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Man sheds pounds in preparation for Disney marathon
A man who used to weigh 500 pounds and had serious health problems has changed course and started dropping the pounds. He got inspiration by preparing for a full Disney marathon, two years in the making. He is sharing his journey on social media.
CLERMONT, Fla. - Chris Hasty is going from morbid to marathon. He used to weigh nearly 500 pounds. His health problems were getting serious, but then he decided to change. He started to run and is now training for something that intimidates even experienced runners.
Outside of work, you can find Chris in one of two places: at the gym or running through the hills of Clermont, anything active, anything to keep him going.
"It’s a journey you have to get your head right. You have to understand what you’re going through, what you’re going to put your body through," said Chris. His journey is two years in the making and started when he weighed nearly 500 pounds. He was suffering from high blood pressure and was a borderline diabetic when he "met my now wife and she gave me a reason to be better, to do better for myself."
His wife set him on the right course to shed the pounds.
"I didn’t want to die at 35. I didn’t want to leave her alone," Chris said.
It is a journey he is sharing with everyone on his @morbid2marathon Instagram account.
"The big reason I started it at first was to keep me accountable" -- accountable of his huge weight loss, starting in 2017 with bariatric surgery. He dropped more than 100 pounds. But where most people would stop, Hasty kept going, running 5K's, 10K's and half marathons with his coworkers at South Lake Hospital.
Now he's training for his first full marathon, as part of the Dopey Challenge, a weekend of Disney races in January where he'll run a 5K, a 10K, a half and full marathon over four days. That's a total of 48.6 miles. He is racing toward a better life because before "I could run to an emergency at work but by the time I got there, you didn’t know if it was the patient or me that needed the emergent help."
Chris currently weighs in at around 220, which is down more than 260 pounds from his original weight.
"I have weight vests that I do training with. They’re about 30 pounds and that really puts into perspective how heavy that feels considering I had like 8 of those on me at one point," Chris said.
You could say he is half the man he was. But really, he's so much more.
"I have people reach out every day sharing their struggles and I do my best trying to talk to as many people as I can. Now, it’s more about inspiring people just keeping other people going," Chris said as he keeps going with everything: marrying and promising forever to his wife, training for this marathon and staying fit to stay alive.
"I know that if I hadn’t have done this I know that I probably would have died in the next five, ten years," he said.
Tune in to FOX 35 News at 5 and 6 p.m. for the latest.