Man loses 200 pounds to enlist in the Air Force

When Ethan Cobb graduated from high school and started college, he felt that his life lacked purpose. Since his grandfather had served in the Air Force, he decided he wanted to enlist to find a sense of duty.

But Cobb weighed 398 pounds at the time. In order to join the military, he needed to lose nearly half his body weight. He accepted the challenge, and over the course of two years he dropped about 200 pounds so he could ship to Air Force Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.

Now an airman first class, Cobb will graduate from tech school on Tuesday after more than two months of training to become a heavy aircraft integrated avionics specialist. He said his next assignment will be at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota.

On the day he graduated from basic training in March, Cobb’s mother tapped him on the shoulder per Air Force tradition and gave a speech about how much he had gone through to arrive at that moment.

“It really set in that I had done it, and I’d finished the whole journey — not finished, but gotten to that goal,” Cobb, 21, told Task & Purpose. “It’s never finished, but I had gotten to the goal I had been looking forward to for years.”

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To lose so much weight, Cobb completely changed his diet. His main issue was eliminating binge eating. While he found he was able to eat less overall, cravings for unhealthy foods proved to be difficult to overcome. Thankfully, his mother helped him avoid chips, candy, ice cream, and other snacks.

Cobb also began introducing exercise into his routine. He started by taking a job at a car wash that forced him to walk around all day, and he worked his way up to exercising at least four days per week.

He found that running was one of the most effective ways to lose weight, although it was extremely difficult at first.

“It was horrible,” Cobb said. “The first couple days I would go out there and you’d run down the road and turn around and go back home because it sucked. But then you start getting better and you start realizing that you can do it, and the more you do it, the better you get at it.”

After losing between 50 and 75 pounds, Cobb spoke to an Air Force recruiter about possibly joining, but he said he was turned away because he was still well above the service’s weight requirements.

Undeterred, Cobb doubled down on losing more weight. He later met with another Air Force recruiter, who was much more supportive and who asked him to keep her informed of his progress.

“I would text her and tell her I’m getting closer, and then she would start helping me do paperwork,” Cobb said. “She really just believed that I could actually do it.”

By the time Cobb enlisted in the Air Force, he weighed 197 pounds, and he shed roughly 20 more pounds during training. He said that successfully losing so much weight to become an airman has given him the confidence that he can accomplish difficult tasks.

“It really showed me that there are things that I can do that I could only ever imagine a long time ago,” Cobb said.

Even though he had setbacks during his 2-year effort to lose weight, Cobb said he kept to his diet and exercise regimen because he knew that if he joined the Air Force “it would open a lot of doors for me,” he said.

“Every day I got one step closer to being that better version of myself,” Cobb said.