Man Loses 100 Pounds Thanks To Running

All it took was a photo to get him started.

Many people depend on others to stay motivated to keep running, but not Adam Reitz. He uses a picture on his phone. The photo was taken of him before his wedding three years ago when he weighed an additional 100 pounds.

Reitz, a high school teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was given the photo by the school nurse after a school trip to Hawaii.

“I thought, ‘I better lose a few pounds before the wedding,'” he recalled.

At first he rode a bike, and then he eventually turned to running. A friend convinced him to sign up for a local half marathon–a daunting goal for Reitz. “I probably couldn’t run from here to a block away when I started,” he said.

However, Reitz put feet to pavement and began to shed pounds. He became addicted to running and by the 2008 Philadelphia Marathon, he’d lost 50 pounds and went from a size 44 waist to a size 32.

“Losing weight is something that you don’t do unless you want to do it,” he says.

For More: Baltimore Sun