My name is Ben Aronhalt and I am 22 years old. I’ve struggled with weight growing up when I was a kid. The only sport I played was football, and after my senior year of high school, I just stopped doing anything active. I gained a lot of weight, and I would breathe heavily when I climb flights of stairs. I pretty much accepted that I was big and that’s the way it was going to be.

It was during Christmas Break of 2016 where I really thought to myself if I wanted to accept my current state. I’m browsing the Internet and come across one of DDP’s Motivational Monday from December 26, 2016. I vividly remember him say, “Get your head out of your ass… You can do this by telling yourself you can, as long as you keep telling yourself you can’t, I can’t help you and neither can you.” What Dallas said there it felt like it was directed at me, and I felt I understood his message. I also ended up watching transformation videos of Arthur, Jared, Christina, and Eric. Once I got back home from vacation, I stepped on the scale and it said 330 pounds. I knew I was out of shape, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. After all of that, I knew it time to make a change.

In January 2017, what I did first was transfer my retail job to a location closer to home, so instead of eating fast food or processed junk every day, and  I’d have what was in my house at the time. I noticed I felt less groggy and had a little more energy than usual during my shift. I was finally in a good place mentally by the end of January I decided to commit to doing the DDP Yoga DVDs.

In the first three weeks of doing DDP Yoga workouts, I lost 15 pounds. I was feeling better about myself and felt myself getting better at it bit by bit. In late February, just when I thought things were falling into place, I made a mistake at work that suspended me. Thankfully I watched DDP’s Living Life at 90% a couple days before that I learned how to react to it. I learned it was alright to be mad and sad as long as you don’t stay there.  I got called into work where I was ultimately fired, but walking out I remember telling myself that this would be the best thing to happen to me.

8 months later I was down 65 pounds, and I got my job back. I’ve officially been doing DDP Yoga for over a year now and I have lost 90 pounds. In the beginning, I made small goals in terms how many pounds I wanted to lose in a month or doing one more pushup than I did in a workout. My focus now is to learn more about nutrition and fine-tune good habits. I am not at my overall weight goal, but I am proud of how far I have come.

The biggest change for me was to stop selling myself short, and quit telling myself I’m not good enough. Change the story you tell yourself and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.