Why I Didn’t Want To Be The Fat IT Guy Anymore

Today we’re going to talk about the reasons why you make certain decisions in life, and also how to make decisions that stick to them and I’m going to share some personal stories on this too. When we get going here, you’re going to love to share this out with at least three people please do that. That’s the only way that we grow as fast as we have been, thank you for being a part of impacting lives, and here we go.

I’m gonna share a story with you. I had surgery a couple months ago and this surgery was something that was a long time coming, because if you’ve listened to the show for a long time, you know that I’ve dropped tons of weight, or I did drop tons of weight back in 2013 through 2014. I was at my heaviest around 280 pounds as a six foot one dude and over the span of about 14-15 months, I dropped 90 of that down to 190 pounds, and then I had some sickness stuff with the gallbladder and all that but when I came out of that illness that literally almost killed me, I was about 24 hours away from dying, I started working out.

There’s reasons why I dropped the weight initially and reasons why I started working out and I want to share those with you today. I was reminded of these just after my surgery this year towards the end of 2021, actually a couple months ago and the reasons why I did things because this came back to my mind, the first workout I had and I had to wait like typical surgery, I had to wait about six weeks. So I waited almost seven weeks to get back if you’re restricted during that period and you can only lift five pounds or less. You know, I might have fudged that a little bit here and there just because but I could feel it. Because the surgery that I had was a tummy tuck and it was a tummy tuck with muscle repair. There was a reason why I did this, you know, once I dropped 190 pounds, my jeans went from a size 44 down to a size 33. That was my pant size, can you believe that from a 44 down to a 33. That’s 11 Freaking inches. Right.

That’s just insane to even think about that way but when I got down to that 33 and I started lifting and actually seriously going after fitness because I had the nutrition part down. That’s how I ended up dropping weight as I have the nutrition part down, eating in moderation, eating the right stuff I could still indulge when I wanted to because I still love sweets, I love scotch. Putting everything in moderation became pretty simple to me once I decided that that’s what I was going to do and the fitness thing was new. So I put on over the course of the first couple years, you know, I was building muscle mass and coming out of that near death experience. I couldn’t even do 10 Push ups at the time but then I built it up over the course of these five years to where my warm up was 150 Push Ups. You know, among some other things before I started lifting, and I started lifting heavier, getting a better understanding of my body. I ended up putting on 15 pounds in muscle mass to where I got pretty well defined, you know. So I went from 190, then to 205, tracking with me? From 190 to 205. Just adding muscle mass and I know I just added muscle mass because my jeans and my waist was still a 33.

So I started scratching my head and this was the beginning of 2021. Right? I’m looking good. I have this extra skin still from when I was really really big. Because I was that big. Guys, I was that big for 15 years. That’s the crazy thing. I was super fat for 15 freaking years, just ignorance and not understanding nutrition. The home that I grew up in was not big on nutrition. My dad was overweight, but was also really poor. They did what they could. My mom didn’t really understand nutrition. She was the primary cooker, we would have things like Salisbury steaks that were frozen and if you want to call some of the cooking that she did if you even want to call it cooking.

The only thing that was really cooked was spaghetti and we would have that like once a week right? It was noodles, regular noodles. How hard is that? Right? You boil them and then you’d have some Ragu sauce, literally Ragu. That was the thing, dump it in there and some ground beef and that was dinner once a week, you know, amongst the Salisbury steaks I was talking about, we’d have peas, or corn from a can and then we’d also have, you know, other things like banquet fried chicken, buying fried chicken in a box, didn’t really go out to eat much, you know, just grew up, not very wealthy at all and because of this because of constrictions, and my parents never really educated themselves on nutrition.

So that’s kind of how I grew up and the thing that really got me growing, I feel, is all the milk that I drank, that’s where I would get a lot of my protein because I mean, imagine like six, you know, 1/5 pound Salisbury steaks to feed five people and here I am like a 14-15 year old boy who’s already six feet tall, you need more nutrition than that you need stuff to feed your body. So I’d have like 3 16 ounce glasses of milk, three pint size, glasses of milk, every single meal at night, we would go through like five gallons of milk every single week in my house growing up, because that’s how I nourish myself, I’d have the little bit of food that my family could afford to put on the table and then I would just down to a crap ton of milk.

Yeah, it was worked out. I grew well, sure and my parents did the best that they could and my mom didn’t really know how to cook. So it’s okay. Everything turned out alright. But the downfall from that was that I didn’t understand nutrition, until I educated myself, and that’s why I dropped that way. Just educating myself around nutrition. Then I had this near death experience, and I got into lifting. But coming full circle, I put on that 15 pounds in muscle mass and my jeans were still the same size at 33. Yet, I still had this flab, right, I still had this extra skin and I’m like, I don’t think this stuff is going anywhere. So what do I do? I hired a fitness coach. This was towards the beginning of 2021. He’s like, “Oh, yeah, you can lose that, right?” I start going after these things, even like, you know, super strict nutrition, I’m like, this still isn’t going anywhere. It’s still not moving anywhere. So I see some doctors now at this point. A couple of plastic surgeons, I see three of them. The first two are like, “Yeah, you know what, it’s never gonna go away.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m figuring because you know, I’m still the same size as jeans size, I have more muscle mass on my upper body and all over the place.” But this stuff that’s left over, from this amazing effort and work that I put in to become healthy and fit is just not going anywhere. But it was the third doctor that I talked with, who ended up telling me you know what, it’s not just the skin, dude. You also need muscle repair, like, What are you talking about?

He’s like, “Think about a pregnant woman.” I’m being vulnerable with you here. I don’t mind sharing this at all, think about a pregnant woman because when a woman gets pregnant, they’re that way for nine months, right, and during that process in order to fit the baby, the ab muscles separate. There’s this fascia, these fibrous tissues that connect your abdominal muscles, the two sides of your abdominal muscles together, and those stretch outs and then as the woman has the baby, nine months later, those come back together over a period of the next couple months. The issue is that I was this way for 15 years, and I had way more weight that I put on then a woman would put on when they get pregnant with a single child.

You know, this can happen a lot, actually, with moms of twins, or multiples, because they get so big that that fascia pulls apart and it just doesn’t go back together. This can happen. So he told me he’s like “You need muscle repair. He’s like, first, you can work and work and work and obviously you’re working.” He’s like, “I can feel your abdominal muscles. You’ve got contours underneath this, but you’re never going to see them.” He’s like “And even more, so this is the real reason to do this. This is the real reason to have the surgery done is the muscle repair. Because if you don’t have a core that strong, if you have your abdominal muscles that are separated like they are with you, you know, which was a couple of inches by the way, it’s only supposed to be like a half an inch, like a half a finger width or something and mine were like three to four finger widths apart towards the bottom of my abdominal muscles.

That’s bad. I didn’t know this, but I found out how to do this and if you’re at home, you can try this yourself if you’ve been large or if you’ve been pregnant, you can lay down on the floor flat on a flat surface a hard floor and you can take your fingers and actually see how many fingers there are separating between your abdominal muscles below where your belly button is like the last ones and you can tell this for yourself. I did this for myself after he told me that I’m like, oh god, he’s right. Yeah, so when he starts talking about this, he’s like, “Yeah, you’re gonna look good. The tummy tuck will allow you to look good, because everything’s gonna be perfect where it needs to go and that extra skin is going to be gone.”

The real reason to do this, and I want you to grab onto this today. The real reason to do this is you will not have back problems, when you’re older, 80 years old you are going to be thanking you right now for taking care of this. This really is the last step of the fitness and weight loss journey and nutrition journey that you’ve been on for eight years now is repairing the muscles that you can’t do yourself because you were that big for so long. Without doing this, you will have back issues and he asked me questions. “Have you ever had back issues?” I’m like, “Dude, three years ago when I was lifting, you know, it was a super light dumbbell like 25 pounds and just putting it down. Normally, there was something that shifted in my back.” He’s like, “That’s exactly it.” Because if you travel along with that separation is all the way around your back, that’s where you’re losing the support, is you don’t have the core support, and you will not have the core support, unless you get it repaired, was like dude, sign me up for real, you know, and at this point, the looking good and everything else, you know, the extra skin was just an afterthought.

That hardly mattered at this point because the real reason to get this surgery done was to be healthy, to have my core muscle support that I had not had in like 15 years. That was the real reason why I had the surgery done. So then, seven weeks later, I worked out for the first time and I’m noticing obviously, you know, I’m going to the point of muscle failure, and I can’t do the 150 push ups as a warm up anymore. I get to around 110 or so and my arms give out and then as I’m lifting I had to reduce my weights 25% from where I was, and I was up there I was doing like 40 pound curls, right. Just to give you an example, I had to lower those down to 30 pounds, and the struggle that I had, which was anticipated, I knew it was going to be a struggle, obviously not lifting.

For seven weeks, the struggle that I had made me think it’s like, “Man, I don’t ever want to be this way again.” I enjoyed being fit, I enjoyed being strong. It’s not like I wasn’t strong, but I enjoyed being as strong as I was and there was a point to where this brought me back to the real reason why I’ve made some of these decisions in my life. This is where I want you to really listen up today, please, because this will change your life, especially if you’ve been struggling with weight loss, especially if you’ve been struggling really with any decision because a lot of times, the decisions that we make are surface level.

They don’t get down to the real deep reasons as to why you would make those decisions and those choices, which are the ones that actually cause the lasting results and the permanent shifts. So prior to this, remember I said I was fit for several years, and I was looking good. My arms are great, you know, my chest was out further than my stomach. I even had a friend that I see quarterly at a mastermind event. Like walk over pat me in the chest like did you get PEC implants? I’m like, “No, man, I’ve just been lifting heavier and increasing my time under tension.” He’s like, “You look really good.” Like, “Thanks, my man.” Everybody equates this to looking really good andI started thinking that way too. It’s like, okay, I want to look better, which is not a bad goal in itself, right? It’s not a bad goal in itself.

However, I feel that looking better should be a byproduct of being healthy. So when I started lifting again, after seven weeks, I’m like, I don’t ever want to not be fit again. This struggle with the workout after not lifting for seven weeks. This is horrible! I don’t want to go through this again. Obviously, if something happens, like another surgery I need to have, of course I’ll do it with everything within my control. I don’t want to have to be to the point where I have to reduce my weight again, I don’t want to have to be where I feel weak. In my body, I don’t want to go through that. I want to feel fit. I want to feel healthy. I want to feel good. They look good. will come as a natural side effect, but if I chase that, and this is what brought me back was like dude, you got pretty vain the last six months because you were focusing on looking better rather than being fit. You lost the reason why you started this to begin with the decision that you made a long time ago that you wanted to be fit because it’s healthy because it’ll give you longevity.

That’s the reason why I dropped weight because I wanted to be healthy. I wanted longevity, which are awesome, awesome goals. It wasn’t to lose weight. That wasn’t my goal. My goal was to have longevity and be healthy, be around accomplish everything I wanted to and fulfill my purpose on this planet. That’s why I dropped the weights. That’s why I got healthy. That’s why I got fit. Looking good started to distract me and seven weeks after this, as I started lifting again, I recognized this like, “Dude, you lost sight of why you chose to do this, what the reason was, you chose to do this in the first place.” That’s why I was able to sustain it for so long because the reason was deep and core and meaningful. Not surface level. surface level is I want to drop weight. surface level is I want to look good. surface level is, I want people to think good things about me. Deep and sustainable choices are generated by wanting to be healthy. I want longevity. I want to fulfill my purpose. I want to be around for my family.

Eight years I’ve been able to sustain the weight off and the fitness level that I have because I’ve had deep reasons, deep choices that I’ve made. If you’re falling off diets, it’s a couple months past New Year’s now you probably blew past your resolution which happens and I commend you for even making that in the first place because that’s a good step to recognize that you want to change something. Just maybe something wasn’t the deep, rooted, sustainable choice that would allow you to continue past those moments of wanting to give up. Coming from my experiences and my stories, I want to encourage you today that your reasons, your reasons for choosing to do anything need to go past surface level in order to be sustainable. They need to be deep. They need to be meaningful to you, not to everybody else’s perspective of you. make good choices, make sustainable, deep choices, and watch yourself succeed.

#RickJordan #Podcast #weightloss

Episode References: 

• Salisbury steaks
• Ragu Pasta Sauce
• Tummy tuck
• Fascia
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