Steve Vaught is the fat man in “The Fat Man Walking,” and Steve Vaught is a man with a mission. Well, three missions, actually. He intends to a) walk across America, to b) lose weight, and c) take back control of his life.

And he’s sharing his mission, and his milestones and misses, with the world (or at least the web) as he chronicles his journey on The Fat Man Walking Web site.

His site starts out with this forthright explanation: “My Name is Steve Vaught, (born Stephen James Liller in Youngstown, Ohio). I am a 39 year old, happily married father of two great kids and I have a pretty good life here in Southern California. You would think that I would be happy because of these things, but I am not. I am not happy because I am fat and being fat makes every day unhappy.”

After training for a few weeks starting in March, Vaught started his walk across the United States on Sunday, April 10th. His first day he walked nine miles and, he explains in the day-by-day walk journal on his site, “Starting out is definitely the hardest part. First, it takes a while to really get warmed up and secondly, because your head is still busy with thoughts of things going on in the real world.”

As of the writing of this article, July 23rd, Vaught has made it as far as…

[Continue reading The Fat Man Walking Chronicles: Steve Vaught Loses Weight And Inspires Thousands Across The Web]