Team Beachbody Guest

I have battled weight all my life. I have always been in sports growing up but I was always the biggest kid on the team. Most of my family members are overweight and carry a family history of diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. My grandfather died in his late 50s from a heart attack. I thought I was destined to go down the same path. Even though I excelled in school with the dream to become a doctor I was poor in health. My parents had extreme difficulty finding clothes for me to wear when I was growing up. Thank God for the “husky” and “Big and Tall” section.
As a teenager and even into my early 30s, I tempted to lose weight every year through a diet and exercise but never stuck. I have tried multiple different diets such as Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss and countless others. I did achieve some success but never to the level of what I have recently achieved. I have always put the time into my studies, grades, and career but never for my own health. I finally know understand that you can have all the success and money in the world but have nothing, if you don’t have your health. I decided to take my life back!
On January 1, 2007 my wife and I decided to begin our serious journey with weight loss and fitness. On this day I weighed 304 pounds on my 5’6” frame. How was I able to get there? I still can’t believe it! The photos show it all. I began to exercise in my basement on my elliptical machine. We then bought a treadmill as well. I had a great setup in my basement with a TV and satellite hookup. That first day I could only exercise for 20 minutes before feeling exhaustion. As I continued my goal to exercise daily and be accountable to my diet, I was seeing success. I remember watching P90X, Turbo Jam, and Hip Hop Abs infomercials and working out when they were on. I was especially intrigued by P90X with Tony Horton. I could not believe these people were getting completely ripped in 90 days. I thought to myself that there was no way I could do that. I could not even do a pull-up. My goal was to get as fit as these people that I was seeing on TV. If everyday people can do this why couldn’t I? I continued to exercise and workout at a health club, eventually losing 122 pounds in 10 months. My wife through diet and exercise lost 70 pounds.
With the success of our weight loss, my wife and I have appeared on multiple Minneapolis local news stories, newspaper articles, NY TIMES article, local talk show, and CNN with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Even though I had success I always had P90X on my mind. I knew I lost that much weight because I was not doing any type of resistance training. Even though I lost 122 pounds and was extremely weak and was not satisfied in how I looked. I lost muscle mass and definition. That is when I decided to order P90X.
I remember seeing my BeachBody coach, Aaron Mathis, tell his story on the P90X infomercial and I was impressed. I wanted to get ripped like this guy. So I purchased P90 X. Unfortunately, I let the program sit on my shelf for six months without doing it. I thought I would try to make progress on my own doing regular weight routines and cardio. I became so frustrated I was not seeing change in what I was doing even though I was working my butt off. At this fitness low point is when I started to give P90X a try. Let me tell you that since I started P90X, my body has never changed so much. I have become stronger everywhere and more defined, gained muscle mass and increased flexibility. MUSCLE CONFUSION DOES WORK! I have become a believer and now want to share this with everyone else.

I have known my life’s calling is to be a physician, but I always felt I was destined to do more to help people in a unique way. God has granted me this fabulous stage of my life after all my life struggling with weight, the ability to be fit and healthy. As primary physicians in the office, doctors are often unsuccessful at helping their patients lose weight. We keep pushing pills on patients to control their blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes, most of which are preventable conditions. I have taken a different approach. I try to push preventive medicine and always make it a priority to ask every patient about fitness and their diet. I want people to be as or more successful than I have at fitness. I believe that working with Beachbody’s wonderful products and tools gives me the ability to help people reach their goals.
I want to thank Aaron Mathis, Tony Horton and the people of Beachbody for giving me this opportunity.

******* BRING IT! *********