Twenty-two months ago today, I arrived in Texas weighing 280 pounds.

[caption id="attachment_1585" align="alignright" width="300" caption="In Texas, May 2010"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/20101020_36.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1585" title="20101020_36" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/20101020_36-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

It was the heaviest I had ever been in my life, and I was serious enough to pay to spend 11 weeks at Rancho Cortez, a fitness ranch in the lovely Texas Hill Country. I shoveled manure, hiked, rode horseback and exercised, dieting all the while.

When I left for home in mid-July, I weighed 213 pounds, and I had established such a good routine that by the end of October -- when we moved from California to Georgia -- my weight was down to 168.

I had lost 112 pounds in six months and I was walking at least six miles every day.

I figured I had completely straightened out my life, health-wise, and I went to two reunions back home in Virginia in early November thrilled with how I looked.

[caption id="attachment_1586" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="November 2010"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/312316_108384889268366_100002905662762_59593_1144218450_n1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1586" title="312316_108384889268366_100002905662762_59593_1144218450_n" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/312316_108384889268366_100002905662762_59593_1144218450_n1-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

If only it had lasted.

There have been at least five different times in my life that I have had very successful diets, and every one of those times, I eventually gained the weight back.

This time was the worst of all. In about a year, I gained back all the weight I had worked so hard to lose in 2010. My cholesterol is bad again and so is my blood pressure. I look pretty much like I did on horseback, only a little heavier.

You're not going to see any pictures of the way I look now, at least not on my Website.

A lot of the stress that I reacted badly to was due to health problems my lovely wife was having. She too is heavier than she has ever been, although she is still beautiful.

We've been talking about it for weeks, and tomorrow morning -- March 1 -- both of us will start a strict diet and exercise regimen designed to get us heading in the right direction. We're going back to Texas together in May, although we'll spend just a month there this time.

It isn't going to be easy.

It is going to be necessary.

One of these times, I have to get it right.

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