Mike’s Reboot Journey – Achieving Goals & Kicking Rx Meds to the Curb

I actually was thin as a rail up through most of High School until Senior year when I went over 200lbs.I have been struggling with Asthma since birth so staying thin and active seemed to lessen some of the severity of my attacks when I was younger. In college, I discovered beer and other less nutritious foods, it was from that point on my weight went anywhere from 220lbs to 260lbs. Once I met my wife I seemed to hover around 260 to 280 with an occasional attempt at losing weight, 30 pounds at the most.

Around 2004 I hit 300 pounds. I became so involved in my kid’s band/sports along with my job being so busy that I didn’t take the time to focus on my health. As 2010 approached I was over 330 pounds and with the stress of family and work, I was in no mindset to try and become healthy.

I went to the doctor because I wasn’t sure if I was depressed, stressed, fat, severely asthmatic, or sleep deprived. She said: “Yes, and your blood pressure, resting heart rate, and cholesterol are high”. She prescribed some antidepressants, Viagra, a sleep study and a possible nutritionist consultation. Out of all of these, the one that probably could have helped me the most was the nutritionist, but I didn’t do it. The sleep study results showed severe sleep apnea and I was prescribed a CPAP machine.

Some months later, a friend posted on Facebook the link to “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead”. I watched the trailer a couple of times, joined JoinTheReboot.com and ended up purchasing the movie through Amazon. I didn’t watch it right away but it was in the back of my head for a week, picking at my brain.

One evening, I was walking up the stairs to get ready for bed, as usual I was out of breath and I take a hit off the inhaler. I put on my too tight pajamas, hooked up my headgear for the CPAP machine and laid down in bed. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to watch the movie…

There were a number of references that really hit home for me. Phil not wanting to be called Big Phil (my nickname for the band had become Big Mike), the gentleman in the diner saying “What are you going to do with those extra 5 or 10 years?”, as well as the Prednisone and other meds, I looked at my inhalers and psoriasis creams sitting on my desk and it it just triggered me to make that change. I searched around for the Breville online and found one I could pickup over the weekend. My wife was a little unsure of the whole thing, but whatever it takes to motivate me to get healthy, she was all for it!

I started at a weight of 337.1 pounds with the intent of going for 30 days. If I lost 20 pounds in that time I would be happy. I had no other expectations than that. I did not do any pre-fast preparations, and as a matter of fact I had pizza, coffee and diet coke up until the last few hours of the night before.

DAY 1
Day 1 went pretty well. I had set up a plan to do the Mean Green recipe for the first week since that is what I remembered from the movie. Day 2 and 3 hit me hard with the withdrawal headache so I paid for not prepping the week before.

DAY 7
I noticed the need to use my inhalers had slowed a little so it made me wonder how much of an impact does processed food have on asthma/allergies. My fingertips were always dry and cracked to the point of bleeding but now they were starting to heal. This early healing started motivating me to think about 60 days instead. I was also already down almost 20 pounds! I set a long term goal of getting under 200lbs again. That number seemed untouchable to me, but I wrote it down as a goal.

DAY 15
People were noticing I looked a little different. My skin was a little clearer and I was down 29 pounds from where I started. My CPAP machine felt like it was pushing too much air so I decided to try one night without it. I slept like a baby and my wife had to check on me a few times to make sure I was still breathing.
I started exercising by walking a 5K path around the neighborhood. It was rough going, but the results of the Reboot had motivated me to give it a week.

DAY 21
The morning of day 21 I weighed 299.2. Within the first three weeks not only had I walked a 5K loop over 4 times, I had stopped using my CPAP, reduced my inhaler usage to half, AND LOST 37 pounds. I still had some psoriasis breakouts on my scalp but they were getting smaller, My energy levels were going through the roof. I knew at that point I had to go for the 60 days.

DAY 31
I started attempting to jog for 1 block during my 5K walk and did ok with it. It took me two weeks but I could eventually jog 4 blocks each time I did the loop.

DAY 60
Fast forward to Day 60 and I was at 259.5, a total weight loss of 77.6 pounds. I could now jog a 5K on the treadmill. It wasn’t easy, but considering where I had come from I felt like I won the Boston Marathon. My CPAP machine was returned to the medical supply, my inhalers were now sitting in the cabinet collecting dust, my psoriasis was gone, sleeping great, and my cholesterol went from a 256 down to 148.

My doctor had me write down the movie, site and pertinent information so she could check it out. I decided that if I am within just 60 pounds of my goal, why not extend it for another 30 days and see where I am?

DAY 90
232 pounds and feeling incredible. When I started this change I did not want to tell ANYONE because they were going to think I was extreme or that it wasn’t going to be healthy. Now people come to me and ask what am I doing, how can they do it, can I show them.

With my doctor’s approval I decided to go to 120 days to see how close I could get to my goal weight. All my vital signs and blood work looked great at this point. My resting pulse is down to 51 bpm compared to 91 before I started, so she said: go for it but check in with her on email each week.

DAY 120
The scale says 205.9! I consider stopping since it was my ultimate time frame, but with some encouragement I felt that 199.9 weight was my biggest goal, so I extended it until I got there. It took one more week and there were two days the scale didn’t seem to move at all. So as of Day 128, I hit my goal of 199.9 (actually just a little past it. 🙂 )

I am down a total of 137.8 on this Reboot and have transitioned to the Eat to Live plan by Dr Fuhrman. I will continue to do shorter Reboots in the future.

This Reboot has also increased my self-worth and confidence so much that I started back up my pursuit to finish my degree. I was only a few classes short when I quit a few years ago and now I am only weeks away from completing it. My wife and I have also signed up for a half marathon at the end of November.

This has been such an eye opener as to what impact the things we put into our bodies can have. I really felt as if I was just going to wallow around for a few more years until the kids got out of school then just pack it in. But being around the same age as Joe, this Reboot made me realize I still could have half my life ahead of me, grandkids…etc. This may sound corny but I have my life back. And I cannot thank you enough.