Recently returning to the gym for the first time post-surgery, John has now spoken about his long journey and his battle to overcome a dangerous relationship with food.
"It's one thing to be obese and it's another thing when you reach morbid obesity," he said. "When I was about 20 years old I tried to go to the doctor and they couldn't weigh me. So they found a fish market where I lived in Florida and I had to get weighed on a commercial scale in the back of a fish market.
"There were people there and we had to explain why we were there but I have no recollection of any of those interactions — I think I just completely blocked it out."
It took a long time for the Florida native, who now lives in Japan with his navy wife, to break his dangerous food habits — something he fully committed to only after becoming engaged to his high school sweetheart, Caila.
He said: "Looking back at my eating habits, whenever there was a bad situation stemming from my parents' divorce we would get upset and my mum's answer was, 'OK, let's go to a supermarket and pick up an extra cake for dessert tonight.'"
These habits continued into his teen years, when he used food as a coping mechanism to deal with his dad passing away from cancer when John was just 18. Within a year of his father becoming sick, John shot from 172kg to a staggering 226kg — putting him in the category of morbidly obese.
"I started skipping all of my college classes," he said. "Every day when I was supposed to be going to college I would go to a fast food place, put on sports radio and just drive around aimlessly eating three to four meals-worth of fast food."
Gaining this massive amount of weight took a toll on John's life, causing him to break several couches and chairs, and even two toilets just by sitting down.
"I didn't fly for a period of 15 years because it just would not have been possible," he said. At his heaviest, John says he was over and above 245kg — though, he doesn't know an exact number because after the fish market episode, he stopped weighing himself.
It wasn't until he became engaged to Caila, who he had known since they were 12, that he started taking weight loss seriously.
He said: "Even though Caila loved me as I was, and she was ready to commit to marrying me at 245kg, I was like, 'There is no way that I can, in good conscience, drag this woman through the difficulties that I am going to go through the rest of my life if I don't lose weight.'"
After seeing an advert on Facebook for The Camp Transformation Centre in San Diego — where he lived at the time — John threw out all his junk food and went along to the first session.
The program promised attendees they would lose 9kg in six weeks, but John soon excelled, losing the initial 9kg after just week three. He said: "Then it was like, 'OK well I will see what else I can lose,' and I ended up losing like 14kg in that first six weeks."
After 15 months, John had dropped an unprecedented 135kg — a record for the centre.
After his success at the gym, John was left with a new problem: excess skin.
Before the surgery, his wife Caila said: "I think his loose skin affects him in a lot of different ways. The surgery is just going to improve his overall quality of life. He's finally going to feel completely free — there's not going to be any baggage from his obesity."
The 10-hour procedure was completed in March and saw the bulk of the loose skin on John's torso and arms removed — though he will still require further surgery in the future to remove the skin on his lower body.
Returning to the gym in May this year, for the first time post-surgery, John was able to complete his intense workout without the loose skin and compression shirts weighing him down.
John still has some recovery to go through, and has to wear compression garments to help the post-surgery swelling go down over the coming year — as well as getting used to his new physique.
"Having the skin gone has been a weird experience," he said. "Now it's becoming a great experience, but for a while it was kind of weird.
"I remember the first week my arm skin was gone but I could still feel it. Like, when I move my arm, my brain was feeling the skin was still there. I have to check it or like my wife said she still catches me adjusting myself and there is nothing there to adjust. "I was remarking to my wife just the other day, that it's not lost on me how I can bend down to tie my shoelaces without thinking about it — without having to find a place to sit down and angle my feet high enough to tie them."
"If you told me two years ago that I would be the size I am now and I could fit into a medium shirt, I would tell you you're crazy.
"The coolest thing is that it doesn't really matter what your circumstances are, you can get out of it. I can 100 per cent can say if I can do it, anybody can do it."
