Thank you to Louis K Mensah of Mensah Memories for producing this gift for me.

“I lost 55 pounds and I haven’t jogged a day.”

It’s not easy. You’re going to have naysayers, you’re going to have people say you can’t do it, you’re going to have people say you’re too old but you can do it.

I understand that I have the knowledge to do it properly and a lot of people lack that knowledge.

So I recommend that you find a professional, find somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.

I lost 55 pounds and I haven’t jogged a day.

What made me start the weight loss journey was a specific incident one day. I was training, I was feeling good. I had a good training session, it was a Saturday afternoon and no one was in the gym. I was at my downtown location. I took off my clothes, jumped in the shower, looked at myself and I just basically couldn’t believe it.

So it was just that reflection in the mirror was something I did not like.

I was pretty much trying to convince myself I was happy. And almost, to be honest, tears almost came to my eyes.

I was 270 pounds, big belly, strong, strong dude, decently strong, nothing crazy.

But something clicked that day. I went home, went into my liquor, alcohol storage, poured all the wine, everything, vodka, everything I had down the sink and that was if from that day.

I haven’t turned back. It’s been more than a year and that’s how I started the process slowly. And I just did it in chunks. First thing I did is I committed myself not to drink and I haven’t had a drink, it’s over a year now. And then from there, I just started to eat healthy. And then from eating healthy, I just started to get stricter and stricter and that’s how my journey has been.

Now I’m 215 pounds so I lost 55 pounds.

If I don’t take care of myself, I won’t be able to take care of my first and foremost, my family and my loved ones, and I won’t have a business.

I feel like I felt like when I was 25 years old. And it’s just amazing. And I guess I’m lucky, I have a lot of young athletes around me who support me. I’m a big kid and I try to compete with them and so and so but they motivate me. Guys like Fabian, and Mensah, and my daughter. It’s just it helps being in this environment.

So I feel young, I feel great. They call me old man and the old man tries to keep up with these young guys.

Until you actually go through it, go through the experience, you don’t appreciate … because I used to be very tough on people who don’t want to make the commitment to lose weight, make all the excuses. I still am pretty tough but now at least I have a different perspective, I understand.

I understand when people say, you know, the shoemaker who has holes in his shoes or the doctor who needs to take care of himself.

So I say, you know what? I’m not going to be that guy, I’m not going to be that type of professional.

I’m going to make time, sacrifice, whatever it is, money, and I take care of myself and I do that. There’s a certain time of the day I train and I will, I refuse to train anybody else.

And if I have 10 minutes for that day, it’s 15, if it’s an hour, fantastic. I will not budge because at the end of the day if I don’t take care of myself, I won’t be able to take care of my first and foremost, my family and my loved ones, and I won’t have a business.

To be honest, I always thought or people hire me for my brain, or they do, right? People hire me for what’s in my head and how I look. So I don’t care but at the end of the day, I realize it’s not about that.

It’s about me, it’s about how I feel. I feel great, I feel young, I have so much more energy. I’ve never felt like giving up. It’s like when my … I don’t know.

That was, at that moment of looking in the mirror was such a powerful moment for me, and I think I did it right. I didn’t take on too much too fast. I literally looked at my responsibilities, my schedule, my life and I just started to take in chunks.

And it wasn’t only about weight loss. It’s even about self-improvement, doing small things in my day to be better, getting up 4:00am in the morning, having a specific time to study, time to build on my craft, just really reading books to help feed me, motivate me.

I like things, motivational things to keep me going. I like motivational quotes. I pull on those things day-to-day to help me chunk on my past. Of course, there are days that I don’t want to work out. It’s not for everybody but I work out seven days a week. It could be for 10 minutes, it could be for an hour, it could be for two hours but I work out seven days a week. I do not miss a day.

I actually have a chart and that chart, I chart my workouts, I chart my weight, I track if I eat good food or processed food. I track those little things because I’m competitive.

So I found ways to make that little world work for me. And that book was a Stephen Covey, I got that out of actually, where you basically have these metrics. And if you look at these metrics and you’ll check if these metrics work for you.

So I just basically have a scorecard, I guess that’s what it’s called, it’s a scorecard. And it’s actually a business book and it’s called 4 Disciplines of Execution, 4DX. Phenomenal book and that helped me.

And I applied some of those businesses, some of those principles, a lot of those principles to my business but I also applied them to myself.

So reading, and applying, putting certain things around me to help me within my journey was tremendous for the commitment to my diet.

The toughest part is the diet.

Training is easy. The toughest part is you go home, have a family, have two young children. You see I Love Gummy Bears, Jujubes, and ice cream and all those things, and you see those things around the house and you want that. So yeah, that part isn’t easy. That part sometimes I do take a couple of steps back.

But as a whole, I’ve found what works for me and I’m so happy and I am so grateful.

Some of the annoying things are some of the misinformation and all that, marketing and gimmicks and so on and so forth.

I just lift weights. I recently started doing some hills and some conditioning work. So I’ll do strongman, I do sleds, and some hill work.

But jogging, no.

I lift, I eat well, it’s just that simple, right.

I guess my point is to find someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

If you want to make a change for your life and you don’t want to do things that actually going to destroy your metabolism and give you the quick fix or yes, you lost some weight on the scale but you look like crap, right, find someone who can help you utilize the right methods of training and nutrition to get the body you desire. That would be my message.

It’s not usually about looks but this time around, I’m 50 years old or heading to 50, sorry, 47, I want a six-pack.

And when I’m 50, I want to pull 600 pounds, squat 500 bench 400 pounds and those are good numbers for my age.

And those are standards I set for myself and I’m going to push myself to get to there.