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About
In The Beginning
Tulane, 1983 - 250 lbs. |
As a freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans, I was recruited to play linebacker for the school's football team. I had played through high school, and had developed a pretty decent reputation on the field. At the time, I was already at my full adult height of six feet tall, and weighed a solid 210 lbs. Years of training had formed my body into the kind of strong but lean shape that had always served me well on the field. What I soon learned, however, was that what worked in high school left me somewhat behind in college, where my opponents were bigger and stronger than I was.
My coaches wasted no time in telling me that, though I had the necessary talent, I would have to bulk up if I was going to be able to compete at that level. Some of my teammates decided that the best way to do this was to take anabolic steroids, and other performance-enhancing drugs. I knew this wasn't for me, so I went with the old-fashioned way -- eating and hard work!
The training tables were laden with steak, grits, mashed potatoes -- you name it, available for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in-between. Anything that would help us pack on the weight was encouraged. At the end of the day, my roommate and I would order a 20-inch pizza, eat the whole thing, then re-heat the remaining crusts with butter and eat those.
The thing was, if you were working out as hard as we were, your body could almost handle that much food. In a way, it almost REQUIRED it, in order to perform the tasks we were calling upon it to do. For the next three years, through my junior year, I continued in this pattern, all the while excelling on the field.
The Pill
Going into my senior year, I decided to stop playing football and concentrate on my studies. One day I was getting dressed, and noticed that I was having a hard time buttoning up my pants. Concerned, I mentioned this to my girlfriend, who then admitted that she had noticed I had been packing on some extra weight, particularly around the waist. A quick check on the scale revealed that I had managed to go from 250 lbs. at the peak of my playing days, to nearly 270 lbs, in no time at all.
My girlfriend suggested the first of several quick weight-loss plans, which I tried over the next month or two. Her idea was to take a popular over-the-counter weight-loss pill, along with diet soft drinks. This diet worked for exactly one day. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. It didn't take me long to go through more than a dozen fad diets, all with dismal results. I even found myself buying magazines based on what was written on the cover. "Lose Ten Pounds In Ten Days" -- "Ten Tips To Be Thin Forever" -- it seems like everything was based on ten. The funny thing is, I really should have known better, as I was in the middle of getting a degree in physical education from one of the best universities in the South.
I decided then to take a different approach - go right to my text books, and go back to the tried and true information that I had been learning all along. THERE IS NO QUICK FIX!
Cutting It In Half
Being in college, I didn't have much money or time, so my plan was simple. Eat exactly HALF of what I was eating before. I quickly learned by keeping a journal of everything that went into my mouth for one week that I was consuming between six and seven thousand calories per day! By dropping that down to three thousand, I was eating only a thousand more than the U.S. recommended daily allowance. Though this seems simple, this was part one of my two-part plan.
Parking the Car
The college years |
As most college students do (or at least try to do), I had myself on a strict budget, with every expenditure accounted for. So much for food, so much for books, so much for gas, etc. After some calculating, I decided to take the money that I had set aside specifically for pizza (that tells you something about the way I was eating), along with the money designated for gas, and buy myself a bike.
From then on out, anywhere I went in and around New Orleans, I went on the bike. To school, to the market (I would carry a backpack, and only buy what would fit in there), to the coffee shop -- anywhere. After a while, I got to enjoy it so much that I would ride the bike just for recreation as well.
One day my mom called, and asked why it had been so long since I had visited. The town I grew up in, Donaldsonville, is about 70 miles west of New Orleans. I had by this time committed to myself that I would go everywhere I needed to go on the bike, so I just promised my mom I'd see her on Saturday. Come Saturday morning, I got a nice early start, and headed home to Donaldsonville on what for me, at the time, was a long-distance journey.
When I got home, my parents were shocked by two things: first, that I had ridden my bike all the way from New Orleans, and second, that my weight had dropped drastically. I knew right then that I was on the right track.
Completely Changed
At 270 lbs. |
Over the next year, by continuing to eat half of what I had before, and ride my bike all over Louisiana, I brought my weight down to 185. When people who knew me in my football days ran into me, they were all shocked by my new appearance. As I got progressively slimmer and fitter, I began participating in a host of other athletic endeavors that would never have considered before, when football was the only sport in which I engaged. I started running 10Ks and doing triathlons, as well as bike races. I generally did well in all of them, but especially in the bike races, some of which I even won.
Eventually, I began to get noticed around town in New Orleans, and was invited onto several local television shows to talk about my weight loss and athletic successes. This led after a short while to my own local radio show, as well as to a burgeoning fitness training business. I was able to combine my university education with my own real-world experience transforming my own body, to provide really useful help to people struggling with their weight, or people who just wanted to be as fit as they could.
Me, A Model?
Down to 180 lbs. |
The radio show soon led to my being approached by a modeling agency. In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined myself as a model, yet here I was, now being paid for what I looked like. After a few years of this sort of success in my new-found life as a radio-show host, fitness trainer, and model, I decided to move out to California, where I believed I could take my message to a whole new level. Since I arrived in L.A., though, I've found that what I've been doing mostly is working with professionals in the movie industry -- actors, actresses, screenwriters, etc., as the proverbial "trainer to the stars."
Don't get me wrong -- that's been terrific, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. But I've long yearned to do something that could really make a difference for a LOT of people -- not just those who could afford the services of somebody like me. And that's where this site, and this program, come in.
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