Endless Thread - Get Motivated

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

Jared Wells was ready to accept death just one year ago. But a year in the gym with a bodybuilding legend has totally changed his perspective on life... and his body, of course. Plus, Ben and Amory share their 2019 resolutions and recruit Redditors to help them accomplish their goals. Read more about Jared here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/85xfn6/image_thank_you_getmotivated/?st=JQEH8X32&sh=a8a167b6

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Emery, if you are trying to accomplish something, would you be most motivated by fear, jealousy, anger, or a lifetime supply of vegan chewing gum? None of those really resonate with me. But for the sake of this thought experiment, will go gum. What's your favorite motivational quote?

At the moment, it's one that I found on the Get Motivated subreddit. Okay. And it's actually an Ernest Hemingway quote. He says, There's nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. I love that. It's like, you're great.

Just be a better version of yourself. Okay, mine's a little different. Okay. It comes from Conan the Barbarian. And it's an answer to what is best in life. And his answer is to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you. And so it's a little different than Hemingway, but I seriously think that my answer for what motivates me is provocation. It's like friendly competition, someone telling me I can't do something.

What about you? When I think I can't do something, that's when I really want to do it. Like, that's why I started running, and that's been the source of many new adventures in my life. It's still really hard to get motivated, right? Even when you spend all of your time, as you apparently have, looking at the Get Motivated subreddit, which is full of, like, Hemingway and Conan motivational quotes and stories about people doing awesome things, despite the challenges they face. Right.

But it feels appropriate that Arnold Schwarzenegger is referenced in your answer, because we're about to meet Conan the Barbarian. What? No. We are going to meet someone who's pumping a lot of iron, though. True. So my name is Jared Wells. I'm originally from Utica, New York.

I just moved to Denver. And right now, I'm working over at Appliance Factory and trying to become a pro-bodybuilder. Being a pro-bodybuilder, what I think of is, like, basically you get paid to go to places and put oil on your body and flex. or bright lights. That's what I think. I used to think the same thing. I'm not going to lie.

Jared started his quest to become a bodybuilder pretty recently, actually. He's still bulking up, as they say. What is the part of your body that you're most proud of right now? I'd have to see my abs. Can you describe what you look like now? So I'm about 150 pounds. My arms really aren't that big. They're getting there.

My thighs are still kind of thin. I've got some pretty decent calves and then ripped ribs and then I'm building my chest up. Do you have like a target weight, target like circumference of your bicep or something? No target circumference or anything like that. But I do, I would like to be at least, my goal weight is 180. 180. Yeah. That's my goal weight too.

But I'm 30 pounds heavier than that. Hey man, we're both 30 pounds away, so. Hell yeah, I'll meet you in the middle. Sounds like a good deal. If you think Jared's size and weight sounds a little small for your average bodybuilder, you're not wrong. This is partly because Jared's new to bodybuilding, but also because it's been a big year of transformation for him,

and not just because he moved from upstate New York to Denver. January of last year, I weighed 117 pounds. and I'm six, just about six foot one. So as you can imagine, that's not very good. I was kind of looking at Destore. My lung function had fallen severely. My mom and I kind of been planning for the worst. We had talked to the doctors about hospice,

kind of had been thinking about that. But I definitely looked my mother in the eye and kind of told her that that might be something I want to set up a, you know, a will hospice at the whole nine. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson, and you're listening to Endless Thread, the show featuring stories found on Reddit. We're coming to you from Boston's NPR station, WBUR. Today's episode, Get Motivated. A year ago, Jared was close to going into hospice, because Jared, Jared has cystic fibrosis.

And I'll be honest, I didn't know a lot about this disease, but Jared has lived it pretty much for 22 years since he was born. So cystic fibrosis is a degenerative genetic disease that affects the lungs and sometimes the pancreas or digestive system. We have a hard time clearing mucus out of our lungs. So it builds up and can cause infections and make it very hard to breathe, to clog it all up. And eventually some people have the digestive issue where the mucas can just kind of cover, you know, the digestive track and make it really hard to absorb the nutrients that most

people would. Despite this, Jared says that thanks to his mom and his older brother, he had a pretty quote-unquote normal childhood. He went to school, hung out with his friends, pretty typical. Not so typical? The medications and time-consuming treatments that he had to keep up with every day. enzymes to help him absorb the nutrients in his food, nebulizers. I also have a machine called a vest, which is literally a machine that pumps air into a vest, you know, fills it up and then vibrates it very quickly to help break up that mucus to make me cough it out. As you might imagine, this stuff can get pretty tiring. And last January, Jared was freaking tired. You know, after so many years, I was kind of just sick of it.

You know, even if I did everything right, I felt like I was still going to get sick, and I was just prolonging the inevitable. And I kind of just let myself go. I kind of just decided to enjoy my life to the fullest instead of doing what I need to do to prolong it. Translation, instead of doing his treatments, Jared would go hang out with his friends. He started drinking a little bit more. He started sleeping more. Which doesn't seem like a big deal on the surface,

but when you have cystic fibrosis backing off of the fight starts to turn into a death sentence. And Jared knew that. He just thought he was ready for it. One day after a doctor's visit, he had the talk with his mom about setting up his will and preparing for hospice, preparing to die. I think it was maybe the very next day.

My lung function had dropped so much that I was practically suffocating myself. I just remember calling my mom saying that we need to go to the hospital and then being in a wheelchair, finally getting admitted into the hospital. And I remember coming out of that saying to myself, like, there's got to be more. And something just clicked that said, I'm not ready yet. This is when Jared decided to do something totally out of character for him,

and especially out of character for someone with his disease. He had this friend from town. The friend's dad ran a bodybuilding gym in Utica. And that friend invited Jared to come work out sometime if he wanted. So one morning, pretty soon after he decided he didn't want to die after all, Jared hit the gym. But this was not your so-called sports club with, you know, cucumber water and a sauna.

So it's a super old school bodybuilding gym. Yeah. There is no windows, only a few skylights. and then we have one big garage store to open. Walls are concrete with, like, paint chipping on them. There's a wall of all the people that have trained there that have gone pro. And then, of course, you got all the old school bodybuilders and women bodybuilders with, you know, the sign frame photos.

So, like, what did you do on your first day? I definitely followed my friend around like a little puppy. What's your friend's name? Vinnie Donnelly. Vinnie Donnelly. Okay, you and Vinny. So we did a decline bench press. I was only doing the bar, but, you know, you got to start somewhere.

We did chest press. I believe we did just a flat bench. Was there a moment that, like, clicked for you? Were you like, oh, yeah, this is my, this is it. This is my jam. I'm going to do this now. Not really. To be honest, I was thinking it was going to be a one, you know, a couple times.

and then kind of quit, but I don't know what it was. I just started going every day. And, you know, after Mr. Donnelly, Vinnie's dead, I kind of wanted to take me on as a project. Everybody looked at me and said, well, you're not getting out of this now. All right, wreck it. Come on, Jared, own it. Pull, pull, pull, hold it.

Nice job. Can you describe Mr. Donnelly? Like, again, I'm going to. come from a place of pop culture, uh, basic references here. But I'm just like thinking of the guy from Rocky, the trainer from Rocky with like a stogie in his mouth and he's like, you know, and he's got a little cap on his head. Oh, God, he's, uh, he's about six, I want to say he's like six three. He's a pretty massive guy. Um, and, uh, he is very hard of hearing. So sometimes you got to like scream in his ear. But, you know, you ask him any questions about

bodybuilding, he's more than happy to help anyone. He's just that kind of guy. Mr. Donnelly had actually trained with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrignau in Venice Beach, so there's some legit bodybuilding category there. And he saw something in Jared. Partly, attendance. They'd train at 6 a.m. every day because Jared wasn't really into having an audience. There were fewer people there to stare at Jared, who was frail and pale and honestly didn't look like he could lift much of anything. I would have to say it was probably like two or three weeks down the road when I started actually having energy and I put on, you know, five pounds of weight and I was like, this, this is amazing. This is exactly where I wanted to be.

In the first three months, Jared put on 35 pounds. And that's not even the best part of it. My lung function, it jumped up to about what it was. three years ago, which was kind of unheard of. Typically with cystic fibrosis, when you lose that substantial amount of lung function, it's very, very hard to get it back. And I kind of done that what seemed impossible. Since then, Jared has had a pretty mind-blowing journey, and all in the last year.

Eventually, a Reddeter caught wind of a post about Jared on Facebook and posted pictures and his story to the get-motivated community on Reddit. It blew up, just like Jared had. Then came more posts with pictures of Jared at the gym and captions, like, Jared didn't take today off, did you? And some people just don't make excuses. He basically became his own meme. And even though he's at best a Reddit lurker,

Jared kept up with the memes and comments on these posts. What do you make of that? What do you think of all these strangers just kind of owing and awing over your, what you've made of your life? I never would have expected in a million years for me to kind of go viral, for people to be so impressed or, you know, motivated or inspired by what I've done. Jared says the whole thing, his work at the gym and the results he's had, the training under Mr. Donnelly and the Reddit reaction has him thinking about the future in a way he hasn't before. What keeps you motivated? Like, I feel like I could, like, not be able to find my earbuds or, like, not have the shorts that I want, you know?

And I'm like, ah, it's kind of wet outside. Yeah, anyone can start going to the gym. It's continuing to go to the gym. I definitely have my days where they're tougher than others. but what really what really keeps me motivated is the fact that I can kind of take control of my life again and be healthy as well as motivate and inspire others to make a change in their life as well. Jared's even considering something that he never would have considered a year ago, becoming a motivational speaker.

Even if it's not just in the gym, if I can inspire someone to take control of their life or, you know, do something, more with their life, that's everything. And then being able to show my mom that everything she did when I was younger is not going to waste. Was it hard for her when you moved? Not really. She kind of, she was really excited to get me out of Utica. That is not what I was expecting you to say.

You neither. I mean, the day. Don't let the door hit your butt. I mean, the day of she got very emotional, and I'm not going to lie. That was probably the first time I've seen her cry when I left. These are big steps. Nine months of heavy training in Utica after years of not training at all, moving away from home to a new city, a drier city, where Jared can breathe better,

a new job in an appliance factory, someday, motivational speaker. But in some cases, you've got to start with the bar before you ask. add weight. Jared's bar right now is getting his personal trainer credentials. And leaning into the bodybuilding community, where you go to competitions, you can win prize money after being judged on the symmetry and sculpting of your muscles. Also, where Jared has found camaraderie that he never knew existed. You competed in your first bodybuilding competition recently. I did. How did that go? It went very well. I wasn't expecting it to be as as friendly and as much of a community backstage as it was.

You know, I was just chatting up with people. I didn't even know. I didn't even know. I just met. I placed fourth overall in one of my divisions or in one of my classes, and then fifth in another. So I did pretty decent, not as good as I would have liked to. You know, I wanted to win, but I would say for my first go at it, It was a learning experience and I'm going to take that and kind of build on that.

What's the high five quotient backstage? How many high fives are going around? Oh, God, plenty. Everybody is such a great supporter of each other. It was very eye-opening. Ben, I have a new get-motivated quote. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

It's Jim it like Jared. Ooh. I mean, it doesn't have the same barbaric rage of seeing your enemies driven before you, Conan style, but I'm in. It has a nice ring. Thanks. In fact, I'm motivated, Amory, and there's proof. And it's on the internet, which means it's forever. We examine Ben's proof of getting motivated in 2019 in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew.

Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the Creative Studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Amory, can you remember my New Year's

resolution that I told you about? Well, I remember you saying that you wanted to get fit and lose some weight. Specifically, I think the words I used were that I'd like to turn my dad bod into a little more of a rad bod. Oh, yes. It's all coming back to me. There's a rad bod inside of me here. I just know it.

Okay. Whatever you say. Okay, look, I realize that this is the tropeiest of all New Year's resolution tropes, but let me just say, number one, I'm not that unhappy with myself. I feel like my goals are within reach. I'm a pretty active guy. But my dad life with the whole milk in the fridge, the garbage truck cleanup for whatever the kids won't eat, the happy life I've lived, enjoying beers and all the things over the last 10 years, Amory, it's caught up with me. And for myself, but also for my family, I want to get a little healthy and make a little change.

I like this. I support you. Thanks, man. And naturally, of course, instead of recruiting you, Amory, because I knew that you'd kill me in the gym. I recruited a Redditor to help me with this resolution. My name is Daniel Pever. I'm from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. And my day job, I work as a sales rep in a family business here in town. Daniel's family business involves providing bingo sheets, Amory, to, you know, like all the

retirement communities and other avid bingoers in northwest Ontario. I didn't know that was a thing. I know. I forgot that bingoes. like bingo sheets, you need like actual sheets. They've got to come from somewhere. Yeah, exactly. But the business also involves something that would seem to run counter to any effort to lose weight ever.

Yeah, the other focus of our business is like concession food, snacks. So have you ever been to like a hockey arena and had nachos and cheese or a slushy or an icy for the American people out there? We supply all that in this part of the country. Hmm. Operation Dadbod to Radbot is. off to an iffy start. Yes, I admit getting in touch with a guy whose family business literally provides concession

nacho cheese has some pitfalls. But Dan is actually the perfect person to aid me on my quest, or my journey, which he told me is the term folks used because losing weight isn't easy. Daniel started his own journey about three years ago. I started at around 480. I'm not 100% sure the exact number, but it was 480 to 490,

but I just always use 480 as my point of reference. Long story short, Dan had a friend living across the country that was getting in shape. And that friend kind of inspired Dan to get cracking in Thunder Bay. So he got a personal trainer. He started working out, started eating better. In two years, Dan lost 200 pounds. So, I mean, I've gone down, like, you know, 20 inches there and, you know,

in pants size and all that. and going from six, seven Excel shirts to, you know, sometimes an Excel shirt. Somewhere along the way, Dan got involved with a community on Reddit called Luzit, where he eventually became a moderator. I mean, when I joined, it was a lot smaller than it is now. So it was only 600,000 people or so, whereas now in the last, like, eight months, it's gone up to, like, 1.3 million people or whatever. So the dynamics definitely changed a lot.

But, you know, it's a great place for people to come, and it just encourages all the things that I said, like, you know, moving more getting healthy. And it puts you in a group setting with other people. And it's definitely been a really good tool for me. And I know lots of other people that use it and to find it as a great resource as well. What do you think about around this time of year when it comes to the common mistakes that people make?

And what advice could you give to people like me who are like, all right, this is it. I'm going to use this to get my shit together. Right. Well, I mean, the first thing I always like to say to people is that, like, I mean, this is when I started. I started January 6th, and, you know, as we've discovered, you know, I've had my own success. So don't think you're going to fail before you can start.

I like to hear that. That's good. Yeah, yeah. And, but I mean, the biggest mistake people make is you try and do too much too fast. And you're trying to make 50 changes at once while still having a real life and working and all that comes with that. And it's just too much. So when you're starting right now, I mean, your focus should only be your food, basically,

what you're eating, because that's the biggest thing to kick or change. What you're doing is, in theory, should be changes for your life and not just changes for right now. And then you end up in a position where what you're doing isn't a diet anymore or it's not a pain in your ass or anything. It's just what you do. You know, I eat this way. I go to the gym three days a week and, you know, that's just my life. And that's what I do and I enjoy it versus the terror of, you know, trying to go to the gym at at 5 a.m. every day and, you know, eating this and skipping that and not having that.

And, you know, it's, you can't overwhelm yourself, right? You just got to take a one step at a time. It's a marathon, not a sprint, as it were. Yeah, well, exactly, right? I mean, that's a perfect analogy. And I tried to avoid using that because it's so reused all the time. But, I mean, it is a perfect analogy, right? So. But, yeah, no, it is the perfect analogy. I mean, it's going to take time to undo the damage you've done, so to speak, you know, to your waistline in that. And, you know, you know, I spent 26 years being a fat fuck. So if it takes me a year longer to get where I wanted

than I thought, then so be it, right? You don't have to be good every day. You just have to have more good days than bad. You know what, Ben? This all sounds like solid advice in spite of your marathon and sprint cliche. But I'm not wrong, right? No.

Daniel also told me a less cliched saying, which is popular in the Luzac community. It is not what you eat between Christmas and New Year's. It's what you eat between New Year's and Christmas. Basically, every day is a new opportunity to have a quote-unquote good day. But what's a good day going to look like for you? Like, what are you going to do in this operation, Dadbod to Radbod? Okay, well, I did some research.

Which already gives me a little more hope that you're serious about this, I got to say. Yes, and not only did I do research, Amory, you're going to be so proud. I posted a draft of my plan to the Luzit community on Reddit looking for feedback. I am so proud. Good job, dude. And now I'm going to break it down for you. Okay. The headline is, I may not like it, but this is what my peak 38-year-old dad-bod looks like. I have a plan, but I'm not sure it's the right plan advice. You ready? Yes. So I've got a diet section here and a fitness section. Okay. So for diet, I'm going to try to cut out all refined sugar. I'm going to like call back my carbs big time. Okay. I'm going to lose the beer and swap it out for booze.

No eating after 10 p.m. So that's going to help me hopefully go to sleep earlier and also like not put on weight by just eating late night. I'm going to generally cut back on my dairy. So chill on the cheddar cheese, swap whole milk for skim milk or soy. So that's my diet plan. Love it. Fitness plan. Do everything the Amory does.

No, my fitness plan is commit to four hours. hours per week of exercise. So that's going to be a little tricky, but I think I can do it. I'm going to do that by working out in the morning. I'm going to get more sleep for realsies. I'm going to focus my exercise basically on cardio, core strengthening, and arms work because I want to, you know, be able to invite people to the gun show. Do you have a trainer or are you just making your own fitness? My trainer, weirdly, is my dad. Okay. Because we go to the gym together in the morning. Hell yeah So my dad

He texts me every morning If I'm running late And is like Hey man I'm down here sweating What are you doing? I love this I know What a hero

He is a total hero And I'm a zero Right now But I'm working on it And my question is Will this work Will it take forever And will I

You know Look less like a seal And more like a dolphin It sounds like a lot But I think there are tools that can help you do that for sure. Okay. You're optimistic?

Totally. Okay, cool. Cautiously optimistic, but I'm optimistic. Okay, thanks. Yeah. All right. So I also asked Dan for his feedback. I mean, for what your mission is, right?

I mean, your mission isn't to become a, you know, planet fitness, Mr. Fitness or whatever. You know what I mean? Your mission is just to get a little bit healthier and look a little better, right? So I think I described it as going from Dadbod to Radbod. Yeah, Dad were slightly Radbod. Oh, I think you'll do just fine. I mean, it's, I mean, it's going to suck sometimes, and it's not always going to be as hunky-dory as you want it to be.

But, you know, as long, I mean, it's what you want to do, right? And I mean, what you want to achieve has to be important enough to you that it's kind of overrides everything. Sure. And, but in doing that, I mean, eventually it gets to the point where it's not overriding anything. It's just your new normal, your new routine, right? Dan, thank you so much for giving me all of this advice and for talking to us about this and telling us your own story. Thank you.

Well, Ben, at this point, I'm not sure what else there's to say other than let Operation Dadbod to Radbod commence. I mean, I'm basically perfect. I just need to tone a bit, that's all. And stop eating like all the donuts. What about you, though? We talked about your New Year's resolution possibility. We talked about a couple. Yeah.

What are you got? Okay. So you remember last summer we went swimming at the pond by your house? Yes, we did. In these frigid days, that feels like another planet. But yes. And I feel like swimming is a generous term for what I was doing because I can't really swim. I mean, you definitely stayed afloat and we swam pretty far,

but you did it with what I would characterize as a very energetic doggy paddle. Very energetic. Yeah. I can tread water for days, but I just have zero swimming technique. So this year, I'm going to learn how to swim. And I got myself a swim coach on Reddit. Nice. You got to surf the internet before you can swim.

So how, where, who? Hoomst. Her name is Leah. She lives just outside of Boston. And she has agreed to up my swimming game. Roll tape. No. No.

Oh. No, I'm going to dive in pretty soon. Oh, I see what you did there. Yes. So we're going to have to do an episode update, I think, from the fantastic future of Rad Dad, Bad Ben to Amory, Katie Ledicki Siebertson. Mm, damn it. This means we actually have to follow through.

Mm-hmm. Give me 10, Johnson. No! All right. If you want to take a look at the detailed version of my fitness and nutrition plan and the amazingly detailed and, dare I say, encouraging positive feedback, You can do that on Reddit, where we are endless underscore thread. While you are on our page, by the way, hit that follow button so we can stay in touch with you there.

Also, huge thanks to the Luzit community and Dan for helping with that. And thanks to user Sodak Zach for connecting us to Jared, you the man. Also, by the way, Sodak Zach is featured in one of our other episodes called Gator Roll. You should totally check it out. It features three great love stories from Reddit. And yes, Amory and I will update you with our progress on our missions, epic wins or epic fails. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who rolls into her gym with that old school cool.

Iris Adler is our executive producer, and when we told her we were entering a bodybuilding competition, she said, That happened. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, who when looking at Ben's, Workout Plan, he said, No, no, no, no, no. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who stares at inspirational Jared posts because she loves.

Wholesome memes. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit who thinks lose it is full of Life Pro Tips. Josh Swartz is our producer, and he thinks about New Year's resolutions like expectation versus reality.

Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Thanks to Redditor Suicide by Thug for this week's artwork. It is called Delete Facebook, Hit the Gym, lawyer up. It's great. By the way, if you want to email us, you can hit us up at Endless Thread at WBUR.org.org. You can give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did

today, or let us know if you want to make art for an upcoming episode. We'd love to work with you. My co-host and producer is Amory Sewardson. I am senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out. Do do, do, do, do. Baby shark. there is a sharp signal.