The Sevan Podcast - #314 - Dalton Musselwhite

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Dalton Musselwhite joins us to share about his journey towards weight loss! https://thesevanpodcast.com/ https://www.paperstcoffee.com/shop https://www.barbelljobs.com/ "The Sevan Podcast" T-Shirts https://asrx.com/collections/the-real-sevan-podcast-collection Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions apply youtube bam we're live we We did it. All right. Where are you at? What state are you in? Florida, Pensacola, Florida.

Oh, nice. Pensacola, Alabama. Why, why, why? They don't like to consider us Florida just because we're at the northern tip. So everybody's like, man, you're so close to Alabama. It's considered Alabama there. All right, all right, all right. to Alabama. It's considered Alabama there. All right. All right. All right. But yeah, it's not too bad.

No, Florida sounds like a great place to be right now. I'm in California and all my friends who, you know, we've had a mass migration out of the state. We got serious issues here i was uh it was interesting um i was listening to um i got i got this guy coming on the show next week named patrick bet david have you heard of him i have not sir he's he's a businessman and uh and a really forward thinker like a like a really forward thinker like one of those people who's like really introspective and like always trying like um he was in a conversation with joe rogan he was on the joe rogan show i was listening to that podcast and he basically i've never seen this happen well i haven't listened to a lot of joe rogan but he basically turned the

whole interview around the entire time he's basically joe rogan and i was just i was um and one of his things is is to not confuse the symptom with the issue. So, so for example, they keep saying we have a homeless problem in the United States. We do not have a homeless problem in the United States. That is the symptom. The issue is we have a drug problem in the United States. How do I know this? Because I was homeless for seven years and I, there was only me and one other guy in the thousands of homeless people I ever met who wasn't a drug addict. They think we have a Corona. They think people are dying from Corona virus in this country. That is not what's happening.

That is the symptom. The issue is, is that we're in a tsunami of chronic disease from people drinking 12 soda pops a day. It's the same thing with age. They keep saying this thing kills old people. That is there. There's,

I had a female Horta on here, the doctor. And he said, there's i had to see mel horta on here the doctor and he said there's not been a single he even claimed it was old people dying from coronavirus and i said is there a science that shows that and he goes actually there hasn't been a study it's just a correlate it's not a cause yeah if you're 80 years old you've been drinking coca-cola for 40 years you're fucked you know what i mean yeah we have this whole we have this whole country of just looking at um symptoms and trying to cure the symptoms yeah it's like it's like having your door open and the ocean water is coming in and then you're just pumping the ocean water out no close the

fucking door that's the issue yeah it's just it's. It is nuts. We're in a crazy, crazy time. That's what I'm realizing. It is nuts. The racism thing is the exact same way. We know the cause almost to a certainty that the strongest correlate for all inequality at this point where we are in the country is people not being raised by their mom and dad. Oh, yeah. Not skin color. color well it's obviously not skin color i mean oh yeah that has nothing yeah i know i'm off on a wrong foot with you you you are let me say this about you you're an amazing human being and my belief my knowledge of the world is that we're all mirrors here there are no individuals here and so that when someone like you does what you've done the journey you've been on you you're telling the whole you're you're just

emanating good shit to the whole world you're basically yeah yeah you're doing your part that's like um i'm fascinated by weight loss journeys and and i and i consider these people and i know the terms you use loosely these days um as heroes and people will be like no no why are they heroes they should have they should have never put on the weight in the first place and i don't agree with that at all it's everyone's on their journey and now we have a huge segment of this population massive where a lot all their problems are are are being manifested in this weight gain and um and you took full responsibility for it that's another thing right you're crossing the street and a car hits you and you're screaming

at the driver you were crossing the street you you hit me and i had the right away it's like dude like it's your life even if you did have the right away even if the light was green it's you just got hit by a fucking car and you're still blaming people. Like, yeah, yeah. Take some ownership. Yeah. How did you learn personal responsibility? For me, it was just one of those things where I had to make up my own mind.

You know, my entire life, I had to cram down of people, everyone else wanting me to lose weight. You know, my mom, dad, my parents, my, my grandparents, my friends. I remember my friends going to my mom and dad at like 21, 22 and be like, yo, he's, he's going to die. Like you've got to like convince him to change his life. Um, so it was kind of like a wake up moment. People were saying that to you. I remember going to a car show, uh, at 21 or 22, um, with some friends and like my mom and dad was out of town and they actually

showed up at the event and uh one of my friends like pulled my parents aside and was like hey like he's struggling to make it through this car show just walking and standing his back start from so bad like is there like we gotta talk to him like it's almost like they planned like and they never did thinking this but like um it's like they literally planned like an intervention to try to help me um just but but it's cause they're concerned for me. That's all, you know, they're doing it. But, um, but until you make up your own mind to make that change, it's useless. You don't have the driving force to actually complete it yourself.

So you've got to want it for yourself, not others. So when did, when did you start getting heavy? I was big, um, from was big as a little kid. I remember going to like dieticians at like seven and eight years old with pediatricians and things. But yeah, I started very small. Like I noticed probably when I was like six that I was a lot bigger than everybody else. We started passing out these little baseball cards for individual like cards for our team that we were on at the time. And I remember passing around and everybody's weight was like 60, 70 pounds. we were on at the time and i remember passing around everybody's

weight was like 60 70 pounds and i was at a whopping 110 and i was like wow you know man in my head i'm like shit man i can't pass this out like no i'll keep these you know so uh i remember finding one recently it's like man it started way back then and just slowly progressed i let it get out of control and and and why? Like at home, you were drinking Capri Suns and Ritz Crackers. And like what was going on at home? You know, no, man, I ate a lot of Southern fried food. Born and raised in Pensacola, it's very Southern. And my grandparents loved to either cook or take us out to eat.

That's what we did. And at the time, they just wanted me to be happy and let me live as a kid. And in all reality, me being happy and letting me live and eat all my fried foods and chicken tenders and burgers and burritos at night was killing me. Um, and then after about, I'd say, I think I turned around 18, 19, I was already 300 pounds, 350. Um, turned around 18 19 i was already 300 pounds 350 um and they just kept going up from there uh and then i think after my like highest weight total recorded at a doctor was 515 and you how do they how do they how do they do that how do they how do you weigh someone at 515 like is there i didn't know there was a scale for that yeah they have specialized scales uh they

have scales in the doctors that go up to like a thousand um i bought one off amazon when i first started that goes up to 750 um still got it i i actually was thinking about giving it away for like my three-year anniversary uh and buying one of the new like smaller scales but yeah uh but yeah so that was that was pretty fun but, I found a scale that measures 750. What about soda pop? What role did soda pop play? Were you a big soda drinker? Man, that's actually so funny you've asked me that.

You're the first person to ask me soda or drinking at all. And that was actually my biggest issue. That's why my stomach, in my opinion, hung so low. Because, man, I could put down some soda. I remember at one point at my biggest point i could go through two two liters a day just sitting down just like boom boom boom boom boom just poison um and what mountain mountain do oh mountain do dr pepper um and sweet tea those those were my my two i'd say my three my three go-tos. And so you'd have these massive insulin spikes, and then you would need more food to address the insulin.

So you drink – yeah, it's crazy. I suspect that soda is like at the center of of it's the gasoline on the fire you know like i hear statistics like 55 of the calories in mexico are consumed from soda pop and i think it's something i think it's something massive in the united states too and so uh another thing that i'm that i'm tripping on um and i don't go there anymore uh since they went woke but i used to go to starbucks a lot since they turned into basically a racist, sexist company. I avoid them, but I would go in there. I live in a beach town also.

I live in Santa Cruz, California. And I'll go into the Starbucks, and I would be there like at 7 in the morning, 8 in in the morning and i would see just like a line of i don't know in my head right now i just see this line of like 30 obese women and they're all getting uh trenta and venti things with sugar just squeezed onto them oh man and i'm like wow what a way to start your morning like for me like when i would drink those they'd be like one every six months and i would just it would be nuts yeah but i would see i'd be like man these women start their morning with just a big old dose of gasoline on the fire on the insulin fire oh yeah no i mean and it's it's so true like i was looking um my girlfriend at the time you know she could put down some starbucks and they are uh just insane in cal i had no idea let's thank goodness i never

had an issue with it i wasn't a big coffee drinker yeah um but um i tell you one thing i did go in man i would just pile in the sugar in fact i remember the starbucks person being kind of shocked like damn he's gonna have a uh uh diabetic cold in the drive-thru but uh i ended up man we got the trenta it was like a passion tea lemonade or whatever it's the massive like lemonade thing they make but it tastes awful if you get it the way they make it so you got to get it with like tons and tons of sugar so man i was getting like four extra pumps of sugar on that thing it was enough to like kill like three people probably but yeah um i don't even want to know i don't want to know the calories or sugars that was in that drink so yeah when did you have your you had you ended up having bariatric surgery is that what it's called No, the calories or sugars that was in that drink. So, yeah.

When did you have your – you ended up having bariatric surgery. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah. I had vertical sleeve gastrectomy or bariatric surgery in April of 2019. So I'm sneaking up on three years total. And April 19th. So they don't actually – do they actually remove a piece of your intestine or anything like that? So not the intestine.

That's part of the gastric bypass. Okay. They cut your stomach and reroute it to your small intestine and then reroute it. For the sleeve, they basically take your stomach. Here's your actual portion of your stomach, and they cut out like 80% of it. And they make like a little pouch and just reattach so basically helping you control your your your for uh your food control and portion portion so they cut out 80 of your stomach yeah is that is that so there was a lady many years ago i interviewed and she had lost 150 pounds and she had done the one where they cut out part of her intestine and in hindsight she wished she hadn't have done it because what she didn't take into calculation was the fact that that part of her intestine –

I believe – I don't want to say this wrong, and feel free to unfuck me if I'm way off. That part of her intestine absorbed – was where a certain vitamin was absorbed or vitamins. And since she lost that part of her intestine, she had to supplement that vitamin for the rest of her life. Is there anything where you have to do that? Um, so that's a great question. You are supposed to supplement your vitamins. Um, thank goodness. Now I may get some feedback from this, from people as I say this, but, um, I personally didn't dive into the vitamins at all as much as people did. And in reality, I'm losing my hair because of it. Um, I didn't take the biothin all as much as people did. And in reality, I'm losing my hair because of it. I didn't take the biothin and collagen that I needed to. And so I'm losing my

hair. And now I take it religiously every morning and every night. Even in my protein shakes, I take the biothin. But it is true when you when you go through the the bariatric surgery route and you do the R&Y or gastricric bypass you do suffer with being able to take vitamins in through your food uh through your your drinks all that um that's why it's so easy to get malnourished as well after surgery happened to me um i got no shit dehydrated oh yeah i got dehydrated and malnourished like after surgery and had to go get like ivs and stuff so um because the thing is and you kind like, think of it like a clock. If you have to take a sip, like when you first come out of surgery, like every 15 minutes or 30

minutes and you get behind, well, normally for us, we take an extra goal. But if you start getting behind and you miss and you miss and you miss, then like, you can't catch that time back up. So now you're like, Oh, well I'm 25% dehydrated today. And you keep trying and you just finally, after like a week or so of struggling to get your water intake, you're like, okay, I feel like shit. I'm dehydrated.

I had to go get it. Has that stopped? Has that stopped? Or do you still have to consume water? You still have to be conscious of that. It has. Yeah. It's stopped now because I can,

I chug water now. I'll be at the gym and just knocking it out. Left her. I try to aim for a gallon to a gallon and a half a day now. So did you go to the gym before before you had the surgery i tried uh that's a that's one of the questions i love asking or or i don't i don't want to say questions i get a lot of response from people like well why didn't you try working out beforehand um i did you know yeah there's there's a lot of first of all if you can show me a treadmill at planet fitness or a gym in anywhere that can let a 500 pound person jog on it, I'll kiss your ass.

I tried, I tried and I'll be honest with you at 500 pounds. I remember getting so frustrated and like getting blood faced embarrassed because like, as I'm walking, I'm not even jogging. I'm walking the treadmill underneath me is getting stuck at 500 pounds. Like the part that slides slides like no shit. So whenever it's like, oh man, you ever worked out? Yeah. Yeah. I did multiple times. the fuck didn't you work out my angle was i'm curious how you built the habit so so i'm assuming this is this is where i'm going with this whole thing kind of here in the beginning you have this bariatric surgery but you have on let's say it's uh april of 2019 yeah and on this side you have all these habits but on this side you're going to need different habits right we already talked about we already talked about, we already talked about one of them consume water, more water, right? Um, but by the way,

it's going back to the vitamin thing real quick. You have amazing skin. It's interesting. It's interesting to see that you would have, you don't look like someone who's vitamin. Do you know what I mean? I mean, like you, you would think you would see it in your skin your skin is like like snow like snow ridiculously put lotion on every day on my hands and face I'm very weird about that like I like doing my beard and stuff so I'm very big on lotions and trying to take care of my skin I just man I guess I missed the ball when it comes to taking like I didn't take any of my vitamins uh well I tried though I sick and, and like my boss can attest for this. Like the first three months after surgery, man, I was sick as a dog because I could look at food. I could think about food. I could take a sip of something like even the

texture or like, was this too thick or like not thick enough instantly. I'd be sick as a dog. So after a while I was like, you know what, I'm going to do this my way. Uh, I'm not going to take these vitamins. And then after about three months, man, I was good. I was solid. Wasn't having any more issues like, you know, so stuck with it. And yeah, but you're absolutely right. No, if I'd have maintained the habits prior from April to now, I would never be here. I would be dead. What are some, has soda come? Do you ever drink soda? Very, very rarely. Um, if I do, it's like on like a uh cheat i want to i don't want to say cheat day because i hate that word but like if i'm having like a fun day out with friends and everybody's you know out and about and we're at dinner and something sure i'll

have like a soda every now and then but um like right now no i'm in a cut until june so it's it's all water or like sugar-free stuff for me right now is do you feel like if i um do you ever feel guilty for that stuff or shame yourself like you're like and leverage that part of your ego to make sure you stay on the straight and narrow like i like um it's 10 o'clock at night i haven't i haven't worked out yet and uh fuck you you're gonna go out and walk a fucking mile oh oh yes absolutely and kind of leveraging just keep keep yourself because some people say it's not good to feel guilty or shame yourself but for me i i i leverage the shit out of that you know i was talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday um because yesterday i was having kind of like an off day like i said i'm in meal prep. I'm focused on counting macros and stuff

and trying to be ready for a bodybuilding show in June. What? Seriously? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good on you. Holy shit. That's amazing. Yeah, I have my first transformation bodybuilding show in June. So, yeah, we were just trying to talk about that. And like I had to go to the store and prep and do all this food prep and trying to cook meat and stuff and so that's been a little more difficult but um we were just

talking about like uh sodas and like how like um i was oh we're talking about tacos street tacos and like i love mexican food man i can destroy some mexican food um so it's like man i'd love just to like have a day of tacos and like go on the market and, you know, walking around, enjoying the sunlight and going by the water and things. And, and I realized, and I was, I was telling her, I was like, you know, I, I, I wish I could take that mindset away of like treating food as being bad sometimes. And, you know, cause food isn't bad. It's the way that we treat it as bad. You know, we treat it as a crutch. We treat it as a, uh, a way to get through our mental and I'll say it like fucked up lives. Uh, that's what I did. I used it as a

crutch to realize that I was so broken, depressed and everything all through life. And I never even knew it. I had no idea. Uh, and so I would run to it and use it as my, my, my security blanket. Um, which is weird using a burger as a security blanket, but hell it worked for me, I guess. Uh, I, I say it works, but here I, you know, ended up blowing up, but, um, yeah, staring at food and treating it as like a reward, a reward system or, or treating it as a, as it's bad and has been something that I've struggled with, especially coming from surgery, because I've spent my life looking at food as like, oh man, I can't have soda. It's going to be bad. Or like, oh man, I know I don't need this. Like I'm 500 pounds. Like, do I really need another large fry? So you couldn't even enjoy the food, even though you're 500, you were 500 pounds. You can't even enjoy the food because

it's too much guilt, too much shame. Every time you eat it, you're having this fucking whole conversation. Yeah. You, you, um, you're having this fucking whole conversation. Yeah, you would overcome that very quick. And that's why, like, in my mindset at 500 pounds, I'll be like, you know what? I'm never going to make a change. I can't change. It's too late. I've already reached that breaking point.

Let's eat another burger, you know? Right. Or a pizza. Let's eat a whole pizza. Pizza. Tacos. Yeah. Oh, man. The amount of food.

My dad was joking the other day. He was like, you know, I knew that you had a problem when we went through the drive through. I was like 22 at the time. And we spent like $55 on food for me and her alone. And I was like, that is my dad pulled me aside. He's like, what are you doing like you do you're not eating all that and i was like well no i am he's like and that's why you are the size you are you know so um yeah just some things like that where it's like i should have i there's wake-up calls there was wake-up calls all along i should have realized and i'm mad that i didn't pick up on them sooner but um yeah that was that there was a few of them like that with my dad where it's like, man, I should have, I should have read the signs right there. Like something, any normal person would have been like, oh, like you just spent $55 in a drive through line. Like, yeah, light should be turning on right now, you know?

But I remember being, I remember being a kid and we would go to McDonald's and I would get a 20 piece chicken McNuguggets a milkshake and a fries i would never let my kid my seven-year-old kid do that and i would get four of the mustard hot sauce one that you know and and i and i would be determined to eat all four of the hot sauces with all 20 mcnuggets like so every five mcnuggets i guess that's why i'm so good at math i would uh yeah i would make sure that okay every five mcnuggets got to eat a whole thing of sauce i'm just scraping inside and then it's nuts can you relate to that you can't feed a 12 year old or a seven year old a 20 piece chicken mcnugget that's like no and and i wouldn't

even get my kid a milk i would never even get my kid a milkshake now like unless it was you know like his birthday or some shit yeah um you know it for me it was something i i look back on it and i realized like yes it was me making choices but it started young like i remember leaving middle school and i say middle school i think it was more like kindergarten like my first few years of like you know first grade second grade my grandmother picked me up from school and man like the lunches that we had back then were very very very small and i'll admit that even to like a normal size kid like they were small like we got two nuggets and that was it like yeah yeah um and so like i remember leaving and it was like a noon

checkout that's when we'd always leave back because it was early so they didn't feed as much so it was time for lunch well my grandmother you know she's a sweet old southern lady oh baby let me feed you you know so yeah we do, drive through every day. Oh, you want your own personal pizza from Pizza Hut? Oh, baby, of course. I got you. Pat on the back. Let's do it.

So the enablement was there. And so I ran with it. I enabled myself along with them to blow up at a young age. And then after that, it just kept on going. Yeah, it's interesting you can you can blame your parents in the world all you want and you could be a hundred percent right but but you die there with that you don't at some point i think me, that's like an adult. When you finally take 100% accountability and personal responsibility for everything. That girl broke up with me because I'm responsible.

My feelings were hurt here. That car crashed into me. It was still my fault. I bought a car. I decided to drive. You just start like everything and you you have to own everything and start working on it like exactly the moment you start owning up to your own faults and your own mistakes and you realize that yes those people may have played a part it you are the ultimate deciding factor

and getting like yeah now it's all yours it's all yours yeah so it's all yours are you a pretty forgiving person um i am yeah i would say i am uh for the most part it you know screw me once it happens screw me twice i'm an idiot screw me three times we're out of there i'm not giving you any more chances but yeah for the most part i'm i'm i'm forgetful um i i like i'm i want to be forgiven as much as possible. So, yeah, I know I make mistakes. So I'm very quick to forgive others. So I'm not perfect by any means. But my thought on the subject is is and I've told the story a bunch of times, but basically the the guy I front him a bunch of weed. He sells it. He owes me four thousand bucks. He tells me he's got the money. I don't go pick it up at his house because he lives a couple hundred miles away for like four years or not four months i go down there and he's like in i go to his house and he's moved into a new house i'm like hey i'm here to pick up my money

he's like oh dude i spent your money i'm like on what and he goes i moved into this new house i had to pay first middle and deposit i'm like okay and he never pays me back, but I'm not throwing the friendship away over it. No fucking way. It's on him now. It is, yeah. I don't front you weed anymore. Well, I don't even sell weed anymore, but this is 30 years ago. But I just can't – I just reach a level of maturity.

It's just like, like, like you kind of like you were saying at some point it's like shame on me. Like, okay, okay. I get it. I get it.

And now that guy knows he owes me money. Why should I carry around that? I'm mad at him. He's the one who's tripping that he owes me money. He should be carrying that on him. Yeah. We're cool. I like going over to his house and making him feel awkward.

Hey, you got my money. I can just go into his fridge and eat a steak now and he can't say shit going through his pantry like give me your fruit snacks i'll take those what's going on with me um how old were you in 2019 when you had the surgery i was 25. in the decision making um so i'll start kind of like before like when i like kind of what made me realize and say okay this is it um so i had thought about surgery for a while after like you get so big you realize that there's not many options left um in all reality like and that's what that's why i kind of i don't want to say i get defensive but i am a little defensive whenever like well you could have worked out i tried i, I did. I tried the doctors and the, I tried the programs and all that and nothing ever worked for me. So, um, you know,

I'm talking to my primary care one day. Um, and I was like, you know, is surgery an option? And my primary was very always bored and he's like, Oh, this is baby fat. You'll lose it. But you know, if it's something later on, you know, that we're gaining weight then yeah uh we can talk about it so you know year two goes on um and i'm in new orleans uh with my ex-wife at the time and that shit concerns me by the way with when doctors like doctors who don't like most doctors don't know shit unfortunately about nutrition and the vast vast majority okay yeah it's just baby fat you should have been like hey motherfucker fat people's immune system is compromised and if you're obese you're gonna die premature 100%. That's one of the few things that we do know. One of the few. Yeah, it's true. It's like, man, it's, it's, it's,

uh, I like to refer to it as like an underlying issue, but it's, it's overlying at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy that he tells you that I'm, but go on. Sorry. Yeah. No, no, no. You're fine. You're fine. Oh my goodness. Um, so yeah, we're, we're in New Orleans and, um, man, I'm realizing I'm so tired walking from like restaurant to restaurant or like attraction to attraction. Um, and I made it to two and I was like, okay, I can't do this, babe. I gotta, I gotta order Uber. So I break out Uber and I'm ordering Uber and two days goes by. Um, and I, you know, I'm checking my statement. I spent like 180 something dollars, like $188 on Ubers in that two and a half day period in New Orleans.

Walking around instead of walk places that could have walked. Places I could have walked. And the Uber driver is kind of one of the things that, that was just like, it was one of those things where the light bulb turned on and it's like, Hey, wake up. But the Uber driver was like, got mad at me. Cause you know, I don't know if you're familiar with Bourbon street and how everybody like starts to walk on it at night and it fills up and traffic and things like that. Well, me ordering an Uber and them coming on Bourbon street to nightmare. And our hotel was like right there on Bourbon street. And so I called the Uber and literally we were going like 0.01 miles away. Like, I mean, in all reality, man, I probably could have walked there. Um, it was less than like on Bourbon street with Like, I mean, in all reality, man, I probably could have walked there. Um, it was less than like on Bourbon street with traffic, with people, it was less than 10 minutes

away. Like it was 0.01 miles away. So I get in the thing and the Uber drive, like, I don't know back then it was where it wouldn't tell the person where they were going until they accepted the ride and we got in the car. So she accepts the ride. And then she I had never, I'll never forget it. She's like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. And like mumbled out of her breath. And I was like, I looked at my wife and I was like kind of in shock. And she's like, are we really going 0.01? Y'all couldn't have just walked?

And I remember looking down and I was kind of rude, but I was like, no, I'm, I was like, no, I'm a fat ass. I'm not walking up 0.01. I can't do that. You did say that? You did say that? Oh yeah. Oh, I did. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I was my own worst, I'm a fat ass. I'm not walking up point zero one. I can't do that. You did say that? You did say that? Oh, yeah. Oh, I did.

100%. Yeah. Yeah. I was my own worst critic back then. Yeah. I mean, I realized early, like if I could beat people to the punch and, you know, say like, you know, that was my security blanket. So, I mean, when she hit me with that, I was like, like, who the hell is this Uber driver?

You know, but at the same time, that Uber driver was potentially somebody that saved my life because it slowly got me thinking like man my uber driver dalton in a whole nother state just called you out on your weight like wake up bro i'm gonna say something really harsh here oh yeah please do that is the collapse of civilization it's not the coronavirus it's not the woke fucks it's not the ukrainian war it's the fact that america is so obese that we're crushing the fucking system having to cope with it it's 86 i've said a million times 86 percent of all health expenditure goes towards chronic disease that's caused from poor diet poor poor lifestyle strategies. And the doctors don't have the cure.

No. The cure is in your hand right now. Drinking water, taking personal responsibility. One person coming on podcast, sharing your journey. It's nuts. It is fucking nuts. This, like, it's crushing where this country is dying because of obesity it's it's dying under chronic disease it's nuts and that uber driver that moment you had is kind

of like the summation of the big picture yeah hey was the uber driver fat um no uh no they were just like yeah they were a smaller person so um it was a combination of that. And then one day I'd come to my grandparents house, like pick up my mail and do some things. And back then I like, because I was so big, I struggled with sleep apnea and falling asleep. And, and, like, also at the same time, like I would fall asleep in the most random places. also at the same time like i would fall asleep in the most random places um i mean i literally at one point was about to have to stop driving because i was like just i'd be driving just boom instantly fall asleep that's hormones just from sugar in your bloodstream just i i don't know what i think well i had sleep apnea diagnosed really bad and i found out um through this video there's a video that my grandmother filmed me on her little iphone it's so bad the quality of us or her she was trying she, she was filming me and I fell asleep after work just with like my mail in my arms and everything just like on the couch.

And you can watch me like it's three minutes of just like me gasping. Yeah. Like, I don't mean just like a, a snore, like a, I mean like a, like gasping for air. Uh, and she's like, baby, like you're, you're, you're not breathing while you're sleeping. And showed me the video, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Could you sleep laying down when you were 5'15"? The other people I spoke to say you reach a certain rate where you have to sleep in chairs because if you sleep down, you suffocate. Well, I was close, yeah. And that's what I found out. I was on average,

stopped breathing over 140 times per hour, um, after two sleep tests or I'm sorry, a sleep test and a half technically. That's more than twice a minute. Yeah. So yeah, it was one of the highest cases they've ever seen. It was so bad that in Pensacola, my doctor, so they normally do two sleep tests. They do one where you go through for eight hours on your, your like sleeping on your own and they monitor like all of your, your, um, your system basically just make sure you're not waking up and all that. And then the next week or the week after they bring the doctor in, they put you on a sleep apnea machine, um, or CPAP, excuse me. And then, um, you know, have you test it out? Um, well, mine, I didn't even make it to the second test, man.

Uh, I started, fell asleep at by 10 and by like 1231, they'd already brought a doctor in on site and made me like, wake up, hook me up to the machine. They're like, we're not letting you leave home without a machine or we're not letting you leave here without a machine in the morning. So, oh man. Yeah. They made me fall asleep from like one to six. We'll be back up at six, oh man yeah they made me fall asleep from like one to six we'll be back up at six waited like two or three hours to like rush the like shit through with my insurance and like trying to find out what they would cover like on a rush like this because the doctor's like yeah you're like it's bad like you should have been dead years ago we don't understand your oxygen levels drop out way too low like everything's way too low you you shouldn't be here with us um and that was it

gone is your sleep apnea gone it is uh it is for the most part i don't use a c-pap anymore oh you must be so stoked you must be so stoked to kick that machine to the curb yeah oh yeah man i looked like a jet pilot when i was going to sleep um you know i looked like i was getting in a boeing 747 ready to take off uh yeah know, mouthpiece and everything on. But I will say the first night I ever slept with a CPAP, they're like, oh, it's so annoying. You're going to hate it. I loved it. And the reason I loved it was because I slept.

Man, I hadn't been sleeping in years and I didn't realize that. I got my first night's sleep. I got my first night's sleep and it was so funny because like three days later, all this energy at 500 pounds just came rushing back. And I'm like, okay, I can do this. You know, I feel alive. Like, and so I started like working a little more at work. Like I started pulling more overtime and like make a little more money. Cause it was like, well, damn, like I have more energy.

I feel like I can move. And then, um, and the, and the reason why it took a long time is I was fighting my thyroid. My thyroid levels were extremely high. Um, and I was trying to get them under the, I think it's, I'm going to probably butcher the word. I think it's TSH levels, if I remember correctly. Um, and you mentioned that in your, um, in your Instagram and I was, you said you've been, uh, this, you said, this is it.

This is, uh, Oh no, no. Here it is. Let me see. see is that what is that what these are let me show you the number yeah let me show you this real quick this right here these are because i couldn't figure out what these numbers are yes that is it yeah yeah tsh so that was my original test for my doctor that man i had been waiting on that fucking test for a year and i get so emotional over that test because that was a picture that changed everything that was my announcement to the world like hey i am having surgery i just got my all my life this is the last step that i made it through this is it we're we're doing it and so and so tell me about these numbers why why what about these numbers did you need to have the test so and let me get really close to the screen because they're going to remember.

Yeah, so it went under, if you look on the bottom right where it says 0.5 or 5.60, that is the top of the threshold for insurance to approve you for surgery. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if I didn't get under that 5.6, I would not have been able to have surgery. And what does that number represent? Oh, that is something to do with your thyroid level. Other than that, yeah, it's way above my head.

And is that something you had? You had to change your diet to a point where they were like, okay, you can have the surgery? I did. Yes, sir. Yeah, I had to show them for six months that I could lose weight or lose as much weight as possible. But in that time frame of six months, or lose as much weight as possible. Um, but in that timeframe of six months, like that, that's why mine took even longer. And I got, I went back up to 500 pounds is after six months of doing the dieting and everything, I wasn't approved for surgery

because of my, my thyroid and everything like that. My, my CPAP, all that had to go through. Well, I fought my thyroid for another like eight months trying to get it to where it would fall under the threshold of 5.6. And as soon as it went to that 5.6, um, I'll never forget it. It was, uh, um, I want to say it was a Thursday afternoon. The, uh, the, the lady at Dr. Gatton's office called me and she goes, Hey, good news. Your thyroid levels under the 5.6. I'm going to go ahead and submit today for insurance. We're submitting. And she was like, it'll probably be like, you know, two to three weeks before we hear anything back. Um, and I'm thinking to myself, well, damn, here we go another month or two or four, and then we'll take another three or four months to schedule it, man. I kid you not.

It was a Thursday that very next morning, I got a phone call and she was like, Hey, your insurance signed off on it immediately. Um, can you be here in a week to have surgery and i was like damn no i can't i can't why because you were scared or because of work i was scared and yeah and then also man like you're supposed to do two weeks um just for me i was scared of the whole like that because i mean it is a big deal you know anytime it's huge so um but yeah so i ended up going under and getting it done and um i was terrified but it was the best decision i've ever made um hands down saved my life so basically the problem got so bad that you thought that anytime you were to address it um you were more in the mindset of like i've gone too far i can't i can't do it oh yeah no a thousand so does the surgery actually work or is it the

so so you um i'll use this example uh you buy a new pair of running shoes and the running shoes really don't don't help you run but you're like fuck i spent 150 bucks on these i better start running at least two miles a day for a month so that i like i can justify that purchase is which one more is it or is it a combination do you know what i mean like shit i got the surgery now the pressure is really or you know like you buy a drone for 1500 bucks you're like dude and then after a week you're done flying you're like dude i still gotta fly it every day for 30 minutes you know what i mean that's a waste of money no no you're absolutely right um the only thing the difference with surgery is um if it

protects you from going back and that that's why a lot of people do refer to it as cheating is and the reason that's crazy to call it cheating by the way that's fucking that's fucking bad thinking i'm not saying i i'm not saying i like the surgery idea but it is to call it cheating is fucking idiocy the fact that someone is willing to they've reached the and this is kind of my thing and the fact that when someone is so broken on themselves that they are willing to go and be put to sleep and have their physical stomach cut out to change their, their, their life. I, I, I don't, I could never consider that cheating ever. Um, and so that's not like, all right. And when anyone says that, I just laugh at this point and I'm like, I could shut them down in two seconds. And it's like, yeah, all right.

But, um, okay. But look, but what are the, I, the reason why i don't get it is is what are the rules i'm i'm overweight and i'm dying and i want to save myself i'm sorry what were the rules for that exactly tell me that again like i didn't know we were playing a game i didn't know that there was rules yeah like i'm not competing like and that's one of the biggest things i tell people that message me every day it's like you're not competing against me you're not competing against jill jam joey or susan or karen you're competing against yourself it's you versus you like you know i i'm go for it like yes um but would you would you recommend that who would you recommend the surgery for and who would you not is there anyone you would not recommend it for

yeah well surgery has different things. So you don't just get surgery some days just because you're big. Like there's, I have a lot of friends that have gotten surgery due for underlying issues. Like, um, like, uh, Oh goodness. I can't think of the, the, I want to say it starts like PCOS is some of them for like women, um, and, and other things like things like that um that have literally like they have to get surgery because the other is uh gastro like issues like with um oh my digestion yeah like digestion and things like that sometimes um this is an alternative for that um is the

bypass or the the sleep so um it's not always weight loss related. I know a lot of people, everybody automatically seems like they're at surgery to weight loss surgery, but sometimes there's underlying issues that causes it. But for the most part, if anyone's like, well, would you ever recommend this to anyone? Absolutely. A hundred percent, without a doubt. There's not a time or thought in my mind where I would never say, no, surgery isn't for you. Do I ever advise people why I got surgery and why I thought it was better for me than other, you know, alternatives? Yes. Um, because you know, surgery may not be for everybody. They may not want to, a, they may not have insurance B they may not have the financial ability to do it. See, they may not have the, the, what if they just don't need to like like like do you

have any friends who are overweight and they're and they're thinking about it but you're kind of in your mind like i wish you would just not do the surgery and just do what the rest of what i'm doing right now i'd like to take this guy on as a project you know do you ever have that feeling in in in my head yes but it's such a hard feeling because – and I try to shut it down instantly. Because at the same time, I think would the same people have said the same thing about me at 500 pounds. Right. And so it's like a double-edged sword. Like if I start thinking that way for others, then like why couldn't I have done it at 500?

So I think that people put this mental – like almost like blinders on and they start to like, I can't do it. I won't. And then when they start saying I can't lose weight, then they're, they're really programming their brain to say, I won't lose weight. And after that, it's just this downward spiral. Um, the reason why surgery is so successful and works is it has those, like those security risks that keeps you from doing it is the way I like to say it. So, um, you ate too much sugar guess who's going to the bathroom real quick me uh if i overate i'm gonna be thrown up if i drink too quick it has that has that happened to you have you eaten too much and thrown up oh yeah yeah yeah um there's it's called in the weight loss community the bariatric community is called dumping syndrome. Um, and basically when you eat either too fast, like at the beginning foods that are just too

enriched in sugars or anything like that, man, it literally feels like someone is like taking a 14 inch knife and just stabbing you over and over, over the stomach. And you, it feels like it's going to come out both ends and you're miserable. And you don't do it again. No, you try to refrain that. And you know what? It happens. You eventually two months down the road, you're really, oh, I can eat a piece of pie or something. That's not going to kill me.

Nope. You're gonna be sitting on the toilet for two hours. So it has that. You made this post and it says, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right, Henry Ford. And there's this Taoist saying that says, argue your limitations, and they're yours. Meaning you say – if you say you can't, then you can't. You had to face that in a way, right? Because you had reached a point where you said, I can't, and I need help. Exactly.

How do those – but yet you have to take full responsibility. There's kind of like this – it's like a paradox right you have to take full responsibility and yet you're leaning on this really traumatic intense surgery yeah uh you it it's something that you realize like that you're leaning on the surgery but you realize that like it's now your tool and it's only going to work for you. And I, and, and I'll be honest with you, the, the, the example that you use with the running shoes, I want to steal that and take that because that was great. No matter how many pairs of running shoes you buy, they're not going to do the work for you. You got to put in the work, you know,

you got to leverage your ego and be like, well, I bought them. I better like not be and use them. Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh, and you, at that point, if you plan on using your shoes, then they're going to work. But if you're just going to let them sit there on your counter and get dusty, I got news for you. It doesn't matter if you buy 10 more pair, they're still going to get as dusty as the other pair. You know, you should have just gone out and bought 20 big max for the same price.

You'd probably be happier. No shit. Seriously. So, yeah, man, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's exactly that it's you, you use your tool and that's why I become such an advocate for like, like people looking down on it. I shut that shit down because at this point it's like, what is there to look down on? Um, there's nothing like, and, and I was talking to a friend of mine. Um, they just had surgery and

they're like, you know, I don't want to really tell my friends. I don't want to tell my family. I don't want to tell anyone. I just, how do you tell everybody? And I didn't have that issue for me. I realized at an early point, there was, there was very few and far between four males who would come out and talk about like surgery and just give the like the transparent no shit no filter let me throw it all out there um ride and roller coaster of a journey and i was like you know what why not let's do it so i literally laying in bed i had my ex-wife um say hey take a photo of me right here and i'm just gonna save it this is day one and i'll i'll never forget it posting I mean I

didn't know what hashtags like to even look for back then like to post on social media for this photo I was like let's do it so I remember like googling as I'm laying in post-op like googling like what hashtag should I use for this photo I'm gonna try it like what what so I put like the like basic you know and that was day one, April 8th, 2019. I'll never forget it. How has your – can you tell a difference in your thinking now that you are more nutritionally sound? They talk about brain fog. sound they talk about brain fog they talk about so basically from from where i stand in in my ivory tower in my in my fucking blessed and in in perfect life i see just a world of people acting

from fear right because because they're 100 pounds overweight and they start every morning with the triple frappuccino and and they're basically walking out on a high wire every morning. And if the wind blows, they're scared. That's why they're scared of COVID. They can't even do the math. They can't even be like, hey, there's no chance of me dying from this if I stop eating added sugar and refined carbohydrates. Zero.

12,000 people die. If you're obese or you're elderly, you should really be afraid of stairs. 12,000 people die falling down the stairs every day. Now, if you were to fall down – if Dalton were to fall down the stairs today, he would get way less injury. You probably would have died if you would have fallen down a flight of stairs four years ago. I would have died, yeah. Yeah. Man, I would have died.

And now you can fall down a flight of stairs. That's the same thing with COVID. If you get it now, no big deal. If you would have got it four. Yeah, man. I would have died. And now you can fall down a flight of stairs. That's the same thing with COVID. If you get it now, no big deal. If you had got it four years ago, you're fucked. I'll be, I'll be honest with you. And on the whole COVID thing, you know, especially with weight, I, I a thousand percent agree with you when it comes to the underlying issue with COVID and like weight loss being such a, or I'm sorry, being overweight,

having such an impact on COVID patients. Like I can tell you that I've more friends of mine that were my size have passed, like prior have passed away in the past year due to like, they get COVID as they're a larger person and they passed away. And it's like, dude, it's the underlying issues,

you know, thedc i haven't looked in the last year but in the first year it said 94 of the people had four or more comorbidities and six percent and then small says there's no data on yeah no data on i want to show you this i got a lot of people got upset at me for posting this the other day. And so, you know, there's these, you know, with the before I go here, you know, with the BLM thing and all that stuff, some black people have stood up and been like, yo, motherfuckers, like we are not different. And I don't and I don't want anyone looking at me and judging me for my skin color and I don't want things for my skin color. And then there's this whole other contingent. and that that's really brave of those black people they don't think that racism should be fought with racism and they're standing up and they're like and i was thinking i wish the obese community would stand up and say that too i wish someone in the beast community

would say hey assholes we're terrified of dying because of what we've done to ourselves like we need to take responsibility but but look at the what i look at this are the i posted this on my instagram the other day and it upset a bunch of people they thought it was insensitive and i not insensitive is just pc for it's just idiot talk but healthy teenager who took precautions died suddenly of covet 19 this is a 16 yearyear-old boy. How much do you think that boy weighs? In all reality, I would say over 300 pounds. Yeah. Look at his ears. So that's basically – when I see that, I see that, and I see this company, CNN, that claims to be against systemic racism i see this as the foundation of systemic racism you're telling all black people that this is a healthy version of

you this this is fucking nuts this is not a healthy version of any human being you see right there man yeah there's hundreds of these dalton yeah from this from these people. Look, it's called CNN health. Yeah. You know, this is maddening. This is, this is abuse. Yeah. Like this is the, this is the company that says misinformation. This is worse than misinformation.

This is like, I mean, it's a, it's just. It breaks my heart my heart man i'm not even smart do you know what i mean i just see it and i'm not even smart i just know how the brain works i know that someone's like oh i'm skinnier than that and uh so i must be healthy it's just how old are you now i'm 28 i turned 29 in may yeah I remember when I was your age. I'm 49 now. When I was your age, I was doing this. I think it was about your age. For three months, I chased tornadoes in Tornado Alley. Oh, wow. That's so cool. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning,

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Benjamin Moore, see the love. Yeah, basically between Bullock, Texas, all the way up to the Canadian border. We just drove around in there chasing tornadoes for the History Channel. Oh, that's so cool. Okay, yeah. I was a camera guy. And coming from California, I'd never seen the south.

That whole corridor is full of buffets. And we don't have, we don't have buffets like that in California. And I'd never seen three and 400 pound people. And you'd go into these places and they'd be full of three and 400 pound people. And we didn't have, and now California, of course we have them there. They're everywhere, but it's a, um, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a huge problem. It's an issue. It's an issue. It really is. And that's what's bad. And a lot of people don't just they want to acknowledge that it's an issue because no one wants to talk about it. Is it because they can't think like do you think more clearly now? Like tell me is there anything specific you can think of where the brain fog is gone or like you see things like this article from CNN and you're like what the fuck?

Oh, no. A thousand percent. Because like for me, and it's funny you say brain fog because my brain fog was I was I dealt more for like depression and mental health and things like that. That's where my brain frog, like I can't talk. Brain fog went away is when I started making the changes and being more healthy. I realized like, and again, it's science, uh, the endorphins behind working out that's man that saved my life. It really did.

The, the Andy for sellers, 75 hard working out, um, doing the twice a day is what got me to initially start working out. Um, I did it for 33 days and I failed after falling asleep, um, on accident and slept through my alarms. I saw that post. By the way, great post. Fucking brilliant post. Appreciate that. Yeah, that's a great post to take responsibility for it.

Yeah, accountability. But I ended up failing and I was like, you know, I'm going to do this again. But then after about five days, I realized I was like, maybe because I got what I wanted from 75 Hard. I got the mental toughness and that grit and like the determination. I found that in 75 Hard and I really did. And I think if I hadn't, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now. it because I was at the time I was eating way less than what I should have been because I thought that's what I had to do. So stupid. But anyways, I was trying to under eat trying to still work out twice a day while doing everything while working. And I realized that if I could work out in the morning and work out in the afternoon, man, I was causing myself to be way more productive at work, I was in a better mood. I Yeah,, to me, everything was clear. I could respond faster. Um, my, it was like two plus two equaled four faster than it did when I wasn't doing that things, you know, I don't know if that makes sense, but it's just like, I could think better.

Um, and then fast forward to now where I ended up adapting from something so far into a plan where now I try to, I was working out twice a day. It depends on my coach. He doesn't really like me to work out twice a day right now. He's wanting me to slow down. But, um, but I'm realizing, man, it's the, the endorphins from that has been life-changing in itself. And I, I wish I'd have known that years ago. Um, I wish I could have, I've now seen the, the, you know, how when people say, oh man, I love working out, like working out, it's great. Like I'm addicted to to it i don't know if i'm so much addicted to just you know doing this all day but i'm addicted to the feeling after a feeling like i just went there and i bettered myself for an hour yeah double yeah it's so good it's a win you know so good on both levels twice a day oh my

goodness man i'm on top of the world i can take on anybody you know so so so you work out and you get the endorphin rush obviously you get into your body and your brain stops but then also when you're done it's a big check off to like fuck i made my like the to-do list like exactly yeah yeah do you sweat seven days a week i do yes yeah yeah um yesterday kind of a must right they say off day but like i still still went to the gym at like 11 um or no 10 i think um 10 or 11 just to get some like you know basic core and cardio in it's just a way to like get your day started clear your head relax you know um i like to put my music in and just kind of like i it may be weird but i call it put my work in or put my dues in, you know? Um, man, I look forward to it every day. So how about walking? Uh, yeah, I love walking around. Um, you know,

that was actually how it started was in my neighborhood. Uh, I was so self-conscious going to the gym, um, even after losing 250 pounds, man, I've got loose skin hanging everywhere. So, you know, and I, at the time I didn't want to go to the gym and see all that flapping around. Um, it's always in my head then, but, um, I started working out here at the house, walking around the neighborhood and, you know, working out. And finally one day I was like, okay, I'm going to overcome everything I can. I'm just going to take my shirt off in my neighborhood. These people have seen me with my shirt off before let's do it. So I took my shirt off and I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to walk around the neighborhood. I'm going to try

to put in a mile or two, um, while and do that so then i started trying to aim for two miles a day on lunch you know in that little 30 minute time frame going walking around the neighborhood taking my shirt off and yeah man i felt amazing um and then it just transpired into me like working out and my like because again i was doing the inside and the outside so my outside was my walk and you know jog and doing like a little like um because that's that's the 75 hard thing right inside and outside okay yeah uh and then like inside i didn't have weights and stuff when i first started and um i remember like going around the house was like what's heavy household items that i can lift really quick because weights you know weights are kind of pricey they're like 30 40 bucks for bucks for like 10 pounds, 50 pounds. I was like, I'm not,

you know, what if I don't stick with it? That's already my mindset. I'm already thinking about how I'm going to fail, you know? Um, so I was like, well, let me, let me start out with something here. So I went in and my parents had bowling balls, like two 16 pound bowling balls. They're under my bed to this day. I went and grabbed them and was on the side of my bed, like doing this, you know, and then doing this with the other arm and then realizing, okay, I figure out I got to do tricep that way with a bowling ball. So I started doing these little exercises in my house and like getting used to it. And I was like, okay, well, I'll be damn. Maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not out of the ringer. Okay. Maybe I can do this in the gym.

Maybe everyone's not going to stare at me. So I remember going to the gym and I tried for a little while. Didn't really like it with a friend or two. And, um, you didn't really like it. What say that again? I didn't really like it with like, you know, going with a friend or two at the time that I was trying to go with, it was just a rush and we would, we'd get there and just do cardio. And at the time and I'd be like dead. And I, I, I will say that did get me into a love early

for cardio. Cause I do love cardio now. It's weird, but, um, I think during that timeframe, that is what really got me to push towards 75 hard. And then when 75 hard happened, I started doing the inside weights and doing more of that. And then after Sunday required, I was like, okay, I'm going to go to the gym. So I bought, uh, I already had a planet fitness membership, but I just never went to it. Um, but my buddy awesome was like, man, I'll teach you some things. Uh, him and a friend, Tyler, they ended up like teaching me a few things in the gym. It's like, Hey, you know, this is, we're just gonna, we have a chest day and then we have, you know, a bad, I had no clue what that was at the time. I didn't know what chest and triceps meant or like,

you know, we're doing a push day or a full, I had a bat i had no clue what that was at the time i didn't know what chest and triceps meant or like you know we're doing a push day or a pool i had nothing i had no awesome so they're just schooling you up good yeah man they sound so fun and so good yeah so but yeah it's been amazing how about a pull-up is a pull do you have any desire to do a pull-up i do i do i do i do and uh i've got my first pull up it was assisted it wasn't assisted but hell man that's more than i could do before awesome but i yeah uh we now do pull-ups i try to do um like on back day we do four sets of like six to eight um on pull-ups on the assistant machine so awesome you know one of the things um when i was a kid i i used to the boys would do pull-ups for the presidential and i would do what the girls did because I couldn't do one. I'd have to do like the what's that called?

Steady arm, steady arm hang or something, which is crazy because now because now I'm in the CrossFit community and all the girls could do more pull ups than the boys. But, you know, I got my first pull up on. You know, I got my first pull-up on – I think I was in college, and I think my buddy and I were high on ecstasy, and he was like a bodybuilder. He was all juiced up on roids and shit, and he was into meth and roids. It was kind of crazy. Holy shit. Yeah, and I just smoked a little weed and drank beer. But we were in the backyard, and I think it was one of the first times I'd ever done ecstasy. And we're in the backyard, and he goes, hey goes hey dude it's not a fucking pull-up and i

we were on a branch and i was trying to pull up and i go what is it and he put his hands under my armpits and squeeze my lats and he says see these muscles right here i'm like kinda he's like you have to contract those and then you go up your hands are just so you don't fall to the ground so just contract those muscles and you'll and it worked of course it's high as fuck but uh and so i could really focus right because i was on mdma but it was crazy and i was like oh it's a total misnomer to call this thing a pull-up it's a back contraction and then you go up so i don't know if that helps you but someone could squeeze under your lats there or you can even squeeze your own first to kind of like be like okay that's that's the muscle right there you know and then i started just doing lots

of negatives once i was warm i would just jump up to a top of a pull-up bar like this and then like from and i would just lower myself slowly or i would start here oh wow okay and then just lower myself and that's how all the strongest um later on i found out um from a mentor of mine greg glassman that that's how all the strongest gymnasts in the world that's how you learn the iron cross you don't go here you start here and then slowly let out and then fall through yeah i mean be warm first or something will fucking snap but anyway i just thought i'd share yeah yeah that's so uh and once i could do pull-ups and muscle-ups i started getting that in my 30s um the whole world changed the landscape changed fences were no longer fences they were things to go over i mean it was just nuts though my whole my whole

perspective of the world that's so cool man i can't wait i i want to be able to go over a fence like that and i know that sounds crazy um there's that's two things I'm looking forward to is a climbing a fence and weird, but B climbing a tree and my entire life, I've never climbed a tree. Yes. So I didn't climb. So it's funny you say that until that kid guy showed me that on ecstasy, I used to play a lot of Frisbee. And if the Frisbee went in the tree, it was always some other, and I was 20 years old. I was in college and it would be some other kid who would climb the tree and once i started getting a little confidence in my grip and shit i'd be like i'll go get the frisbee yeah i'll get that shit i'll see maybe some girl will think i'm cool yeah um oh yeah what is what is this um surgery here? Sure.

Yeah, so that is – This one is – do you care if I flip through these pictures? Not at all. Please do. That is a paniculectomy. So when after I lost 250 pounds, like through that, they actually cut that off. So that's all loose skin that was hanging over my front midsection or, um, you know, my crotch area. So as you can see, that's the doctor pulling the skin away. I actually had to beg him to do that. Um, but are you conscious there? You're awake there. I'm asleep. No, I'm completely out. Yeah.

Um, but in this right here, I don't know if you can see, but there's only one scar going across, like right above my crotch yeah i see yeah like you had a c-section or something yeah literally that's kind of what i had but so they should have went and cut all the way up my stomach and did an abdominoplasty and tighten up that muscle and all that skin and they didn't why not um that's a question I have still been trying to get the answer to. So this is seven pounds of skin they cut off. Yeah. Yep.

Uh, seven pounds. And I still have roughly 20 to 25 pounds of skin remaining. So, um, you had to beg them to do this. He didn't want to do that. He didn't know it, man. My doctor at the time. um why not i mean i kind of get it but why not it's so powerful it really was and that man i saw it on a video before i was like please this is all i want like you won't let like at the time i now realize why he

didn't want to be sued for what he was doing but like the whole initial visit like he was giving me and i'm gonna put this in parentheses, a discount, um, because it wasn't much of a discount at all. I, in all reality paid full price for what I got. Um, it was like basically 10 grand for a paniculectomy to be cut from hip bone to hip bone that should have had muscle repair and abdominoplasty included in, um, at the time I asked him, I was like, Hey man, can I bring like, you know, one of my boys, he was in the media and filming and things like that. And he was like, dude, I'm willing to take a work day off. I'll come film the whole thing. And so like the, there's a video, like one of my first tick tocks of me at the doctor and they're talking about like what to expect. And he's no shit like hiding in the corner with like

a camera like this, just like in his pocket, like trying to record because they wouldn't let him in for, for HIPAA and all that stuff um which i found out later is it had nothing to do with hippa at all as long as i'm not like divulging yeah they just didn't want to be recorded but they don't want to get sued i think you nailed it yep i i woke up they just didn't want to get sued i woke up two weeks later i ended up going in they unwrapped me and i found out that like none of that was done and I was bummed. And so, um, we don't go back to that plastic surgeon, but, um, I do have some really good info for this year. I plan on getting, um, three more surgeries done this year with a, um, a plastic surgeon

that's confident that he can fix everything that the other doctor kind of messed up. So it's, it's going to be really good. I'm super excited. Um, I'm hoping to do do that after my bodybuilding show so when i'll be at my least amount of body fat then you can just go in and trim the skin and pull it real tight and hopefully i can have a speedy recovery so it's it's it's cool that you're so transparent um it's very cool and it's very cool that you show your failures too, like with the 75 hard. I like having you on because I am so, in my head, against the surgery. And you're helping me with that like you're giving me you're giving me therapy because because the goal is to give people an avenue and it's not it's not that surgery in general it's just doctors in general i i think they're compromised because

of big pharma because of surgery i think so many doctors are compromised don't get me wrong there's some fucking amazing doctors out there and for people like you or someone who gets hit by a car you get shot by a bullet but like these doc but but i just feel like the vast majority of doctors especially if they're not taking personal responsibility if they're not going to the gym if they're not studying nutrition then yeah they're why would they push that on others yeah and they're blind they think like um um type 2 diabetes when they treat you for that they're basically docents to walk you to your grave the service they have is to walk you to your grave when they really should say hey motherfucker

stop eating snicker bars not not here's your insulin and and it's it sucks because they're teaching you how to admit it they're teaching you how to live with it as opposed to cure it. And I just think that that's – did you ever have type 2 diabetes? I didn't, but it's so funny that you brought up that. My grandfather has diabetes. And when I was – I want to say – I'll probably butcher the age here, but I was like in between 12 and like 14 timeframe. I went to a program that was called positions, weight loss. And in the United States, you're not allowed, like it was for a minor back then on a weight

loss program. They weren't allowed to like have me as a client. They, they weren't not approved to do so. So what they ended up doing, because they're like, man, your health is already so bad at like 14 years old, 13, whatever. I was so big back big back then um that my grandfather was like well listen why like why don't we sign your grandfather up and he will be our patient you just come with your grandfather each time and we'll do everything on you too and so like no shit man i like i remember getting like nope still can't hear you not a big deal though did i lose you yep you're back okay so you went with your grandfather uh it's you sound like a chipmunk right now on mine oh if it keeps being bad you can just hang up and hit the link again and come back in if you want yeah let me try doing

that give me just a second i'm so sorry one second no no no no not an issue at all my fucking show we do it my way uh did doctors or professionals recommend or prescribe that fitness needs to be a part of the your routine post-surgery i you know what great question i just made the assumption that yes but that's silly to that's silly to make that uh assumption we'll ask him that um here in a minute So sorry about that. My bad. Not okay. I got one of those spam calls came through. Not a problem. I lost my great father. Okay. So, so you, so you were with your, so your grand,

your grandfather was going to this program that was for adults, but he just signed up for it. So you could tag along. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my grandfather and I'll never forget it, man. I felt like, and yeah, he could lose a little weight. Like I think he was in like a size 42 waist and like in all reality, he should have been like a 36. So, um, I just remember those numbers. Cause I remember like we, I was like in a 48 and trying to get lower at the time. And so we were competing and man, I remember like him is kind of funny because we're going through this together and he's in real reality i look back on it and i just realized like man this man loved loved me to death because like yeah in all reality he did not have to do that shit like each way he caused himself to go on this plan just to make me go on the plan to try to like you know kickstart it but um you're talking about the diabetes and i watched him literally literally like his diabetes was going down drastically.

He was able to start maintaining his sugar levels based off of him losing weight at the time, and he lost like 30, 40 pounds. It was a great program, but anyways, I say all that. So it's funny that you mentioned that weight correlates to diabetes and things because it can definitely directly correlate and cause those diabetes and other issues to to slowly come back up so um i never had no one in this country should have type 2 diabetes it it's a it's a um i think i think it's like and same with that that's another thing that's just fascinating to me all these numbers around covid here's another crazy one. I think there's 600,000 people on dialysis. I'd say at least 500,000 of them are because of lifestyle choices that they've made. At least.

I'm being so generous. And once you're on dialysis, you have a five-year life expectancy. And half the people who get on dialysis die in the first six months. I mean, those people have no chance if fucking if they get influenza covid if their granddaughter sneezes on like it's just yeah it's so man you're hitting all the points it's so funny you brought up uh that that my ex-wife's um mother is on she's a dialysis patient and she's she's had three transplants over the past 30 years but it's funny because you bring up the whole –

Is her life miserable? Is her life miserable? No, she lives a – well, I can't speak on her happiness, but I can say from the outside looking in, she looks happy. Oh, okay, good. She's a fighter, man. But it's so funny because I see how much she cares about her health. She's very small. She focuses on what she eats. No shit. She's very healthy. Oh, yeah, about her health. She's very small. She focuses on what she eats.

No shit. Very healthy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She weighs probably 120 pounds. And why is she on dialysis? What happened? What caused her to get on dialysis? Kidney failure.

It shut down like 30 years ago, man. Like literally 30 years ago, her kidneys shut down completely. And they couldn't like, I don't know the technical term, revive i guess i don't know but they put her on dialysis and then they put her on the transplant list and then like it just like she would get a transplant her body would fight it off it would not be successful so then they do it again and then like you know 10 years down the road i don't know the exact years amount of time but she ended up having three transplants um and they all three failed um they, she is, yeah, she's, she's still alive kicking. She's an amazing, strong, powerful woman. But, um, yeah, so it's, I see what you're saying though. A lot of the dialysis patients, they are,

you know, they, they again, bigger and they, they, all of that adds it's, it's a compound, you know, if you have one thing wrong with you, you take another thing wrong with with you and then you add on the small things like what you're eating what you're drinking what you're recreationally doing all that adds in and like it's a combination or like a mathematical equation and it can either be very good or very bad you know so it just depends what how you you put it together you know what else is interesting is i'm pretty sure dialysis is a is an environmental just fucking disaster and yet no one talks about that i mean i think it's a i think they consume i think dialysis just requires so much water i think it's it's it's like absolutely nuts yeah it's a i feel so sorry for like going like it's such a and she's surrounded by to go through right and Right. And imagine this, like, so she's, she's, she sounds like she's one that like needs it, but I bet you she's like, I hear people who are in dialysis centers and they're sitting in there and they're like, and there's someone in there just like getting their blood change and they're drinking a 42 ounce of super big gulp of Coke. And I that's the norm and it's like holy shit yeah and

see that's the thing man like you're i mean what is the point like what is the actual point of dialysis is to flush the toxins out because you can't pee right so like yes if you know that like why why are you going to keep what like you know um why would you put stuff in your system that you're not able to actually flush like at least you and i we can pee we can flush you know like right that's the thing but like those patients but like they can't. And so they just hold it and hold it and hold it. And then they had to go get it released and flushed out their system. So to me, like if I knew I, you know, I was fighting dialysis, it, I would think that, you know, I would not be with coke or anything. Yeah, man. I'd, I'd try to like keep

it as clear and pure as possible, but I say that, but then look at me, I was 500 pounds and it didn't, you know, prevent me from putting my fork down. So I don't know. It's, it's, uh, it's, I think it, it all goes back to the original thing of what's your mindset, what's your, your determination behind it. And can you know, you control you it's you versus you at the end of the day did you ever just think you were just gonna die absolutely absolutely yeah yeah i'd i'd i'd already signed off on being dead by 30 and being completely okay with it um yeah that seems to be pretty normal from i've interviewed you know i don't know 100 people now who've lost over 100 pounds i feel like. And there, there, that, man, that's just, it's, it's so scary. But, but what a, um, once you've gone there and come back, like you have, man, you're like,

like your life is the richest it's ever been. Right. Oh yeah. It's it, man. I've, I've never been happier. And like, and I was telling her the other day, I was like, yeah, right now. Yeah. I'm stressed with this, this cut and everything. It's, it's hard doing a cut and trying to, to get all the food in and do that. It's been hard, but man, I'm still happy. At the end of other day, I was like, right now, yeah, I'm stressed with this cut and everything. It's hard doing a cut and trying to get all the food in and do that. It's been hard, but man, I'm still happy. At the end of the day, I'm happy I'm here. You're living. I'm living. I got a second chance at life, which a lot of people don't get, you know, and I'm forever and eternally grateful for that.

And that's why I want to be able to help so many others. I just hit myself in the eye with my cord. Oh, and that's why I want to be able to help so many others. I just hit myself in the eye with my cord. Oh, that hurt. Um, but yeah, no, I w I want to tell as many people as I can, like about how surgery saved my life. And, um, um, you know, to a lot of people, me and my brother just made up, I don't know if you, and I'm sure now I can say this because we're now close again and we're, um, our relationship's fixed, but, um, I'll never forget. Like, I don't know if you saw my post about the whole cheater thing and like, you know, me just going on an absolute ramp, like rampage, me going off screaming basically

on TikTok and Instagram about being called a cheater. I was for my brother. My brother called me and he was like, you know, you cheated, like you cheated, like, yeah, you lost weight, me one day, he was like, you know, you cheated, like you cheated, like, yeah, you lost weight, but you cheated. And so it's, it's, it's always been this real personal thing for me. When someone struggles, like to understand the reasoning behind why someone gets surgery in the first place. And so I, you know, I didn't know at the time when I got surgery that I had a food addiction, I didn't realize that I was turning to food as my crutch. I had no idea that I was literally relating everything that I do in my day-to-day, like just living, I was relating it to food. And I'm sure you can attest to this because, like, think about it.

When you watch TV – I smoke cigarettes. Nicotine is the same thing. It becomes a coping mechanism for everything. Someone cuts you off, you put a chew in. Someone – someone cuts you off you put it you put a chew in someone your girlfriend's upset you put a chew in you have to go pick your kids up from school you put a chew in you want to read a book you put a chew in next thing you know it's like it goes with everything i totally know dude i totally know so the way that that happens for you is same for food so and that's that's why at that point, man, I'm so addicted to it. And I, I couldn't even realize that because I had this fucked up view of food for so long,

um, that if it wasn't for surgery, I'd be dead. Um, and so I finally yelled at my brother. I said, Cody, you know, you can't be mad at, like, you can't call me a cheater. Like we're not playing a game. This is my life. Like I have literally prolonged my life and you'll have your brother longer because I decided to have someone cut me open to help me lose weight. Like, I don't see how I'm cheating. Like, and that's when I finally, and, um, I use the example, like I have never heard someone yell at someone for going into rehab for having like a drug problem or like being addicted to drugs or anything like that. Like I'm not, I need to get off the heroin. You, you cheated.

You went to rehab. You yeah, bro. If you call, Oh my God. So like, I was like, so by you calling someone a cheater, who's addicted to food, who took the last fucking route they could to better themselves. And you're going to like, to me, me that's that's the same fucking thing as me going to a rehab center as someone graduates and be like you you're you're cheater you cheated yeah yeah you you no no you bettered yourself you took control of your life at the lowest fucking point in your life when when at that point it's either death or or that's how bad shit was bro that i did the surgery yes i checked myself in rehab i to, let's look up the definition of the word cheater. Just real, real.

Yeah, let's do it. Quick here, just for shits and giggles. Let's see what cheater means. One who violates rules dishonestly. Well, you didn't violate any rules. Exactly. And you were absolutely not dishonest. So, so basically people who say it's cheating, it's a defense mechanism on their part.

It is. They – is your brother overweight? He's not, and I think that's why he – and it's so funny, man. Well, then maybe it's just too intimate for him, and so he had to do that. Yeah, go on. Sorry. Say that again. No, you're fine. He was always fit. He was always the older brother. He was 10 years older than me, know, 21, he's over there benching like 400 pounds. It's a big, big guy. Yeah. And so here's me at 21 weighing 400 pounds. So, you know, at the time

I was like, uh, you know, but I, I talked to him and, and now we've, we've polished our relationship. He's actually like, he hits, he, I don't want to say got bigger, but he just like, you know, maybe gained like 30 pounds in the last like two or three years of just being happy, you know, living life or whatever. But it's so great because he called me. He's like, Hey man, like, and he's never done this in our 25 years. He was like, Hey man, I'm proud of you. Like, like I see you're busting your ass. I'm proud of you like like i see you you're busting your ass i'm

proud of you um and because of that i'm gonna make a change so like he started working out and like he started like watching what he eats and you know walking around the neighborhood and like man that can make me cry at the end of the day like at the end of the day i just wanted to impact people with my journey and like tell my story and i ended up being able to like impact my brother you know like that's that's emotional in itself um someone that we had fought and been head against each other the entire time through surgery and like everything like and now we're close and you know now we're he's hopefully going to start working out with me eventually we'll see yeah cross on that one but

yeah does he live near you started he does he's like 10 minutes away so um but he's just constantly busy with work and um businesses and things like that so but uh like i told him he's got to make time for what's important so hey did you were you ever into hard candy did you ever get like just a huge bag of just like hard now and laters or those butterscotch things and you just have them in your car and you'd always just have a hard candy in your mouth or blow pops um i wasn't too big on candy man mine was like just like sweet tea and drink that's why you hit the nail on the head earlier when you're like sugar soda man soda was my my my biggest downfall like i wasn't addicted to chocolate or like candy or anything like that mine was soda and like cookies or like soda and like meat, man. I could, I could eat some food just like,

give me a cheeseburger and I can put three of them down. You know, you want nuggets? Give me 50. I'll put them down with no issue. And then I look back now and I'm like, damn, I couldn't put five down and I'm wanting to throw up now, you know? So, yeah, man, it's amazing. It's amazing.

Hey, when, when you, this guy Todd asked basically, let, man, it's amazing. It's amazing. Hey, when, when you, uh, this guy Todd asked basically, uh, let me see, um, did doctors or professionals recommend or prescribe fitness needs to be a part of the new routine. So is there a, is there a whole program you go through that's like a building up to this? Like, Hey, after this, you're going to have to drink celery through a straw. We need you to walk at least two miles a day. You're going to, you should get a heart rate monitor and get your heart rate up to 80% max, at least six times a week. should get a heart rate monitor and get your heart rate up to 80 max at least six times a week was there a whole like hey here's your shit and is that overwhelming as opposed is that overwhelming it is um you know they sit you down and i'll be honest with you they try to scare the absolute shit out of you which is good and i was joking

about that with a few of the people on like the bariatric pages. There's a whole community, man, on Facebook about it. Thank God I joined their community like early and learned, but man, hearing like the way, like some of these doctors teach some of these newer people is insane. I had to follow a plan for six months. Like I said, I had to meet my TSH levels. I had to, you know, verify about my sleep apnea. I had to, you know, attempt to lose weight for six months on my own. And then also at that point, like show that I am, you know, attempting to do it before I go into surgery. Afterwards, then they give you like this maintenance plan, kind of like a, like a, I say maintenance, but again, I do the air quotes very sparingly because it wasn't much of a

maintenance plan. It's just like for the first two months after surgery, they kind of like, okay, for the first like three weeks, we're going to be on like liquids and then like soft foods. And then after that, for another three weeks, then we'll do like, you know, cut up foods and then very, very, very soft foods. And then we'll go into hard foods eventually. So stuff like that, like, and they tell you, you can't drink out of a straw, you know, you want to avoid exercise for like first three months, and then you can start if you want to. Um, the biggest thing they tell you is, what do you mean if you want to? Well, because in a lot of times, and that's why I think, um,

I think mine is a little bit different. A lot of people's story is because a lot of people are happy with losing the initial weight. You know, if you follow what they tell you in that first three or four months, you're going to lose weight. It's going to fall off because you're in such a deficit, a calorie deficit at the beginning. Right. So if you follow that, you're good. Like six months. Do you have a message for those people? Like, like I'm thinking like, hey, they got it wrong, their people.

You better fucking exercise. Shut the fuck up. That's wrong. Do you think that anyone should not exercise? I can't get my – I'm getting all pumped up about this. I think everyone should exercise, every fucking person, everyone. Yes, and you should. It's just at the beginning, man, it's so difficult too. Right, okay. Everyone. Yes. And you should. It's just at the beginning, man, it's so difficult to.

Right. Okay. I get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah. My wife had twins and she didn't move for three months. She just breastfed. Yeah.

I totally get it. But like if you – it's inexcusable to Uber 0.1 mile. It's inexcusable. Right. Even in a fucking downpour rain, that's when you look up to the heaven, you say, thank you for the opportunity to walk in a downpour rain. Yeah. It's inexcusable. No, you're absolutely right.

And that's that wake up time. Yeah. But no, in the beginning, when you are the biggest weight at that time, I always tell people, like, if you can work out, great, please do. It just helps you. It's not going to hurt you at the same time though, if they are, you know, a month or two months out, they can't drink water like we can. And 500 pounds, man, if I just got up and went to the fridge, I'm breaking a sweat. So if I'm, if I'm on the treadmill going through and, you know, dropping as much sweat as I did back then, I mean, hell, even now I drink, you know, my entire

outfit at the gym. Um, but I'm drinking a gallon, a gallon and a half a day back then. I'm not, I was just, you know, I wasn't drinking hardly 50 ounces at the beginning, uh, after surgery. And even that made, I was, it was, I don't know if you saw my Instagram, but if you pull back like the first, I think maybe first or second photo, you can see me drinking out of a medicine cup, my water. And I had like a giant, a giant thing like this on the side where I just constantly fill up my medicine cup and would sip water every 15 minutes to try to hit my water intake. And that, again, that's part of the process of what they tell you to plan for after surgery. Make sure you hit your water intake, make sure you hit your proteins.

Those are your two biggest things that they kind of just crammed down your throat. Um, but I wish I would have started working out more. I wish I, I would have just took the initiative six months out instead of waiting as long as I did. I'm glad that I waited as long as I did, because now it's, I don't say it's easier, but I'm able to see more, um, but I can see more things happening on me. And because of that, man, it's like, it's like someone's lighting a little match underneath my ass to make me keep going.

You know, I want to see the next result. And, um, but at the same time, I'm also happy where I'm at. I love the process. Like if I didn't lose another pound, I'm happy, man. I'm, I'm, I'm in a better place than I've ever been in my entire life. I can go out and change a tire. I can literally, I don't have to think about, am I gonna be able to fit in that booth at the restaurant?

Oh shit, is the handicap stall open? Because if not, I can't shit in the bathroom. It's things like that. Like, yeah, like you think I'm kidding, man, but that's what we call a non-scale victory. NSV, because those are the non-scale victories that doctors don't talk about. Um, but you do get them, you know? Yeah. I can tie my shoe in public. I can. You can sit in a chair without worrying about it breaking.

Dude, I broke my work chair. I'm literally going just like this at work. I leaned back and it snapped and it sounded like a gunshot went off. Um, and I'll never forget it. I put it in a request and I was like, Hey, I i'm i'm over 515 pounds and this is a small chair uh can i get a bigger chair and they're like they don't they don't make them man this brand that you know the company that we partner with and i mean i work for a fortune 500 company so i mean the resources were there it's just like they don't actually make the chair for the company so it's like bro you you gotta do something you know what are you gonna do just keep breaking chairs every three months so i have a friend who's a cardiologist and he told he was telling me about how they have to make all the machines now everything has to be bigger and more

robust because everyone's getting so huge and he told me he told me he'll go like he'll see he'll look at like 10 patients a day for fucking three months before he sees one patient who's not 30 years complicit in their demise. Meaning like patient after he said there, it's all their fault. Like they eat like shit. They don't move. They smoke cigarettes.

They drink alcohol. They drink soda. It's crazy. I'm like, really? You'll see 10 patients a day for fucking 90 days. And then finally you'll see one where it's like something like, wow.

He's like, yeah, it's nuts. Um, he, he, this, there like something like, wow. He's like, yeah, it's nuts. Um, he, he, this, there is something really,

the, this, everything you're doing is fucking amazing. I fucking love you to death. I think the contribution to humanity is like, we need you. Um, thank you so much.

There's this really sad part that, you know, when you get in a car accident and you bend the frame of the car and they say it's totaled you bent the rig and so you did that to your body you bent you bent you bent the the frame and now you're doing everything you can to get to get it back i think about all these kids out there and i think like that thing you did with your grandfather this is not a dig at your grandfather did that really help or did that make it worse what what what can we tell parent what there's kids out there who 12 years old who've done you're already millions of them

who've done irreparable damage to their rig they've bent their frame already and i'm just thinking to myself no like we we have to catch them so they don't have to do it what dalton muscle white did i pronounce your last name right muscle white you did yeah yeah yeah what a great name by the way thank you i appreciate what can we tell these kids what can we tell their parents so that we can catch it before the rig is damaged because the rig rig, I mean, it's just fucked. I'm sure it made your first 25 years or 20 years fucking miserable. Yeah, you know, and that's something everyone's like, well, man, do you wish you could go back? Yeah, I do. You know, I wish I could go back and catch myself at 10 years old and be like, wake the fuck up.

Stop it. You know, but I didn't, you know? Um, and because of that, I, I, I now you're, I love that again, you and the examples are excellent. The whole bent frame thing. That's so true. Like now I'm spending the next five years straightening it out. Like, you know, I've got two torn rotator cuffs, my backs, I've got, you know, herniated disc in my lower back. I've got bone spurs in my back and shoulders. And it's all because of the way I treated my body before. And so now I'm, again, I'm pulling that frame, trying to straighten out that frame. Um, if I had to give advice to parents is stop enabling. Um, I, sometimes it takes the person to be the parent instead of being the friend.

And sometimes like, but at the same time, also like you can't expect the parent to like teach their kids how to eat when the parent is not eating healthy themselves. You know, like, how do you tell, like, that's the pot calling the kettle black at the, you know, the old saying, um, how do, how do you, how do you teach someone when you're eating like shit, when you go to your nine to five and you're stopping in the morning at Starbucks and you're getting your trend to drink, and then you go, you know, to Waterberg or Burger King to get your, your croissant lunches at fast food. And then at night you don't have time. So you're cooking like hamburger helper, or, you know you know again maybe you're going out to eat

how how do you do that how do you then say well you know what timmy i understand you look i know you watch dad eat like all day but here hey don't you dare eat that cookie you know like it at that point i'm gonna call my dad a hypocrite like if i'm if i'm timmy and the eight-year-old like no dad like you're a hypocrite like you change it and then maybe i'll follow what you're doing um so now saying all that to say i see a lot of my like a few of my friends that have families already i don't have kids i'm no kids yet but i see you're too young you're too young you're too young i didn't have kids in my 40s you're too young party Yeah, party on. No rush. No rush. I see the difference between the families of parents that are fit and are mindful of what they do and they work out. I see the way that they treat their kids and the way that their kids react to the meals compared to families that are like, oh, man, I feed my kids whatever. They can go in the pantry and get whatever they want. I see the difference in like the way the family looks like, like in a healthy way, if that makes sense. Like I guarantee you, if we had to ask anybody,

like if we took two families and compared like the parents of one and the parents of the other, and we, we, we did a comparison between the parents that ate like shit, didn't do whatever. And then the parents that consciously watched what they ate, drank, you know, not doing all that shit. And then took the kids of those two parents. And if they're the same age and like, send them out to like PE, you just did like a, like, like you said, the, the president's test, I guarantee you the parents that are consciousness of the way they like eat and think and act around their kids and what the kids eat. Like, yeah, man, it's, it's, it's night and day. I guarantee you, those kids are going to outperform the other ones, you know? Uh, it's because what they're putting in their body, are they putting all that

processed sugar in their body? No. You know, I, the, the parents that are watching their kids cram fruit snacks down their throat by the dozen that's not helping them like it's not i remember i tell you what and this will this will also kind of tell you the way that parents have an impact on what you eat or drink for 18 years i wasn't allowed to have whole milk because it was like all adult oh i mean neither me neither it's bad for you extra fat it's extra fat you can't have it man it's so fattening i dude if i heard that one time i heard it a million times yes i was so mad like do you remember that non-fat blue shit you'd pour it in your cereal and you're like is this white milk or blue milk

you know like that yeah exactly uh-huh yeah so man i would i remember at 18 i moved out and i was like oh my god i've got adult money the. The first thing I went and bought for my apartment was a gallon of whole milk. Why? I don't know. It's just dumb. But I was like- Rebel. You're a fucking rebel.

18 years of being told I couldn't do it. Yeah. So again, it's all, there's leaning ways. You know, parents are damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's all a learning curve. But I say, if you just talk to your kids, man, talk to them, let them know, like, hey, this is bad for don't think that's, that's rude. I don't think that's going like into their private space and, you know, going to kill them in 20 years of, oh, my dad told me to eat an egg instead of a cookie. It's not going to be anything like that. But I think, you know, it may be that jumpstarting conversation that's like, oh, you're right. I am 12 year old and I have a. Like, I am 40 pounds bigger than everybody else in my grade all of a sudden. Why is that? You know, maybe it's the conversation that people need to have instead of waiting until someone's morbidly obese to have the conversation.

Or go out and do something with your kid. Like, why the fuck are you at home watching the fucking Raiders game with your kid? Go to the fucking park with them. Take them to the game, you know? Yeah, right, right, right. Walk around. Like, go to the fucking park with them take them to the game you know yeah right right right walk around like go to the park do do something like if you're that young do it man like have fun with kids live life with them i'm fascinated by my um i have a really bad potty mouth in front of my kids like i'll say anything in front of my kids like anything like my like

anything yeah and um but there's things that but but in my friends and i have friends who don't like their kids around me because of my potty mouth and yet they'll buy their kids ice cream like every day or they'll buy their bring their kids home bags of reese's peanut butter cups or or another thing like i wouldn't i don't let my kids do like i don't let my kids use the word like disgusting or boring like if they saw a cockroach and my kids said it was disgusting i'd be like what are you talking about that well look at the beautiful brown hues on that and look at the the shit look at its exterior exoskeleton like it's just lazy dumb shit talk it's disgusting no you're disgusting or if they use the word

boring boring i don't even know what that means show me boring you know like i'm i would rather my kid be like that's the that fucking bug is brilliant did you see where you jump from the wall from there that's fucking brilliant i would love that yeah yeah i'm not telling him no i'm like what good job you used fucking appropriately and don't use it when your grandmother's here she doesn't like that it's so nuts it's so people are in such autopilot. They're so confused. You feed your kid poison, but you let them use words disgusting to describe one of nature's miracles, the cockroach. I don't even – Yeah, whole different scales of the earth. I completely see what you're talking about.

Yeah, don't close your world. Open your world. Yeah. Open your world. 100%. Open your world. So you'll do this competition do you do you have um do you have daily anxiety about um about the old dalton coming back does the old dalton have a name do you do you have does this guy is he dead like what how do you think about that guy

or is it all same one i don't mean to uh project schizophrenia onto you but is there is there a is there you know so i refer to him as my old self or like him i know like in a lot of my videos you'll see me be like you know i wish i could have told him that um because he was a different person than i am now uh a whole different person when i've changed when and someone asked me when my wife when my wife's pmsing i call it her and i know when she's gone like it's just like a big cloud leaves i'm like holy fuck she's gone and my wife like yeah she's gone but i'm still a little scared i'm a little damaged sorry okay so him sorry you have a him yeah i got a her she comes around once a month man she is fucking gnarly. I'm in big trouble.

Yeah, she's going to get you for that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so mine is like, you know, body dysmorphia is a big thing. And what is that? And what is that? Yeah, so body dysmorphia is, so for example, like I'm looking into the camera right now and I see 213 pound ball. But in sometimes I'll look and that's what you weigh now 213 213 yeah 213 you're a boss uh trying to go lower trying to well trying to maintain muscles to go lower but um but when like man like when i look in the mirror you know there's

days where i'm like who i still see big dalton looking back at me you know there he is looking back and it's like no fuck that i'm not I'm not going back. I'm hitting my goals. I'm hitting my dreams. I've got aspirations. Fuck this. We're hitting it. So, um, and you know, like people are like, well, you've kind of changed you. Damn right. I changed you. Please give me that compliment again. Tell me I've changed because I have, like, I've changed everything about me and I don't want to be referred to as old Dalton, you know, the Dalton that didn't care and didn't you know good time happy go lucky let's go drink and did you think about changing your name did you ever think about that you know i did i thought about it i just made that up that's awesome i did man i but uh but i was for a lot of things i just didn't like the

name dalton also my mom gave it to me oh it's it's a nice name, dude. It's a nice name. There's a UFC fighter I have on the show. Yeah. And there's a UFC fighter I have on the show regularly named Dalton Rasta. No, no. He's a Bellator fighter. 185 pounds. He's 6-0.

You should look him up. He's so awesome. And I think the guy's so sexy. And his name's Dalton. So I just attribute it with the sexy guy. I appreciate that. I like that name it's badass okay sorry so him body dysmorphia um dysmorphobia is a mental disorder characterized by obsessive idea that some aspect of your own body part or appearance is severely flawed yeah i think i must i have that too yeah i think my dick is way too big for my

body um uh if the flaw is actual it's important its importance is severely exaggerated okay so meaning that okay i i okay i see yeah i mean do we all kind of have that right to some level the mirror is right the mirror shows your biggest flaws that you see you know yeah like when i'm 20 feet away from the mirror i'm like i'm not so bad but when i put my glasses on and get five feet away i'm like you're fucking disgusting it's weird oh my goodness um yeah that's body dysmorphia looking in um i i made a tiktok about it and it's just one of those things where it's like, yeah, bust my ass every day. But then like, I take my shirt off and again, mine has a lot to do with loose skin. So that's why I'm constantly fighting, um, my body dysmorphia

because I can't see a lot of like, now I'm starting to see it cause I'm at such a low weight, um, that I've ever been. But like, uh, I, I constantly fall back into that mindset of like, damn, like I can't see anything. Like, yeah, I do a hundred sit-ups of like, damn, like I can't see anything like, yeah, I do a hundred sit-ups a day, but I still can't see abs, you know, or things like that.

So it gets in my head, but, um, I just have to hush it down and realize like, again, you're not old Dalton. He's never coming back. You've got this whole new life ahead of you.

The ground running. Is there anything you miss? Is there anything I miss? Is there anything I miss? No. And like in all reality of my old being, like maybe like some of the friends that I had back then, I'm like, you know, maybe some of the opportunities. I wish I could go back now and relive them as being smaller. I feel like they could have had a way bigger or different outcome but um for the most part no i there's nothing that i miss about being 500 pounds um there's nothing that i miss at all is it is it

is it harder being 500 pounds than it is doing the work to keep the weight off? Yes. So, so you've made the right decision. That's crazy. Isn't that? Yeah, it, no, it's so much easier than being 500 pounds, man. Like, you know, I, if I have to work out and I'll say this in all reality, if I had to work out five hours a day to just guarantee me that I would never go back, I would do it a hundred percent because that's how bad I realized how miserable I was, like how much I was looking forward to dying, how much I was not wanting to wake up every morning. Um, you know, it's, it's, it, people think, oh, I mean, it's not that big. It can't be that big of a deal being overweight. Like it's just being fat. Right. No, man, it's, it's some, it, there is some mental side behind it that you never would think is going through a fat person's head. Like, for example, we'd have a work potluck, right? We've got food, enough food to feed a hundred people. And I personally would always wait until I was like the last person to go because I didn't want people to look at me going in the line. They knew I'm going to eat. We all know that Dalton's going to eat. Now, really, why the fuck am I waiting until I'm the last person to go?

Small things like that. Ready? Everyone else, people that are the size of toothpicks, getting second plates. Am I going to get a second plate? I'm hungry enough to eat the whole fucking table. You can't even enjoy the moment because you're already – you're like a drug addict just surrounded by piles of heroin. Yeah, man. And I was at the pounds that way so like it was it was this it

was this whole twisted mentality of just like everyone's looking at me being 500 pounds they're gonna judge me if i eat more well dalton like like i wish i could have like just tapped myself on the short like dumbass they already know you're fat just like either eat or make a change like don't make yourself even more internally miserable by thinking what others are thinking. And then like projecting that on yourself, just either like eat it or get the hell out like type thing, you know? It's small things like that, that people would never think is a big deal. But like now thinking it like, I don't like walking in front of people, walking into the gym every day for me in front of people, I get my head so much.

And to the point where now I won't even walk into the gym until I have my headphones in. And I, I normally like, I walk straight to the, the locker room, normally just appear like, you know, get ready, tighten my shorts. And then I'm like, it's like something clicks. And I'm the only one there. Why now? Why now? Just, I think it's because I'm, I'm so in my head about being in front of people and like, what they'll think, like, even like the way I am now, like it's, it's, it's something that I, I think it's because I'm so in my head about being in front of people and what they'll think. Even the way I am now, it's something that I, again, this is me being 100% transparent. I still fight with it. Yeah, please. Yeah.

I still fight with it to a day. Do you drink alcohol? I don't right now. I have in the past. I did for a while, but I'm not drinking any alcohol right now on the cut. And do you smoke weed? I do. I smoke weed. I hope my job doesn't fire me for saying that. But yeah, I have my medicinal card in the state of Florida.

I can't smoke weed. My brain gets so fucking noisy. I haven't smoked weed in 30 years. I used to love it. I used to smoke it every single day. And then my brain's just too noisy. I can't do, not even in a bad way but like but that's what it sounds like to me um i used to have three great danes and if i would get stoned i wouldn't want to go out because i i wouldn't want people talking

to me i would get overstimulated so that's what it seems to me like if i i couldn't smoke like i couldn't smoke weed and go to the gym because my voice would be too loud like is that person looking at me holy shit that chick's boobs are falling out oh my god look at that guy's butt how hard it looks like i would be just too much i would be overwhelmed do you know what i mean yeah no i get that um maybe you just need to not smoke weed ever that i mean that could potentially be it um i know for me uh so i was on depression medication and i ended up changing to medicinal marijuana um here in the state of florida and like for me what i'll normally do is when i get there like when i go

into the bathroom and pee normally at that point like i'm in my head walking in but i have like what i have with me right now but normally in my hydro drug i carry like my little pin just as a a way to relax and no shit i'll go in in the bathroom, take one little, little like puff of it. And I'm good. And at that point, man, I know shit. I'll do like three or four miles on the treadmill. I'm good. Like bike, dude, no lie. Kind of the opposite for you. Gets you focused. I focus in and I'm the only person in the room at that point. So it's weird. I don't know why, but I'm, I love it. It lets me take all my anxiety out. And I'm like, okay, it's showtime. Now I can put in the work like I want to.

Yeah, you don't seem like you smoke weed either. So proceed. You know what I mean? You know that type, like you have big, open, wide eyes. You don't slur. How does a 500-pound dude get into, this is like one of my good friends calling me right now. You should be listening to the podcast, asshole, get into, this is like one of my good friends calling me right now. You should be

listening to the podcast asshole supporting me. Um, how does a, how does a 500 pound dude get into a car like this? Like it's so slammed. It's so slammed already. Um, yeah. So that's actually, um, I used to be really, really, really big into cars. Um, that was kind of like my outlet to escape as well as food. So, and I think that's honestly why they put on a lot of weight is because like after all my car events and stuff, man, what did we do? We all go sit at a restaurant and eat and talk about cars. Um, but that was my, uh, that was my little car that I used to win. Um, uh, yeah, it was on full air.

So it'd like air up for me to get in and out of it. Oh yeah. Yeah, man. If I had to get out of that at 500 pounds, bro, no, it was not happening. Uh, no. Okay. So there it's, it's like, it's like, so when you turn it on, it would go and it would come up a little bit.

Yeah. In fact, like for me on that car, because I was so big, man, I was so like out of shape. I actually paid a little bit extra money to have the Bluetooth version put on my phone. So like when I'm walking to my car, I could press a button on my phone and it would air up so then I could get in it. Wow. Yeah, it was. You still have that car? I don't know. I wish. Yeah, it was a fun time. But yeah, I ended up getting rid of it and moving on from it. So good times. hyper you know fitness community I love weight loss stories I absolutely

do not think just surgery in general just scares the shit out of me right I definitely 100% and I'm glad you know it too it's not cheating absolutely but just whatever it's a big decision

and I think you shared that really well in your life, even up to the moment of you getting it. Like, you know, you applied for it, you did the journey up to it. And then when they told you they're ready, you were like, holy fuck. So I appreciate you sharing all that. Absolutely.

And I'll have you in my Google alerts and I'll be following you and I can't wait to see you in your competition. I'm really excited for you. You think you'd ever do steroids? You think you'd ever get all juiced up? know uh that's funny you asked that i thought about it and and hear me out the reason why it was to get rid of all my loose skin on my arms um however i was talking to a plastic surgeon and um he's like man we could take care of that in my office for

close to very little he's like so all in in fact because like most people cut from their elbow down to their shoulder um and tighten all that up um i'm not mine will be like that long right there and so it'll tighten all because when i put my arms down by my side i have a like a bunch of loose skin right here from my chest and arms so it just looks kind of bad um so and i'm guessing it's uncomfortable too i'm guessing it's uncomfortable too oh yeah yeah yeah the loose skin is awful man like um running uh a lot of people like well why don't you wear um you know the like a girdle or something to hold you yeah girdles or you know all that and like i wear my under shorts for compression for like you know my manhood but other than that i'm not wearing this shit like my skin's gonna bounce let it flap i'm

already over to this point like if you want to watch it flap let it flap you know i i there's a there's a million people online that's already seen my skin flap so i don't give a shit if the person next to me in the gym is is looking at my skin flap at this point so now i don't wear compression now i wear my my t-shirt my shorts i wear my undershorts for compression for my you know like if i'm doing squats and all that but um so i'll let it flap are you cool with people reaching out to you um and and and for with questions and social media you open all that okay yeah yeah please if you have questions or anything, I'm, I'm open. Um, if you have questions about surgery or like, if you want to know if it's right for you or

anything like that, or it's like, if you're on the edge or if hell, if you're just thinking about starting your like weight loss journey in itself and have questions, please feel free to hit me up. I'm I'm, I will try to give you as much knowledge as I personally have. And if I don't know the answer, I'll try to find it for you. So awesome, dude. Thank you so much for your time. This was cool. Thank you so much for having me, man. It's been an absolute like, uh,