The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Success story
Charles Fowler, 24, of Atlanta lost 95 pounds
Former weight: 320 pounds
Current weight: 225 pounds
Pounds lost: 95 pounds Height: 6 feet 4 inches Age: 24 years
How long he’s kept it off: Started July 2014; weighed 210 pounds by August 2015. Since then, he’s gained muscle mass, continued to burn excess fat and currently weighs 225.
Personal life: “I’m an actor, chasing TV and film roles here in Atlanta. I’m also working on getting certified as a personal trainer,” said Fowler, who’s single and lives in Atlanta. “I’ve worked with the Atlanta Opera, too.”
Turning point: “I had been dealing with ankle pain for years, ever since I was 13 and hit my major growth spurt, which is what we chalked it up to. … There were days I couldn’t walk or stand. … I have had everything done to my ankles from surgeries to scans. … In 2014, we saw a doctor who was an ankle surgery specialist. …
What he said was, when you’re going through your growth spurt, your joints are kind of weak. The bones will grow kind of fast, and the tendons and ligaments don’t grow as fast, which put a lot of pressure on my ankles and they did not form correctly. They stayed squished down with no proper arch support.
There is nothing medically they can do about it,” Fowler said. “To change my life, I had to lose the weight. … Just having an answer of what was wrong was so helpful. … That is when I started taking fitness seriously.”
Diet plan: He carefully controlled his calories while losing weight.
Breakfast was a couple of eggs with toast. Lunch and dinner were chicken or fish with a salad and a vegetable.
Exercise routine: He works out six days a week. He currently does one muscle group per day, and he does 30 minutes of cardio. “Cardio is extremely important for weight loss and has other benefits for being healthy plus increases endurance — it’s extremely important for weight loss,” Fowler said.
Biggest challenge: “The biggest challenge was probably just being patient,” Fowler said. “I didn’t realize how long everything was going to take. … Sometimes you can get frustrated when you are not losing weight. You can think, ‘This is pointless, I’m going to give up.’ You’ve got to keep going.”
How life has changed: “I’m able to walk and run — before, I couldn’t stand for 30 minutes. The confidence has enabled me to pursue acting. … I never saw it as something I can achieve. I took the classes, and now I am going to auditions all the time. Prior to the weight loss, I didn’t have the confidence to ask a girl out.
Now I’m going on dates and have had girlfriends. The trajectory of where my life is going: I want to be a personal trainer; I want to go back to school and get a degree for physical therapy and do that.”