Sticking to his Goals

For the past six months I have been following the progress of a local teenager's goal of losing weight. Sophomore Alfredo Ortega, 16, got a slap of reality back in December 2008 when his doctor found signs of diabetes and serious liver problems due to his obesity. From that point on, Alfredo decided he was going to make a change. Tipping the scales at 371 lbs be began a rigorous work out routine with his family members and continued to follow it daily since. Each month we would do an update of his progress. This week marked the end of our coverage of him when he reached his goal weight of 250 lbs. It was pretty incredible to watch him transform like this. When I first started shooting him he was incredibly self conscious about his image and would never smile. As you can tell from his big grin above, he has found his smile. When asked what he was going to do next he said he was off to Disneyland with his family. He earned it.