Spotlight: David S.
Man, I can't believe I'm writing this down. I've never told this in its entirety, just bits and pieces when I think it may benefit someone.
I've listened to you tell your story on Rogan and Layne's podcast and with Dr. Mike on AG. The least I can do is tell my story for anyone that can relate and possibly use it as motivation until whatever they're going through is a distant memory.
I started off as a super healthy, happy, and fit kid. Apparently, my sister and I would choose fruit over candy. I played soccer, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Then at around age 10, my mom got sick with breast cancer.
We moved closer to family since my Dad had to work really hard to make ends meet. My parents are both from litters of 6, so to help, aunts, uncles, grandma's grandpas were constantly bringing food for my sister and I. Cue coping mechanism. I began equating food with comfort.
It was a really tough battle for my mom, and it was even looking like she might not make it. Because cancer and its treatment is so ruthless on one's appearance. I actually remember thinking of her as the sick lady upstairs I was nervous to look at. Between this and my Dad's drinking, I slowly withdrew into myself as I learned the people who were once my everything can be taken away from you.
Thankfully she won her battle after an almost miraculous turnaround. I shit you not. She credits it to a detox tea that she drinks to this day.
We've talked about it a lot, but that time period had a profound impact on me. Entering into grade school, I began gaining weight, sneaking food and my life revolved around food. I would even take money out of my Dad's wallet to buy junk food at school, even though my mom had made me a healthy lunch. Yep, I would eat two lunches. I went from this kid with a generally happy disposition to quiet, shy, and just angry.
Then I began to get bullied for my weight and struggled to make and keep friends into high school, which only exacerbated the issues. I found more and more comfort in food and solitary activities like video games. High school was a really shitty experience for me. Still, it formed the empathy and sense of humor that I cherish today, so I'm thankful for it in retrospect.
Finishing up senior year as I was getting my physical for college, the doctor told me straight up that I was borderline obese and headed down a long sick road of a life. I was 265 pounds with 30+% body fat at 16 years old. That Doc telling it to me straight changed my life. I left his office, looked at myself in the rearview mirror and said, "you're not doing this anymore."
This was 2006, and we were still on dial-up and printing out maps on Mapquest for directions, so still pretty early on in terms of fitness and diet information outside of magazines.
Enter what I have coined the 'yogurt gum and 5 miles a day diet.' I ran 5 miles per day until my shin splints were so bad from being heavy and years of not running, I could only walk, so I walked 6 miles to make up for it.
This was summer in Chicago, where it can be 90 degrees with 100% humidity. I remember I was dry heaving in the bushes one evening. My Dad was smoking a cigarette in the garage; he just gives me this bewildered look and asks "why are you doing this to yourself." Without skipping a beat, I replied, I don't want to marry a fat woman. Remember I was 16 years old, 265 pounds with fucked up teeth, and at zero risk of losing my virginity anytime soon. To this day, that's one of my Dad's favorite stories to tell.
I lost 80 pounds that summer before college.
But I fucked up.
I would learn a hard lesson that if you want to lose a lot of weight AND look good afterward, you better be lifting weights.
So here I am 80 pounds lighter, heading to college, and I was still mortified to take my shirt off. I think it was the rapid weight loss and being heavy throughout puberty that resulted in loose skin. But I wouldn't wish loose skin/man boobs on Hitler…Well maybe Hitler, but my point is men aren't supposed to have perky nips were suppose to have pecs. I thought about how my chest looked at least every hour for over two years.
It affected my self esteem, my posture, the colors and clothes I wore. I was constantly pulling my shirt away from my chest. I even bought expensive compression shirts that I would wear as under shirts to make them look more like a pec. All I really remember was how fucking hot I would get wearing them.
Thankfully over time the weights started to pay off, and I fell in love with the concept of being able to build and shape my body.
What I didn't expect is that you can look awesome on the outrside but completely fucked up on the inside. You can change your exterior, but if you're compensating for broken things inside of you, the reflection in the mirror isn't going to change that. The jackedAf dude at the gym can be depressed yall.
You have to do the work, seek therapy, talk out and identify your problems. You must break out of the feedback loops you're trapped in, and that's not necessarily going to be a 12-week program either. It could take years.
The universe can be a cruel summ' bitch.
At 20 years old, I was in a bad rear-end collision that blew out 3 discs in my back. Essentially stealing the one thing, the glue that held me together. Working out. The day after the accident, I could hardly walk. I had a final that day and somehow managed to get to class. I remember sweating as I was taking that final, I was in so much pain. I ended up putting C for most of the answers and went to the ER directly after.
At this time they were rolling out the pharmaceutical red carpet for people like me. Muscle relaxers, barbituates, and alcohol were my go to. I would have taken opiates, too, but they make me nauseous. -Found that out the hard way at 19 after jaw surgery to fix my aforementioned fucked up teeth. I was wired shut and almost choked to death on my own puke from the morphine, but that's another story entirely. My Dad had actually quit smoking for 6 years…until that night, It must've been tough to watch your son go through that. Solid excuse but still an excuse Pops.
So at this point I was living back with my parents and pretty lost, very depressed, unable to work out the way I used to, and partying HARD to escape. This went on for a few years.
Then one night after taking my mixture of choice, which was a Xanax bar and enough alcohol to send most people to the hospital. I decided it would be a good idea to drive home. Upon turning onto my street, I must not have wanted to wake up in my childhood bedroom with the flame wallpaper again. Some part of me wanted to end it. Sick of being in pain, sick of being depressed, not seeing a way out, I floored my car into a neighbor's tree.
Clearly, I was pretty fucked up because I should've chosen a much bigger tree. It was comical, imagine a hot wheels car running into a toothpick, and you'll basically see what the 3 squad cars saw as they pulled up.
Interestingly enough, I stomped the gas so hard, I rolled my ankle so bad the ortho would later say I would have been better off just breaking it.
But this meant the field sobriety test was out so I had to blow or get arrested. The airbag must've sobered me up somewhat because I remember past experiences to avoid blowing at all costs. They took me to the station for booking and I later blew .28.
That's more than 3x the legal limit, and this was about 90 minutes after the accident. The officer told me they've taken people passed out to the hospital with less than that, as I'm openly talking to them, being polite and even cracking jokes.
Like the Doctor doing me a solid. I got lucky again. The arresting officer took me aside and said something along the lines of. "Look you seem like a good kid, I don't know what happened. But based on where you said you were, you drove for 45 minutes with no issues, judging by the address on your license in the last 500 feet you crashed into a tree going way to fast for your own neighborhood. I mean you can see your house from where you crashed man (yep, that one still stings). With this amount of alcohol in your system and the way you're handling it, you could get pulled over, talk your way out of it, and then wipe out a family."
I pondered on that in the drunk tank for the rest of the night. A court-appointed alcohol and addiction counselor would later refer to my ability to handle large amounts of alcohol as a "hollow leg".
The next morning with a totaled car, a broken ankle and all the same depression and back pain as before. I took another long hard look in the mirror, vowing to never lose control again. That was going on 10 years ago as I'm about to celebrate my 32nd birthday.
I opted out of surgery for my back. After the chiro stole what little money the settlement awarded me (a whole other story), I had no resources. So I rehabbed my own back watching YouTube videos and reading Stu McGill's books.
Today I'm proud to say I'm able to lift heavy and sit for long periods without pain. Things I never thought I'd do again. I no longer feel trapped in my own body.
I don't really mess with alcohol anymore, I can have a drink here or there with friends and be perfectly fine, but I don't get drunk.
I just finished a 75-day challenge while following carbon diet coach and am currently in the best shape of my life.
I figure there's a reason for me still being here and that every day I wake up is bonus time. So now, I try to use what I've been through to help others.
My takeaways to others:
Don't let your situation get so bad that it requires a Doctor or, worse still, an Officer and Judge to intervene. The only better teacher than hitting rock bottom is learning from someone else's rock bottom.
The more I learn about diet and exercise, the more I realize it has more to do with psychology and our behavior surrounding food than the actual food itself.
Understanding "the why "behind your diet and exercise choices must be confronted and worked through to make lasting change.
As my followers will attest, I've shared so many of your posts and am so very, very happy for Ethan. His story will help countless people, and I can't think of a better person to share mine.
Spotlight: Amber
Recovering binge eater, and gastric bypass recipient. I lost almost 90 pounds while using medical intervention paired with extensive food addiction therapy and psych rehabilitation to battle my eating disorder. I use my positivity and experiences to combat diet culture to inspire other men and women who went through the bariatric experience.
From the age of 7, I used bingeing to cope with years of molestation by a family member. I remember hiding and bingeing on food in any way I could. I’d steal food from grocery stores when my mom wasn’t looking, hide in the bathroom at church after hitting the vending machine, and I’d wake up late in the night to go eat entire bags of chocolate chips and potato rolls. Whatever i could get my hands on. After years of yo-yo dieting, crashing dieting, and fad dieting… I started therapy.
I went to my doctor and they highly recommended weight loss surgery after hearing about just how addicted I was to food. How I didn’t get up higher than 274 pounds is truly a miracle from God. The amount of food and how often? How did that not make me more than 4 or 5 hundred pounds still baffles me to this day. At just 28 I was on high blood pressure medication and severely depressed. I am thankful for the tool that I electively received. It helped me lose the weight and get off all my medications.
Weight loss surgery is not for everyone, and there are a lot of stigmas about it. But it saved me, along with so many people I know. Thankful.
The cold makes me hungry.
Then I feel guilty about a season so many deal with year in and year out, having such an effect on me.
But, I mean, like, it makes me REALLY HUNGRY!
I grew up in California and never really experienced the cold, and while there was a decade or so that found me in Park City, Utah every year surrounded by the White Death for a film festival, I actively avoided it at all costs. I went from hotel to car to movie theater to car to restaurant to car to hotel etc. Over and over for a few days until I escaped back to the safety of the sunshine, always feeling like I was a survivor.
When my then best friend, now wife and I were sixteen, we decided late one night to drive to LA’s local ski resort, a place called Big Bear. Half way up the mountain chains were required and though she’d been skiing with her family since forever and was an old pro, I the utter novice was designated to put the chains on her little Dodge Neon. I can vividly recall shivering while simultaneously pouring sweat. Pulled over on the side of a mountain while other cars flew by us, down in the mud, with numb fingers, for over an hour. I’d wanted to put on a good show for her, but very soon found I couldn’t control my four letter outbursts when trying to marry the male and female ends of the chains.
Some years later, with four children in tow, my wife finally got me to participate in an actual ski lesson, the very first was also the very last. I have no desire to continuously experience the sensation of slipping while also being cold (and hungry).
This perplexes her as we have been waging a silent war over the thermostat for over two decades now. When the kids were little, I gave in to an above 70 degree household. Now that they’re all adults (in legal terms), 68 is my best and final offer, especially since it still falls within the definition of “Room Temperature”.
Having just finished back to back jobs in Montana and Toronto, I feel ever confident in identifying as a person who DOES NOT like the cold. It only exists to evoke an animalistic feeling within me of the need to escape. I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone arrived in these locals, way back when, experienced sub zero degrees and didn’t flee for their lives. When they saw all the birds flying south, why not follow? Without the comforts of modern day, I couldn’t do it. I found myself watching much more television, hiding out indoors, not motivated to move. Whatever energy I could muster to make myself move a bit more was zapped, and there was even some sense that I needed to conserve energy in case of a catastrophic grid failure and we all had to march out of the frosty madness.
CONSERVE energy!
The very opposite of what I’ve been trying to do for years: expend as much energy as possible!
I will say that I was flabbergasted to find I hadn’t gained any weight when I got home. Surrounded by frost, and television and the bizarre desire to be warm, still had me a bit worried.
But the White Death is melting, the flowers are beginning to bloom, and as the sunshine appears, it is time once again for me to get back to work on myself!
Spotlight: Michael B.
I struggled with my weight my whole life much like Ethan. I tried fad diets, Weight Watchers, etc. with varied success but always gained it back and really kept gaining the older I got.
When I was 40 I decided to get serious and went all in with personal training and a nutrition program. I completely dedicated myself and lost about 50 lbs but went back to my old ways and soon gained it all back.
But then 2 years ago, I found out that I was diabetic and had some liver issues. I started training and dieting again, but this time on my own using the tools I had previously learned. I knew that if this was going to work I had to do it on my own for myself and no one else. Something just clicked. I used an online PT to help build workouts and started tracking my macros and maintaining a caloric deficit.
This time I felt like I was in control and made real progress. It was gradual but it just felt like it was natural.
Once Covid-19 hit we went into a strict lockdown, I live in Singapore where no businesses were open, we were only allowed to leave for essentials like food or medical needs and no visitors were allowed. I live by myself so I only had time on my hands. I decided to go all in on my weight loss.
I studied Biolayne's science of weight loss and shifted my diet to high protein and high fiber, focusing on whole foods, complex carbs and of course staying in a calorie deficit. I read Atomic Habits and Fit for Success and started focusing on building good habits instead of focusing on long term goals. I used his waking up app and began meditating every morning and I also added mobility training. I fit my house with ropes, kettle bells, a rack, a slam ball, bands, TRX, dumbbells, etc. and worked out 4 days a week while hiking or biking on off days.
Today I have lost close to 120 lbs. I was well over 400lbs, but only started tracking my weight at 407lbs and today I weigh 289 lbs.
But most importantly I'm no longer diabetic and my liver function is normal. I've gone from wearing 6XL to 2XL. I'm no longer sedentary and have an active lifestyle that I love. I simply had to come to the realization that for 40+ years I had indulged in all the wings, pizza, beer and cake that I ever wanted. I had a good life but I wasn't happy.
I had enough of that life and wanted something different, I wanted to explore the world with joy and excitement as opposed to focusing on the difficulty of doing so due to my physical limitations.
My journey isn't over and there will be peaks and valleys but with what I have already gone through and the tools I've picked up along the way, I know that I can succeed because now it's like water eroding rock, all I need is time and patience.
Lastly, I have to say that Ethan was a huge inspiration for me. Mainly because he could relate to how I viewed the world or most importantly how the world viewed me. Most fitspo personalities out there have never come close to walking in our shoes and while some have the best intentions, they simply can't relate. I needed to hear from someone like Ethan and John Glaude. I know it is only I who can walk this path but it takes someone before you to set the trail and point you in the right direction.
On Reactions
I find so often that my actions are a reaction. While this is fine under many circumstances, such as seeking shelter to avoid inclement weather, much of my reactions have led to less productive results. I also have accepted that much of my reactions happen subconsciously to some degree, meaning I do not even realize I’m reacting.
The compulsion to overeat is almost always a reaction, for me, to something I find uncomfortable in the present. Even if it’s just that I find discomfort in watching TV without snacking, because I know that snacking makes TV watching so much better. But for so long, I simply ate while watching TV because that was my routine, my pattern, it was a part that made up the structure of my life. When examined more thoroughly, I would experience some discomfort, overeat in some attempt to soothe this, but before too long, I was simply accustomed to overeating.
This bled out into all aspects of my life.
For instance, I hate trying on clothes. This is something my wife and kids could tell you, or anyone from any wardrobe department I’ve ever worked for.
Part of my job is trying on clothes and having people look at them on me and decide if they are the correct clothes for the character I’m playing.
At my heaviest, getting dressed was a total body workout. Every day, after showering and drying off, I would very slowly get dressed, only to find myself drenched with sweat. I would quite often sit or lay down after dressing until recovered, and then proceed with my day.
So when it came to wardrobe fittings, I had my work cut out for me. They often want to see many different looks and will book multiple hours to go through the various outfits that have been chosen. It was torture, by the end, I would be sweating through every new outfit, much of which would be returned if they didn’t like it for the show.
Yesterday I was in a wardrobe fitting, hating it, hating people looking at me in what I perceived to be ill fitting clothes, hating just having to get dressed and undressed repeatedly, and also hating that I hated it.
In consulting why I hated it, everything led back to the actual physical discomfort I used to experience every single day when dressing, none of which I experience today. There is nothing tiring for me about getting dressed today, in fact in a 2 hour wardrobe session, I won’t break a sweat.
I’m trying very hard to find something nice or enjoyable about them, with little luck. But upon closer inward examination, I could see they were not actually as bad as my mind wanted them to be.
Sometimes my emotional reactions, based on things from the past, do not line up with the present reality.
I drag the whole of my existence into the present and view it through a lens that informs some part of my mind that everything I’ve ever experienced is very literally relevant to whatever circumstances I find myself in now. Considering that, will quite often calm me down, because I can then very easily discard a lot of that baggage.
One day it might even be possible for me to actually enjoy trying on clothes.
Spotlight: Al
My name is Al, and I grew up fat.
The theme of my life is one of shame. I grew up in a family of 3 kids and a spilt home. Actually, my childhood was relatively normal, and I wouldn’t even say I was that overweight until I was probably 12 or 13. I did live my mom, who tried very hard to give us everything we needed, but she lacked in providing the emotional needs of a child. I remember very early on life feeling less than. I don’t understand it, but I felt I was the forgotten child.
Not as smart as my older sister and not the youngest, who got a lot of attention. I was the middle child. I assume that’s what paved the road for my eating to escape in my adolescent years.
I think things changed for my when we moved out of town when I was 10. I wasn’t super popular before, but I was uprooted and never really felt a part of the crowd in a new bigger school. I was kind of lonely, and though I had peripheral “friends” I lacked real connection.
I did get a paper route to do after schools. While paper routes can force a kid to be active, this actually gave me the chance to earn money and spend it on food. This money was my own and I could stop by the local convenience store and buy whatever I wanted. I’m not sure if this was so intriguing as we grew up somewhat poor and never had the pudding cups, cupcakes, cookies, or even juice boxes that other kids had in their lunches. Regardless, I would stop almost daily. I remember this being around 1989-1992(ish) and Crystal Pepsi (clear cola) was a thing. I would buy a big bottle of that and a whole box of mini oreos. And I ate this stuff alone. I did not go back and show my friends or share what I had purchased, rather I would eat this stuff alone behind the convenience store. Obviously looking back, I had elements of shame even before I gained all my initial weight.
The next couple years, I got bigger and bigger. I was increasingly aware of my body. I hated myself already by the age of 13. Though I never really was bullied, but there were pivotal moments in my life that still hurt as I recollect them. In Grade 9, we were changing in the change room after gym. A classmate looked at me and made a comment that I should be wearing a bra. This crushed me. I felt less than nothing and I never changed in the changeroom for the rest of my life (I still don’t).
Similarly, my own step father made a comment before about needed a bra. I was so angry and hurt, and didn’t know what to do with myself. Probably the worst thing was hearing my mother tell somewone (not knowing I could hear) that she was ashamed of me. My fears were proven… I was less than and the black sheep of the family.
Non of this inspired me to lose weight, rather set me on a spiral or shame and self loathing. I continued to eat. I even stole money out of my mothers huge change jar to buy more food. High School had a cafeteria (something we didn’t have in elementary school) and I was able to buy 4 small hot cookies fresh from the oven daily… for $1! The also served meals every day… with fries being the main side. I ate this almost everyday despite bringing a lunch from home (which I’m sure I ate too).
By 15 I was probably about 240 pounds. Things were rough at home for my mother, and my brother and I were constantly fighting (verbally, rarely physically). She said she had enough and wanted one of us to move to my Dad’s. My brother wanted to go. I remember clearly at that time wanting to stay. Not because I preferred my mother to my father, but likely more out of routine. This was another pivotal moment in my life as even though my brother wanted to go and I didn’t, despite this, I was told I would be the one to move in with my Dad. This was a very painful moment as it solidified (in my mind) my fears of being unwanted. In that moment, I knew I was unwanted… the least of the family… the forgotten child.
I moved in with my Dad. My Dad was an alcoholic in the height of his issues. I never saw him. I was 15, and forced to live on my own. I went to a new school where I did not make friends. I was fat, and remember literally eating my lunch in a bathroom stall to avoid being seen or not be accepted. I did befriend an Indian boy who made me laugh and we ended up going to Ken’s Fry Truck almost everyday for lunch. We had fries every day. I also got my first job at McDonalds. I ended up taking extra shifts and even skipping school to work. My Dad was never around, so I often ate at McDonalds during my break and after work as I headed back to home alone. I was not active, did not really play sports and had no friends. But there was also a 7-11 Convenience Store near my Dad’s apartment. I ate nachos and big bite hot dogs, slurpees, and pretty much anything you should not eat. In the 6 to 8 months that I lived there, I ballooned to well over 300 pounds.
I ended up moving home. I can feel the almost audible gasps of people seeing me, a 15 year old, return home probably 80 to 100 pounds heavier in less than a year. Not only was my mother ashamed of me, I was ashamed of me too.
I floated through high school. I wouldn’t say I was hated or made fun of, but I had no real friends there. I did my thing and kept o myself. I do remember I was very good at basketball and made the high school team. The first practice was shirts and skins. Though I was not selected to be skins, the thought that one day I may be asked to, crippled me. I was so scared I quit the team (though I loved basketball) as I never wanted to be in that position.
I continued to work at McDonalds from 14 right into my early 20’s. I was made manager at 16 and managers got free food. I had some friends at McDonalds so we would also go to a local truck stop and smoke and drink coffee (and eat) well into the night. My mom used to accuse me of drugs as I was often out late, but in reality, I was just at the truck stop smoking and drinking coffee.
At 23 I ended up on disability for an ankle injury. I lost my job at that time from McDonalds. I took a job a call center. I was sitting all day in an office setting and the job itself was sedentary. I gained weight again until I was about 400 pounds. For many years I did not know how much I weighed as most scales stopped at 300 or 330 pounds.
Fast forward to 2007. I was 28 years old, 400 pounds, and pretty miserable with myself. I did however find a girl who liked me and within our first few weeks, we had an unplanned pregnancy. I can’t say I was scared though. I always wanted a kid and never thought I would ever even have the chance being a 400 pound dude that felt no one would ever love me.
I loved this kid pretty much upon finding out we were pregnant. To this day, that moment changed my life. It changed my thinking. For the first time, I wasn’t living just for my miserable existence, I was living to be a dad and provide a life for someone. I remember in my quiet contemplation, not only wanting to be a great dad, but I had this fear that one day my kids friends would make fun of her for having a fat daddy. I knew I had to a make a change, and a drastic one.
On October 21st, 2007 I first stepped into the YMCA gym. I also made Facebook Notes saying I was going to do this. I believed I couldn’t do this on my own and wanted to make myself accountable to anyone that would read my notes.
The first week I lost 9 pounds. I was ecstatic. It was embarrassing as I had to use the industrial scale at the gym, but I did it. I’m glad I did. I might have lost that much before in a week, but not having a scale, I never knew.
After that week, I was hooked. A new man appeared. A goal driven man. I wrote notes on Facebook weekly (that still exist) that should my weekly updates. I started to gain a following of people on my Facebook that followed my progress and cheered me on.
My journey evolved over time. Started with walking on an incline for 40 mins each day and light weights, to training myself to run. I made a runner out of me which I never thought possible. After training myself to run with intervals, I got to the point where I ran 10k every single day. My diet evolved as well. It started with never eating out and making at home food substitutions (ground turkey instead of beef, etc). I got to the point where my diet was good (looking back probably way too few calories), and things were rolling.
In 7 months, I had lost 100 pounds! I was over the moon. My followers of my progress were now calling me an inspiration. They wanted my help and advice, and others continued to cheer me on down my path.
At one point in 2012-2013 I got down to 193 pounds. This was the first time ever being under 200 pounds. Looking back, I am rail thin lol. I am 6’4 so I look almost gaunt in some pictures.
I remember wanting to be under 200 pounds as BMI says I should be under 206 to be considered healthy. While I don’t put too much stock into BMI these days, I always wanted to be considered “normal”.
In the years since 2013, I started to weight train. I slowly did less and less cardio and more and more weights. It has become my new love. I started to put on muscle, but with that came fat as well.
Today I weigh about 270. Though I’d like to be a bit smaller, I can see some strength and size and though I very critical of myself, I can at times sit back and say “wow, look how far you’ve come”.
Now I have a ways to go and this journey is a constant evolution. I have heard it said that statistically it is more plausible to survive a gunshot than to lose 100 pounds and keep it off for 5 years. Well I have done that, and that is something to be proud of. I wont lie and say its easy. I feel I am in a constant fight with a body that wants to be fat. I still am trying to properly train my metabolism and id like to lean out a bit.
But for today as I retell my story, I am choosing to be proud of my progress. I am not someone to be a ashamed of. I have started my own gym even with 5 guys that I train and am able to share my knowledge and value with others. I know the hurt of an awkward teenage boy that never thought he would have anything. I also know what’s its like to be fit and strong, have a large family and a trophy wife that looked beyond my insecurities. I recognize I am my own worst enemy, but its time I look to the allies around me.
Sincerely,
Al R.
(Former Fat Guy)
Genes vs Personal Responsibility
I have observed some urge or desire to pinpoint the source point for anything we deem to be an ailment. The battle line today regarding obesity seems to be processed food vs genetics. This does very little for me personally, in fact it seems to just be more of the either/or world we live in that disregards nuance and individuality.
I find America to be highly over medicated, where there’s a problem, there’s a solution in pill form. Of course, there have been many weight loss medications, but often after some time on the market, they are pulled because either harmful side effects are discovered, or they just don’t work.
I took fen-phen as kid, I don’t remember losing weight, but I can vividly recall laying down to go to sleep at night and my whole body feeling like it was vibrating with electricity. It was just a few, very long and sleepless nights before my parents threw it away.
As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to eat processed food. My mom shopped at a store called Mrs. Gooch’s (which later became Whole Foods) and Erewhon (long before the Kardashians made it famous). These stores weren’t the pillars of opulence that they are today, they were dusty and bare, Erewhon felt like it could barely keep it’s lights on! I used to sit in my mom’s car on Beverly Blvd, refusing to go into “Nowhere” as I called it, while she bought our weekly self-flagellation in the form of bland and tasteless food.
Eating non-processed foods did nothing to stop my weight gain as a child, I still simply ate too much.
So maybe my genetics played some part in me eating more than my body needed for its own physical survival? Maybe that tells me some of the story. Calley Means, a former consultant to both food and Pharma who now works to expose their practices makes a fairly strong argument against genes being a culprit. His point is that lasting evolutionary change take about a million years.
Perhaps then it’s not “lasting”?
There are some interesting studies (Dutch Hunger Winter is one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944–1945) that would suggest that those genes which would encourage weight gain can be rapidly developed in as little as a single generation. So, the argument that it can’t have anything to do with genes because it’s happened in about 50 years, doesn’t make too much sense to me. Of course, the primary cause of this genetic change would seem to be an impactful famine. Perhaps our food supply has become so nutrient lacking that it’s tricked our bodies into thinking there was a famine?
There are also studies that suggest obesity is socially contagious (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa066082). That means that if you know or interact with obese people, you are more likely to become obese yourself. Should the thin people avoid the fat ones in some attempt to retain their thinness? I’m fairly confident that this would seem like a good solution to some. When I was a kid, I felt very much like my weight and I were being avoided by many for this very reason. Is our modern drive towards acceptance playing some role in the spiking obesity levels?
I look around and just see food everywhere. You can’t buy a pair of headphones at Best Buy without running a gauntlet of candy to get to the cash register!
I went to some fancy furniture store recently with my wife. I was thrilled to see NO FOOD anywhere. I thought, how nice, I’ve found the only store in America that wasn’t pushing food on its customers. When I brought this up to my wife in the car, she said they’d offered her champagne and chocolate covered strawberries.
Cheap and delicious food is EVERYWHERE!
I find no solace in wanting the world to bend to my needs. Would my life be much easier if I could go into Office Depot to buy a ream of paper without some temptation? Maybe. But there would be something else for me to get bent out of shape about, and I always liked the idea of “being the change I wanted to see in the world” more than “what I want must be correct for all.”
I think Ozempic could be beneficial for some people who have struggled for years with their weight, people who have been on countless diets, who “eat clean” and still cannot win this fight. But in the Over Medicated States of America, I think very many people who really just need to recognize that they are in a food battlefield and act accordingly, have just been given a hall pass.
Kafka’s Bug
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous bug…
What has happened to me? He thought. It was no dream…”
-Franz Kafka
Oblivious isn’t exactly the right word, because I could feel self-awareness coming on, like an emotional swell, that I could stuff down into some dark cold vacant part of my mind. Willful ignorance is more accurate. When friends expressed concern, I’d feel the blood rushing to my cheeks, the tremble in my hands, and I would take that creeping self-awareness and put it in a shoebox, lock it in an uncrackable safe, which happened to be in a locked closet, in a derelict house, which was situated in the worst and least visited neighborhood of my mind.
Hide away the bad thoughts, stuff them into the cracks of the couch with the crumbs, I’ll get to them later. The house was on fire, but such a large house, and if I couldn’t feel the warmth from my bedroom, did it matter?
And then I would wake up a monstrous bug, with no ability to disguise myself, from myself. I would wake up with every bit of hidden knowledge crashed down upon me like the Hindenburg.
On these mornings of revelation, I would need to solve every problem instantaneously. I would search for the easiest solution or the most radical. I vacillated between belief that either one small change or total upheaval were the answer. This led to years of failure and frustration.
Changing one thing never led to a miraculous recovery and changing everything all at once didn’t either.
It took many years for me to understand that in order to become a different person, many instances of small change were required, but that I wouldn’t understand them all on day one. That getting good at a single change might then require another change to bolster improvement.
Self-improvement has no end and if I’m not working towards this in some way, I am in deterioration.
I prefer getting better.
Resolutions, Goals, & Challenges
As we welcome month two of 2023, I am curious to know whether those who made resolutions have stuck to them, or if they’ve fallen by the wayside?
Late last year a producer on a television show I’m about to begin shooting asked if I’d “gain 10lbs” to more “Americanize me” for the show. I politely declined and brought up the fact that 10 pounds would be hardly noticeable to anyone else but intentionally gaining weight could be rather destructive to me. It’s also a hard thing to gauge, I could have a 10 pound swing because of a carby or salty weekend, but if I returned to my plan, it would come off pretty quickly. 10 pounds of fat… yikes!
I had been planning on getting lean for the show, but in light of the request decided just to go back to maintenance, and that has been going just fine. Except for the fact that maintenance feels fat to me. Maintenance feels like I’m not working hard enough and there is some part of me that emotionally feels that if I’m not working harder than is comfortable, the wheels are eventually going to fall off. There is still some masochistic bit of me that believes I deserve punishment. Yet of course all the while, maintenance is work! It’s not coasting, it’s not popping into McDonalds and taking days off. Yes, the days are easier than dieting, but it’s not auto-pilot and comfort food.
But the universe rewards me with negotiations for a summer job that wants leanness, that requires it! My dieting has been pushed off and I am resolute in maintaining with the idea of dieting in my future. (and if I’m being honest, maintenance for me could work with either definition of diet.)
So for those of you that have white knuckled your way through January, chapeau. And to those of you that have thrown in the towel, the Gregorian calendar is a societal invention that doesn’t have to work against us. The earth will spin around the sun in very nearly the same way, day in day out, whether it’s January, February, March, or April. And if any of you are anything like me, it definitely gets better, but it doesn’t end.
“Ever tried,
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again,
Fail again.
Fail Better.”
- Samuel Beckett
The Good, The Bad, The American Glutton
I can vividly recall getting into mischief with my friends, as an adolescent, that I later clung to, simply because my friends were able to do them without much obvious fallout. I had this idea that right and wrong were absolute and universal. So, if my friends were drinking, then I could drink. If my friends ate whatever they wanted, then I could eat whatever I wanted.
I found myself, in my early 20s, an obese drug addict and had to begin to unravel the way I’d been thinking about all of this.
I can recall the first time I drank alcohol and the first time I snuck food, out of sight of my grandparents. Both were meticulously wrapped up in rationalization but the alcohol and drug use was far more cut and dry. The first time, I was knowingly doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I had to talk myself into it a bit, a gentle push, a couple “don’t be a wuss” and I was from then on able to rationalize it with a bit less effort, all the way until it took over.
With food, there was definitely a moment for me, with my back to my grandparents, walking away from their small dining room table and into their kitchen, that I was able to shield myself from their gaze and stuff the unfinished remnants from one of their plates into my tiny mouth. That moment happened very quickly and without too much debate, but I was doing something that I felt I shouldn’t have been doing.
The line from trying to unravel all of this, into becoming a person who doesn’t do those things he believes to be harmful is a real Gordian Knot, impossibly tangled. That first moment, had I not done the wrong thing, would I have built up some strength for the next? And had I succeeded in correct behavior on multiple occasions, would I be immune from bad behavior today?
I think these ideas of “good” and “bad” are deeply and entirely personal. I don’t think anyone else can determine what is “good” or “bad” for you, but I do think with some introspection, we can all figure it out for ourselves.
Today, having fought my way through so many urges towards “bad” behavior, I do feel somewhat buttressed for the future. The trick for me has been in having my own understanding of what I want.
Health as a metric, or good health as a goal, is definitely a part of my behavioral process today. It holds some weight in the hierarchy of how I structure my life. That is true today, but it wasn’t always. When people would sit me down and plead with me to change, health was often their goal. When I take apart why anything is good or bad for me today, health is in there, but it really has nothing to do with why I began working towards this behavioral structure. At the time all I wanted was to be able to go on walks with my girlfriend, to feel less embarrassed about people seeing her with me in public and to be able to go with her to the beach. Those were the reasons that I was eventually able to even make the distinction of something as “good” vs “bad” for myself. Before all that, it was meaningless. And no amount of anyone else giving me their reasons, made any bit of difference at all.
The biggest change I have experienced has been with regard to who I am. Am I some amalgamation of my friends, up to and including behavior that isn’t destructive to them, but is quite destructive to me?
Nope, I have my own path, and I know that no matter anyone else’s, I’ve gotta stick to my own.
Sublimation and Dieting
Sublimation: “to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable.”
I know I’m deep into a diet when my Instagram feed becomes almost entirely food. Scrolling through not only pictures of chefs preparing haute cuisine, but bacon wrapped onion rings, with cheese centers that are then somehow wrapped in a fried cheese skin cooked on a griddle. The creativity with food abounds.
When I separate myself from that equilibrium I’ve managed to claw my way into, maintaining my weight, and try to plunge ever lower, there is something missing from my life. Calories! But it isn’t just calories, it can’t be. Although, when I am getting enough calories, I don’t seem to get the same inundation from IG, I also don’t seem to care much about old episodes of Chef’s Table, or Top Chef, or seem to have much inclination for creativity with cooking whatsoever.
When I was 23 and I did a ~600 calorie a day liquid diet for two months, I had so little energy that I sat and watched a lot of TV, A LOT. Mostly I watched, the then new, Food Network. Possibly it wasn’t all that new, but I had never heard of it before. I found some relief from my state of starvation by watching others prepare and consume food. When something looked especially good, I’d think “one day I will try that.” I wound up dieting for so long that my “I’ll try that” kept getting kicked down the road and I finally settled on merely making some of the fantastical things I’d now spent so much time watching others create and serving them to others.
I desperately want food to be simply a source of fuel for my body, I want all the pleasure and reward schemes in my brain turned off so that I can get on with my life. But food is buried even deeper than that for me. I associate everything with food. Camping is meats cooked over an open flame without the benefit of a grill, Disneyland is turkey legs and corn dogs, movies are popcorn and hot dogs. Even geographical locals can’t escape this conundrum, the only places on earth I don’t want to visit are places that serve food I’m not excited about eating. So even if when I haven’t eaten some of these food type in years, and I’m deep into dieting, my mind starts working a mile a minute conjuring images of all the different foods in all the different lands that I associate with pleasure.
My wife used to joke, “when you diet, we all gain weight.” I can get hyper focused and even obsessive. What I can’t eat, I can cook. The flip side of course is everyone disappointed when some holiday rolls around and I’ve been on maintenance for some time and I don’t care too much one way or the other about cooking. It seems to be a fine line with me. And since I’ve been mostly maintaining for some years now, my kids disappointment has only grown.
If I can actually pull myself out of myself and take as much of an exterior view as possible, I think the rational part of me wants to be able to enjoy food occasionally but mostly be unswayed by it. I’m generally not thinking about food when I’m actively doing other things, playing with my dogs, or working out, writing, doing a podcast or at work. These are all healthy pursuits that I never seem to be overly or hyper focused on.
So when I find myself scrolling through the 5th or 6th frame of some food porn on social media, or I begin to daydream about making cassoulet for my granddaughter, I now see it as a signal that it’s time to put down my phone and do something else.
Spotlight: Trevor
Every weight loss story we receive is incredible, but there are some that truly stand out as the epitome of dedication and perseverance. This story is one of them!
Trevor began his journey to a healthier lifestyle in November 2021 at 362 lbs, but at his heaviest weighed in at 374 lbs. Trevor was motivated to lose weight by a desire to skydive, which required him to slim down to 230 lbs. After keeping consistent and changing his lifestyle to suit healthier living, Trevor was thrown the curveball of a lifetime - his daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia in May 2022. Instead of letting this deter his progress, he continued working hard towards his weight loss goal. While he could've made her illness and caring for her in her illness an excuse, he chose to persevere and stay on track.
Thankfully, his daughter is doing much better, and making great progress. Meanwhile, Trevor continues to lose weight and is only 5 lbs from his 220 lb goal! Absolutely incredible. Trevor credits switching up his fitness routine to keep it interesting as one of his keys to success, and has recently found a love of running!
We love his story and its absolute testament to the power of determination. Thank you for sharing Trevor!
It’s 2023!
Are you knee deep into a brutal resolution that shakes the very foundation of your soul?!
So many times I tried to make total radical lifestyle change happen overnight, and so many times I failed. I often failed so badly that it was years before I could summon that courage to have another go at it.
While it is true that my life today looks absolutely nothing like it did when my eating and drug use ran the show, the change wasn’t miraculously overnight.
I also resisted total change for a long time. I resisted the idea that in order to be sober, I would have to radically restructure my life. I believed for a long time that I could exist in the exact same manner and just not do drugs. I would scratch my head on mornings that I woke up from a blackout wondering why I’d done the things I’d so righteously decided not to, and again try to move forward with the idea that no broader change was necessary.
And then there were the times I went for total radical change instantaneously, and also fell flat on my face.
The thing that I learned that has been true for me, is that I had absolutely no idea what my life would look like when that total radical change took hold.
I knew some things. I knew that hanging out in crack houses was a bad idea. I knew that dishonesty was something I could immediately do away with. I knew that I needed to seek help and guidance from others, those who had the sorts of things I was battling figured out to a respectable degree.
But I learned a lot on the way!
I learned that moralizing food, for me, reduced my own self responsibility. I learned that if I killed myself in the gym everyday that eventually my body would find a way to quit on me. I also learned that I was capable of a lot more physical exertion on a daily basis than I’d led myself to believe! That there was a sweet spot to daily activity that was HARD but that I could do FOREVER!
How are you doing in this first week of your new life? Have you learned anything about yourself? What IS working on your plan and is there anything worth changing?
I have nothing but faith in YOU!
Are you there God? It’s me, Ethan…
God is an interesting idea that has been argued endlessly since its inception. I am quite fond and even envious of those who have a deep understanding of God. I am equally envious of Atheists, since they too seem to have it all figured out for themselves.
In Maimonides book, The Guide for the Perplexed, he painstakingly details what God is not. I appreciate his text as the image presented to me while growing up was of a man, and I prefer the “unknowable” to a dude.
In fairness, I have always been basically Agnostic, though I could even rationalize The Big Bang as a moment of creation, and hold out hope for the divine.
I say all of this as the below prayer, cite’s God as the source point of necessary power.
I do believe in a power greater than myself. Quite often, the power is found by adding another’s power to myself. Me AND my wife are more formidable than me alone. Me AND a group of likeminded individuals will always be more powerful than me alone.
When I think very thoroughly about God, I am envisioning a higher power, some external source to divine power from.
I believe that extra spark is available to all of us, whether in the dark recesses of unexplored parts of ourselves, or by the addition of another. I wish you Godspeed in finding that spark, harnessing the energy and courage to confront those things worth changing.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”
Wishing you a glorious 2023!
Spotlight: Kim
AG social club member shared her story on Discord a few weeks ago, and we are still picking our jaws off the floor. Her insight, self-awareness, and raw honesty was incredibly powerful and we are grateful for her willingness to share.
While Kim has managed to lose over 100lbs using both the Keto diet and a low carb/high protein calorie controlled eating plan, she says, "I've learned there is no such thing as an after, we are all works in progress..." Such an important mentality that leads to a lifetime of progress and change.
Kim shared that she was a true food addict in every sense of the word - lying, cheating, and stealing to feed her needs, making secret drive-thru runs to feed her needs before having a "sensible" meal with her boyfriend, and creating excuses to leave the house to get her food fix. After several years of making personal changes, she has been able to not only significant weight loss, but a massive shift in mentality. Kim explains that while "food will fix it" thoughts still occur, they are no longer in the driver seat of her life.
Thank you Kim for sharing your story, it's truly inspirational!
On Health Food
For some huge portion of my childhood, I was inundated with “health food.” After years of failed dieting, my parents turned their sights on the food types.
This is how I rationalize it today, but really I can’t recall having any “normal” food, outside of occasional “rewards” and “treats.” We ate off brand “health food” for the most part. Our cereal had no sugar and was a pallid fibrous substance, our grocery stores seemed dusty and incapable of affording proper lighting. I got the sense, as a child, that the rest of the people who ate this sort of food were either terminally ill and on macrobiotic diets, or Sikhs.
The wonder that I would experience when going to a friend’s house and seeing a pantry full of brand names, was huge.
It has been proven today that one of the healthiest things a person can do is lose weight. (Weight Loss and Improvement in Comorbidity: Differences at 5%, 10%, 15%, and Over www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5497590 )
The sorts and types and kinds of foods you eat in this pursuit, are largely irrelevant.
Though I cannot imagine how crappy I’d feel if I went on a diet of Twinkies, so long as I kept energy balance in line, I could improve my health by eating just shy the amount of Twinkies my body required to function.
Of course there are extremes here and I’m sure that a long term Twinkie diet would produce unintended consequences.
But what does this say about “health food.” Is much of the health benefit one seeks not possibly achieved by simply losing weight?
I really enjoyed my conversation with Chris Kresser, and I do believe that often I am lacking some micronutrients, I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
But, I can also testify that for huge portions of my life, I did not lose weight by eating health food. I can quite easily over eat a salad with an extra virgin olive oil dressing, and baked potatoes, especially if covered in some fat, and steak, and raw cheese (this isn’t my preference but seems to be made a big deal of, at the “health food” stores).
So, I think simply switching to “health foods” as a long term strategy for weight loss and maintenance, is a bad strategy. I personally find it as flawed as merely not eating carbohydrates, eating for blood type, starving yourself, or any of the other diets that purport skirting energy balance.
BTW, understanding that energy balance is a requirement for weight loss, doesn’t mean you have to count calories. Many can achieve it without counting calories. The mistake for me, is labeling things as good and bad, and assuming the good stuff shouldn’t be governed.
Olive oil, and brown rice (as a kid, white rice was “bad” but since the cool word nowadays is lectins, I think it’s brown rice that’s poo-poo’d,) and anything else considered “good,” can be over consumed.
Eat your liver, and take your vitamins, reduce carbs if you feel better getting energy from fat, do all the healthy things you feel good about doing… but weight loss remains supreme for overall health and none of those listed above guarantees weight loss.
Body Positivity, Embracing the Inevitable, or a Rationalization for Self-Destruction.
As a kid, I had no body positive social movement to encourage me to feel good about myself despite the physical and societal norms that I was clearly outside of. I have, as an adult, wanted to shout at times, “I was fat before it was trendy!” I do see this as reactionary and am disappointed in myself when the thought occurs.
There is something to it though, this urge towards acceptance of things that were for so long, unacceptable.
I do not believe one can accomplish anything good from a position of hate. I think that in order to succeed at anything, it requires some modicum of faith that success is possible. I did not begin dieting, until I was ready and part of that required my own belief that success was possible.
So, in that way, I see body positivity as a major benefit. The downside is that it can also be an opiate for complacency.
There are so many reasons I wanted to lose weight that exist outside of cultural norms and aesthetics, there was a persistent physical pain from carrying excess weight, a constant impediment to literally moving through space and time, and an exhaustion that I did not see exhibited in smaller bodies. None of that has anything to do with just wanting to fit in, or to match in looks to the other people around me.
If we decide that life is of some value, therefore lengthening life is too. This would be evident in the amount of energy that goes into medicine and safety precautions. Then the societal obligation to urge towards healthier choices must stand. If we hold these principals societally when we discourage drug addiction and dangerous and reckless behavior, the same should stand for obesity.
There must be a way to reinforce positive behavior without creating an entire subset of society that is self-loathing.
Today our immediate and literal need to physically use our bodies to produce food and shelter, to battle the elements and flee danger, is drastically less that it was at humanities inception. There is an abundance of cheap food, and the stage has been set for an obesity epidemic. Mankind and certainly our bodies, have done everything possible to get fat, we have worked tirelessly in this pursuit. It seems wrong to work towards a goal and then shame the population who has some adverse reaction to it. But in the same way, it seems wrong to celebrate this reaction.
I personally required a new paradigm for myself, to look at all of this from as much of a detached emotional position as possible. As an addict, if when trying to get sober I’d had some huge portion of the population urging me to accept and embrace my addiction, I would be dead today.
I prefer to be alive.
Seasons Eatings
The holiday gauntlet has begun!
I like to celebrate with food. Food makes all things better for me, if I’m being honest. It’s comforting when I’m down and icing when I’m up.
I don’t know if the biological is so intertwined with the cultural that it would be dumb to try and separate them out, but I want to understand all these things! Is it just that my meat sack is programmed to want to store as much fat as possible, and so when presented with many divergent reasons to eat, I am inclined to lean into them? Or was it more that, as an American, I was raised to experience holidays with food. That when I think of Independence Day, it conjures vivid imagery of hot dogs and burgers on a grill, birthdays are my mother’s carrot cake and ice cream, Easter is chocolate, Christmas is my wife’s eggs benedict and my gigantic roast prime rib.
I have now done every version of every holiday. In the pre-me that is me-now era I would drink a quart of eggnog at a go, eat to the point of true euphoria, and not pay attention whatsoever to any possible harm this might have caused my body. The other end of this extreme has been rigorously dieting through the holidays, skinless turkey breast only, lots of water, and trying to spend as much time away from my family and friends who all seemed to be able to celebrate with food, and not kill themselves in the process.
The last few years, I have tried something different. I have tried to become on at least speaking terms with moderation.
“Hello Moderation, my name is Ethan Suplee…”
Moderation is the incredibly cool and intolerably aloof type who flits around the party and seems to know everyone very well, and though we’ve been introduced many times, always looks at me like it’s the first.
“Tell me your name again?”
“Ethan, we met last week at my wife’s office party. And two weeks ago, at the movies. Last month at my daughter’s birthday dinner?”
Feigning politeness, Moderation gives me a condescendingly weak handshake, and moves off quickly to grace the other party goers with its effortless presence.
Moderation is a bitch.
I don’t know if we’ll ever be close, I don’t even know if my desire to be close is totally rational. I think it’s probably about as sane as wanting to be “normal,” Normal won’t even shake my hand.
In knowing that when I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, if I’m not on a turkey-breast-only-diet, I will probably go to bed that night with some sense of regret, my foremost mission has become surviving the “season” with as little inflicted damage as possible.
I cannot do that by spending the entire season off the rails. I cannot attend every party, every dinner, every get together, go to bed feeling guilty, and not do some serious damage to myself. And in all honesty, there are tiers to the level of guilt I’m willing to experience. I cannot eat myself silly and hit the ground running the next day. It is possible for me to go into an amnesia induced blackout, wake up January 1st with a ton more work to do, very low morale, and feeling like total garbage, and to avoid that I will fight that with everything I’ve got.
I am allowed to have Thanksgiving dinner. This is the opening salvo in the holiday battle for me. Can I have Thanksgiving dinner and not make myself sick? Can I taste, or even have small portions of all the wonderful dishes, and not feel like I have to lay on the couch for the rest of the night? For some years this was not possible, I would fold and have seconds, thirds, then move in on the desert table. I would feel sick and then nurse myself well for a few days by grazing on leftovers. The hard line I draw now, is no seconds, and I can’t game this by obnoxiously overloading my plate. One plate, not obscenely overflowing, followed by a small serving of desert. The trick for me has been having something to do after the meal. Where I would normally sit around the table for hours, staring at the would-be seconds and thirds, I have to physically take myself away from the food. I have to do something else. My wife likes to go on a walk after dinner and this has been really useful for me.
Once that meal is over, it’s OVER. That holiday is done, I don’t mess with leftovers. That’s my hard line.
I set very strict boundaries for myself, knowing that if I break them, the wheels will likely fall off.
There is some celebration with and through food, but more and more I am trying to move away from this as a tradition, trying to do things to celebrate, that I enjoy, which have nothing to do with food.
I will greet Moderation at the next ugly sweater party with a firm handshake.
Spotlight: Keith
This week's weight loss story comes from our Patreon Social Club! Meet Keith. Keith is the ultimate example of how weight loss can often a lifelong journey.
After growing up as a "husky" kid, things escalated for Keith as he began high school and had more freedom to binge eat, and had less physical activity. New Years after high school, Keith set out to lose weight and did so intentionally for the first time in his life. Keith was even able to lose so much weight he qualified for skin removal surgery in 2002. At this point Keith was working as a personal trainer and truly thought he was "cured" and would have a "normal" life from then forward. But life is never that simple is it? After so many ups and downs yo-yoing from 385 down to 211, then back up to 330 and back down to 216 again, with a few bouts of gaining and losing the same 50 lbs again and again, Keith found his stride (for good!) and was able to start taking health, nutrition, and fitness seriously again. Keith didn't just trim down again, but he regained a healthy mentality, began building muscle and even has plans to complete a finish competition in the next year. So incredible!
About his journey to a fitness competition he said "Seeing Ethan and what he's accomplished at this time of his life is the epitome of inspiration and why I feel like 40 isn't anything but a number. It won't be perfect, I still have leg skin issues, but I want to step on stage next year in some way, I'm not looking to compete to win anything or blow anyone away, I'm doing it for myself, for my mental well-being, and my confidence."
Keith is an amazing example of perseverance, hard work, and dedication and we are so excited to share his story. There is so much power in vulnerability and sharing our journeys! Strong work, Keith!!
On Stress
Stress
Definition 2, a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.
I like to posit stress prior to experiencing it. If I can really see it beforehand, it is a lot less powerful. Stress is the darkness within my mind that hints at chemical and edible solutions. As a sober person who has struggled most of his life with over eating, these are the most harmful solutions. They had become my coping mechanisms for life, then once doing battle with them directly (sobriety and diet), they seemed to be offered up by myself, in order that I could get through some sort of strife. Sadness or loss, stress or pain, boredom or melancholia, even rational joy was a circumstance my mind would offer as deserving of chemicals or edibles.
The most stressful situations for me are those which I feel are out of my control. As far as the control spectrum goes, from total chaos to perfect order, I prefer the latter.
If and when I perceive that some task I’m undertaking is too big or overwhelming, that I am losing or have lost my grip on it, I can feel the physical manifestations of stress taking hold. For me, it comes on like a migraine, there’s a non-odorous scent to it, a shadow, and then I’m swallowed by it. It’s a physical discomfort that I have manifested within my body due to my own mental perception of the surrounding circumstances.
AND BOY AM I THEN DISSAPPOINTED IN MYSELF. Because I believe that the stress isn’t real. It’s my reaction to something objective, and I could just as easily react with a laugh, except I can’t because I’m feeling anxious and stressed out.
I will continue to believe that how we react is up to us. Though I almost daily have undesirable reactions that then lead to disappointment, and you guessed it, stress.
I cannot do drugs when sad or stressed or in pain. When life presents me with a scenario that is well out of my control, I cannot use drugs because the drugs, or food will ONLY make me feel better for a moment. Ultimately I will feel worse and they will do nothing for the external situation.
Succumbing to the use of food to feel better does nothing to put the situation within my control, so I have merely changed how I feel. And only temporarily at that! As soon as I come down off the food high, that’s seemingly alleviated my stress, my stress returns and it’s compounded with guilt for having strayed from the path that gets me where I want to go, and all manner of various physical discomforts the food has delivered.
I do not think straying really matters much so long as you can stay within the same general direction, but for years I strayed to the point of going backwards.
If in a moment of calm waters, where my brain is the sane side of rational, I try and know what sorts of foods make me feel better, perform well, have generally more control over my surroundings, wouldn’t these foods be the ones that my sane self would want to utilize to get through a moment of stress?
There is certainly a difference for me between feeling emotionally better from food and feeling physically better from food. It could be that I am somewhat more emotional when hungry and I can argue with myself that any food at this point would help to even the keel of emotionality. But that’s just me bullshitting a bullshitter (also me). My “plan” of late is foods that are mostly nutrient dense and not necessarily calorically dense. When I eat to plan, I have energy. When I eat for emotions, I feel better momentarily but nothing external changes and I eventually feel worse physically.
There was a time when I jumped from the downward slope and physical manifestations of poor nutrition, by just continually getting a comforting dose of junk food. Didn’t it make me feel better last time? So shouldn’t I just keep doing it so that I always feel better? I got myself to half a thousand pounds by trying to escape the stress and emotions within myself by using a buffer, food.
Today I try to not run from how I feel. I’m not always in control, but when I turn and face it, I certainly have more control than when I run away. When I examine how I feel, what about the circumstance makes me experience stress, I can see more of myself along with the situation, and the stress itself lessons, because observation is to some degree control.
I know that eating well and sleeping well will help me navigate any situation I am presented with, so they are my priorities. For too long food was an escape and for me, that escape was throwing my power away, handing the steering wheel to the voice in my head that insists on harming me. Now I turn into the storm. I try and focus on something external and small, often tiny. Something that I can easily control, and I build upon that. When it’s total madness, I have even sat down and tied or retied my shoes as an act of control. I will often go for a walk. I have preloaded things that I will always be sure of being within my control, and if I can keep some portion of my mind in the drivers seat, I can win.