160 pound weight loss maintained for 15 years with a mind, body, spirit approach

The Decade After “From Fat to Fit”: A Ten Year Struggle to Be Well


In January of 2000 I began a journey. The journey I began was one of significant weight loss. Having been obese for my entire 23 years, my dream was to be thin. By October 2000 I had lost over 100 pounds and by January 2001 I had achieved my goal of being thin. When everything was said and done I had lost a total of 160 pounds through proper diet and exercise and passionately wanted to use my story to motivate others. I wrote my success story and titled it “From Fat to Fit: A Lifelong Struggle to Be Thin.” My motivating story was published in numerous national and local publications such as Men’s Fitness, IronMan, The Daily Herald, and The Chicago Tribune. Just as my story was published, over the last ten years numerous stories similar to mine have been highlighted in newspapers, magazines and by the broadcast media. Weight loss reality shows (“The Biggest Loser”) have thrived on America’s dream to be thin. We repeatedly hear about people achieving their weight loss goals, of changing their lives through diet and exercise. What we don’t hear about is the follow-up - what has happened to these people ten years later? We never find out if success at getting thin actually gets people well.

A decade after writing my story “From Fat to Fit: A Lifelong Struggle to Be Thin” I learned that being thin does not necessarily make you well. I learned that losing weight physically does not help you lose weight mentally and emotionally. I learned that getting thin did not solve my problems the way I expected it to. In the same way something moving at the speed of light is perceived differently whether you’re on Earth or in space, my story of weight loss success looks much different ten years later. My success was not in losing 160 pounds but in maintaining it and incorporating it into my overall health and well-being. My follow-up story is a realization of why weight loss did not bring me the happiness it was supposed to. It is a story about how traditional approaches help you achieve results, but don’t teach you to maintain them effectively. Only through a comprehensive mind/body/spirit approach was I able to maintain my results and only through a mind/body/spirit approach was I able achieve wellness. Growing up I never saw why I was heavy. I thought it just was the way things were, and needed to be accepted as my reality. When pressed, I told myself it was genetics or bad luck. Most of the time I depersonalized myself from the situation and did not think about it at all. Looking back at myself now that I am standing elsewhere, I see that the understanding the etiology behind my obesity was too threatening to contemplate. It was much easier to sweep the “why” under the rug and eat another candy bar or drink another soda pop. Food was my coping mechanism; it was my best friend and at the same time my worst enemy. Food made me fat and being fat was why I was unhappy…or so I thought. In January 2000 I went into battle with food. I stayed away from convenience eating, counted my calories, logged my food and won! I did what I needed to do to make up for 23 years of mindless gluttony and was thin! My whole life for 23 years had revolved around dreaming what it would be like to be thin. The way that kids say that they want to be a fireman, a policeman or a doctor when they grow up...I wanted to be thin. When I was overweight I blamed my unhappiness on my weight and thought that being thin would take the unhappiness away. Now, ten years later, I realize that my unhappiness was not the byproduct of my weight! The exact opposite was true...my weight was the byproduct of my unhappiness. Not only had I never addressed the underlying mental and emotional issues that had caused me to overeat, but now I had a whole new set of problems to deal with. People were now treating me differently. Girls were paying attention to me in ways they never had in the past. Losing weight might have made an aesthetic difference in my appearance and taken physical stress off my heart and joints but it did not make me happy. It made me angry. I was angry that my physical appearance was so pivotal to how people treated me. At the same time I was also confused. I had no idea how to be thin and was lost. Not only did I have the same mental and emotional stress that made me overeat in the first place, but I was angry at the world for treating me differently, and confused on how to grieve the loss of my old identity and accept my new one.

At this point, I did what was familiar and found a habit to cope with my stress. My constraint was that it had to be a habit that would not get me obese again. That habit was exercise. Exercise was a consistent and vital part to my weight loss regimen from the start. I would exercise 3-5 days a week for up to 60 minutes, doing a combination of cardio and strength training. It was time to take it to the next level to feed what I now recognize as an addictive personality. I proved to be very successful at my exercise addiction. I found myself in the gym 7 days a week for 2-3 hours at a time. I was now counting my calories, weighing my food, taking muscle building and fat loss supplements and furthering my knowledge of physical fitness through research and study. At my lowest weight I was 182 pounds with 6% body fat. My lifestyle began to reflect that of a workout junkie. I isolated myself from social situations and kept myself away from any activity that did not involve fitness or exercise. When I did let my guard down and have a couple of drinks with friends or a piece of cake at a birthday party, unrelenting guilt would follow. For many years I fed my addictive personality with exercise and remained unhappy.

In 2002 I made a career change and became a personal trainer. I wanted to help others lose weight through diet and exercise as I had. I had great success as a personal trainer, working with clients on a wide range of weight loss goals. What I realized through many years of practice was that when people were paying me, they achieved their goals. When they were kept up with their training sessions, they did well. Many of my clients achieved success…. But few maintained it. By concentrating only on the physical parameters of exercise and diet I got results that were temporary. I felt that there was a piece of the puzzle missing. My own long-term results were suffering too. The techniques that I was using to maintain my weight loss were isolating, and did not make me happy. My transfer of addiction from food to exercise began to take a physical toll. My knees hurt, my back hurt, and my daily struggle to control my unresolved food addiction was making me tired and angry. If I wanted to teach people how to achieve permanent and sustainable success, I realized it had to involve more than just the exercise and diet. I saw that it had to be an approach of wellness and not just fitness, and I saw that I had to start with myself.

I didn’t know where to start, so I began at the same place that helped me lose 160 pounds...education. I had focused heavily on the body studying and practicing exercise and nutrition. I could recite thousands of different strength training exercises, functional movement patterns, stretches, training protocols, eating tips, diets and supplements information. During the summer of 2006 I attended a continuing education workshop that introduced me to the concept of incorporating body, mind and spirit. This was the missing piece of the puzzle! It was the philosophy that tied everything together and taught me that there was more to life than physical fitness. Physical fitness had helped me accomplish my dream of being thin. It had helped me fit into the size 32 jeans that I was never able to wear….but at the same time it did not make me happy. I had spent six years putting countless hours of work into my body, but never my mind nor spirit. To achieve real success for myself and to be able to teach others how to lose weight physically, mentally and emotionally I needed to find balance. It was time to begin a new journey, a journey from fitness to wellness. Wellness is defined in medical dictionaries as “the condition of good physical, mental and emotional health”. Currently, wellness is considered a “hot topic”, with prominent mention in the media. My journey toward wellness did not initially involve the smiling faces, blooming flowers, sunny skies and peaceful Zen gardens like I saw in the advertisements and articles. I had to face several ugly truths - I did not become 360 pounds by eating only when I was hungry, and would never be well until I was honest with myself about that. I lost 160 pounds by transferring my addiction from food to exercise, and would never be well until I was honest with myself about that. My journey toward wellness began with a complete assessment of past and present mental and emotional factors that were holding me back from being well. Even though I was 190 pounds of solid muscle I still held on to the self esteem and body image of a 300+ pound kid being ridiculed in school. Even though my father had passed away years before, I still carried with me the negative emotions of sadness and anger that had built up throughout the course of our relationship. Getting my body better did not automatically get my mind better, and only through brutal self-awareness and honesty was I able to start on the path toward real wellness.

Becoming aware of what my mind was thinking and being honest with myself about my thoughts and emotions was a very scary process. Looking back over my life, I’ve realized that focusing on physical goals (exercise, diet) is much easier and safer to achieve. The real process was threatening and challenging – who among us is truly comfortable confronting ourselves about who we really are? This might explain the failures we hear cited - the people that lose 50 pounds and put 60 back on, the failed gastric bypass surgeries, the climbing American obesity rate despite the multi-billion dollar health and fitness industry. It is so much easier to stay unwell then to swim through the muddy waters of self-realization. But I wasn’t standing in the same place anymore, and thing looked different. I could no longer accept being fit without being well. As hard as it was to swim through my personal mud, it was the only way to grow honestly enough to be able to help others. Achieving fitness alone just wasn’t enough anymore - not for me, not for my clients.

It doesn’t matter what experiences from our past dictate our present state, and it is unnecessary to compare one person’s past experiences to another’s. My experience involved learning very early on how to use food as a stress coping mechanism. The way I dealt with the physical, mental and emotional turmoil of growing up obese was to get more obese. Regardless of my new present weight, my mind was still playing the same tape from the past: “you’re fat”; “you’re no good”, “food will make you feel better”; “I can’t control myself”; “I hate being me”. These thoughts could no longer serve a purpose if my goal was to become well. I was no longer 360 pound Mike and had to stop thinking like him! For many years I was angry at how people treated me as an overweight kid! I was angry at food and the lack of control that I had towards it! I was angry at my father for being so unhealthy and not being there for me as a kid! At the same time I was also sad that I missed out on what I felt could have been - growing up as a “normal” kid. I saw my past with sorrow, sadness, guilt and resentment. What I had to realize is that if I had never experienced my past in the way that I did there would be no chance for me to help people in the way I do today. I would have never been able to develop the enthusiasm, compassion and understanding that I can now bring to others in need. I was unable to change my past, but changing how I viewed it allowed my mind forward. Developing a mindset of wellness and not just fitness gave me the ability to finally pursue happiness and begin to define what the word spirit means to me. Having a mind, body, spirit approach, gives me the confidence to say that I have finally overcome obesity of both the mind and body and will maintain my 160 pounds of weight loss for the rest of my life!

Over the past decade I have learned a lot what it takes to achieve goals, and what it takes to maintain goals. Weight loss alone did not bring me happiness. Working to keep my mind and body balanced and having my actions and behaviors reflect my definition of spirit does bring me happiness. I believe that permanent success with weight loss requires not fitness, but total wellness. Without it, the fitness is transient and cannot be maintained. Through a mind/body/spirit approach I have been able to maintain my weight loss, and move beyond it into helping people achieve weight loss success and happiness. My story is a revelation about wellness being a daily process that we need to practice for the rest of our lives if we want to reach our full potential as human beings. It is far more than just the food you eat and the exercise you do. It’s about the way that you think, honesty about your actions and behaviors reflecting your thoughts and beliefs, about how you view events from your past, and if you can define and live by what your spirit means to you. Being physically fit will not make you well by itself. Wellness can be achieved only through balance of your mind, body and spirit. I have been on the journey of weight loss and have the before-and-after pictures to prove it. I have begun the journey towards wellness, and, by telling my story, hope I can strengthen others to do the same.