LEWISTON – Ask any of his family and friends and they’ll tell you that when Ulysses Milana sets a goal for himself, he’s likely not only to achieve it, but also to reach beyond it to the next level.

Too bad the first armed services recruiters he spoke to didn’t take him seriously about that.

“I went to a Navy recruiter and they told me, ‘You’ve got to lose weight,'” Milana said of his first attempt to join the military back when he was still living in Arizona. “Well, it’s hard. When you’re at 330 pounds, you’re not exactly motivated.”

He said he checked in with an Army recruiter a couple years ago and was told the same thing.

But Monday, the 23-year-old Lewiston man boards a plane bound for Marine boot camp at Parris Island, S.C. And thanks to motivation, assistance and support from a wide circle of family and friends – as well as his Marine recruiters – he boards it nearly half the size he was less than one year ago.

In the ultimate show of wanting to achieve his dreams, the Lewiston man dropped at least 140 pounds to achieve his long-time goal of following in the footsteps of his family and serving his country. And while he may not be joining the Navy, the San Diego native couldn’t be more proud of how far he’s come in about 11 months.

“All that stuff did nothing for me,” Milana said of the diet craze books and weight loss reality television shows. “It was more a matter of…so, OK, this is what I wanted to do, and I knew what I had to do to get here. I mean, you can watch all that, but it’s like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ The hardest part was just getting motivated to do it.”

A big part of that motivation came from his wife of four years – Latoya – whom he met while still living in San Diego. The Lewiston native also comes from a military family and she was living in California with sister’s family while going to school to be a medical assistant.

The couple settled in Maine following their wedding and Latoya went on to become a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital while Ulysses went to work at TD Banknorth.

Given her career in health care, Ulysses said it stood to reason that his wife would play a big role in helping him change everything from calorie intake to controlling portion sizes.

“It was really difficult for him at first. He always said, ‘I’m gonna lose weight.’ But I never took him seriously,” Latoya Milana said of her husband’s promise to shed the pounds and make his military dream a reality. “Then, when he started to do it, I told him he needed to cut his portion sizes way down.”

Another big part of Ulysses Milana’s motivation stemmed from the fact that Marine recruiters actually worked with him since he began this journey back in December 2007 and even helped him develop a work-out regimen to follow. Marine Staff Sgt. George Monteith said one of the biggest differences he notices in Milana is his newfound self-confidence.

“You can sit there and preach and preach, but if you’re not willing to help, then it doesn’t lead you to success,” Monteith said of helping Milana and the Marine tradition of teamwork. “If I say, ‘Go lose weight and I’ll see you in a year,’ then what kind of help have I offered to make that happen.”

Milana credits self-determination, healthy eating and exercise as the three biggest factors leading to his weight loss transformation. The former culinary student admits weaknesses like pizza and hot wings, but said the promise he made to himself and his determination to see it through made giving it all up that much easier.

But one of the hardest guilty pleasures to give up, Milana said, was that occasional beer after work or at the weekend party. Instead of cracking a cold one at the end of a hard day’s work, he said he went out and bought himself a head lamp to going running at night or hit the gym.

“It was really hard. You see all your friends drinking beer and you’re like, ‘Oh, man, I want one,'” he said with a smile, adding proudly that he didn’t even have one at his going away party Saturday night.

“I just know where I’m at now,” Milana said, adding that his goal now is to build up muscle during boot camp and never again gain back the weight. “And I always look at my wife and say, ‘If I ever get there again, just kill me.'”