I’ve always struggled with my weight.

I’ve written about it in this column. I’ve done a whole series with fitness and nutrition experts in the past, but 14 months ago, my weight started to creep up to 280 pounds at 5 feet 10 inches. I was almost 30 percent body fat.

Early the previous summer, I was down to 245 but in a completely unhealthy manner. I was living off cream of corn and fat free baked beans.

Later in the summer, I started to put back on the weight. I was eating horribly. A lot of fast food. In fact, I can remember the week where I totally took a turn for the worse. My friend Kim and I took a road trip from Denver to St. Louis following the horror rock band Wednesday 13, the solo project of the former lead singer of the Murderdolls. The band had shows in Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis, and we were in tow with backstage passes to Pop’s, the St. Louis venue.

For us, the entire trip was about six days, including two days driving back from eastern Missouri. Fast food was on the menu for every stop. The food was great, but to be loading that kind of fuel into a body that would just sit in a car for the next several hours simply wasn’t good.

And what was worse, I continued to eat that way when I got back. I ate poorly through the anniversary of my mother’s passing, and I ate poorly through the death of my best friend of 17 years, January 2009.

It was a couple months after that when I reached 280 and decided I wasn’t going to get back up to 310 like I had five years earlier — the heaviest I’ve ever been. So, I went to former Mr. Colorado Kent Paul for some coaching.

Fourteen months later, I’m at 235. Let me explain the significance of that number.

The last time I weighed 235 pounds was when I was playing inline hockey twice a week with an additional practice. I didn’t nearly have the muscle mass I have now, approximately 205 pounds. The morning of July 12, I weighed myself getting out of bed, which I do daily, and shed two pounds from the day before.

235 was on the scale. I had to weigh myself twice, because I didn’t believe it. It’d been so long since I’d seen any scale give me that number, about 10 years now. So, given my gained lean muscle mass and now that I’m back at 235, I’m officially in the best fitness of my adult life.

I threw my hands in the air and ran through my apartment — my apologies to the hot girl who lives below me, screaming to world to “suck it.” Tears starting to form in my eyes like I had won the freakin’ Super Bowl.

I called my father and told him. He freaked as well, and he told me to call him again when I hit 230. My goal is 220, and I was hoping to make it for my Aug. 9 birthday. Not sure if there’s enough time for me to do it the healthy way, but I’ll keep it going regardless until I do.

It hasn’t been easy. If fact, it’s been utterly painful. I’ve had to cut out a bunch of food I like. Pizza. Qdoba. Most recently, chocolate animal crackers. Holy crap, those are good.

A lot of people ask me how I’ve been able to do it. There’s a lot of details that a professional trainer and nutritionist can answer for them, but there’s only one reason I can really credit to my slow and steady success, outside of Paul’s coaching. What I put in and do to my body is one of the only things I have total control over.

After a breakup with a girlfriend last year, I started to drift away from my fitness efforts. Paul told me something that has stuck with me. He said that it’s amazing how we tend to allow all these aspects of our lives, which we ultimately have no control over, dictate our actions and emotions and give us reason to ruin the things do have control over.

We can’t control who in our lives pass away, or a relationship ending, etc. But what I do to keep myself healthy is something I can control.

I’ve come to cling to that when life’s bad stuff starts creeping in. The things I can control is what I cuddle up next to frequently. And few people get in between us now.

See you at 220.