Donald Tiller

When Donald Tiller was 11, his mother became disabled, and he began helping with cooking meals for her and his three siblings. Back then, Tiller, who grew up in West Pullman, made the standard fare of bacon and eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches and cornbread. The focus wasn't on being health-conscious but surviving.

At 19, he was involved in a city program that connected teens with business owners for apprenticeships. He got a job at a South Shore health food store, A Natural Harvest, where he cleaned but later learned to make salads and vegetarian burgers. He was supposed to work there for 12 weeks, but he wound up staying two years.

"(The owner) Cheryl Simms saw something in me," Tiller said. "I had a weight problem, and when I worked for her, I was surprised she kept me because I wasn't a good reflection on her business."

Simms, who died last year, took Tiller to a 1985 deli convention in Rosemont. He said he was blown away by the many varieties of food and how professional the chefs looked in their white coats. He decided to go to culinary school, and Simms helped him enroll at Kendall College and stay afloat.

After graduating in 1988, Tiller went to work in upstate New York at a resort that he said resembled a castle.

"Here I am, this little fat boy who came from the South Side of Chicago," said Tiller. "We would create cold food buffets with pates, tuna and chicken. We had desserts and salads and fancy appetizers of smoked salmon."

He was promoted to supervisor and stayed there for two years before returning to the Chicago area, where he would spend the next 18 years working as a chef for a couple of fraternities at Northwestern University and for a North Shore catering company.

"I was working in a mansion in Lake Forest and I had money and I was eating and drinking heavily," he said. "I had a nice condo in (the Edgewater neighborhood), and I was a walking time bomb. I would get these headaches so bad that I had a bottle of aspirin beside my bed, and I was popping pills in my sleep."

Tiller, who's 5 feet 9 inches tall, was about 100 pounds over the 185 pounds that is optimum for his height. He had high blood pressure and was borderline diabetic.

In 2008, he was visiting his mother at her West Pullman home when he bent down to kiss her and had a mild stroke. "When I got to the emergency room, I learned I had kidney problems, liver problems," he said. "I was in respiratory distress. They put me on strong medicine, and I had to lie in bed and look at the wall for weeks because I just couldn't sit up."

When he was able to get up, he began walking to exercise. He now walks three to five miles a day. He also stopped eating white bread and drinking soda and alcoholic beverages. He watches portion sizes and eats more fruits and vegetables. He said it hasn't been easy, but he now weighs about 225 pounds. As he continues to recover from the stroke, he said he would like to lose 30 more pounds.

Tiller wants to get the word out, especially to schoolchildren, about healthy eating and living.

"People say, 'You look so different,'' he said. "Now when I give presentations, I wear my old white chef's jacket that I could hardly button when I was heavy. Now I'm swimming in it and it may look crazy, but I wear it as a reminder and it motivates me. I want it to motivate others too."