Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 606 - 550lbs at age 17, A Real Life Weight Loss Story ft. Mike Cupples

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Mike Cupples slid into Mark Bell’s DM’s after a post on Instagram sharing his weight loss story. Mike realized at four years old he was bigger than all the other kids, but it wasn’t until he was 17 when the scales were tipped too far. He weighed in at 550lbs and decided it was time to make a change. Through diet and exercises, he was about to lose about half his entire body weight and at 32 years old now, he has been able to keep it off. This is a real life weight loss journey that most people will be able to relate to and follow. For more info on Mike, visit his website: https://mikecupples.wixsite.com/mcpt Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

i'm ready and go guys did you guys eat a lot of cereal as kids because i did you fucking kidding me i had a giant i had a giant like dog bowl like you know like a bowl that you'd put like popcorn in yeah i had this like giant ass bowl uh that was like that and my mom uh started buying the cheap cereal and no name brand cereal oh god like the fruit loops that uh you know it doesn't yeah it doesn't have like the logo on it and shit i was like what is this crap she's like you eat way too much of it because i would use a whole box every time yeah yeah and then i got really fat and i started putting like half and half on it and the heavy cream i got way out of control you did heavy cream oh yeah of course that's fucking amazing no. It doesn't make any sense that ice cream or that cereal is a breakfast thing because it's

like eating ice cream. Yeah. It's so sweet. Why do we eat weird stuff like that for breakfast? Because it's the most important meal of the day. Yeah. You got to start it out with a donut or some cereal. And most adults, we don't eat cereal anymore because we're like, I was a three bowl guy

and my bowl was also pretty big. But Magic Spoon is fucking legit. Actually, it has 14 grams of protein. I'm going to grab this box real quick. Think four grams of net carbs. What's the best part about eating cereal? I know what you're going to say. I will disagree, but in my opinion, it's the whole thing.

The whole process. It's when the milk and the cereal combine and they kind of get that crunchy, but still kind of soggy, like you're dipping cookies in milk, but it's with cereal. Can anyone just make milk that way? But I know what you were going to say. The best part is when you get to drink the milk that's just full of all the flavor. I want to let you guys know something. Each serving of this is like 170 calories, but let's be real.

Most of us, I ate the whole box. So if you do eat the whole box, the macros are this. I think it's 45 grams of fat, right? 70 grams of protein and net carbs are 20. For an entire box. So I'm just saying like we have eaten the entire box but like if you're an adult and you can have servings of this you know it's no guilt cereal and it fucking tastes amazing kind of a cleaner a cleaner cheat and maybe isn't gonna wreck your blood sugar

the same way that regular cereal cereal would yeah and then for me it's the other the guilt part of it all. Like if I have store brand or name brand cereal, I'm going to kind of just feel like, oh, man, I didn't finish the day, or I didn't give it my all. I had this. But now with Magic Spoon, I can have it and then realize like, hey, this actually works really well with my whole daily intake of calories

and macros, all of the above. What about what we did on the show the other day? We packed it together with Fairlife. With more protein. Yeah. So use your favorite protein shake or use something like Fairlife with it, and you're really having a party. Yeah. That was so good.

So good. That was fucking good. Talk about protein leveraging. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You guys have really, really got to give this stuff a shot if you have not done so already. Pick up a value bundle, which is what's kind of part of it. That's what's up there on the table.

And you go through magicspoon.com slash powerproject, and you'll receive $5 off of that value pack. No code needed. Just head over there to that exact link. Links will be down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. And you'll receive $5 off that variety pack because it's amazing still dancing you seem decaffeinated i'm a little decaffeinated yes okay guys now so the first guy to fail at sober october is me i drank a cup of coffee this morning as you can tell i feel fucking amazing yeah you were on point i think it's not a bad idea you know i think with uh the sober october um the whole the whole point of it is to maybe do less right like not to so do less be less yeah nobody needs to like kill themselves with it my

wife was saying the other day she's like i'm going to this party and i was like just have some drinks don't worry about it she's like i want but I'm trying to do the whole month. I'm like, but who cares? You're going to drink one night and have a couple of drinks. It's going to enhance the experience. You're hanging out with your friends. Fucking go drink. Go have fun.

I will say I do appreciate the feeling I had without caffeine because now it makes me realize how beneficial it is for me. And number two, I'm going to limit it. I'm going to make sure that I don't like have too much every day. So I'll have like a cup of coffee. Some days I'll maybe just only do tea. We're going to have the same conversation in like three weeks. I'll cycle it. I'm going to cycle my caffeine.

You see, we got to talk to you about this. Only going to be two cups of coffee. No, no, I swear guys, I can quit anytime I want. I mean,

kind of, sort of, man, I feel like such a bitch but it's okay you know what's interesting is i thought for sure because like like everything else that's difficult you know and sema has um a hard time with it for like five minutes and then we're like fuck dude he figured it out again like he got better at whatever it is the animal flow being one of them right that was the most recent thing.

I'm trying to think of anything else. It's really hard. But I was like, I bet you he's struggling. And then he's going to come out of this and be like, guys, my energy is like 10 times what it used to be. I'm so much stronger now. I'm so much better. And then, so you walked in today, like all jumping around.

I'm like, oh shit, did it actually happen? And then you're like, nope, I had a cup of coffee. I literally skipped into the office office i just like skipped into a happiness so almost caffeine makes you feel great yeah some awesome stuff today's guest i'm really excited to get to uh we have what's uh what was the name that's written down jason uh again so Jason again. So side effects of no caffeine. I have been booking guests at wrong times and under 30 or one or 12. I think it's today's was supposed to set for like, you know, 1 p.m. Eastern Pacific Standard Central Time. God, that gets so confusing.

But I wrote it down as ryan oh yeah ryan his name is mike couples my couples i don't know how that happened i met mike via uh sliding into his dms um i think he uh or maybe he slid into my dms um mike Mike commented on a post that I made where there was like, I think it's like a famous art piece of somebody etching their once fatter body into a kind of sculpted body. And he said, I have that tattoo because I used to weigh X amount of pounds. I forget how much he weighed when he was a teenager, but he weighed a lot. And so he and I went kind of back and forth and he started kind of telling me the story and he started telling me the pain that goes along with that. And I just found that to be really fascinating. I don't think you really hear people talk about that that often and love to get

a perspective of what are some of his thoughts on kind of what happens to our children in this country and is what is what is currently happening. Like, who better to ask than somebody that's lived it? And now he's on the other side of things and he's a lot better shape. He was able to I'll let him kind of speak for himself on what he did diet wise. But it's all really interesting. I'm excited to talk to him today. Yeah, I love it when we're excited to talk to him today. Yeah. I love it when we're able to talk to people who literally have just done it.

Um, and he just seems like he just changed his habits, but it's going to be different because he was fat for a long time. And as a kid too. So this is going to be real good. Yeah. Let's bring him on in here, Andrew.

Yeah. I'm waiting on him. Fair warning. He might be pooping. Oh, you're getting to poop? In about 10 to 12 minutes. The coffee is great with the regular timing, too. It's like clockwork. This feeling is

something I just have been missing. There's a lot of people that are like, yeah, like, I can't even poop without my coffee. I was there. That was definitely me. I had to have some form of, like, caffeine in order to kind of, of like jitter me up to go take a dump. And then now I just, it just, I'm good. I don't need anything.

Hey man, power to you. I know. You know what? I'm happy, but I'm proud of you because you, you like, even after this October, you're not going to be drinking coffee anymore. You are a better man than me. Dude, we'll see. All right. Because there's going to I'm still going to have caffeine.

But like, yeah, I'm going to limit it to the bare minimum. Like if I'll have like a Coke zero, maybe, or I'll have the sun kiss that has a tiny bit of caffeine. Love is Coke zero. Got to have Coke zero. But yeah, I'm not going to do the normal traditional thing that I would do every day, which is wake up, have caffeine, get here, have caffeine, yawn, have more caffeine or whatever it may be. Cause like that's, that's all out the door.

Once somebody says like, no, this, then all of a sudden you're obsessed with it. You know, like you can't eat breakfast burritos for the next. The fuck? No, that's not what I said. The next three months or something like that. You know what I mean? And it's like, you're like you can't eat breakfast burritos for the next the fuck no that's not what i said the next three months or something like that you know what i mean that's like you're like what like then it gets you thinking like fuck man breakfast burritos are amazing they are they're unbelievable really good the breakfast burrito diet you know i feel kind of sad though because now i'm leaving you two on this journey alone it's like it's like we were all running down a trail and i was like right there but but I'm like, fucking, I'm out.

I just, but now you two are just running. I'm like, I'll miss you. So what happens now is like, since you have extra pep in your step, you're just leaning the pack now. And so like whenever we start to drag, you'll just have to pull us forward. That's what's going to happen now.

Man, Andrew, I love the way you twisted that around. Thank you. I feel better about my quittery. You could throw us a lifeline yeah exactly i just one day bring in some nitro cold booze three and just place two right there and be like i'm just gonna have one like oh my god these other ones are already open too so weird they smell so good that's another thing you smell a coffee going into a coffee shop. Is Andy drinking? Or is anybody in the house drinking coffee?

So do you have to smell that when you leave the house? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other day she was like, her and I were going to go somewhere. And she's like, oh, let me make some coffee real quick. And I was like, ah, man.

I just sat there and bit my lip. You know, the self-control that this is bringing you, that was admirable. It's going to turn me into a real beast. Seriously? No, I think so. You know? Yeah. I mean, you know, I like, I like challenges and I like, uh, I like trying to have discipline on certain things. It's not easy, you know. But I think you can take anything that you have going on in your life and you can, you know, develop stronger discipline towards it or to it. There's many different levels to it. And for some people, it might be harder depending on what it is. And if anytime it's like substance, I guess it'd be way harder. Or if it's food, as we're going to learn from Mike. I think it's Mike and not Ryan it'd be way harder or if it's food as we're going

to learn from mike i think it's mike and not ryan right mike yeah mike my couples um you know how uh how derrick from more plates more dates does the um like those crazy stories about like yeah so we got one on ghb if you guys want to hear it while we wait. I'm going to butcher because I can't read stuff. But this one's from, I'll just say Paul. It says, big fan. He listened to the episode with Coach Trevor and he wanted to share his GHB story. I'll leave the camera on you guys so you can respond. But I went to my dealer's house and I grabbed a pretty small volume of GHB and put it

in a water bottle. I had some experience with compounds, so I thought I could just casually sip a little bit from the bottle on my way to the superstore. I was going to the grocery store to buy a rice cooker. And by the time I parked my car and started walking inside, it started to hit and I could hardly walk straight. One of the employees asked me if I was okay and I just gestured that I was and I asked if I could use the washroom. Anyways, I used the washroom and I could hardly effing stand up. I slowly made my way back to the parking lot to go lay down in my car for a while without buying the rice cooker because I was too effed up to even buy a rice cooker. without buying the rice cooker because I was too effed up to even buy a rice cooker. And on the way back to the car, I passed a police officer near the entrance and dropped my phone right in front of him.

And he was like, hey, buddy, you dropped your phone. I didn't respond to him because I didn't actually hear him. And he grabbed me as he said, come here for a minute. We need to talk. Anyways, he called in like five cruisers and a bunch of undercover cop cars pulled up and circled me and i was a little i was a little bit built at the time i was 245 pounds anyways questioned me about what i was on and i denied over and over again that i was on anything so they called me an ambulance and then we shot the shit for a little while whilst we waited for the ambulance and we talked about lifting they asked me if i quote pushed mad stacks my rebuttal was i

prefer the barbell standing there handcuffed chatting with like eight police officers kind of made me feel like a big deal because they needed to call in that many guys just because they weren't sure if I was going to be calm or if I was going to be trouble or what. So anyways, I peacefully go to the hospital with the officer who arrested me, and we continue on. He follows procedure, handcuffing me to the chairs as we move through the hospital to different rooms as they do a tox scan on me which they find nothing because

ghb is pretty benign it's not on typical toxicology profiles and we proceeded to continue shooting the shit chatting and it turns out that police officer knew one of the guys i trained with in the strong man scene at this point he looked at the time and decided it was not an issue he needed to con he needed to concern concern himself with and he uncuffed me and told me to stay out of trouble i was a little bit pissed off because i got a bill in the mail for 500 for a 500 ambulance right of this and the superstore was two blocks away from my house and right across the street from my house was the hospital uh he goes on to say more stuff that he had to go to work and explain the whole thing to his boss at three 30 AM.

Moral of the story. Don't drink. Don't sip GHB out of a bottle while driving. It'll end badly. What is GHB supposed to do again? It's that help you sleep. Yeah. Oh,

wow. That's the thing. He thought he could just sip on it though. Oh my God. And I take it as like a party drug? He's probably just going to go home and take a little nappy poo. Didn't realize it was going to hit him so fast. Yeah.

A little nappy poo. That's some craziness. Sorry, that was a lot longer than I expected because I suck at reading. But we got our man. Yep. Can't quite hear him yet. There we go. We got you.

It's amazing to be here, guys. Thank you again. Just so much. Really. It's the dream come true. Thank you. What do you got going on in the background there? So that's actually my gym right now.

This is my small studio that I train people at. And so it's just my sign. I got a dumbbell rack over here, squat rack. And then I got just like a normal bench and stuff. Hyper extension machine over in the corner. That's not seen. Um, just the, the usual spring, the conditioning stuff. Awesome. Well, this is my little studio. Well, if you don't mind, we're just going to roll right into it.

Cause, uh, we won't bite. We'll, uh, we'll, we'll play nicely. And I think, uh, I think we'll end up having a great show. We're just going to talk just as, just as we were talking, uh, when I was going back and forth with you a little bit on Instagram, if you're comfortable with that. I would be absolutely fine with that, yeah. All right. This is Nseema. The other guy over there is Andrew.

And you know me already. Mark, nice to see you officially. Nseema, nice to meet you. And Andrew, thank you so much for being so professional through all this. I appreciate it, guys. I try my best, dude. He signed my name perfectly. Holy shit. Yeah yeah he said your name right off the bat yeah that's crazy well i mean he just said it so it wasn't that all due respect but still anyway all right well tell us uh tell us

a little bit how this whole entire thing uh like you saw, how did this transpire into, uh, you turning into developing into, um, a teenager that was how, how much did you like, what was your, what was the most you weighed? Yeah. So, um, I was 550 pounds at 17 years old And around 17 is when I started a diet and I'm 32 now. So it's been around a 14 year journey. And, um, I, it's very easy to summarize that way, but there's a lot of nuance with like my weight loss story and also my post weight loss story where I started a career as a trainer too. Let's just go back a second to, uh, let's go back to like when you were like five, were you kind of normal? And what about when you were 10? Well, it's actually very interesting.

So I've always known when I was young that I was overweight. And I could just tell by physically looking at myself, comparing myself to others. And I was keeping track of what I actually weighed for about 12 years, maybe up until 12. track of what I actually weighed for about 12 years, maybe up until 12. But then from there, I actually got too overweight for a scale at like the doctor's office to register my weight. And so I only know that I was 550 pounds because I was, I got sick once and I ended up going to the hospital. They really, really needed my weight. So they had this special machine that was made for people to be weighted that are stuck in wheelchairs. And you just subtract the weight of the wheelchair. That's the weight of the person. I just had to stand on that myself. So that's actually how I found out I was 550 pounds initially.

Back to being five years old, my lifestyle really consisted of the same thing, playing way too many video games, eating really large portions and taking way too many trips to Denny's to be honest with you. I think I kept their lights on for many, many years. And that's really where roughly I would say four to about 12 years old, that lifestyle just compounded over time to where your weight can spiral out of control. And then next thing you know, it's just out of your hands. Do you have any siblings? I don't, I'm an only child. Okay. Now, how about you're like, so in terms of your parents, were your parents overweight also? Or did they, cause, cause like, you know, you, you couldn't

have gone to Denny's by yourself as a kid. You didn't have that money. So like how, how did that play into that? Absolutely. So I would say that probably 75% of my family was or is still overweight. My father and my grandmother are quite small. Actually, it's very ironic. But my mom and I have some distant relatives that have all been battling with weight for most of their life. And because you got fairly heavy at such a young age, it was probably just maybe not even an option or maybe something that you didn't even want to explore to do any sports or to do anything like physical. Well, I actually did try not for nothing. But what I did find was when I did start trying, I was so overweight that I would end up getting stuff like stress fractures in my feet or be completely ridiculed off the team. I do have a distinct memory of being on a soccer team in one of the towns I grew up in for about three days. And I ended up hurting

myself on one of the first practices. And also just people were rather unkind to the really large kid trying to join a sports team as an outlet to lose weight, considering most of them are there to do better at sports. So it's hard to get in. Yeah. When these things were happening, did you kind of start to pull back from other people more and more and then kind of end up playing video games more and more, ending up inside more and more and maybe ended up maybe isolating yourself? Well, I absolutely have always tried to be as social as possible. One of the credits I tend to get from people is because I was so overweight as a young man, I really developed and worked on

my personality. And what I've heard from a lot of people is that my personality stood out more than my size, which I really appreciate. But I do believe that my size definitely made me stand out. I have some photos that I'm actually going to send you that were very accurate about how large I was. Wow. So also, yeah, yeah. Also like as a kid, when all of this was happening, um, how much do you, do you know how much you weighed at like 10 or 12 or did you even weigh yourself much then? So right around, I would say fourth grade, I was was at one of i was at my school and it was one of those presidential fitness tests yeah where they would collect all the height and weight of all the kids and then do all the usual exercises to see where they measure and i said this is a very

distinct memory i was in line the entire school was completely lined up to just have these two women record the height and weight. And one woman was taking the weight and the other one was recording it. And I'm in about fourth grade. And I remember hearing the kids in front of me being roughly like 65 to 70 pounds. And I ended up being up and get weighed. And the woman kind of double took and tried to say under her breath, 110 pounds. What ended up happening was the, everybody ended up hearing it. And so that was a little bit of a tough situation just because it was one of the first standout moments of my, my weight, really differentiating me from people.

But that was when I, that was right around the time when I was still able to understand my weight and keep track of my weight. There is a problem because a lot of the scales can only go up to about 300 pounds. Past that weight, it's not necessarily healthy to be, but it's also very hard to record your weight. And did you try anything? Like you personally or your parents, did anybody try anything to help you lose weight? Was anything ever successful or no one really did? No one really did anything. No, people actually did. And it was my mom being an overweight woman has done nothing

but spend almost all of her mental energy when I was young to try to help me lose my weight. And there were two diets prior to the one that actually stuck where I lost my weight, where I lost about 50 pounds. It was a no carb actin set diet and I lost about 50 pounds. But the second I started going back to my old ways, I just gained it. I gained it back and I ended up actually probably netting gaining weight from about two diets before the diet at 17 that I started that actually was successful. How do you think, uh, I think shame maybe played into this a bit? Because I know that we use that word and we just always think it's bad. I heard you mention that you got ridiculed and made fun of, which really sucks and is extremely hurtful. side. It kind of sounds like without that, your story might be quite different. It might have been too hard to ever even come back from that particular situation. But how do you think

kind of shame and pain of being upset about the situation, being made fun of, being teased, how do you think it kind of made you into what you are today? Because you probably have lost, I don't know, almost 300 pounds or something like that. Right around two 50. I want to say around two 25, since the lockdown happened, I gained a little bit of weight and I don't feel like I've earned the right to say that just yet. However, my story is never ending, so I'll have it back. Right. How do you think shame kind of played into turning you into who you are today? I would say that the negativity that I experienced in my life when I was overweight was probably a double-edged sword. When I was young and I had

lost the weight, so roughly 19 years old, I was a little bit distant from who I was when I was overweight. I had finally gotten myself out of it and it was just a tough situation where I almost kind of shut it out. And from looking forward and kind of reflecting on it all and learning and growing, the shame today is actually nothing but good. Because any of the hardship that I experienced when I was overweight, chances are it gave me a little bit more thicker skin today. And I'm just lucky enough to be where i am today in a different situation so i would say that it was preparatory but at the time shame is a large reason why i would stop dieting or stop thinking that at one point in my life i would ever get out of this weight cycle where i would ever move forward and lose my weight i definitely would say that had some effect.

And you also mentioned, there's one thing I thought was really interesting is you mentioned that you had to develop your personality more. Um, but you also, you said, you know, you played a lot of video games, you were kind of sedentary. So my question is, you know, I don't think a lot of people like what, what allowed you to do that? Because a lot of people, if you, I don't know when being super overweight, if that would actually make you less confident as an individual. But it seems that like you were able to build a great personality, we can tell, but also a lot of confidence. So what brought you that level of confidence, even though you didn't feel right with the body that you had? Truth be told, at the time, it was most likely compensatory. The way that I looked at it back then was if I had a personality that stood out,

if I showed some form of intelligence and just tried to be as social as possible, maybe these things would stand out a little bit more than my size. Also, I will say at the time, I was motivated by the more I developed this personality, the more I was able to fit in and mesh with people in my mind. I feel like I would have been picked on less as well. What do you think ultimately led you to saying like, this is it? You know, I got to really make a change. And then you actually being able to stick to that change.

Two main things stick out. So out of all my reflecting through these years, the two things that really stuck out to help me lose weight, one is rather serious than the one to me is kind of funny. So the one that's kind of funny is I stopped actually fitting into 6XL clothes at the big and tall store. So from there, it might not seem that important of an intrinsic motivation to lose weight based off that. However, what am I going to wear? Where do I go from there? If the big and tall store no longer has anything in my size, is there a bigger and bigger tall store? No, there's not. So that's one of them. And the second one's just a little bit more serious. I ended up having a really good

high school experience in terms of my professors and teachers. They really took a liking to me. I've always been a lifetime student and I try to stay humble and they always seem to gravitate towards truly liking me. And there was one day that I was out on a hike, not even a hike. That's a terrible way to word it because I was out on a very small walk around this little college campus that was right across the street from my school. And I was out with one of my professors. And I actually, just from probably 10 minutes of the light, light walking, I ended up having a pretty bad asthma attack. I never really had any asthma attacks, but I've had asthma my whole life. And I just remember practically 50 feet outside of my school's door to cross the street, I was winded. And by the end of maybe half of the walk, I ended up having to have my professor go back to the school to get my inhaler to come back and then let me have my inhaler to then let me get back to the school.

of shape that even something that the simplest of human that you know i was i was a young man my professor was probably 20 30 years older than me and he's just fine walking around and you know i've always been observant and that was just one of the straws that broke the camel's back so to speak because i genuinely have never felt that way in terms of asthma attack since um when i was young i i went to a one of those medieval dinner theaters and i found out the hard way through this experience that i was lurched to horses my throat closed because there were so many horses around and i self-induced that same feeling by just simply walking and that was terrifying to me so when when you start all the changes at 17, I'm curious, first, like later on what diet you did, but how did you start changing your habits in terms of just the way that you lived versus what you were doing before? I'm curious about how you were living before in terms of how sedentary you were, et cetera.

But what physical things did you start to change and slowly move towards that were some big needle movers for you? Absolutely. So I would say it's actually been more of a step-by-step process. My weight had gotten so out of control that looking at it now, it was just so many things to try to tackle right away. And so initially my thought was to change my eating habits. and so right initially my thought was to change my eating habits and what in terms of diets there's probably no specific diet that this is called but what i did was i logically thought of the food that i could eat almost every day and i stuck to those foods and the way i would kind of spice it up and also just you know be a human and not just live in the same modality my whole life would be like different sauces, teriyaki sauce or barbecue sauce. But what I tended to stick to was some

form of one rotisserie chicken the entire day. And I would break it up and put it in the little containers, a baked potato, some rice and Caesar salad. And then from there the where i found my variety was different dressings different sauces but my young mind and my family at the time because i was young also helped me figure out what to eat and those just seemed like the logical things to gravitate towards all of the foods that i ate before i lost my weight were the typical overcaloric large plate meals. And that was just probably one of four or five meals per day. When it came to the diet and the weight loss that actually stuck and it really moved me forward in my life, it was more doable because I stopped caring about. How do I word this?

I stopped allowing myself to think that that was true food, true food. And my mom actually gets credit for this. Food should be looked at as fuel, not something that's an enjoyment or a scapegoat. And that's always been a mantra to this day, looking at food as fuel. That's wonderful. I start a lot of people there when I, when I communicate with somebody about their kind

of weight loss journey, I'll sometimes ask them, I'll say, what's your favorite food? And they might say pizza. And I'll say, let's try again. I'll say, what's your favorite food? And they'll say, uh, uh, they'll say French fries, you know, and I'm like, let's, what's a real food that you like? You know, and I think that's really brilliant what you did. You said, because, because you had previous experience at times in your life of trying diets, the diets did work. You mentioned you lost weight a couple different times.

The diets did work. You mentioned you lost weight a couple different times, but when you went off of those plans, they didn't work, which is obvious because then you're back to your old habits. But very intuitive of you to recognize, hey, those experiences I had before weren't necessarily bad. I just didn't enjoy the food enough to really stick with it. So what are some foods? How do I meet myself halfway on this? And I think that is a really great place for people to start. Did you end up still cheating a lot and messing up on the diet here and there? And if you did, how did you have enough positive self-talk to the asthma attack and just when you can't wear clothes at that size anymore, that is kind of like a, so to speak, rock bottom. And so, a lot of it I attribute to those leaving any excuse that might have given me a choice to stop my diet, leaving. But there's another part of it where when I started this specific diet, the one that had success and the one that took at the very beginning, it was really, really easy to stick to. And when it comes to the cheating element of my diet, I'm a human and willpower is just about as depletable of a system as a muscle energy. So I did absolutely allow myself to eat. But what I ended up doing was I structured it so that on my birthday, on holidays, I just stopped caring about what a diet would be and the hard part.

But what I taught myself to do through that was the day after, it doesn't matter what you did, just go back to it. Prior to that, like with the first initial diet, it would be if I cheated for a day, my mindset would be, well, you've cheated already. You're off your diet. Why not just let this bleed into the next day or the next? And that attitude, I just don't know if I could afford it the time to have anymore because at that age, you know, at any age, if you have weight issues and you just feel different, you're very aware of it. The mirror every day will remind you. So at the end of the day, more times of just looking in the mirror and more times of realizing what I've become just gave me a little bit more motivation this time, because this was the first time that my health was in question. And how did you know to structure like your cheat meals like that? I see, you know, some people or I say I used to see a lot of people would like, OK, I'm

going to do whatever this diet is. And then you kind of check in on them. And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going off the plan today because I need a cheat meal or whatever. I need a cheat day. And it's like, man, like, I don't think you've made enough progress to actually do that. But you're scheduling around events that are throughout the year. And they're not like, you're not going to give yourself like, I'm going to go two weeks really hard. And then

next Saturday, I'm going to go get some tacos or something. You're just like, no, I'm going to wait till my birthday. Like that's really big. And since you did start so young, how did, like, what made you decide to kind of structure the cheat meals that way? So just logic, really, when it comes down to it, I know what my propensity at the time was to want to eat. I really did, because obviously it was enough to get myself as far down the road as I did. So going into this diet, and this is one of the large differentiators from the other diets,

was just simply not giving myself the option to cheat every day. And that is a little bit vague. And so as I started going through it, I revised it to I'm only going to cheat on special occasions that are mostly attributed to food. Anyway, on Thanksgiving, we attribute it to food. We attribute Christmas dinner. We attribute, you know, it's your birthday, you know, do something special for yourself. So knowing that I will always have a propensity for those kinds of foods. I've at that time, it was just the smart route where it was just a smart route to limit myself to that. How I actually did that though. And this is something I remember to this day was just a constant talking to myself in the moment

that today is not a day to cheat. You've done so far on your diet and you need to keep going because this one can actually be the one that works. I remember being in the middle of school, not paying attention to some form of exam prep, reminding myself that I remember being in my computer room at my old house, the middle of an afterschool day, reminding myself that. And, um, I just, I think one of the things that really, really helped me succeed was just keeping that in my head for the entire time were you a social eater did you end up eating uh you know a lot around other people or uh were most of your bad habits kind of done behind closed doors type

thing well at the time most of the people that I gravitated towards as friends were people that played a lot of video games and had similar lifestyles. So I would absolutely say that I was a social leader. I made the joke about Denny's, but in all reality, that was more of the social hub for a large amount of my friends. Does that make sense? What kind of video games are you talking about? Yes, finally.

Oh, big into shooters. To this day, I'll still dabble a little bit obviously i got other stuff going on but i'm a really really big first person shooter guy which are you waiting for halo infinite by any chance like i am you know i feel like now it's not the time to differentiate opinions but i'm not a big halo fan. I got really into Counter-Strike. Yes. That's what I'll say here. Okay.

Well, fun fact, boys. Anything that I did in my youth to channel some form of athleticism or competitive vibe was actually through Counter-Strike. I've been to local tournaments and stuff like that and did pretty well. That's awesome. So when I was young, yeah. Are we talking about Source? No, 1.6. Oh, shit. Okay.

When you were playing those games, was this a trigger? Was this something like you were playing the games and eating pizza or something like that? What did it look like? I wouldn't necessarily say it's like that. I would say that playing too many video games is a conduit

to be able to eat too much you're already in you're already signing yourself up for something that doesn't necessarily include a lot of activity right and so you have to think about the kind of people that would electively go towards that route people that would probably not inherently like activity anyway so i would say that it's just a conduit for the energy drinks, eating bad food, pizza, because when you hear the word gaming, those are the things you tend to think about. Yeah. What are the foods that you had a real affinity towards? And were you, in your opinion, were you kind of addicted to those things? in your opinion, were you kind of addicted to those things?

Anything fried or pizza to this day, I have structured an entire cheating on my diet model, my entire life around pizza Fridays, because it's just something that I'm not necessarily sure I want to compromise ever giving up, but those, that was really my jam. It really was.

You ever have a, you ever have a fried calzone by any chance? No, but now I want one. It's delicious. Yeah, hopefully we don't have another conversation about eating fried calzones. I just found my way back to it. Yeah, you told me about those damn fried calzones. That's all I ate for the rest of my life.

I remember I was in California for a pretty long time and i went back to new york and i was like i just want to get something different something weird and i went to this place and i got a calzone the guy's like you want it fried i was like yeah okay great it sounds like like basically fried pizza that's all folded up with a bunch of it was so good it's unbelievable it sounds delicious power project, how's it going? This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Merrick Health. Now, if you know Derek from More Plates, More Dates, which you obviously do, he owns his TRT clinic. And Merrick Health is the premium telehealth TRT and HRT clinic where we have something called the Power Project Panel.

If you're just interested in getting labs for men and women, 26 different labs that'll give you everything you need to know. But if you want to work directly with somebody who can give you advice on exactly what treatment you should get, Merrick Health has those doctors, too. So check them out. Andrew, can you tell the people how to get it? Yeah, absolutely. So we have links down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes. But you need to head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com.

And, yeah, if you are interested in TRT, you can actually contact them. You'll hop on the phone with them. And when it comes time to actually start paying for some of these panels, just let them know that you've heard it through us and you want to use promo code PowerProject15, and that's going to save you 15% off all the recommended labs that they give you. Again, links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Highly recommend it. They are the premium telehealth HRT clinic, TRT clinic. They're really, they're second to none. So head over there right now. So I'm right there with you. Pizza Fridays used to be like an every week thing. Well, I used to have pizza all the time, but I'm curious, have you ever tried messing with

like making your own pizza to make it like less calorically dense and maybe you know have control over it so that way you can still have it and not really have to wait till friday to eat it or is that just going like is that opening up a can of worms that could go really bad really fast not at all um not pizza because i think i'm a little bit um unwavering with how much I do enjoy pizza. However, stuff like lasagna or chicken parmesans or other things that you can add a healthy fat free or better breadcrumbs or the fat free ricotta. I have absolutely tried and I am a big believer that they actually do satiate that need for especially lasagna. You can really do lasagna in a healthier way. And it's really does satiate that need for especially lasagna. You can really do lasagna in a healthier way.

And it's really does satiate that need for lasagna. So I would say probably not pizza, but absolutely with other forms of food. Do you tend to lean towards like lower fat, lower carb, or do you just kind of pick just in accordance to like maybe what's available? Or do you kind of move shift around a little bit? I have a couple rules so the only time that i actively avoid carbs would be when i'm at a gas station so when i a lot of a lot of clients can ask me if i go out and i forget my lunch or something what's one of the best alternatives and i'm a big believer that like beef jerky cheeses the the sliced meats other

things like that that would not involve carbohydrates that are especially sold at gas stations. I think that those, that would be the time that I kind of avoid carbs. For me, I feel like I am lucky because limiting myself to a potato, a baked potato and rice really got me to love a good potato or a good rice. And so those are the carbs that I'm the most gravitated towards anyway. So when you say good potato and good rice, like is there a certain way that you,

you yourself like prepare these things so that it actually is good for you? Tastes good. Well, tastes good. You can just kind of make a compromise with something like margarine which is not the best for you but when it came to where i was at the beginning trying to be a hundred percent by the book of what is the most healthiest was so far against the way that i lived my life that i learned to be okay with these forms of compromises that's why i actually brought up

teriyaki sauces and other stuff because not necessarily it's that is that something you hear to put on food for if you're trying to lose weight but one of those things that they really do is give you more sanity to push forward to the next day i'm curious oh yeah go ahead no you go ahead i want to know because i think uh right now on social media a lot, you see people talking about like fat phobia and that idea. And I wonder, first off, do you think fat phobia is a legitimate thing? And also when it comes to people within fitness, like trainers or people putting forward information to try to help people lose body fat, right? Is there messaging that they are missing when it comes to individuals who are much heavier and are in a different situation? Two part question.

I have a decent answer for both. So in terms of fat phobia, I would say that my own personal opinion about people that are overweight are people that have a ton of untapped potential because people that whether they're overweight or not, there's a commonality amongst humans. They're probably distinctly good at one thing. So they have some form of inherent value. So I would not use the word fat phobia in terms of devaluing anyone that needs to lose weight. However, I would say that if I did not go down this road and start my fitness journey and continue it the way I did, I would not have allowed myself so many new parts of me that have shined through since my weight loss to actually be a part of me. People need to lose their weight to just continually find the better in themselves. The longer someone has just stayed in that very almost stasis-based state where they're just gaining weight and not doing anything, they're forgetting about all their assets and about all their values that they have done in their life. And I would just say that no one will ever succeed.

I would just say that no one will ever succeed. Well, very, very rare. Few people will succeed when everyone has the chips against them. So I would say that in order for people to just bite that bullet, get over themselves and start the journey for their personal sake. I don't think there should be any form of demeaning to them about their weight or fat phobia, or I don't think that there should be a stigma about fat. However, go ahead, please. I'm curious about one thing you mentioned, you mentioned becoming a better version of themselves. And a lot of times when I see this talked about on social, one of the big things is like, I'm okay. The way I am, like, first off my, my, like go to the doctor, my blood levels are fine.

Like, um, the, even the idea of saying you can become a better version that seems to rub people the wrong way. You know what I mean? Because they're like, well, I'm already healthy. All my, everything on my cholesterol, all that's healthy. This is the fine version. I don't need that being skinnier isn't better. And that seems to get people kind of angry when it comes to that conversation.

Have you seen that? I have. I have. It's hard to answer that one directly because there's always context that will probably give someone a way out of a solid one way directional statement. But I would say that, well, I was very overweight and I can tell you for a fact that I wouldn't be able to sit in my own skin today doing this. Had I not uncovered parts of me that I only uncovered solely due to losing my weight, forms of confidence, forms of self-worth. So I don't know. I think it's a very, very hard topic because as far as I'm concerned,

the world's becoming more and more sensitive in a sense. I have a lot of empathy, so I don't judge anybody for it. But as a health professional, that one of my biggest assets to have people look at me as credible is my weight loss. I can't fully stand behind people thinking that losing their weight, changing their composition is a bad thing because inherently, it's not a bad thing, but look at like a different form of addiction. Nobody is affected more so than the actual person by an addiction. And so you have to ask yourself, if I know someone that is suffering from something like that,

I can give them the best guidance I can. I can help them the best I can. And clearly I'm worried about it myself. I have my own emotional stake, but I just know for a fact that no one has more emotional stake in their longevity than the person. And so if someone that is overweight doesn't feel like it's conducive to be okay with losing weight, I just don't know if that correlates with the science of how the body works,

because there's no, there's no reason why someone should aim to have an exponentially low body fat or even grow a ton of muscle unless they want to. And that's their goal. Absolutely. The one thing that I try to emphasize for people at least is what's the quality of your life. Now, something is in the quality of your life where you decided to seek a professional to change the quality of your life. So what exactly do you want to change? And I would, I would say that if you come from a perspective, no one wants to hear someone that's not accomplished something,

tell them to do something. Does that make sense? Because they haven't accomplished it. And the person hearing it hasn't accomplished it. And by and large, anybody being told they have to lose weight for those reasons are probably going to bring up a large form of a barrier to guard themselves from hearing that because they don't want to hear it. But like I said prior, every day, the mirror reminds you of your health. And then on top of that, it's not even about how you look. I can tell you that I did not feel like a healthy young man when I was so overweight.

I didn't feel good. I felt like I had the body pain of someone a little bit older than me. I felt very embarrassed, not wanting to walk up my school stairs because I didn't want to be the one huffing and puffing in the silent class prior. So I don't want to hate any part of my old self. I just want to thank myself for moving forward because the aesthetic part of it's irrelevant. I've been able to live a better life because of my weight loss. Does that make sense?

Yes. It doesn't seem to hold a whole lot of value to point the finger at anyone, you know, when somebody talks about like being obese. However, it does seem to make a lot of sense to take a lot of personal responsibility. As you're mentioning, you took it you took it head on and you and you decided like this is going to be the change that I'm going to make. In your opinion, do you think it's people's fault, their own fault? Like it kind of sounds like to me that because you were heavier at such a young age, it almost isn't really your fault. But I guess, does it even really matter? Because what matters is that you are heavy at one point and you needed just to lose weight. a human on this planet. I did.

But I also think that people that have made choices to get to that certain weight should have some form of self-accountability because to me at least, and this is the only person I could speak of from this, my accountability and me choosing to gain that weight allows me to have more

initiative over my own choices, allows me to recognize that initiative over my own choices, allows me to recognize that I have made bad choices. And so setting aside anything where someone might feel bad, no one on earth is being force fed. Does that make sense? So I would, and I would say that a large amount of people that want to lose the weight truly do know it themselves. It's just locked away under a lot of self, self convincing that it's okay. So I would say that to inherit, it's inherently a battle of your own ego against yourself. against yourself. How does one, because you mentioned something there, uh, having to take accountability and responsibility. And I can like with many things, for example, you know,

if someone isn't somewhere in life, um, like I was raised by a single mother, some people are like, Oh, I didn't have this person there. And when it comes to maybe situations like this, some people are like, well, you know, my parents didn't have the greatest habits or when I was younger, there's this. Since you've had that experience and since you've probably worked with people who have lost massive amounts of weight, how do you get them to a point where they take ultimate responsibility for everything? Because it seems that when you're able to take that responsibility, you also know that now you have the power to make the change and it's no one else. Your parents don't have the power.

People in your life don't have the power. You have the power to do that. So how do you help people shift that mindset, just taking ultimate responsibility for where they are and where they can actually be? I think I'm very lucky, honestly. If you think about it on paper, there's an obesity problem in this country. very lucky. Honestly, if you think about it on paper, there's an obesity problem in this country. So I think that no matter what way someone tries to approach someone and talk about it,

more than likely, it might be a harder conversation to have. It might not be a successful conversation where I consider myself very lucky is just a perspective of living through it. So I know for a fact of what I've experienced, more than one person has tried to get me to lose weight based on what they think. And each time I know for a fact that I agreed, but I did hit that kind of ego wall where who wants to really break down their biggest weakness in front of some person that's just arbitrarily saying you need to do this. Does that make sense? What was the initial question? I'm sorry. Kind of the mindset shift of it's, it's your fault. You know what I mean? It's, it's the balls in your corner. It's your responsibility to do this. No one else's.

Yeah. I think, like I said, it's, I think I can speak to someone with them knowing that I am not trying to be on a pedestal when I talk to them. I'm right next to them in the trenches because one of the first things I'll talk to anybody that's lost weight or people that I'm going to help lose weight is that I still struggle with it to this day. And it puts me kind of in the same situation as them. And I think that from my own experience, I'm very lucky, just like I said, because I lived through it. And by living through it and changing who I am gave me this immense passion for trying to get others to follow suit that need it, that want it because of all these, like I

said prior, tangible lifestyle improvements from my day-to-day, whether it be self-worth or confidence. And one of the things that I try to really advertise to people in a sense is no matter whether you hate the feeling of exercise, because like I said, initially, I had an asthma attack during a very light walk. So that doesn't necessarily want me to go into a lifestyle of fitness with a ton of excitement. Initially, I thought I was very fragile. But one of the things I tell the people that really need to lose weight is that you would just be so surprised at how durable you are. And I don't even know you to this intimate level. I just know that everybody has a better form of themselves inside.

And by and large, that ego that I just spoke on is what's holding them back. I've worked with so many people that have wanted to lose weight for years before they actually started losing weight. And it's just a, it's an issue of not knowing where to start or having a lot of people in those shoes, telling them that they need to lose weight. If you tell a young kid, a teenager that's having some hard times, that they need to follow these rules, even though logic dictates to me, you should follow these rules. They're probably not because they're getting it hammered into them at every angle. So it's almost a double-edged sword to tell people that they need to lose weight because on one side, people really do need to, not only for the health,

but for the mindset benefit and just for everything good that comes from it. But by telling someone that they need to lose weight, you're inherently guarding them up. You're inherently giving them less reception to what you're saying, because I still am a firm believer that people that need to lose weight know it. It's just a matter of how far in there it's locked away. You mentioned people having forgotten assets. What do you mean by that? And what do you think these forgotten assets might be? Well, for me, I worked on my personality when I was overweight because I didn't think that I would have much of a chance in social situations because of my size. Being where I am today down the road, I quite enjoy being in social situations and I feel like I at least have a passion for it. I'm not sure if I'm good at anything, but I at least have a passion for it.

have a passion for it. I'm not sure if I'm good at anything, but I at least have a passion for it. And if I had just listened to my initial thought, first things first, I wouldn't be here. Second thing is I wouldn't be trying to give my message to people because if I thought initially what I believed with all the fibers of my soul that I just wouldn't be able to stand out in a social situation, then, I mean, like I said, I would have been a little bit worse off than I am today. And now take that idea about being good in a social situation where you're made for it and it could just be a part of you and turn that into anything that's just some individual's talent. You know, I've ran into people that need to lose two, 300 pounds, but the way that they

can see numbers makes me feel like it's my first day at school or, or, you know, even better yet, a lot of people that need to lose a large amount of weight are very successful business owners because they've channeled all of that passion and all of that hard work to that. And it's funny because they almost don't have the ability to connect like the living through the hardships and having all that passion and just driving forward with themselves. It's they, they separate all of their own at all their own assets or all of their, all the things that individually good at,

and they separate it from their actual self because they don't like their actual selves or how they look. And so it's just funny to see because people that lose weight, you'll find as they lose weight, they pick up different hobbies, start dressing differently, start becoming a different person. And they really do mold and change just simply because you're giving an opportunity to try new things. When you're overweight, you're very limited. You already are probably holding yourself back in a litany of ways. Then you are worried about what the outside world is thinking about you.

So living very reserved doesn't give anybody the opportunity to grow or get better at anything or realize what they are good at. And then for me, at least learning fitness, learning and understanding this whole game gave me a really good mindset on just not anything in life. I'm not going to be a business owner. That's amazing at this right away. I'm going to progress as oh, because I learned that through fitness. So I think that people could really find a lot of benefit from just uncovering that fitness process of trial error, experiencing hardships, failing, coming back again, because those are the things that tend, one of those situations solely defines someone that's overweight in their mind.

So you're just kind of losing some emotional baggage while you lose weight. And that lets you kind of go back to your own drawing board and figure out who the hell you are. You know, I'm not sure if you guys touched on this while I had to run to the restroom, but you mentioned that you play games less now, right? Or like not nearly as much, correct? Yeah. I mean, I still love video games. It's been a lifelong hobby, but I have, I have other things that I have to take care

of and learning to prioritize those things was a valuable tool in my life. But I don't believe in personally abstaining from anything that makes the person who they are. Cause I think that just about anything could have some form of self control over. It's just a matter of when you feel anxious about something that you either feel like you need to abstain on or change, don't label yourself as the failure in it.

Take that thought away and start figuring out a process to solve that problem. So that's good. Yeah. I'm just curious. Cause like when I was younger too, my problem with video games is that I would play multiplayer games and I would get too competitive and I'd spend way too many hours trying to get too good. So now I just play single player stuff because like I know that once I open that multiplayer worm, I might not be showing up for the podcast.

So I'm just curious when it comes to the video game thing, how do you balance that now where you can do it in a healthy way and healthy doses? Well, it probably sounds like a silly mindset because what you just said about getting into an online, as soon as I could compete against someone, I get that exact same buck in my games. constantly that when I'm not on top of everything else I need to do in my life, whether it be work, you know, my, my outside life, my relationship, I'm going to play like really bad in those games because I'm, I have other things on my mind. So the, the base definition of a video game is a hobby. A hobby is supposed to be something to be enjoyed. If you are overly competitive as a hobby, supposed to be something to be enjoyed. If you are overly competitive as a hobby, that's not a bad thing. However, if you subside parts of your life for something you're incredibly competitive in, that might not make you a whole person and you might not be a performer after that. So for the people that spend one hour doing a multiplayer game, that one hour, you actually might be really

good because your mindset is on the game. But then four or five, six, seven hours later, you're reminded that you've done nothing but play this game. And if you start losing the game or if other people start doing better than you, that trickles into your mindset. And then the game's not even fun anyway. So the way that I try to always keep myself in check with it is I'm going to play like crap. So the way that I try to always keep myself in check with it is I'm going to play like crap if I don't keep track of my life. Just like I would assume a physical athlete would take care of the other elements of their life to make sure they're not going into competition with their head full of stuff. Does that make sense? It makes total sense.

What do you think young people and maybe parents should know about children that are gaining excessive amounts of weight? Do these things always come from places of pain and trauma? No, actually, I would say some of it just comes from love. Like I had said to you a little while ago when we first started talking, no perennial bad decisions were made in my house. The only thing that I could really think of was people's large amount of love for me, overshadowing their logic for the right decision for me. that you can love them by setting up systems where later in life, they will really thank you and not feel unappreciative. Because I think everybody has uncovered in a sense that life unfolds the way it does. It doesn't necessarily have a lot of favorites. It's not necessarily the most nice. It just is what it is. So the people that have spent their whole life hit away, gaining weight and not experiencing that, especially the ones that are through

enablers or like I said, love, and there's nobody understanding the situation at hand. Well, you're all, you are inherently setting that child up to deal with the already there hardships of life, but they have absolutely no prep for it. So in a sense, it would literally be like someone walking into a gym and saying, I want to be a pro power lifter. Have you lifted before? No,

I would probably not start them on a reverse band bench. Does that make sense? Because you're throwing them to like a shark's den and it's just not the right idea. So life's going to unfold either way. If you spend your time solely playing video games and gaining weight and being unhealthy, you will find out a harder way than others that may have changed that. Gotcha. You know, uh, I don't know if you also got into the fitness stuff when I was gone, but like with your lifting and the fitness and all of that, how, how do you, how did you progress that? How did that start to move forward for you?

lost a hundred pounds just dieting alone. So I'd been on a diet for about a year or two. And my first thought process about going into the gym wasn't about gaining muscle or getting strength. What my first thought was, was add activity because I'm at a plateau and I'm really disappointed in this weight loss. Before that, my diet carried me through a hundred percent of the weight loss. When I did get into the gym, I still remember my first day in the gym like it was yesterday i did 30 minutes of cardio and i'm a young man so i did the preacher pro machine and then i left the next day i was at the orthopedic doctors because i couldn't unbend my arms okay so it just to this day it's just that funny beginning intro story i started like everyone else having no idea what i was doing probably for for a few months, I started just

doing cardio. But one thing that I noticed at my size then, and I had a lot of extra skin from my weight loss. I lost about a hundred pounds. I still had more weight to lose, but my extra skin was starting to come in. I wanted to find a different way to change my composition. So I've always been a really big nerd. I'm a studious and I don't mind asking questions. So one of the things that I did was I walked up to the biggest personal trainer that was there. I told him my weight loss story and I said, I'm looking to gain some muscle. And so I had an early personal trainer that I would say did more than he actually understands for me, but it was just very basic. It was a basic bodybuilding split.

The exercises did their job. I did gross muscle. I did get a little stronger, but the one thing that the, this program really helped me do was realize that I actually really enjoy exerting myself. And I really enjoy chasing a fitness goal. And I enjoyed the feeling of it because if you think about someone that spent a large portion of their life spending in front of video games in front of a computer chair, activity is not high on their list. My last real memory prior to getting into this gym was having an asthma attack when I did something very, very light.

So the idea that this body could actually do things and progress in things and tangibly get better just completely hooked me because it was so foreign at the time. The concept that my body was used for anything other than my brain was just very foreign at the time. So it was just a really beautiful discovery for myself. After I got into bodybuilding for a little bit, I just realized that my muscles were big, but my body hurt and I was never tight. I was, I mean, I was never, I'm sorry. And I was never the flexible one in the class, obviously. And so once I, I won't say I graduated bodybuilding because you don't ever, but once I got the ropes of bodybuilding and I figured out what my body feels like and was, you know, doing during then I wanted to try out different things. And so I researched different forms of fitness.

I found powerlifting, CrossFit and strength and conditioning in a very lucky situation. I, I didn't know better at the time and I didn't really understand the concept of what I was getting into. So I finally walked into a CrossFit gym. What ended up happening was it was a local CrossFit gym where it's mainly just a strength and conditioning gym. And the guy was using the CrossFit name as a way to get more people in. And he was an incredibly nice man. And he had a CSCS. And I told him my weight loss story.

And he instantly brought me under his wing. And so I trained there for a good amount of time. I got strong and he kind of got my foot in the door to understanding there are more forms of training. And then from there, I continued to change my composition where I was gaining some muscle. I was gaining some strength. my composition where I was gaining some muscle. I was gaining some strength. I was becoming more athletic, but I actually had a ton of excess skin where I had it. The most was right here around the chest line. And I had a really, really large, it's actually called scientific or medically a panus. I had a large panus that was falling over my waistline and went down almost to my mid-thigh.

And that's essentially just the skin fold when you lose the weight folding down. And I changed my composition to the point where I actually got a little bit discouraged because I will still have this extra skin after everything that I was working through. after everything that I was working through. And so what I did was I started researching what people can do in the terms of plastic surgery and other outlets to take care of excess skin. One of the things that I found was there were no insurance companies that tended to cover excess skin removal, just because inherently you made the poor choice initially. So that's kind of like they're dead stopped having to cover it. I had my doctor advocate for me. I had a local personal trainer who was doing just body fat analysis and just recording my actual progress advocate for me.

And my own personal fitness journey here was sidelined because I ended up having to get this excess skin removed for about eight months. That eight months was a hell of a recovery. To this day, I still have about a yardstick long incision around my lower abdomen that wraps around my body. And I have a large incision right through here. I have photos for it. I actually sent them over. year. I have photos for her. I actually sent them over. But what that did for me was give me about an eight month recovery period where I wanted to go back to doing what I was doing. I had lost this

weight. I had gained this momentum in the gym and now I'm eight months off. So the entire time I spent in this recovery, researching strength conditioning, researching how fitness works. And, um, from there, I ended up just taking about, I want to say nine months. I don't know if it was eight months. It was a really long recovery time. Took about nine months to recover. And from there, I got back into powerlifting, hitting the ground running.

Are you curious as to how my personal training route went or my own personal training? Does that make sense? You're specific. That's my specifically. Okay. So it was, it was always gravitated towards powerlifting. I never really enjoyed cardio. I mean, obviously my background and when I was a little bit younger, it was kind of a nice excuse to not be a hundred percent lean and still be very active. And so I always

gravitated towards that after I worked with a lot of bodybuilding and I did a lot of this learning about strength and conditioning. And then I worked in powerlifting. I found an affinity for wanting to try some odd lifting and strong man kind of stuff. So I ended up getting into that as well. From there, everything that I did was great at getting stronger, maybe growing a little bit of muscle, but nothing worked on my mobility or my ability to move. And so where the strongman and powerlifting ended off and actually up until

where I am today, I kind of stopped following one modality. And I initially focused on a ton of movement and mobility and flexibility, And that didn't last forever. So then I got back into heavy lifting a little bit and that didn't last forever. So then I got into bodybuilding a little bit. And what I ended up forming an articulation on in the long run is for me personally, if I like these forms of training, I have nothing to specifically train for. I'm going to kind of homogenize. There's no magical program or any formula that I'm doing. I still deadlift. I heavily work on my mobility.

I'll do the gun show workouts that make me happy. And from there, it's been all about just trying to look at my body like life's a playground and that's the conduit to which I can do and trying new things. Just over this lockdown, I was doing these ridiculous, almost circusy banded muscle ups because I was an X 550 pound kid that has now trained himself to be confident in trying this dumb banded circuit muscle ups. So of course I'm going to do it. And I would just say that what I've really tried to focus on through it all is just keeping after fitness, keeping it in my life, keep going after any form of movement. I stopped getting specific goals. So I ended up just really setting myself, work out or do something with your body,

flexibility, mobility, soft tissue work, anything, every day. And probably from the age 23 to now, 32, I've tried to do something with my body every day. I'm not going to say I over, over train and do an insanely large amount of focused on one thing. I'm passionate and everything. And I try to just do something every day because I have 17 years of growing, doing nothing. So that's a little bit different. So that's why I worded this a little bit different than how it approached someone else.

Yeah. But for me personally, adherence is key. So finding what worked and what I can still stick to to this day was something that I found to be successful and not really trying to fit into a mold. Yeah. Now,

I mean, obviously when you started lifting, you probably, you were gaining muscle as you were continuing to lose body fat. So my question is, did, did the scale ever get to your head over time? Like when you, you know, you were dropping weight for a while and then you probably had a period of gaining and losing and gaining and losing. How did, like, what are some things you did so that the scale movement didn't really bother

you too much? I mean, you also mentioned during lockdown, you, you know, you gained like 20 something pounds. Um, how does it, how do you, how do you let it not really affect you? Because the scale really does mess with some people, especially when they start lifting and gaining muscle and gaining a little bit of weight. I can't agree more with the scale messing with people. And I've seen it derail more people than not. I'm actually a firm believer of two indicators of your own fitness could also be how you are in the mirror and your belt loops. Those are also two good ways to measure your own progress.

I'm very well aware that some people are data hounds and they need to thrive in a situation where they're constantly monitoring their body weight. So I don't think it's a bad idea. But I think for anybody that's fighting with their own personal weight loss goals, you should weigh yourself to track your progress, but it should be way more infrequently than people do. So I've never been a big fan of weekly weigh-ins. What I tended to do when I lost my weight was I weighed myself at the same scale every time and I would do it bimonthly. So about every two weeks, I'd give myself a chance to actually do something else.

Because what I find is people will weigh themselves on a Friday and then next week comes up, it's Monday and it's their next weigh in. But then they get discouraged because it's theoretically and technically next week, but they've had three days in between. So I think that it's either learning to find other ways than the scale to be successful in tracking your progress with weighing yourself just as a baseline number and nothing more, bi-monthly or monthly. more bi-monthly or monthly, or just completely not really cutting it out and going with how you look in the mirror, your belt size, how you feel intrinsically. It's probably hard to start someone that has a long way to go on that methodology. But when people want to lose weight, they will change who they are when they start losing weight. to lose weight, they will change who they are when they start losing weight. And so people might find that right away, weighing themselves is a very good idea. But like everything,

your progress is going to stall. So during those times where progress stalls, you can either weigh yourself and if nothing moved, you judge yourself as a failure and go back to your old lifestyle and make nothing out of the time you just invested invested or find other ways to keep yourself in check and follow those methods. Like I said, the mirror is actually a fantastic, for me at least, way to tell how I'm doing. I'm not going to overthink some stuff like inflammation and it's not supposed to be that technical. It's literally, I've looked at myself in the mirror every day. There's probably stuff that I don't like.

Are those things changing? Yes. Awesome. Stick to the process. No. Well, now we need to keep trying new things to make it work. You mentioned this being a battle against yourself.

And I think we all feel that we all feel the way to that. That's like what fitness is. You know, you're trying to get more flexible, trying to get stronger, trying to get leaner, trying to get bigger, whatever it is. It's a process of some self-mastery. You know, you're trying to figure out a way to constantly improve yourself. So it's very difficult. But I think the story that you shared with us today, I think, uh, gives people a really good idea of, uh, where they can start, how they can start. Sounds super simple. You picked foods that you liked. Um, you, and then when you ventured into exercise, you picked exercise that you liked, and now it sounds like you're doing more of the same. Uh, you're not really, uh, set in your ways. You're not a of the same. You're not really set in your ways.

You're not a bodybuilder. You're not a powerlifter. You're not a strongman athlete. You're not a crossfitter. You're just someone that likes exercise. You go in the gym, you exercise, put in a good effort. It sounds like you understand that probably the most important thing is consistency, trying to figure out a way to be consistent.

Not all workouts are going to be bangers of a workout. But as long as you're getting in there doing something that's going to help your mind. And as long as you keep kind of checking back in the mirror here and there and things are looking like they're trending the right way, then it just means you're heading the right direction. I think you said a lot of this stuff in a very smart fashion. What's your education background? Sure.

So I ended up getting my associate's degree in general education, but I geared every elective I've had towards health and wellness. I was actually certified very, very young as a personal trainer through my college as well. I believe it was NCSF had a class extension through one of my local colleges. So that was where I ended up getting formal education. In terms of firsthand experience and education on training people, I actually have a very interesting story if there's time. So when I first thought the notion to become a personal trainer, it was solely because I was so amazed at the changes in myself that I feel like I'd be doing a disservice if I couldn't try my best to try to help other people find that change. And so I had a very good background in my own fitness. Like I said, I had some good mentors along the way, so I had a chance to sift out some of the BS early. But one of the things when I was certified and trying to find an initial job

was you don't have experience. Everyone loved my passion. Everyone loved my story, but I don't have experience. And this is very interesting. So I got a reach out from a planet fitness to ask me to be their personal trainer or at least interview for the personal trainer. It wasn't where I wanted to start initially. However, when I went to the interview, they explained that they have a free training model where they don't charge members and members will have the ability to book sessions with you to have the time showing you machines. I cleverly looked at that as, so people that will have something to take for free can give me a firsthand personal training experience that essentially there's an endless model to it. So what I ended up doing was trying to sell myself and have conversation with everyone in the gym, just talking about these free sessions.

And then once I had people signing up for these free sessions, instead of going out on these machines or teaching them, I said, F it. And I took them out on the floor and I started training them like I would normally, if they were just a client. And what I really, really did was utilize this model for about eight to 10 sessions a day for about two years. So I took an opportunity that was a little bit strange and I tried my best to mold into something that I could really grow from and actually get that experience from.

The best part about it was I had people coming in with limitations or injuries and me being young at my job. I had no qualms with saying, I'm not 100% quite sure, but let me do my diligence and research and I'll get back to you. We'll reschedule this session and I'll have something that I can help you with. Now, take that example with a hundred or a thousand people. There are a hundred or a thousand differentials in the body. So it gave me a really, really good opportunity to work with hundreds and hundreds of people. We just collect experience. with hundreds and hundreds of people.

We just collect experience. If you see a young kid walk in the streets, that's kind of a byproduct of a lot of the food that we have, a lot of the conveniences that we have, and just the amazing flavors and combinations of food that we have. When you see someone who's really excessively heavy, does it kind of hit you heavy in the heart? Because you're like, man, you're like, shit, I was, I was there. And do you want to like, you probably, I would imagine you want to like approach that kid and be able to like talk to him, but it's maybe not appropriate. Well, it's really hard because

like I said before, if you're going to talk to someone about weight loss, you're instantly going to have a more defensive conversation. But I mean, just the other, just the other week I was at a restaurant with my girlfriend and we saw a young man who was overweight sitting in the corner alone. And I kid you not, I actually had to go to the bathroom and kind of pull myself together because I felt genuinely horrible for this young man. I could just get a lonely sense from him. And I've just been in those shoes to where I actually just, I uncovered this quite a lot during my day-to-day. There'll be times where someone with, you know, movement issues or in crutches or a cane will walk down the mall. And I instantly think about like, how can I help them? How can I give them,

I'm not trying to cure anything. It doesn't work like that, but what tip or tool can I give to that person? And especially with people that need to lose weight, because there is just a large part of my heart that understands their struggle, understands that it needs to be taken care of for their own personal health and wellness. But I do understand the struggle. And so I do get a little bit upset when I see people that stand out for their weight, because I just remembered how lost at some points I felt when I was in those shoes. And knowing now what I know, I have a unique perspective, but

I know they don't have that. And I feel very, very bad for them. And it's like, like you said, I really do want to just approach them and tell them my story and do, you know, for them help in literally any way. How do you talk people out of using an excuse to gain weight? Like you mentioned COVID, you know, or, or he mentioned that. Yeah. And, and there's like certain things that people will say, like, this made me gain weight while I got married or I, you know, I have a girlfriend now. So of course we're going to, but I gained 40 pounds, you know, it's a girlfriend now. So, of course, we're going to. But I gained 40 pounds.

You know, it's like gaining a couple pounds sounds totally reasonable. Maybe you're enjoying yourselves for entertainment or whatever. But, you know, gaining 40 pounds sounds kind of excessive. How do you talk people kind of out of that kind of mindset? Or how do you handle that? I think there's a difference between excuses and self-awareness. So an excuse is something said that there might be no intention to fix it,

but being self-aware enough to know that your discipline has slid is the first step to actually picking your discipline back up. Does that make sense? Absolutely. That's great. I would just say that there is,

excuses don't bode well because you're you're really supporting yourself to not actually continue what you're doing because it's just self-talk that it's okay you're not doing something you want to do whereas i almost feel cathartic with where i came from my past being very open about saying that i gained weight because how else am I going to lose it without being aware that I create a problem. So it does kind of boil down to the accountability and self-awareness to me when it comes to that. Mike, where can people find you?

Thank you so much for your time today. No problem. Thank you so much for having me on guys. You guys are amazing. So I'm currently on Instagram just since the lockdown started. I've been posting a lot more on social media. I haven't had really any presence past that. So I'm at Mike dot couple stick on Instagram and I'm currently working on

rolling out content for Tik TOK, YouTube and Facebook as well. From what? 500 something pounds to what are you weighing now? About two 70. So like I said, I gained a little bit of weight, but man, congratulations on it i wish

you uh all the success in the world really just fantastic to have somebody we have so many nutritionists and so many specialists come on we've had weight loss journeys and weight loss stories but uh we have not had anybody on that was uh heavy at such a young age which i think is just i think it's like a different battle almost, you know, making the decisions later on as an adult is to me, it's a little different, you know, start starting out being 10 years old and being quite a bit heavier than a lot of the other kids. And, and then by the time you're 17, you're, you know, 400, 500 pounds, amazing story and a great job. And,

and thanks for being on the show today. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it so much guys. Have a great day. I'm checking out your page right now. Real quick. What's your tick talk also.

It's currently in the process of being made. Like I said, I started, I started my social media presence just about at the beginning of this lockdown and a very humble 1500 followers in like the last year. And I, the more it goes, the more I'm just currently trying to bring my message out there.

So I will hopefully have one. Dude, we got you. Okay. We'll talk. We'll talk. Thank you guys so much. God bless.

Thank you. A lot of good nuggets in there. Fucking a ton of great nuggets. Oh, God. One thing he said that was amazing, and I love when people put stuff so plainly and they don't even understand, like, how just gangster they are. Like, they say something so cool. But he just said, just get back to it was his was his like mantra. Like, you can have a cheat day.

Totally sounds reasonable. Why can't you have a cheat day? Why can't you enjoy pizza? It sounds that's a reasonable, reasonable thing to enjoy your favorite food. Sounds we can all agree. Right. But we're we're not accepting that it's going to happen the next day and the next day and the next day.

So for him, he just said, no matter what, just get back to it. Whatever way you got to figure that out. And the way that he kind of put forward that it just takes time because he's been at this for what? He's been doing the dieting since he was 17, I think. Um, but it just, it takes a long time. You know, it takes continuous effort and there'll be days where like, yeah, you do have some pizza or whatever, but if you just get back on it the next day, it's no loss. Right. As long as it doesn't keep happening day after day after day. Um um and also the thing he said about the scale

was uh that that was really cool yeah the belt loops yeah that's something i think about because that scale is it's going to go up and down it's going to stall for a while too can't let that get to you really yeah i like you know again about the cheat meals because he's like you know willpower he said it um he said it way better than this but he's like it diminishes like you know like your strength of your muscles like you know eventually it's gonna like you're gonna run out of it he's like so don't beat yourself up over it just have it and then get back to it yeah yeah there's there's a lot in there and he like looks a lot like my cousin brandon it's like almost identical really that's crazy what the hell?

When he was mentioning his socials, I went and I found his Instagram. That dude is like his calves, his forearms. Like he's got some fucking muscle. Yeah, he's put some muscle on. And I think that's another great goal. Like, especially for somebody that has ended up being that heavy, he most likely doesn't have access to the body that he wants, you know, the exact body that he wants. So there's a little compromise in there. And I think for some people it's like, well, let me fill out my arms and shoulders a little bit. Let me, you know,

let me get my legs a little bit bigger. Uh, because, you know, he had these surgeries and he's got scars and, and, and things like that. It's hard to, uh, end up maybe looking like you're, uh, you're, you're, uh, like you're the rock or something like that, you know, might be hard to be impeccable and look perfect, uh, when you've had surgeries like that, but yeah, what an awesome story. And I like that, uh, there's also no blame, you know, he's not blaming his mom. He's not blaming, you know, he's not blaming his family. And he said there was attempts. People did, you know, work at it with him. I just think maybe, you know, people that are listening to this show, you know, hopefully you can learn from this.

And if there are people in your family that are heavier, I hope that at some point you had conversations with them. point you had conversations with them and if you have um there's probably not a lot of reasons to continue to bring it up yeah because they they're they're staying where they're at you know and they're staying where they're at for a reason but hopefully you at least brought it up a couple times but what i really in my own life i like to look at things as like an opportunity for education. So let's say you have a family member and you've talked to them many times about nutrition and the importance of it and the importance of the importance of a 10 minute walk and stuff like that. And just for whatever reason, they're not having it. And you're like, well, you know, I don't know, maybe I hurt their feelings or maybe it doesn't vibe with them or they're not in the right spot in their life to really try these things, then just let it go for a while. But then when you get around them again and there's

any mention of them being frustrated with particular things, you don't throw it in their face and say, hey, remember, you know, you don't need to do any of that. You say, look, anytime you want, I'm right here for you if you want to make some changes so you don't end up with the same problems over and over again. Or whatever way you can word it so they don't get pissed off at you. in my opinion, when somebody, sometimes when somebody says those things, it's, uh, it's a little bit of like, uh, I think it's a little bit of like an alert. Like I, I really kind of do want help, but I don't kind of, it's almost like your birthday. Like it would be cool if someone just gave me a big hug and said, happy fucking birthday on my birthday, but I really don't care.

But I would, it was kind of cool if someone acknowledges it, but we don't need to make too much of a big deal about it, you know? You know, so I think it's, you know, it's kind of like that. They'll make an excuse or they'll say something and it might be frustrated. And I think if you just kind of throw out that lifeline and say, Hey, I'm around anytime you want, or, Hey, you know, I know a great gym or, Oh shit. If you want, I'll go on some walks with you here and there, whatever way you can encourage. And he talked a lot about that as well. Just figuring out ways to move movement.

Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. And thank you to everybody that's been subscribing to the YouTube channel. We sincerely appreciate that. Please like this video if you liked it. And like I said, thank you for subscribing.

But if you're not subscribed, please subscribe and hit that bell notification. Please follow the podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and the Andrew Z on TikTok and SEMA where you be. And SEMA ending on Instagram and YouTube and SEMA yin yang on TikTok and Twitter. God, by the way, guys Inyang on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. By the way, guys, wherever you're listening to this, if you're on iTunes, do leave a review because we're killing it there right now. And we're almost at 100K on YouTube.

I know. I swore that. Sore. So you better subscribe. Mark. What about this Knees Over Toes seminar? Oh, shit. It's like people are like flying in from all over the place uh-huh crazy yeah all over my wife's like oh i heard a bunch of people are

like flying in from like this state not state i said i think people are flying in from other countries australia yeah like this is gonna be crazy tickets are already on sale yeah uh not yet we uh we we waited just a bit just to make sure we got everything right because i want to make sure we get but uh probably by like monday or tuesday all right uh which would be what uh october what what are we looking at here so it'll be the day this releases well there you go yeah it'll be october 11 12 or 13 somewhere in there don't be crazy until 13 14 15 13, 14, 15, someone. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Yeah, I'm excited.

Something like that. It's going to be an amazing day. The day that ends with a Y. And Mr. Infinity's going to be here. Alright, I'm going to find this man's name. We keep calling him Mr. Infinity. I know, it's just great. I actually don't remember his name, but he actually makes

some slant boards, I guess. He does. Why doesn't he have his name on his fucking... He makes some, like, portable slant boards, and so... And he makes a Nordic strap. Ben Patrick, he sends me, because I wanted to buy some, because I'd love to have some here for sale, and we're giving some away for free

and stuff like that at the seminar, and so I ask Ben, I'm like, who's got the portable slam boards? And he sends me like this guy's name and number. He's like, oh, you can call this guy. And so I gave the information to my wife or whatever. And then maybe like an hour later, Ben sends me another message. And he goes, oh, that's, he goes, by the way, he's like, that guy is Mr. Infinity. I like that guy is mr infinity mr infinity holy shit we finally figured out who he is yeah amazing oh that's a cool

slapboard yeah hey now very cool i'm pumped up though ben patrick is uh he's so excited like jesse jesse originally asked me jesse brittick originally asked me he's like excited. Like Jesse, Jesse originally asked me, Jesse Burdick originally asked me, he's like, you think this guy can do like a whole seminar by himself? I was like, Jesse, wait till you get talking to this guy.

I was like, this guy's some next level. He got, he's really, really excited. He's really fired up. Anyway, I know that people are going to love it.

And we have two different seminars. We have a private seminar or not a private seminar, a VIP seminar that's for pay. And then we also have a, uh, a seminar following that both will be amazing. Both will be blockbuster, but I just figured with people traveling from all over that there might be people that want kind of extra attention. There might be people that want the, um, uh, maybe a little bit more advanced information and stuff like that, or just even more time with Ben Patrick. So we set up both things. The, uh, paid seminar will be first and the free seminar will be second. And, uh, it's going to be fucking amazing. October 24th. I'm at Mark smelly bell. Strength is never a

weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.