In 2001, I lived in New Jersey. I had only recently returned from a Photoshop conference put on by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Now, back then, my freelance web design business was in full swing. I had just landed a new client and was busy immersing myself in continuing education. Business conferences, by and large, are not diet friendly places. One eats conveniently, quickly and unceremoniously.

If you are dining with a newfound network, chances are, you opt for conventional meals, unless you are in New Orleans where no meal is conventional. But I wasn’t in New Orleans. I was in Tampa, Florida.

This was a city that was on on no one’s “Healthiest and Finest Dining Lifestyles” list. And besides, I really didn’t care about eating healthy (or fine). I didn’t diet or workout, never did and had no interest in setting foot in a gym. I was heavy and didn’t even know it.

Blissfully ignorant and seemingly content -- temporarily for it was here, in Tampa that I won my first web design award.

Naturally, I was immensely pleased with that accomplishment. Perhaps like with so many creative projects, when you receive the acclaim you so desperately seek, you shelve the project -- or at least I do -- and move onto something else. Awards notwithstanding, I lost interest in Great Hera dot com and was now fully immersed in my new suburban life; my first home in the sleepy college town of South Orange, New Jersey.

There was really nothing special about South Orange. True, it was (and remains) the home of Seton Hall University, which had received brief, international fame following the tragic loss of many of its students in the Pan Am Lockerbie disaster (thirty eight victims were from New Jersey). But other than that, it was nothing special.

South Orange was a typical New Jersey town; it had majestic, maple trees that changed into a myriad of colors in Autumn. Cobble stoned streets were aplenty and there were some wonderful three-star restaurants -- oh, it was 37 minutes by train to Manhattan. All in all, a perfect place to live if you worked in mid-town New York, had a family to raise and owned a Volvo in which to get to and from soccer practice.

None of these things I had, nor did I want. Admittedly, at that time in my life, I did not know what I wanted. I just somehow knew that I was seeking something greater. Little did I anticipate that I would find it while grocery shopping in a Whole Foods supermarket, five minutes outside of South Orange.

This Whole Foods was in the town of Millburn, New Jersey (45 minutes by train to midtown Manhattan!). It was a recently opened store and had a great, big parking lot with lovely hedges and shrubs with pretty pink and yellow flowers lining the entrance and surrounding the "Please Return Shopping Carts" sign. A delightful place to nourish one's appetite for organic living. A craze I had not participated in, nor cared to. This particular Whole Foods was purely pragmatic. You see, it was the closest and most convenient supermarket, and when one returns from a trip, chances are you need milk, eggs, bread and Honey Nut Cheerios. So what if the eggs were organic and the cereal was full of fiber, it would be a typical suburban adventure (read: chore) for me in this new town.

I paid for my groceries and proceeded to leave through the automatic double, sliding doors, but what was that little sign blowing in the late afternoon, end of summer breeze? Motion Fitness. This Way.

Motion Fitness, it turns out, was the name of a gym. It had not yet been built, but would be located upstairs from Whole Foods. I had nothing pressing to do (I never work on Mondays), so I entered the elevator car (for a one story ride!) and pressed on 2. “Ding” but then the doors re-opened and in walked a tall, stately, young blonde carrying her late lunch in a Whole Foods take away brown, paper bag. We made no eye contact. She stared at the numbers at the top of the elevator doors and I stared at her and wondered what I was doing there.

The doors opened onto the second floor and there it was, Motion Fitness, a mere construction site. Nothing more other than some exposed beams, un-housed, incandescent lighting and one solitary Formica desk in front of a simple, black, swivel desk chair. The blonde sat in that chair and her name was Stacie. She worked for the soon-to-be completed Motion Fitness. With her persuasive and delightful smile, Stacie convinced me to join a gym no one had heard of, was not part of a chain and worse, did not even exist! But I signed the contract committing me for one year. Maybe I would lose weight and maybe, just maybe have a “Men’s Health” cover model body...

Back home, I stared at the contract, and wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into. Me, workout? At a gym? I can't even run a half mile. And what about those machines? Those great, big, mysterious machines? And the people there? Surely they were all meat heads! "Good Lord," I thought, "I have a huge mortgage, now. I can't afford this!" I put the contract on the new refrigerator and quietly finished my Monday.

We all know what happened on the following September day. That was that and nothing else mattered. Two months went by. And then, in November, Stacie rang. I let it go to voice mail. Her message was simple enough, "How was I? How was my family? Give me a call."

The first time I started actually going to a gym would be in November of 2001. It wasn't easy. My first (free) training session was a disaster. I all but had a massive stroke while peddling on the stationary bike (and even more distressing, I showed up to work out in my Banana Republic jeans). But I persevered and would reward myself with a shake and a chocolate bran muffin from the Whole Foods, downstairs.

Inevitably, I gave up the gym after two months. I took a month reprieve. Perhaps it was intuition or perhaps I somehow hated “giving up.” I returned in the dead of winter with the drive and determination to now “work on my abs!” whatever that meant and however I thought I could. Obviously and clearly visibly not doing a good job, a trainer approached me. Brad (his real name) and I trained for six months and would later become friends. He would eventually drive to Los Angeles to live with his sister, Laura from That 70s Show.

Now, by this time, I was so entrained in my working out and exercising that I began to change my diet as well. Whole Foods, naturally was now not only practical, but logical. The next 15 months, I followed a diligent diet and exercise plan. My life was simple, but structured; work on my freelance web design business during the day and then hit the gym in the evenings. Nothing earth shattering here, but I did have my goal (Men's Health cover model!) and as secretly laughable and presumably unrealistic as that sounded to people, my two trainers were proud of my gains (and loss!). They coached me to continue.

So it was in June 2003, almost two years since I first set foot in Motion Fitness, I would take a vacation, get away from New Jersey. I needed to go somewhere. I was so bored. Where could I go? Somewhere different. Somewhere amazing. Somewhere sexy. I booked a flight to Miami. A trip that would unknowingly change my outlook and ultimately my life -- again.

I moved to Miami that December. I found an apartment in the heart of South Beach and as luck (or coincidence) would have it, mere blocks from my new home was a Whole Foods supermarket. It was there, at this Whole Foods, as I was entering, one Thursday afternoon, that a model scout approached me and handed me his card. And, my new adventures would begin as a male model.