Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/52522
ON THE ROAD TO BETTER HEALTH 300-plus-pound driver resolves to get fit I n July 2011, Richie Nehrings of Hawthorne, N.J., went shopping for a new pair of jeans. His size 44 pants were too tight, and it was time for the 41-year- old, 372-pound truck driver to move up to the next waist size. "I couldn't do it," he says. "I stood there staring at the huge size 46 jeans and something inside just snapped. It started a whole wave of self- loathing and anger." He thought, "I can't fit in my clothes, my blood pressure is out of control, my life is not my life anymore." He didn't buy the jeans. Instead, he decided to change his life. It wasn't the first time he had tried to make lifestyle 18 TRUCKERS NEWS JANUARY 2012 60% of U.S. adults are overweight changes. One low point came when he went to a sporting goods store to buy rubber waders. An avid fisherman, he wanted the protective gear so he could continue to fish in winter. The sales clerk laughed out loud. "We don't have anything that big," he said to Nehrings. Depressed and feeling hopeless after that and similar past incidents, Nehrings decided to change his diet. "My wife and I would go out to dinner and declare that, come Monday, we would begin down a new road to healthy eating," he says. But Monday would come and he would swing by the big-box store and load up on industrial-size bags of M&M's, chocolate bars and fully loaded soda. "I had a lot of 'aha' moments, but PHOTOS BY GABE COLLAZO