Spotlight: Jon H.

So I’ve always been obese since I was 7 or 8 years old, but athletically so. I was a defensive lineman in football and a heavyweight wrestler from middle school all the way through college. It just kind of became part of my identity at that point.

Then my dad passed away in 2006, very unexpectedly, halfway to his 60th birthday. It was also 8 weeks after I got married. At first I took it well, or so I thought. I’m a born again Christian (hopefully that doesn’t diminish your opinion of me), so I took comfort knowing Dad was in a better place. And I really charged hard after my faith. My new (and still hot after 15 years) wife was amazing at helping me cope.

But, after some time of not letting myself deal with how I felt, and how his death effected me, I started eating and playing MMORPG video games for full days at a time without so much as speaking to my wife. Just a little here and there, and a little more, and before long it was every free moment when I wasn’t working. And binge eating. And gaming. And eating. And gaming. And so on. And before long, I went from a muscular 305 to a very unmuscular 440. I’m 6’2”. I couldn’t walk 100 feet before my back hurt so bad I had to sit down. My wife wanted me to go to counseling. I refused. She wanted me to stop. I told her she had her problems too. She begged. I ignored. She told me later that at that point, she was planning to leave if nothing changed. But instead of leaving, she took a massive gamble: she suggested the very thing that would get me screwed on straight.

She wanted a baby.

Now, I’ve always wanted to be a dad. We talked about it all the time before we got married. We wanted to wait a few years and enjoy being a young married couple before we got started. I love kids. I teach them in Sunday school. I have fun around kids. I’m pretty much a big kid myself. So of course, I said yes.

I remember how I felt when she showed me the lines on the stick. I was so happy, so overjoyed. But for just a minute. After that minute, one thought hit my head: this kid is never going to know his dad, if I don’t change. See, my dad was a collegiate athlete like me. 215 lbs of solid muscle. Ran 6 miles a day til the day before he died, and he died playing handball with friends. Of a massive heart attack. And his father, a Navy veteran, died of a massive heart attack at 42. What chance did I have, a kid who was as inactive as is possible, weighing 440 lbs with 2 generations of coronary deaths behind him?

So I had a choice: I could get cozy with the thought of dying early and leaving my kids without a father, or get busy. So I walked into my bedroom, grabbed a journal, and wrote the only long term goal I have ever set for myself: to be the first Hollifield male in 3 generations to hold a grandchild. I’m proud to say that, since that time, the most weight I’ve gained before getting strict with macro tracking and taking it off again is 20 lbs.

Wasn’t easy. At all. I went to military college, and losing half my body weight was harder, and not by a narrow margin. First, I saw a bariatric surgeon. I didn’t want gastric bypass (though they were pushing me for it), but something less invasive. I ended up getting a lap-band. After I had lost my fist 50 lbs, I started running. Little by little. I plateaued at 350. I read up on weight lifting and remembered a lot of that technique from my athletic days. Lost another 30. Read about nutrition and macros. Lost another 50. Before long, I was running half marathons and my body comp had totally changed. But I was stuck around 260ish. Healthy, but I wanted to be leaner. At this point I actually concerned myself with aesthetics. Which I never thought I would be able to do 😂

Then, one very fortunate Christmas family party, my brother-in-law told me he began training Brazilian Jiujitsu. I wrestled in college and am a big MMA fan, so I’d always been interested. But I was an active dad. I never had the time. But after he spoke to me and my wife, we sat down and determined when in our schedules that it would fit to train. I tried a class and instantly became hooked. My kids and wife soon followed. That was almost 5 years ago, and we all still train together

Since then, my long term goal hasn’t changed. But now, I have a mid term goal: maintain a weight of 225 or less so that I can compete in jiujitsu at a comfortable weight class for me. The picture I sent to the Dropbox is me at my heaviest, and beside it is me in August 2019 at literally half that weight (220 lbs), at a tournament in Vegas.