Tiger Greene - Sacking Obesity: The Team Tiger Game Plan for Kids Who Want to Lose Weight, Feel Great, and Win on the Playing Field and in Life

This book is dedicated to the Team Tiger Ohana. The Team Tiger Ohana is a family. It consists of everybody who has helped me continue and go forward with my journey. From all the experts at our camps, the volunteers, the campers, Coach Z and his family, and of course my family. Zack, Kaila, Michael, my mom, my dad, all of my uncles and aunts and grandmas and grandpas. All of the people listed here have given me so much support not only at the start of my journey, but to pursue it into what it is today. Thank you so much everyone. I love you all so much for your support and encouragement.

Ohana forever

When you look up journey in the dictionary, you find this definition: the act of traveling from one place to another. Between December 8, 2009, and now, Ive traveled pretty far from where I started. I guess you could say Ive traveled from sickness to health, shyness to self-confidence, follower to leader. I also lost a lot of weight, which is cool, but whats even cooler is that, by taking this journey, I found out who I am.

I wrote this book to help you get started on your journey. You can take that first step anytime you want. But before you go, you need to know where youre starting from and where you want to go. To see the path I traveled, turn the page

Lets do this!

Its a cool Saturday morning in April, but they say its always sunny and seventy in the Georgia Dome, and thats where I am: in the tunnel with NFL great Marcus Stroud and five other NFL playersBrian Finneran and Mike Peterson of the Falcons, Drayton Florence of the Buffalo Bills, Byron Leftwich of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Brian Kozlowski, a former Falcon and Redskin.

Ive dreamed about this moment for so many years. About sitting in this exact tunnel with my Falcons jersey on, waiting for my name to be announced so I can take the field for my first NFL game. Well, here I am, waiting for my name to be announced. But Im thirteen and instead of a Falcons jersey, Im wearing a Team Tiger Sacking Obesity T-shirt.

Okay, so the moment isnt exactly the way I dreamed it. But I couldnt feel any prouder. In a few minutes, almost three hundred overweight kids and their families will begin the journey I started a little over a year ago.

Back then, I was a two-hundred-fifty-pound kid eating his way through life. No self-confidence. No clear destination. Today, Im fifty pounds lighter. I actually enjoy wearing nice clothes. Im off all the medications I had to take for the health issues my weight had caused. I can run laps at football practice. And I just dont think about food the way I used to. Im a kid with a mission: to help big kids all over the world turn their health and their lives around. That mission was all I lived for. It put me in this tunnel.

LOL. I have tunnel vision!

Its funny, but true. I was totally focused on changing my life and on that mission. My every waking moment was about turning my dream into a reality. Nothing was gonna stop me. Not how bad my knees hurt after those first few runs with Mom. Not those first days of eating healthyI didnt think Id survive on such small portions. But that tunnel vision pushed me across the finish line of my first 5K, and then my first 10K. Dad waited for me at the end with tears in his eyes (and on his cheeks, and on his shirtbasically, he was a blubbering mess).

#66 The Green Machine

What a difference a year makes.

I look out over the field. Onstage at midfield, our master of ceremonies tests the sound system. My coach and friend Andrew ZumwaltCoach Z to the hundreds of kids hes helped, including meruns around like a crazy man, helping volunteers set up the stations. All over the field, the doctors and nutritionists Ive met, who are here to teach and show the kids and their families how to make healthy changes, set up chairs.

But I wont give you or any of the kids who come to my camps any boring lectures about childhood obesity. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it. When you go on a journey, the trip should be fun and the food should be good. So in the end zone closest to me, Shane Thompson, my friend and founder of Shanes Rib Shack, and his group get things ready for lunch. (Healthy food from the best barbecue place in Atlantatalk about a dream come true!)

Lines of boys and girls go out for passes thrown by our volunteers. Some make awesome catches and break out their best touchdown routines. They might be a little achy tonight, but Im betting theyll feel more happy than sore. Today, theyll learn stuff about themselves they didnt know. Do things they didnt think they could do. Come to believe that they can do anything they set their minds to.

As they go long, the kids pass right in front of the tunnel. Some see me, and our eyes meet. Theres something in their eyes; I know that look. Its that little spark of hope that thisthis doctor, this diet, this workout routinemight change your life. But youre afraid to trust that spark. Afraid that, like so many times before, nothing will change. And instead of igniting passion and change, that spark will just kind of smolder.

Some kids smile as they run back down the field, and I smile and nod to let them know I get it, I get them, thats why theyre here. Im gonna ignite that spark. Together with the NFL guys, Coach Z, and the doctors and nutritionists who are here to support Team Tiger, Ill turn excuses into opportunities, fear into knowledge, and the mistakes of the past into better choices in the future. Well start their journeys together. Today.

The kids head across the dome to the tunnel on the other side, where the visiting teams take the field against the Falcons. They form a long line that disappears into the tunnel.

Oh yeah. Dad and I planned this part of the camp just this morning. Theyre about to make their entranceto take the field for real.

The emcee announces the first kid, his voice swooping across the field. A girl, maybe ten years old, charges out of the tunnel, high-fiving the line of cheering volunteers and parents. At the end, she does her best take the field dance. I can see her grin from sixty yards away.

I watch them all take the field, past that cheering crowd, one by one, all 287 of them. My name will be called last. Im used to it. Until a year ago, I was always picked last in playground games. No one wanted the big kid on their team. But today, being last is a great thing. It means these kids are first. Maybe for the first time ever, they get to take center stage.

The Jumbotron, which had been showing our sponsors video loop, goes black. The kids gather around the stage, and the volunteers set up two lines from my tunnel to midfield. Then the huge screen bursts into lightphotos of Marcus and me from Team Tigers flyer. Then, blazing on the screen, my motto, Yes We CanFollow Me, with my name underneath. My name, on the Georgia Dome Jumbotron. Yeah, baby!

The emcee calls our station leaders to the stage. My heart pounds. That old dream comes back: Im about to take the field.