31-year-old Pasquale “Pat” Brocco used to be called “Fat Pat.” He weighed 605 pounds and ate about 11,200 calories every day in the form of cereal, whole milk, candy, meatball sandwiches, chicken nuggets, soda, milk shakes, pie, and doughnuts.
At one of his doctor’s appointments, his doctor gave him a severe warning about his high blood pressure and high cholesterol level. If Brocco wasn’t careful and didn’t make a drastic change, quick, there was a chance he could die in his sleep.
When Brocco returned home that day, he stood in front of his mirror and took a photo of his body, suddenly realizing how bad he looked. “My stomach was down to my thighs. My chest was hanging down here.
“I was disgusted,” he admitted.
He threw out all the bad, processed food he had in his house and decided that he would walk to the nearby WalMart each time he wanted to eat.
The WalMart was one mile away. Brocco went from hardly walking to trekking six miles a day, just to eat. “You walk to Walmart three times a day, and you end up walking 6 miles,” he remembered. “It’s amazing because I never walked 6 miles in my life, and I was doing it every day.”
Instead of buying junk food though, Brocco bought vegetables, lean meats, sweet potatoes, quinoa, and steel-cut oatmeal.
Once he’d lost some weight, Brocco graduated from walking to WalMart to hitting the gym. He used the treadmill and began to lift some weights, and figured out that he could lose more weight if he cut dairy out of his diet – so he did.
Now, three years later, Brocco is 330 pounds lighter than he was when his doctor first warned him about his health. His friends no longer call him “Fat Pat,” but rather “Possible Pat.”
Brocco most recently got 30 pounds of excess skin removed and is continuing to keep up his fitness regimen to be a role model for his one-year-old son. “I’m setting an example for my son so he can be Possible Pat too.”
