Adam Clay would walk down the airplane aisle — all 363 pounds of him — and he would know exactly what the other passengers were thinking.

“They’d be thinking, ‘Please don’t sit next to me,’” he says. “I just knew. I could feel it.”

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Clay, 43, would finally wedge his way into a seat. But the ordeal wasn’t over.

“I’d have to signal to the flight attendant for a seatbelt extender,” he says. “They’d bring it to you, and they don’t make a big deal of it, but it’s so humiliating.”

This was every flight.

This was typical of the way Clay lived.

He avoided mirrors.

He forbade his mother from posting unapproved photos of him on social media.If he went to the doctor and needed blood drawn — you know, to monitor his high cholesterol — he’d prepare to be stabbed multiple times while the poor phlebotomist searched for a vein.

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“I was always the fat guy,” Clay says.

But he is no longer the fat guy.

Why?

PICKLEBALL!

Yes, really. That’s the reason. If you’re skeptical, you’re not the only one.