199 Pounds in Less than a Year

It started out as one of those typical New Year's resolutions, a friendly -- but spirited -- bet between spouses that likely would be forgotten once the calendar turned to February or March.

This one, though, was far different.

Jay Wornick bet his wife, Angela, on who would lose a higher percentage of weight after the start of this year. The loser had to get a tattoo with the other's name.

Jay Wornick started the bet weighing in at 366 pounds.

By Saturday, the 6-foot-tall man was down to 167 pounds.

So he's dropped 199 pounds in less than a year. And he expected to hit 166 this morning, the loss of a full 200 pounds.

That's more than many of us weigh. And it's more than half of what he weighed last New Year's Day.

Another way to measure his weight loss: his waist has shrunk from 56, to 30-32 now.

Wornick is a Kenmore native, who now lives in Fulton, outside Syracuse. But he and his wife plan to move back to the Buffalo area next summer.

"I'm looking forward to changing people's views of me," he said in a lengthy phone interview. "I'm not Fat Jay anymore. I'm skinny, athletic Jay. I'm ready to bring this positive attitude back to Buffalo."

Since his story was published in the Syracuse Post-Standard two weeks ago, Wornick's story has gone viral, and he appeared recently on "Good Morning America" with Robin Roberts.

Wornick is a 1999 graduate of Kenmore West High School, where he clearly wasn't ostracized as the fat kid, even though he weighed about 270 pounds. In his senior year, he was voted the class clown, the class brown-nose and senior class secretary.

Interesting combination.

He's always been an upbeat, positive guy and a huge eater, who knows his way around the local eating circuit -- Duff's, Mighty Taco, Ted's, Louie's and Anderson's.

It doesn't sound as if any psychological problems sent him to bury his insecurities with food.

"I'm not an emotional eater," he said. "I just ate continuously. It didn't matter what my emotions were."

So what got him into such trouble?

An enormous appetite.

Without exaggerating, Wornick described his typical dinner, before this year.

"I'd eat four cheeseburgers, with buns and cheese, a pound of fries, a couple of Ho-Hos or Twinkies and five or six sodas," he said. "That would be a typical dinner."

And enough to hold him over until his late-night snacks.

Wornick said he drank 14 or 15 Mountain Dews a day ("my drug of choice") and ate fast food seven days a week.

The bet took shape late last year, when Angela Wornick came up with the idea, a cute wager with an ulterior motive.

"She wanted to get me to lose weight, really," he said. "I was out of control."

And Wornick knew it. He had just turned 30, with a wife and three kids: Marcus, now 9; Allyson, 8; and Jayce, 4. What if he turned 40 and weighed 400 or 450?

"I said it's now or never," he remembered.

The calendar turned to Jan. 1. Time to weigh himself. But their scale went up to only 330 pounds. So when Wornick got on, the scale said "Error."

On New Year's Day, he went out and bought a new scale.

"It said 366 pounds, and I almost fell over," he said. "I always told everybody I weighed 300 pounds."

There would be nothing gradual about Wornick's new diet.

"I turned everything off on Jan. 1," he said. "There was no fast food, no soda, no pizza. It was like flipping a switch. I don't know where I got the willpower."

With a combination of healthier foods and sensible portions, he cut his daily calorie intake drastically, to 1,500-2,000, down from around 7,000-8,000. Fruits and vegetables, lean meats, high-fiber foods and lots of water replaced his daily menu of fast-food fare.

By Feb. 1, he had lost 40 pounds.

That day, he joined the Fulton YMCA. The first day, he "ran" a mile and a half on the treadmill, in 30 minutes.

"I felt like I just ran a marathon."

But then he branched out from the treadmill, to the bike and the elliptical, before starting weight training to build muscle. Now he runs about four miles in that 30 minutes, and he does an hour of cardio and an hour of weights six days a week.

"I take Sundays off for the Bills," said the man who sports a Buffalo Bills tattoo. "I'm a hard-core Bills fan."

Wornick was clear about what's kept him going.

"The results," he said. "You see the reading on the scale every day, and that keeps you going. There's nothing more motivating."

It's been tempting for Wornick to set his sights on 166 pounds, a 200-pound loss.

"I don't need to get to 166, but I really want to get to 166, to set an example for my kids," he told The Buffalo News.

Then he wants to put on 15 pounds or so of lean muscle, eventually settling in as a rock-solid 185 to 190 pounds.

On Monday night, Angela Wornick, a licensed practical nurse, paid off the bet, getting a tattoo on her back with his initials, JMW II. Showing what a good sport he is, he had the tattoo artist put "Angela" on his left biceps.

"I won the bet, but I wanted to show her I'm just as dedicated to her as she is to me," he said.

Wornick knows how much weight he's lost. But some old habits die hard.

"I'm way more positive, upbeat and energetic," he said. "But when I walk in the aisle in a movie theater, I still feel like the big guy, so I turn to the side. It's just instinct. I used to walk through a crowd, at 366 pounds, and everybody got out of the way. It was almost like people were intimidated by my size."

Now he wants to use his former size to help others.

Currently unemployed, he's a full-time student at Cayuga Community College, majoring in history. He wants to be a personal trainer and/or nutritionist.

"I really want to focus on morbidly obese people, who are where I was," he said. "I can relate to them. I know what it's like.

"It's still fresh in my mind."