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