came in April.

Four days after my 22nd birthday, my family came down to visit me at school. My whole family -- father, brothers, sisters in laws. Everyone except my mother. My father told me she died early that morning of a heart attack. At 57 years old.

My mother wasn't a very healthy woman. She was overweight and she had other health issues. But no one expected this. It came as a shock to me and everyone else. It's still a shock, actually. It's been more than six months and it's hard for me even to put the words together.

Now what I'm going to tell you next is something I still don't believe.

Just 11 days after my mother died, my father died, too. Of a heart attack. At the age of 62.

No words.

My dad was a little overweight, but also unhealthy. He drank (not too much), he smoked (he cut back), he was a border-line diabetic and he didn't eat that well. When he was told by his doctors that he could become a diabetic, he started exercising and eating much better. It was too little, too late, unfortunately.

So now I stand here as an "orphan," as someone mentioned to me the other day. As weird as that sounds, I guess it is true. An orphan whose two parents died due to heart attacks at ages that are way too young.

How do you think I feel now?

Besides the obvious, I knew I had to get healthy. I had to lose weight and I had to get it off for good. This has led me on a great journey.

The weight loss really started when I became a vegetarian. I ate more salads, and just cutting out meat alone did wonders. I lost a good portion of weight pretty quickly. It was a great feeling. I wanted to push it more, but after I got home, I sort of stalled. I was still a vegetarian, but I wasn't working out. I was still losing weight, it just wasn't very significant.

In January, I weighed in around 318. That's the number I date my weight loss to. I was as high (I believe) as 345 a few years ago. I just looked at a photo of myself from back then and I can't believe it. It truly is unbelievable.

Now, I am proud to say, I have lost almost 73 pounds. I am at 246 now and shedding more fast. A lot of the 73 has come in the last two months or so, when I really buckled down. I cut down my intake of beer, I haven't had soda in more than a year now and I'm eating a lot of salad and brown rice-veggie combinations. Steady, consistent and boring, but it is working.

But I'm not nearly done. My goal is to lose 100 pounds in one year. If I go at my pace in the last two months, it's completely doable. My obstacles will be holidays, however (Thanskgiving and Christmas are killers on the stomach) and getting out to exercise. I do a damn good job in my tiny apartment, but being outside is definitely nice -- but not in a New Hampshire winter.

That's my goal. That's my challenge that lies ahead of me. This, for the first time, will be something that I will conquer. I am determined to do it.

And it's all for the right reasons: specifically two reasons that will forever influence my life.