Photo By Master Sgt. Peter Morrison | Pvt. Brandon Millwood, a food service specialist with the 120th Regional Support...... read more read more
AUGUSTA, Maine - Small steps down a long road still lead you to your destination. For one young man, the Maine Army National Guard was his destination, and the long road ahead of him was his excess weight.
“At 5'7" and 291 pounds, I was too heavy, my recruiter said I needed to lose about 80 pounds in order to enlist,” said Pvt. Brandon Millwood, a food service specialist with the 120th Regional Support Group.
The young private from Auburn was discouraged.
“I mean 80 pounds, that’s just a massive number,” but Millwood saw the weight loss like he sees a lot of things in his life; find motivation in the small steps, the small victories. He didn’t focus on the total weight loss, but the smaller goals of finding fun ways to work out and feeling healthy.
He hopes to work for Habitat for Humanity, and sees it in the same way.
“The overarching goal is to make the world a better place, but in the near term, I can see that house and say, I helped build that.”
Changing the world, like changing your weight starts one house at a time or one pound at a time.
During his first visit to the recruiter’s office, Staff Sgt. John Gardner noted Millwood as a smart kid and offered to check in on him and try to keep him motivated. He would call and text him for motivation and to track his progress.
“He came back in after the first couple of months and he only lost a couple of pounds, nothing major and I said, ‘Look, if you really want to do this, you really need to lose this weight.’ I think it took him the first couple of months to find his motivation, but when he found it, he really found it.”
Millwood said he left the office, after that visit, kinda bummed out.
“After that, I kinda got a little mad and I wasn’t gonna let this one little stupid thing like my weight stop me. So, I went out and I got a gym membership and I started working out, and I started eating right.”
As a self-proclaimed nerd, Millwood found ways to stay motivated by trying new types of fitness, his favorites being hero-themed workouts, workouts that simulated heroic acts like running and using weights to imitate rescuing someone from a vehicle or another dangerous scenario.
His mother, Lisa Millwood, started to notice more than just the physical changes in her son as she continued to have to buy smaller jeans.
“Brandon has become a more confident and problem-solving individual. He appears to have more empathy for others and is able to be more focused on completing goals,” she said.
She thanks Gardner for all the support and guidance he offered her son.
“He and the National Guard have had such a remarkable positive impact on my son. I am amazed and very grateful.”
One of the fun ways to get fit he found, was the sledgehammer workout where he would slam the sledgehammer against a tire for repetitions, and though it was fun, he found it was not for him, so he moved on to the next thing.
“There are still times when I am tired and I don’t want to work out, and I think, man I just need to push through it. I am allowed to stumble every once in a while as long as I keep moving toward a goal.”
Millwood is now serving in the Maine Army National Guard with a weight loss of over 100 pounds and hopes to become a sergeant or even the next higher level staff sergeant in his first term with the Guard. Again, he likes to see the ultimate goal and works the small steps to get there.
The soft-spoken but driven young man remembers taking a walk the night before he left for basic training, he wanted to clear his head and get ready for the new task at hand when he was struck with the thought, “This is the first major thing in my life that I have worked for and achieved.”
He said, “I was very proud.”
He didn’t give up. He kept moving toward his destination. He shattered his old goals and set new ones, they are different outcomes and different paths but still small steps toward a bigger dream. “I’d like to work in a kitchen and open my own place one day,” said Millwood.
| Date Taken: | 09.17.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.17.2014 14:33 |
| Story ID: | 142434 |
| Location: | AUGUSTA, ME, US |
| Hometown: | AUBURN, ME, US |
| Web Views: | 613 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Overcoming: A weight loss journey, by MSG Peter Morrison, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT