Hi, my name is Al and I’m on a health journey. I try to be positivity focussed, weight loss and health focused. I’ve been fortunate to foster a community online that is supportive, caring and very enthusiastic. It’s helped me with nutrition, workouts, with recovery, with injuries, with becoming the best version of myself.

It’s been a pretty wild ride for my wife and I that past few years, if you’ll indulge me I’d like to give a little backstory to how I got where I am. I used to be a touring musician, while on the road I came in contact with a skin bacteria that thrives in cellulite tissues, and it contributed 200lbs of weight to me in about a year’s time. It took a few years to get a proper diagnosis during which my wife and I were in and out of the hospital hundreds of times. At one point we had to drive to the hospital three times a day for antibiotic IV sessions, which became exhausting because we lived an hour out of town. I went from walking normally, standing while performing, a normal life to requiring canes to walk and not being able to tour and perform anymore. Which meant I also no longer had any income.

That was all just before Covid hit, when the pandemic came along we had another disaster; our area was hit with a forest fire and we had to evacuate. We were quarantined in an emergency shelter for a few weeks during which time I was hospitalized from Covid, but recovered. We were never able to return home and spent the next 6 months homeless couch surfing with some friends. When we finally found a small condo to rent we were over the moon, and got a little over a year in it that we loved. In there I first started aggressively pursuing weight loss on my own after deciding that no matter what the bacteria or the doctors said the only thing I could do myself was try to lose weight to lose the bacteria. I did well too, I was down 40lbs and feeling strength back in my limbs again.

Sadly our landlord’s sold our condo and in our area we have less that 1% vacancy so in spite of nearly 200 applications, messages and calls we were unable to find anything and wound up moving into an old RV. Living in a 30 foot motorhome through a Canadian winter was not easy, for so many reasons life became monumentally difficult and my health plummeted again. I regained the weight, I was sick, sore, my health was worse than prior to losing weight. My mental health was awful and things got dark.

We kept looking for places to move to and after many more applications finally got lucky again and we now live in a basement suite, for which I’m so very grateful. I have been able to renew my focus on health, I’ve done well and I’m currently down 61 lbs from my high of 598 (I believe I was higher at one point but never weighed myself to know). I’m able to walk short distances without my canes again.

The reason I’m making this GoFundMe is because of a couple things; my disability assistance has been cancelled (hopefully temporarily or I’m in huge trouble) and my online community asked me to. Reality is I do need help and I don’t want to be the fool who is too prideful to accept it. My wife works but doesn’t make nearly enough to cover our bills, groceries have gotten much more expensive and healthier foods in Canada are even more expensive still. I need help financially to make rent, to afford food, to allow me to continue focusing on my weight loss. My hope is to be able to lose enough weight that I can go back to work. I have experience in retail, as a painter, I have skills that are employable but currently lack the health to do much.

So that’s my goal! The number is an absolute guess because I had to put something, $5000 is actually only a little higher than 3 months rent for our basement suite but I didn’t know what else to put.

thanks for reading all of this, and if you’re from my Threads account or Instagram, thank you already for being a part of my community. I’m

very fortunate to have a community of people Al rooting for my success with weight loss and health rebuilding, it means the world to me.

If you have the means and the freedom to help me thank you for considering it, please don’t feel pressure if it’s going to put you in a precarious financial position! I know times aren’t easy for many folks right now, my struggles need not make anyone else struggle.

Weight loss is hard, consider helping me make it easier.

-Al