text: Close Get email notifications on Sheila Mullowney daily! 
   
   Your notification has been saved. 
   
   There was a problem saving your notification. 
   
   Whenever Sheila Mullowney posts new content, you'll get an email delivered to your inbox with a link. 
   
   Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. ||||| To get the latest updates please visit FatGuyAcrossAmerica on Facebook as we update daily and this site updates biweekly. 
   
   I blame the Proclaimers I really do. I will be riding a bicycle from east coast to west coast for a few reasons: 
   
   1. To prove things to my wife and my love. 
   
   2. To take back my health and to lose the pounds I have collected over the years. 
   
   3. I was 567 pounds when I started, I got below 480 during the process. i've had success and failures but i will not give up. I've had an especially rough time for the last year and gained back plus more Topping at 600. I'm ashamed and FIGHTING again to overcome and finally beat this, and i will. 
   
   4. I will be blogging and video blogging the whole trip and interviewing people along the way. 
   
   5. I will be doing cool things seeing cool places and meeting cool people. Rebuilding my soul and EXPERIENCING everything along with riding my bicycle. 
   
   6. After I complete my trip I will write a book on the experience. 
   
   For now the journey is unfolding at home with medical intervention and hormone therapy, working with a trainer and therapy. Once medically released I will start my trip over and attempt the whole trip again. 
   
   at this point i am trying to self fund the trip with sponsors and sales of our products on this page, personal funds from work and the occasional donation. All funds are used for the process WHETHER its a hotel to a tire to medicine, whatever is needed for the goal. ||||| TIVERTON, R.I. (July 23, 2015) — A 560-pound man from Danville is biking across the United States in hopes of losing weight and saving his marriage. 
   
   Eric Hites started his journey two weeks ago in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Thus far, he’s traveled 90 miles and he’s already lost 60 pounds, but a bent rim on his bicycle has kept him in Tiverton, Rhode Island since late last week 
   
   The Newport Daily News reports that Newport Bicycle is outfitting him with a new bike that can withstand his weight so he can continue his journey. 
   
   Hites, who currently wears size 70 pants and a 10X T-shirt, says he’s always been a big person. 
   
   “I hit 40 and I said, ‘I’ve got to change this,’” Hites told The Newport Daily News. 
   
   He hopes to lose hundreds of pounds, and he says he’ll be happier and healthier if he can get down to 300 pounds. 
   
   Hites has a website called Fat Guy Across America where people can follow his journey. ||||| When 560-pound Eric Hites was dropped off by his dad on the side of the road in Massachusetts with his $170 bike last month, nobody believed that he’d actually start pedaling across the entire country. But he had nothing to lose. 
   
   And he wanted his wife back. 
   
   At 40 years old and weighing more than a quarter-ton, Hites hit a wall in life. His estranged wife, already a widow, said she didn’t want to repeat the past. He couldn’t hold a job, in part because of his weight, and prospects in his hometown in Danville, Indiana, were scarce. Friends and loved ones were tired of his excuses, and so was he. 
   
   “I was just failing as a human being,” said Hites, a DJ, pizza maker, telemarketer. “You name it, I’ve done it.” 
   
   Today: Hites is 60 pounds lighter and 55 miles into the journey of his life. And a man who described himself as a miserable failure just a few months ago now finds himself in a story becoming bigger than, well, himself. 
   
   “Everyone seems connected to this story,” he said from a tent outside Bliss Congregational Church in Tiverton, a coastal town in Rhode Island where he’s been on a layover for more than a week. “Everyone is coming forward and wants to be a part of it.” 
   
   When he wobbled into town, his rims were warped from all the bumps in the road against his immense weight. His spirits were a bit dashed, his meager funds were dwindling and any sane soul would say he should probably call it quits. 
   
   “I get thinking a lot and parts of me scream ‘What are you doing? Go home you idiot. But I know I’m not going to do that.” 
   
   With not much cash left and a busted bike, he was thinking about rigging up a harness and pulling his trailer of 300 pounds of stuff like a horse, feet on the ground, heading forward. 
   
   From a post inside a Dunkin’ Donuts, Hites has been doing what he’s done since he first pushed off from the side of the road in Falmouth, MA, and that’s telling his story. A story of love for a woman, determination to shed not just weight, but the self-loathing and sadness that comes with it. 
   
   ‘Bigger than just me’ 
   
   It didn’t take long for word to spread, and on Friday, Hites will set off once again on a brand new bike donated by Newport Bicycle, supplies donated by the Tiverton Police Department, and a growing online community of thousands rooting for him and inspired by his story. 
   
   “I’m just trying to lose weight and build a new future for me and my family,” Hites said. “But now, it’s grown bigger than just me.” 
   
   Like many people who arrive at crossroads in life, Hites knew something had to change. And he was determined to finally follow through. After decades of falling short of expectations, it was time to prove everyone wrong — including himself. 
   
   A few months into the separation, he called his wife and said, “I’m going to change. I’m going to get my health back and give us a future.” 
   
   “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she replied. 
   
   She thought he was all talk, as usual, but he was driven in part by a song by The Proclaimers: “500 Miles.” 
   
   “I told her, ‘I don’t think I can walk 500 miles, but I’ll ride my bike that far just to prove my love for you,’” Hites said. “’While on the road I’ll find somewhere for us to move, out of our crappy town, to start our life over again.’” 
   
   He started hitting the gym to prepare. He picked what he thought was a sturdy bike. He rigged a trailer to haul 300 pounds of stuff. And on June 10, after a long ride from Indiana, he was alone on the side of the road, watching his dad drive away. 
   
   And he was ready to pedal across the United States. 
   
   Overcoming obstacles 
   
   The initial goings were a slog. It turns out he got a bike with the wrong type of suspension and less-than-ideal gearing, so much of his energy was wasted. He labored to make progress, sleeping on the side of bike paths, in a hostel and sometimes resorting to a hotel room if no kind stranger offered a place. He posted his progress on his blog and on Facebook, though not many people noticed at first. 
   
   He kept pushing ahead as best as he could. 
   
   It didn’t take long for his wife to take notice. After two weeks, she realized that he’d actually meant what he said. 
   
   “When she realized I was gone, that I had left and actually was doing what I said, she said it pretty much was the most romantic thing,” Hites said. 
   
   Along the way he’s met artists, shopkeepers, craftspeople, tourists, young children, old men and women. He’s fought rain, heat, met up with a personal trainer in Martha’s Vineyard and attended church services in places of worship dotting the route. One night, he nearly lost all his charging gear and his wife’s diamond ring, but a friendly police officer saved the day and found it after multiple trips. 
   
   It has been lonely and there were occasions, “I get thinking a lot and parts of me scream ‘What are you doing? Go home you idiot,’” he wrote on June 27. ”But I know I’m not going to do that, but it still makes me feel like I’m never going to make it home, or hit my goal, or that I will fail and be a laughing stock and lose what I hold so dear.” 
   
   When he rolled into Tiverton about a week ago, Hites was facing yet another crossroads. It looked like he had won his wife back, but his bike was broken and the Herculean effort ahead was no less daunting than when he began. He could have stopped. 
   
   Afterall, he did win his woman back. 
   
   Community steps up 
   
   Things, though, have taken on a life of their own. His posts on Facebook made the rounds and messages started to pour in. Even after Newport Bicycle offered to give him a bike with a suspension set up for his frame, offers and messages kept pouring in. Meanwhile, his dwindling GoFundMe account started to balloon in value, increasing from a few hundred to nearly $3,500. 
   
   “I’ve had offers for 60 bikes now,” he said. “Everybody came through.” 
   
   By Wednesday, his story was starting to get national attention. The Beach Body network of personal trainers is working to launch a national campaign to get people moving with Hites as he pedals his way across the nation. 
   
   “When she realized I was gone, that I had left and actually was doing what I said, she said it pretty much was the most romantic thing.” 
   
   And most profound for Hites are the messages he has been getting from people who find themselves exactly where he was a few months ago: stuck, alone and overweight. 
   
   “This trip has so many meanings for me and now it seems to have so many meanings for everyone else,” he said. “This is my job now. To make it the whole way.” 
   
   As his coach said, “This is your job until you’re done. You job is to talk to people and do all of these things.” 
   
   And even if he wanted to quit, he can’t now. For a man who set off to save his life, he now finds himself the driving force for others to save their own. 
   
   “Everyone is counting on me now,” Hites said. “I don’t have an exact route or a plan. I’m taking it day by day, sort of letting myself randomly choose which roads to go on.” 
   
   
   
   Whatever route Hites takes, he’s blazing a trail. This “Fat Guy” has found a path that leads to a better future, and not just for himself. ||||| ... 
   
   short minutes. Thank you so much for your help this morning. 
   
   Newport Bicycle has amazing customer service. Helped me get my kiddos bike up and running in a few
target: – Eric Hites recently hit 40 and decided it was time to make some serious lifestyle changes. Having reached 560 pounds thanks to soda and a whole lot of sitting around, the DJ says both his health and his marriage are at stake, reports the Newport Daily News. Unfortunately, after getting off to a good start in Falmouth, Mass., (Tiverton-Little Compton Patch reports his dad dropped him and his $170 bike "on the side of the road") and losing 60 pounds in those first two weeks, the Indiana man hit a bump in the road, reports Fox 59: He bent the rim of one of his wheels in Tiverton, RI. "I thought it would take four months, but [having started in June] I’m only in Rhode Island," he says. Fortunately the owner of nearby Newport Bicycle, who says it "seems like a really good cause," built him a new bike by fitting a frame with mountain bike wheels that should support his weight all the way to California; he'll reportedly hit the road again today. Having first made a name for himself when he published the cookbook Everybody Loves Ramen, a compilation of 50 recipes from his college days (he studied graphic design but never graduated), Hites hopes to publish again, this time about his journey. He's traveling with his gear in tow, and writes on his website Fat Guy Across America that first and foremost he's got "to prove things to my wife and love." Patch reports the two were estranged when he set off, and that his wife, who was widowed once before, didn't want to repeat the experience. She has reportedly told him his quest is "the most romantic thing." Hites says he doesn't know his exact weight now (he dresses in size 70 pants), but he may weigh himself on the big scale at the junkyard up the road before getting back on the saddle. He says he hopes to drop down to a chubby but healthier 300 pounds. (When it comes to marriage, this is apparently the best age to wed.)