When 23-year-old Ulysses Milana walked into his local Army recruitment office last year and expressed his desire to serve his country, recruiters politely told him "thanks but no thanks." Tipping the scales at 330 pounds, the Maine man hardly fit the hardened, muscled Marine Corp stereotype.
It was then apparent to Milana that if he was going to realize his dream of joining the armed forces, he was going to have to drop some serious weight - Jared from Subway kind of weight.
Fast-forward one year and the 190-pound Milana is now on his way to Parris Island, South Carolina to begin Marine boot camp.
So how did the suddenly svelte Private pull it off? It wasn't easy.
After being turned away by both the Army and Navy, Milana turned to the Marines. Thankfully, Marine Staff Sgt. George Monteith took a liking to Milana and offered his assistance in whipping him into shape.
"You can sit there and preach and preach, but if you're not willing to help, then it doesn't lead you to success," told the Lewiston Sun Journal, Milana's hometown paper. "If I say ‘go lose weight and I'll see you in a year,' then what kind of help have I offered to make that happen?"
This wasn't Milana's first stab about being lean and mean. Like many, he had gone down the roads of fad diets and weight loss routines before, all without success.
"All that stuff did nothing for me. It was more a matter of...so, OK, this is what I wanted to do, and I knew what I had to do to get here," Milana told the Sun Journal. "I mean, you can watch all that, but it's like, ‘Yeah, OK.' The hardest part was just getting motivated to do it."
So just how did he pull off losing 140 pounds?
Both Milana and his wife of four years, Latoya, come from military families. Couple that with the fact that Latoya is a health care professional, and the motivation for Milana to get in shape was overwhelming.
"It was really difficult for him at first. He always said, "I'm gonna lose weight.' But I never took him seriously. Then when he started to do it, I told him he needed to cut his portion sizes way down," Latoya told the Sun Journal.
Milana was also pretty frank about the fact that cutting back on some treats was harder than cutting back on others.
"It was really hard. You see all your friends drinking beer, and you're like, ‘Oh man, I want one.'"
In the midst of a workout and diet regiment that would see Milana drop 140 pounds, who could blame him for wanting a distressing cocktail?
With his bags packed for the island Private Joker so memorably described as "an eight week college for the phony-tough and the crazy-brave," Milana is obviously proud of the progress he's made and the goal he's reached, and like a good Marine, he doesn't sugarcoat his speech.
"I just know where I'm at now," he said. "And I always look at my wife and say, ‘If I ever get there again, just kill me.'"
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