# Ep 42 - Johnny Muresan

An episode of [Shit My Dad Taught Me](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1794241148), 18 Mar 2026, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/10ad395cc/podcast/play/117136152/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-18%2F420306788-44100-2-62858ce82999b.mp3

This week, we’re joined in studio by Johnny Muresan, marathon runner, endurance athlete, and someone who understands what it really takes to push past your limits. Johnny’s story is built on discipline, consistency, and the mental toughness required to keep going when most people would quit. From long-distance running to the mindset behind endurance, this conversation goes far beyond just physical performance. In this episode we talk about: • What it takes mentally to run marathons and push your limits • The role discipline and consistency play in long-term success • How adversity and discomfort build real resilience • Why mentorship, community, and brotherhood matter more than ever • The challenges men face today with identity, confidence, and communication • Lessons learned through failure, rejection, and personal growth • Finding purpose through pushing yourself beyond what feels comfortable Johnny shares insight into the mindset required to stay locked in, how to embrace the struggle, and why the hardest paths often lead to the most meaningful growth. At its core, this episode is about becoming the kind of man who shows up when things get hard. Building resilience, owning your path, and continuing to move forward no matter what. 🎙️ Sh*t My Dad Taught Me Special Thanks To Our Incredible Sponsors: This episode’s Dad Jokes sponsor: Spicer Landscaping & Snow Removal Services The Clothing and Swag Sponsor of the show is One Bone

## Transcript

[0:03] Boom goes the dynamite I. Wait for you every time.
[0:07] Like how's Jamie going to start this today?
[0:09] He always comes up with something clever, don't you?
[0:12] Johnny's in studio. Welcome, Johnny.
[0:14] Thank you for having me. Here's.
[0:15] Johnny, here's. Johnny.
[0:17] Johnny Mureson. Did I say that right?
[0:19] Now, yeah, close enough. You know what I'm saying?
[0:21] That would be perfect. That's the way you say it in
[0:22] Canada. OK, give me the, give me the.
[0:24] Murashan if you want to, if you want to be fancy.
[0:27] Do you want me to? Try it.
[0:29] Oh my God, I might go. I might blush if you say.
[0:33] Over that, Johnny Morrison Pretty good.
[0:35] Is that better? I'm so you made it a little from
[0:37] European to Middle Eastern, but it's kind of work.
[0:39] I'm so sorry bro. I'll just it's I'll.
[0:42] Stick to being K here, I'm good. Man welcome.
[0:46] We have a little tradition here where we do a ChatGPT intro OK,
[0:49] so let's let's see how the Internet did here.
[0:51] OK, our next guest has built his identity around doing hard
[0:55] things, publicity, consistency and with intention.
[1:01] Johnny is an endurance runner, creator and mindset driven
[1:05] athlete and he's also a dad. Through long distance running
[1:09] discipline and daily accountability, Johnny has built
[1:11] a community around that resilience, self mastery, and
[1:15] showing up even when the motivation just isn't there.
[1:18] What makes Johnny's story compelling isn't just the miles
[1:21] he has run, but it's why he runs his journey about his identity,
[1:26] routine, mental toughness, and the quiet work that happens when
[1:29] no one's cheering. He uses endurance not as an
[1:31] escape, but a tool to sharpen, discipline, process, and become
[1:35] more present as both a capable father and man.
[1:39] At its core, Johnny Approaches mirrors What we talk about a lot
[1:43] on Shit My Dad Taught Me. Doing the unglamorous work,
[1:46] learning through repetition, and understanding that the habits
[1:49] you build are the lessons that those kids absorb.
[1:52] Today we're talking mental endurance, pushing limits,
[1:55] discipline in everyday life, fatherhood as fuel, and how
[1:58] we're doing hard things shapes the men we are.
[2:01] Johnny, welcome to ship my dad taught me.
[2:04] I love watching you read the notes because you skip words,
[2:07] you add words, you say words wrong.
[2:10] Like it. You said publicly and it's pub.
[2:13] What is it you said? Publicity, but it's publicly.
[2:15] Oh yeah. That's a different.
[2:16] I mean, it worked. That's a.
[2:17] Different. I just love watching this
[2:18] reading. It's like skip these 3 words.
[2:20] Added a couple of others. I'm not a strong reader.
[2:23] I mean, it was good. I'm not a strong.
[2:24] I wanted some background music to felt like I was in church or
[2:26] something. Yeah.
[2:27] It is good though, I really. Enjoyed the?
[2:28] Conversation. And you called me an athlete.
[2:30] If you watch the camera one, you're doing it.
[2:32] I'm literally like smiling and grinning.
[2:35] You know, maybe I'll let me just do Jamie's real quick and I'll
[2:37] do it off the cuff. No, So my apologies for my
[2:41] partner Johnny. He he runs a tight chef over
[2:43] here. How did we do on GPT bro?
[2:46] What did we get right? You did pretty good.
[2:48] Call me an athlete so you guys could win.
[2:49] Brownie pick. Yeah, the Internet won't like
[2:51] that, but they don't like referring to to somebody that
[2:53] looks like me as an athlete. But we had a big controversy a
[2:55] couple weeks ago. But I love it.
[2:57] It's funny. OK, well, let's spill some tea.
[2:59] Let's start. Well, you can't be fat and be an
[3:00] athlete. That's that that.
[3:02] I'm going to run circles around, yeah.
[3:05] I, I did this thing where I was like, I'm fat, but also athletic
[3:07] because there's things that I do at my size that a lot of people
[3:09] don't do at my size, right? So I was like burpee box jumping
[3:13] and moving around and jumping around and like, you can't be
[3:16] athletic. If it was a skinny person doing
[3:18] that, I would have called you athletic, but because you're
[3:19] overweight, you can't. So I did like the next one was a
[3:22] handstand push ups on the wall and they're like like, is this
[3:25] not athletic? No, you can't be athletic if
[3:27] you're fat. So.
[3:28] You could say I'm not in shape, but you can't call me not
[3:31] athletic. Yeah, and I'm like, athletic is
[3:34] subjective, and I'm a Washington athlete.
[3:36] Comments are. So I love it man.
[3:38] And of course, it's the one in the comments that you'd be like,
[3:41] okay, put your hand up if you've run a marathon.
[3:44] Yeah, right. Like right there.
[3:46] Come in with me. Come with.
[3:48] Me that's that's the that's the break in the mold, man, which is
[3:51] one of the many reasons why I wanted to invite you in today.
[3:53] So maybe we'll go. Let's go right back to the
[3:56] start, man. Tell me a little bit about being
[3:57] a kid. So I'm the youngest of nine
[4:00] immigrant family from Romania. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[4:02] My my parents escaped communism in the the late 80s, came to
[4:06] Canada and I was born. I had five siblings at the time.
[4:09] Then one of us was born on the run and then the last three were
[4:12] born here. So I grew up in a real big
[4:13] family, 9 kids in nine years, like mom and dad just one after
[4:17] another. They came walking out kind of
[4:19] thing. God bless your mom.
[4:21] Yeah, Jesus, I. Got, I got 3 and I'm like,
[4:23] there's, there's they're like 3 years apart and I'm like,
[4:25] they're how do you do this? Every single year you get
[4:27] pregnant for nine years straight.
[4:29] Thank God bless my dad for dealing with a pregnant lady for
[4:31] nine years straight. Yeah, not easy.
[4:33] But no, I was, I had a pretty normal childhood, like, you
[4:36] know, my kids over immigrants. I mean, I guess not normal to,
[4:39] to most people, but we, you know, we were close family.
[4:42] We, my dad's a pastor. So we travelled, travelled, you
[4:45] know, he had a pastor to church in Toronto and a church in
[4:47] Windsor at the same time. So we travelled Toronto every
[4:50] single Sunday kind of life would kind of revolve around the
[4:52] church. And then we did cleaning jobs
[4:54] from when we were kids. So like I'm like 4-5, six years
[4:57] old at doctor's offices and, you know, community centers and
[5:00] churches kind of doing cleaning jobs at night time and all that
[5:03] kind of stuff. We call that slave.
[5:04] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Something that wouldn't happen
[5:06] now, but. Yeah.
[5:07] But. But like, to me, it was normal.
[5:10] You know, I worked midnights in high school, you know, stripping
[5:12] and waxing floors at at Shoppers Drug Mart and.
[5:15] Glad you added in waxing floors. Yeah, not just stripping.
[5:18] Yeah, 'cause I used to tell people I I would strip at night,
[5:20] in the evening to make some extra money.
[5:21] Yeah, Yeah. That was my favorite joke in
[5:23] high school. And I would tell people that.
[5:25] But, you know, got, I loved playing sports.
[5:27] I grew up playing most sports, you know, basketball,
[5:29] volleyball, that kind of stuff. Most of those took a back seat
[5:31] when I started playing football in high school and kind of
[5:34] focused mainly on that. Were you were you a big guy in
[5:36] in high school? Yeah, well, I went into high
[5:38] school 185, which for grade 9 is pretty big, but I, but I also
[5:41] like, I played basketball the time I was pretty athletic and
[5:44] then I ended up coming out of high school like 300, OK,
[5:47] because I just, I stopped playing volleyball, stopped
[5:49] doing all that kind of stuff. And, and just all I did was
[5:51] lift, you know, lift weights and eat pizza wraps in the cafeteria
[5:54] every single day. So I came out a pretty big boy.
[5:56] And then I played in, in the OFC, like in CJFL football
[5:59] after. And you guys would know what
[6:01] that is, I'm assuming. Yeah.
[6:02] So I played until I was 22, but I, I was always a, a bigger kid.
[6:06] Now that I look at it now is like, I wasn't, I look at
[6:08] pictures. I'm like this kids like 2030
[6:10] lbs. But I thought I was like
[6:11] massive, right. But I'm like, this kid probably
[6:13] needs to lose 20 or 30 lbs. It's not, it's nothing crazy,
[6:16] but but I was always like an athletic kid.
[6:18] Yeah. The I grew up, got married
[6:20] young. I got married at 20, like the
[6:23] week before I turned the month before I turned 21 and started
[6:27] my business and kind of thing and just kept playing football
[6:29] and then eventually just kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger
[6:32] as as things progressed. I ended up, I ended up tearing
[6:36] my, my meniscus, like I want to say five years ago, tearing my
[6:41] meniscus. And then I just blew up and put
[6:42] on 160 lbs during COVID in the span of like a year and a half,
[6:47] which, but I'm still installing tile everyday, still working
[6:49] everyday. And then found myself like 500
[6:51] lbs in a ton of paint everyday, installing, you know, 5-6
[6:55] hundred square feet of flooring of tiling every single day at
[6:58] that weight, like with a, with a torn meniscus.
[7:00] So I was in pain constantly. I couldn't walk for like I, it
[7:03] would take me 10 minutes to get out of bed in the morning
[7:04] because I'd get up and I couldn't, couldn't walk and I'd
[7:07] have to like roll with a lacrosse ball or something.
[7:10] So yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of where I ended up.
[7:12] And I'm like, you know, something eventually needs to
[7:14] change. And so I started kind of
[7:16] climbing my way back three years ago from that.
[7:19] What was there like a trigger point or was there was there
[7:21] something that like set off something and said, hey, like
[7:23] fuck, I need to, I need to figure something.
[7:25] Out yeah, I mean that £500 like I had worked like 80 hours a
[7:28] week over 80 hours a week since I was 19 years old, right?
[7:32] So like, I was a workaholic. That's all I did.
[7:34] I, you know, I became young immigrant kid came from, you
[7:37] know, immigrant family. All I want to do is provide a
[7:39] really good financial life for my kids.
[7:40] Like I wanted, my goal was always, you know, they want to
[7:43] go to Michigan, they want to go to any school, like it's
[7:46] covered, right. So, so I basically worked myself
[7:49] what would have been into an early grave.
[7:51] And then at one point at £500, I'm just like, I know I'm not
[7:53] going to be here long. So I'm just going to continue
[7:55] to, to pump out and make as much money as I possibly can and
[7:58] treat my body like garbage. And there was a very conscious
[8:01] decision where I'm like, yeah, I'm eating myself into an early
[8:03] grave, but at least I got to provide for them as much as I
[8:05] can until I, until I get there because it's kind of all my
[8:07] value for me came in like what I was doing financially, right?
[8:10] Like I was, I was, you know, I started a business when I was
[8:13] 2022, you know, I had bought my first house at 20.
[8:16] I bought my next house AT25I built my first house at 29 years
[8:19] old. You know, my wife was able to be
[8:21] a stay at home mom. So all that kind of stuff was,
[8:23] you know, I felt good about that stuff.
[8:24] But then my body, I was setting up a life basically that I
[8:27] wouldn't exist in in 10 years from now.
[8:29] And and I was OK with it at one point.
[8:31] And then just it wasn't like a aha moment.
[8:35] It was just like a for a second I got a glimpse of like what my
[8:38] kids perspective was and not mine, right.
[8:41] So my perspective, I wanted to be, you know, this dad provided
[8:44] for their kids because it gave me value.
[8:45] And I thought I was a great dad then because I was, you know, I
[8:48] would sleep 2 hours a night. I would spend all the time I
[8:51] could with my kids. I was always that high energetic
[8:53] dad doing things. Even if I have pounds, I'm still
[8:55] like rolling around with them in pain and all that kind of stuff.
[8:58] And, and now I look back and I'm like, that guy wasn't a great
[9:01] dad because I was validating myself by providing them the
[9:04] life that I thought they needed. And I'm like, so I, I kind of
[9:08] had a little bit of like a what, what can I see?
[9:10] My, my oldest daughter's name is Oakland.
[9:12] Like at 18 years old, is she gonna say, oh, dad, thanks.
[9:15] First of all, she won't have anybody to thank.
[9:17] I won't be there, but thanks for getting me all the money to go
[9:20] to Michigan for four years. Or is she gonna say, I just wish
[9:23] Dad was here, right? And so that little kind of
[9:27] switch was like, okay, I gotta stop.
[9:29] And it wasn't a isolated issue or an isolated moment.
[9:31] It was like, I started looking at everything like that and
[9:34] purposely digging into like, what are they going to, what are
[9:37] they going to think? What is their perspective going
[9:39] to be at 18? If I can project myself through
[9:41] them? And it's going to be like,
[9:42] they're not going to care about, you know, the extra vacations we
[9:45] went to, we went to Hawaii at the time when I was at my
[9:46] heaviest, I was in Hawaii and like, they're not going to care
[9:49] about that. They're not, they're not going
[9:50] to see dad at their wedding day. And that's what matters to them.
[9:52] And that's kind of the, I started getting obsessed with
[9:55] looking outside of my own perspective.
[9:56] And that's what kind of started everything for me, right?
[9:59] So then I guess like a, a question people probably would
[10:02] think is like you're working 80 hours a week, you're Tyler.
[10:05] So you're physically working like hard for half of that.
[10:07] The other half you're working in the casino or whatever you're
[10:09] doing. Yeah, how does somebody put on
[10:12] more weight when you're so damn active?
[10:14] Yeah, so I was like, so for context, I worked about 8 years,
[10:19] 80 hours a week as a tile installer.
[10:20] So I'm installing tile 80 hours a week.
[10:22] I'm on my hands and knees. I'm, you know, working and, and
[10:25] then when I got to 500 lbs, I got a management job at, at at
[10:28] Caesar's Casino. And, and that was just like a,
[10:30] you know, I run the building, but I was still doing my tiling
[10:32] thing. And so if there was a way to
[10:35] outwork a bad diet, I would have been able to like I was, I was
[10:37] working 80 hours a week plus I was going to the gym for two,
[10:40] two hours most days. I got 400 and 400 lbs.
[10:44] I was like, it'd be like 37 days in a row that I hadn't taken a
[10:47] rest day from the gym. I just basically worked out.
[10:49] I had my gym in the basement, but I also went to a gym too.
[10:51] And but I was just eating like I was basically just like, for me,
[10:56] in my mind, it made sense to eat out every day, every day, every
[10:59] meal. Like I was blowing money because
[11:01] I, I have my own business. I'm installing for 12 hours a
[11:04] day. The more I install, the more
[11:05] that I make right in my mind, the more my family is going to
[11:08] be better off. So me spending 100 bucks a day,
[11:11] $120.00 a day on food actually made sense financially because I
[11:14] never, I could work an extra hour.
[11:16] And if I were an hour or two hours, which I make more than
[11:19] what I was spending in a day. So to me, in my own sick,
[11:21] twisted way, it made sense. So I, you know, I, you get out
[11:24] in the morning, I'm buying all three meals.
[11:25] Like it'd been days where I was like 30 days in a row.
[11:28] I hadn't eaten at home. Like I'd just be eating.
[11:30] I mean, I was Taco Bell's like #1 frequent flyer customer.
[11:34] Like I'd eat Taco Bell 8 days a week plus 12 other different
[11:38] fast. Food places that's so hard to
[11:39] fathom because like anybody that knows when they eat Taco Bell
[11:41] like it doesn't last long in your body so like.
[11:44] So that's why I used to eat it like once at least, if not twice
[11:47] a day. Taco Bell and then Burger King
[11:49] 3-4 times a week. And then so I was just like
[11:51] eating like crazy and never addressed the issue because for
[11:54] me, it was never a movement issue.
[11:55] Yeah, people assume that if you're you're fat, then you're
[11:57] lazy. And like, mine was the opposite.
[12:00] I moved so much that I ate so much, and I could never, I never
[12:03] had to address it because I could always move well as a big
[12:05] guy. And it wasn't until I lost the
[12:07] ability to move, Yeah, that's when it kind of woke me.
[12:09] Up, but your cholesterol is probably through the fucking
[12:11] roof. See, I'm lucky 'cause I did it
[12:13] when I was young. So like I, I, I gotta fix it.
[12:15] And I also never checked. So I'm I'm sure, I'm sure at the
[12:18] 100 I had, I had everything. Yeah, you have to worry about a
[12:21] thing. And then a year into me getting
[12:22] healthy, I went to the doctor and like, oh, all of your
[12:24] markers are great. I'm like, sweet, like I must
[12:27] have not done any damage. But I mean, I was only 29 at the
[12:30] time, right? Yeah, still still super young.
[12:31] Yeah, I'll tell you as a 42 year old, the bounce back's a little
[12:35] easier in your 20s. Yeah, I'm sure.
[12:37] It's so with that too, man. Like so now I'm going you and I
[12:41] talked a little bit off camera. Like I've had my struggles with
[12:44] weight. Like my highest was I got up to
[12:45] like 345 at one point and then started to chip away at it.
[12:49] But I think like I'm only talking about me, but I want to
[12:53] know your experience and answer Jamie's question.
[12:55] It's so crazy, crazy how shit snowballs.
[12:57] Yeah, it's the shitty eating and, and fast food and all the
[13:00] wrong shit. But then you put on weight.
[13:03] And for me it was like, OK, now I'm going to sleep like shit.
[13:06] And then as soon as you sleep like shit, you're like, well,
[13:09] you know, caffeine and sugar is going to give me a little burst.
[13:12] So now you're even more calories in between meals.
[13:15] And then like on top of that, you get like just, you know,
[13:18] you're, you're so fucking tired that you're like, well, I better
[13:20] have some drinks or I better have some like just trying to
[13:23] fix something, right. So it's it's quick snowball.
[13:26] How did you sleep when you were that big?
[13:28] I didn't like especially when I was working at Caesar's.
[13:30] So I started working at Caesar's when I was 500 like 497 lbs is
[13:33] the heaviest I was that I knew of because I didn't have a scale
[13:35] that went up past that. So it might have been a couple a
[13:38] couple pounds over there, but I was sleeping.
[13:40] So my my legit. This is not exaggerating my
[13:42] legit schedule. I always kind of count Saturday
[13:45] as my start of the week, but Saturday I wake up at you know,
[13:47] 7 AMI go with tile all day. I come home, I would come home,
[13:52] see my kids for an hour, then I'd start at 7:30 midnight shift
[13:55] and I'd work till 7:30 in the morning.
[13:56] Then I'd come home. I'd probably get an hour, hour
[13:59] and a half sleep because I just can't sleep during the day.
[14:01] I would work 7:30 Sunday night to 7:30 Monday morning for 7:30
[14:06] Monday morning. I jump to the job site.
[14:07] I'd go to the job site all day long.
[14:09] I would come home. I would probably sometimes I'd
[14:12] get an hour of sleep in between, but then I got one more shift
[14:15] Monday night for 12 hours. So then I work another 12 hours.
[14:18] So at least one day a week I was up for like 3536 hours straight,
[14:21] no catnaps. The off nights I would get like
[14:24] four or five hours maybe, but averaged up to like 2 to 3 hours
[14:28] a night of sleep. So I felt awful all the time.
[14:32] And so like cocaine, Red Bull. No, I.
[14:34] Like a lot of energy. Drinks.
[14:35] What the hell kept you away? I.
[14:36] Drink a lot, a lot of energy drinks, but I just like, I'm one
[14:39] of those guys that looks like, like I'm constantly moving And
[14:41] then in my, my job as management at seizures, it was more of like
[14:45] a desk job or I walk around. So I just like pound energy
[14:48] drinks until my chest feels like it's palpitating.
[14:50] And then that got a little scary.
[14:52] And so I got off them for a couple days and I went right
[14:55] back on them. But but I didn't sleep well.
[14:57] I didn't feel good ever. My, my wife laughs because I'm
[15:00] like, I was on stomach problems and I just thought they were
[15:03] normal like forever. She's like, you know, you're not
[15:05] supposed to like for the like have stomach issues like four or
[15:07] five times a week. I'm like, I thought that was
[15:09] everybody. She's like, no, that's not
[15:10] everybody. There's just something going on
[15:11] with you. So, but I just like everything
[15:13] was just like, how do I get to the next 8 hours?
[15:16] The food, the, the, the energy drinks, everything.
[15:20] I could go work out in between. I would rather work out for an
[15:22] hour and a half then go take a nap.
[15:24] That's just the guy. I hate sleeping.
[15:26] And so everything was just about getting through like almost like
[15:28] a dopamine addict, just like getting through the next couple
[15:30] hours and, and feeling like that.
[15:32] And but I felt awful all the time, obviously.
[15:35] Bless you didn't have a fucking heart attack though.
[15:36] Man 100% yeah, I I'm incredibly lucky and I was young, but I my
[15:41] I I my my doctor when I finally went saw him like I'm like I
[15:45] don't think I'm live by by till 40s.
[15:47] I don't even give you till 35 like you, you will drop dead.
[15:51] And luckily I only did that crazy like midnight sleep thing
[15:55] for like almost four years. But if I would have done
[15:57] continued that even that's the reason I quit that job, right.
[16:00] So I was like, I just need to start sleeping and actually
[16:02] taking care of my body. Money is not everything.
[16:04] No. And yeah.
[16:05] And it's just like, you know, it's easy money.
[16:08] It's a management job. I was always hard labor.
[16:10] So I got this opportunity and they paid well.
[16:12] And I'm like kind of feel like a like it'd be a waste if I didn't
[16:15] take it, which kind of kept me there for a little bit too long.
[16:18] Right. And then so, you know, you
[16:21] didn't have the moment, the transition where you're like,
[16:24] hey, today, flip a switch. You know, I I would, I would say
[16:28] the same about myself too. But but you and I are both guys
[16:31] that like to set goals. Yeah.
[16:33] So talk to me a little bit about how you ended up transitioning
[16:36] to where you are now and lost the weight and how you tied that
[16:39] to having some priorities and some goals.
[16:41] Yeah, so I've always been a guy who's lived in the like you live
[16:43] in the gym. Like I was always a guy who
[16:45] tried to chase a, you know, £650 back squad.
[16:48] Like even at £400 justified that by I could squat 650 lbs.
[16:52] And I bench for that one of those leg.
[16:54] Leg. Yeah.
[16:54] What do you call leg days? Leg.
[16:56] That's one of those things. Yeah, never leg day in his life
[16:59] goes and buys a protein. They don't have those at Mavadi
[17:02] man. There's no, I'm sure there's no
[17:03] leg day thing there. I've never seen a sign.
[17:06] But yeah, so I just, I don't know where was this?
[17:09] Where was I going with this? So talking about Jamie's
[17:12] terrible fucking habits and then on top of that, just like.
[17:15] Oh yeah, having a. Goal How?
[17:16] How tying something to having a milestone or a goal in your
[17:20] horizon gets you motivated. Yeah, so I basically like at
[17:22] that point I couldn't really set many goals because I couldn't
[17:25] walk for like, like you would have told me to walk 10 minutes
[17:28] straight walking and I couldn't do it.
[17:29] I was in so much pain. My knee was in tons of pain.
[17:31] So I was just like, for the first time in my life, I'm just
[17:33] like, I'm going to just do what I can in my capability now.
[17:36] So I'm going to go for a couple small walks.
[17:38] I'm going to make a couple switches, right?
[17:41] I didn't have a goal at the time because everything seems so
[17:44] crazy because at the time I wasn't going.
[17:46] I'm going to save my life. I'm just like, OK, let me just
[17:48] make a couple better choices now because I'm still dying young.
[17:51] But like maybe it'll be another year or another two years.
[17:54] I might buy buy myself a little bit extra time.
[17:56] And so I started kind of developing some just some
[17:59] switches. Like instead of going to Burger
[18:01] King and getting 2 Whoppers, A poutine and a drink, it was just
[18:04] two Whoppers and a Diet Coke, right?
[18:06] A little bit, little bit better still not, you know, and I would
[18:08] just make a little bit better choice because as a trades guy,
[18:10] like I would never, you'd never expect an electrician on day one
[18:13] to work on a 30,000 Volt panels. But we try to do that with
[18:16] fitness. That's why I had that idea.
[18:18] I'm like, we try to deal with fitness.
[18:19] We try to do everything perfect. Instead, let's start with
[18:21] something small. Instead of taking away stuff,
[18:23] I'll add more water, I'll add a couple minutes of walking, I'll
[18:26] make a couple swaps and then eventually those swaps became
[18:28] easy and I just did a couple harder things.
[18:30] Now let's add this type of movement in.
[18:32] So as I started progressing, I had gained a little bit of
[18:35] momentum, maybe 3040 lbs. I just got obsessed with this
[18:38] idea of like just doing difficult things because my mind
[18:40] even at £500 was still difficult going to work everyday.
[18:43] But I had this like sick twisted like, like validation from the
[18:47] fact that I'm still out here doing this.
[18:49] Nobody's doing it for me. I'm doing it even though I'm in
[18:51] pain. I would never just like go home
[18:52] and you know, and, and be that guy because a lot of guys at
[18:55] £500 aren't, aren't working at all, let alone working manual
[18:58] labor. And so I think about a few
[19:02] months later, I did like a fast. I'm like, I'm going to try to
[19:04] see how long ago I did a 30 day water fast, zero food for 30
[19:08] days. Right out of the gate.
[19:09] Right out of the gate, I'm just like, I felt awful.
[19:11] I had I. That's because I'm about. 30,000
[19:13] Volt. Yeah, Transformer on this is
[19:15] like four months later, but I'm like, I'm, I felt awful one day.
[19:19] I had binge the night before on pizza and cookies and everything
[19:22] else. And then I'm like, you know
[19:24] what, let me let me go a day or two without eating and just just
[19:27] see if it helps because I had known a lot about fasting and
[19:29] all that stuff. Well, two days turned into 7 and
[19:31] turned into, you know, 1421 and 30 days later I had gone 30 days
[19:35] without eating and I had learned a lot about my because in my
[19:38] mind, I didn't do it for weight loss.
[19:40] I'm just like, I wanted to see, I live in Canada.
[19:43] Like I'm eating $120.00 of fast food a day.
[19:46] Like it's a very privileged position and there's people who
[19:49] can't afford to fast as a luxury.
[19:50] So I'm like, I want to see what they kind of feel, what they
[19:53] understood. It wasn't a weight loss thing
[19:54] for me. And that feeling just got
[19:55] addicting, like I all of my pain went away, like my knee pain
[19:59] from that I've been dealing with for two years that I went to
[20:01] four physios with five days into fasting went from like a nine to
[20:05] like a one because of pain scale.
[20:06] Inflammation, all the. Way inflammation, yeah.
[20:08] And at the same time I had like I had a buddy who is a
[20:11] physiotherapist so he's like my 5th physiotherapist I saw and he
[20:14] was we started working together and he actually was able to
[20:16] repair what I the damage I had in my knee.
[20:18] So the pain went away. I was actually sleeping on those
[20:20] off nights like 6 hours instead of four.
[20:23] So I got like addicted and I was still going to the gym every
[20:25] single day. I would, I got addicted to that
[20:27] feeling. And so I'm like, if I can not
[20:29] eat for 30 days as a 400, I don't know what I was at the
[20:31] time, £450 guy, then there's a lot if I just continue to chase
[20:36] doing difficult things that might be the key to this.
[20:39] So a year into the journey, I'm like 402 lbs.
[20:42] I'm like one year from now I'm going to run a marathon.
[20:44] Like what is the one thing that there's no fat guy that I knew
[20:48] of who what, what, what can they not do or what can I believe
[20:52] that I can't do? Run a marathon.
[20:53] So I made a one year goal, kind of dedicated everything to
[20:56] running that marathon. And then a year later, plus one
[20:59] day I went to Hawaii, the same place I was at 500 lbs.
[21:01] When I have my, you know, picture and video of me getting
[21:04] out of the water at 500 lbs. I ran a marathon, did my first
[21:06] one literally, you know, back on the island.
[21:09] So it's kind of cool. Full circle moment.
[21:11] That's incredible, man. Yeah.
[21:12] How much? How much weight did you lose
[21:13] during that 30 day period? 30 days.
[21:15] I lost 61 lbs in 30 days. Crazy.
[21:19] Yeah. Which was absolutely insane, but
[21:21] I knew that. I knew that if I had a goal to
[21:24] focus on rather than just like, it's like when you drive in a
[21:26] car like you don't like I'm driving, the snow is really
[21:29] sketchy. When I was driving up here
[21:30] yesterday, I'm like, I don't just try to avoid the ditch.
[21:33] I just look closer at the road and I focus a little bit more on
[21:36] where I'm going rather than trying to avoid where I
[21:37] shouldn't be going. And that kind of analogy that
[21:40] kind of made-up really was the catalyst for like everything.
[21:43] I'm like, I don't have to try to avoid pizza.
[21:45] I just got to make a goal. And then when I'm going through
[21:47] that mental fight in my head is like, will this help me focus on
[21:51] the road I'm driving or, you know, is this going to help me?
[21:53] Then I can kind of better chance of kind of, you know, making the
[21:56] right decision. Yeah, and the snowball thing I
[21:59] talked about, it goes the other way too.
[22:01] Like those little decisions, those little, you know,
[22:03] compromises. You're kind of building up a
[22:06] little callus as you go, but you're also stacking wins.
[22:08] Yeah. And and that snowballs.
[22:11] Yeah, it can go the other way too, right?
[22:12] Well, and that's how I did it with food, right?
[22:14] Like today, I, I, I like to say today's compromises become
[22:16] tomorrow's standard. So one day I was really hungry.
[22:18] I got an extra burger. That was just the new standard
[22:20] order from that day on, right? And then next time I went to the
[22:23] drive through, you know, I was, I might as well grab the
[22:25] dessert. That'd just be in the new
[22:27] standard order. Like it was always just, I never
[22:28] went back to the other order. So then I figured you could do
[22:31] the same thing the other way around, right when you're
[22:33] running. When I first ran, I ran for
[22:35] like, well, at first I couldn't really run, but a minute was the
[22:39] longest I ever, you know, got to in my first like, week.
[22:42] And now if I run a 5K, I'm like 5K is my new, like, baseline.
[22:46] Like, 5K is a short run for me, which sounds insane because a
[22:48] minute was like a long run for me two years ago.
[22:51] So that just becomes a new standard and we just keep
[22:53] stacking on top of it. But I also knew that I couldn't
[22:56] run a marathon. But if I said that out loud,
[22:58] because that's what I did, I said it out loud because I knew
[23:01] I would, it would force me to become the person that would be
[23:03] able to do it. If I kept that goal internally
[23:05] and didn't say anything, then I wouldn't have to be accountable
[23:07] to it. Yeah.
[23:08] For sure. So that's kind of.
[23:10] And some of that work ethic you talked about, dude, like I, I
[23:12] see this in, in a lot of people. I know if you're putting the
[23:15] time in here, like in your story, it's, you know, 80 hour
[23:17] work weeks and it's building a business and it's all that shit.
[23:20] If you have that drive, that can be pointed elsewhere.
[23:24] Like if you have that work ethic, that mindset, it's just
[23:26] about like, OK, let's, let's recalibrate that.
[23:29] Find what healthy balances or find what like those goals are.
[23:33] And then just put that same, same shit in motion, right?
[23:36] Yeah, cuz I mean, that's, that's typically like you guys saw
[23:39] Jelly rolls, crazy transformation.
[23:40] That guy, that guy is that guy is a crazy hard worker, right?
[23:43] That guy, everybody says crazy hard worker that go do show
[23:46] after show after show, which takes a lot of your body.
[23:48] But it's just, if you don't focus on the thing that matters
[23:50] the most, like people say in, you know, in fitness and you
[23:53] know, 90% of it is food, but we put 95% of our effort into what
[23:58] we're doing in the gym. And then we put 5% effort into
[24:01] our food. But if it's just a refocus on
[24:03] the things that actually matter, it's like if your roof's
[24:05] leaking, but you got a nice bathroom, like, who cares?
[24:07] Your roof's still leaking, right?
[24:09] So if food was, if food was the problem, the exercise wasn't
[24:11] going to fix it. So I had to address that and say
[24:14] now that now I'm, I actually work way, way less hard now than
[24:17] I did when I was £500. I, I don't tile as hard, I don't
[24:20] push as hard. I don't even exercise as hard as
[24:22] I did at £500 like I I just am smarter and I focus on the
[24:26] things that matter a lot more. Yeah, that's, that's better on
[24:29] your body, that's better on your mindset because again, it's that
[24:31] recalibration, right? And when you say too, about how
[24:34] much you spent on food, the, you know, $110 a day or whatever
[24:37] you're spending that kind of money on food, you got some
[24:39] serious options on what you could put in your body, right?
[24:42] You can get supplements, right? You can get quality nutrition
[24:45] and you can like you can do that.
[24:47] So how did you go from fast food to, you know, the kind of
[24:51] nutrition that that sees you hit that goal?
[24:53] Yeah, so it was, it was just apprenticing my own body getting
[24:56] one thing that became easier. So the fast food was still still
[24:58] need fast food 2 * a week. It was just better orders.
[25:01] And then eventually as it got easy to make those easy orders,
[25:03] it was easy to just go hungry a little bit till I get home and I
[25:07] can make a proper meal that like 30 day fast.
[25:09] That helped me realize like if I'm hungry, hunger is just a
[25:11] feeling. It's not going to kill me right
[25:14] if I'm if I don't eat for I went 30 days of eating and it didn't
[25:17] kill me. It actually made me healthier.
[25:19] I'm not going to die if I wait three more hours till I get home
[25:22] to eat where before it was like I was a meathead and you know,
[25:25] in my younger days. And it's like you got to get
[25:26] protein in the 30 minute window, which is just crazy and doesn't
[25:29] really matter as much as people think it does.
[25:31] And so I just made the decision to like, I can just go hungry
[25:35] and just get home. And the more you stack though,
[25:37] like the more you stack little bricks on top, like belief is
[25:40] just like a, like building a house, the more you stack
[25:42] bricks, the more it becomes easier to believe in yourself.
[25:45] And so I just kept stacking the, oh, I got, you know, I went
[25:48] three hours without eating yesterday.
[25:50] I can do the exact same thing again and get home and actually
[25:53] meet the meal and I can actually be more satisfied.
[25:56] Like normally I'd throw, you know, I get Burger King or
[25:58] something and I wouldn't really be satisfied and I'd go crazy on
[26:01] calories. Now I'm just like, if I just
[26:03] hold off and don't eat the cookie, I get to actually eat
[26:05] till my body's full because I'm not a guy who is, I mean 5 meals
[26:09] a day, little I'm, I'm not a portion control guy.
[26:11] I can't like if I try to eat 5 balanced meals, small meals a
[26:14] day, like I end up binging. So I just what I do now is I, I
[26:18] drink protein shakes and you know, eat a couple protein bars
[26:20] until 4:00 and then I eat good at 4:00 and I eat really good at
[26:23] like 9 after my workout. And it works great for me.
[26:26] I fall under my under my calories.
[26:28] The rules of the game don't change calorie in calorie out.
[26:30] And I get to instead of fighting this like, oh, you know, you
[26:34] know, I got to fight bingeing. This is like I can just if I
[26:36] like to eat till I'm satisfied, I can use that and work in my
[26:39] favor. I don't have to sit in there and
[26:40] demonize every little thing because every Jack guy on the
[26:43] Internet told me that I got to eat, you know, every 3 1/2 hours
[26:46] in a certain window, right? Right.
[26:48] I just got to find out what worked for me.
[26:49] Yeah. What's so calorie wise now at
[26:52] your current weight when you try and eat around in a day?
[26:55] So right now I'm I'm cutting weight so I eat around 2520 to
[26:58] between 25 and 2800 calories a day as marathon volume because I
[27:02] got a marathon in April. As that goes up, then the
[27:05] calories go up to like 30, five, 3600 calories a day and then the
[27:09] weight loss slows down. OK, what are you sitting out
[27:11] weight wise right now? I'm.
[27:13] Just under 320. Good for you, man.
[27:14] Yeah. Yeah, what's what's that?
[27:17] What's that meal look like at the end of the day?
[27:18] What's the 9 O clock meal? What do you tend to put on a?
[27:20] Plate usually burgers. So it's usually like we make
[27:23] homemade beef, beef Patty burgers.
[27:24] I usually put them on like protein tortillas and then I
[27:27] have like I'll do like regular potatoes cut up with my French
[27:31] fry cutter and put them in the air fryer.
[27:32] So it's like 2 big burgers with French fries.
[27:35] Or I'll do like a, I'm a big burrito bowl guy, you know, stir
[27:38] fry, something like that, something that's like big.
[27:40] And then I always eat dessert, like every single night.
[27:42] I eat a pancake bowl, which is like or like a low calorie
[27:45] cheesecake, but like pancake bowl.
[27:48] You can tell everybody because this is the greatest hack of all
[27:50] time. But if you get I just get Kodiak
[27:51] cakes and I make pancakes. My wife does it for me.
[27:54] I should be honest. Sure.
[27:55] Yeah, like wife, wifey does it, but but just do I just do a
[27:59] pancake bowl in a bowl. I get the the no sugar chocolate
[28:02] syrup, no sugar Maple syrup. I get whipped cream.
[28:05] I get I usually put like they have a no sugar added apple pie
[28:08] filling and it's just this like 400-300-5400 calorie massive
[28:12] bowl of dessert. I'm just like, I just found a
[28:14] better way of eating things rather than demonizing that food
[28:18] is all bad. And that's why.
[28:19] So at 9:00 I eat really good. I probably, you know, 1100
[28:22] calories at 9:00. Yeah, that's a good one.
[28:26] And those those other changes with like the fitness side of
[28:30] things, he said. Maybe not working out as hard
[28:32] now but like what are you doing to train up leading up to April?
[28:35] Yeah, so before I used to just like work out and try to like do
[28:37] as much volume as possible and be fried.
[28:40] And you know, if if I felt sore then it was great.
[28:42] Now I trained properly, give myself recovery.
[28:44] So hard days are really hard because the programmed less
[28:47] intense days are done properly and I pull back the intensity so
[28:50] I can go hard. So right now I'm doing like I'm
[28:52] doing a high rocks, you know, in next actually this weekend
[28:56] coming up in in Phoenix. So lot of lot of training for
[28:59] that. But, but just like I said, not
[29:01] going every single day, crazy intensity, just taking the
[29:05] proper rest days work, doing my lifting 3-4 days a week.
[29:08] And then usually I do another one like a more of a strength
[29:11] training day. But as as volume for running,
[29:14] you know, for the marathon in April, I'm going to London to
[29:15] run the London Marathon. That'll kind of take the brunt
[29:18] of of all of my energy and kind of fall back on the weights a
[29:21] little bit. Go back to that first marathon
[29:24] and like when people are looking at you show up like I'm sure
[29:26] you're getting, Oh yeah, one level of input from like your
[29:29] close circle going like, hey, man, like you got this.
[29:32] Like fucking push hard, train hard, you'll do this.
[29:34] But like when you get there, I'm sure there's a handful of
[29:37] fucking people that are looking at you.
[29:38] Go man, this guy, this guy's not going to make it to the end of
[29:40] this 100. Percent.
[29:41] I was 360 lbs when I ran my first marathon.
[29:44] And so I gotta show up and at the start line and everybody
[29:48] else is a runner. Nobody looks like me, but like
[29:50] nobody says anything because I don't think anybody wants to say
[29:53] anything positive or negative. They don't really know what I'm
[29:54] doing there. And so the nice thing is I got
[29:58] like, I purposely picked Hawaii. Hawaii is like, like I fit in in
[30:01] Hawaii, like you guys are tanned.
[30:04] They're bigger dudes. Like they love going shirtless.
[30:07] Like, so I, I ran that marathon. I had so many like people
[30:09] hanging out their window, giving me the, the shock out the
[30:12] window. But, but anybody in my circle
[30:14] told me, like so many of them, like, yeah, we, there's no way
[30:16] we thought you would run a marathon.
[30:17] We all kind of said, hey, you know, that's amazing.
[30:20] We're so proud of you. Like none of them thought,
[30:22] including I, I mean, I didn't believe I would do it either.
[30:24] I'm running the marathon and I don't believe that I'm finishing
[30:27] it until I'm like half, half a mile away, you know, from the
[30:31] finish line. Like I didn't have full belief
[30:32] in myself to do it. I just learned that I don't need
[30:35] to have belief to be able to accomplish something.
[30:37] Like I, I, I tell people all the time.
[30:39] They're like, how do you know? How do you feel confident?
[30:41] I'm like, I'm not confident. I'm a, I'm a guy who's shirtless
[30:43] on the Internet all the time. I hate taking my shirt off.
[30:46] I hate it. I only did it because confidence
[30:49] is like a muscle. You just build it with, by doing
[30:51] things, you know, do it. An easy win.
[30:53] I took my shirt off when I was on a trail by myself one day.
[30:56] And then one day it was hot in Atlanta.
[30:57] I was running at a Wellness festival and it was 100° outside
[31:01] and I took my shirt off and I didn't die and nobody said
[31:04] anything and nobody made fun of me and I just ran shirtless.
[31:07] And then I'm just like, so the same thing happened when I was
[31:09] running the marathon. I'm like, I didn't believe that
[31:11] I could finish it, but doesn't matter because doubt can kind of
[31:14] sit in the back seat, doesn't really have a bearing.
[31:16] And if I failed, I failed. Like if I had to take a, you
[31:19] know, do not finish, then I'll take a do not finish but.
[31:21] You showed up. I just showed up and that's the
[31:23] that's the part I've learned on this whole journey is like,
[31:25] fail, succeed. It really doesn't matter as long
[31:28] as I just show up, put in the work and and do my best.
[31:31] What was your finish time on that one?
[31:33] By marathon it was 737. Yeah.
[31:35] So you gotta yeah, yeah. So I I just missed the cut off.
[31:38] Just made the cut off by like 23 minutes.
[31:40] I also kind of dumb because I just jump into things and don't
[31:43] ever pay attention to what goes into him.
[31:45] So like, I, I did all my training, all this stuff, but I
[31:47] for some reason I didn't think Hawaii would be hilly, which is
[31:50] the dumbest thing on planet earth because it was literally
[31:53] all this whole second of the first half.
[31:54] I'm like, wow, this is great. I my pace was like for, you
[31:57] know, I was going to be just over six, 6 1/2 hours I think it
[32:00] was. And then I hit mountains and
[32:02] like heat and humidity. You didn't Remember Remember the
[32:06] first time you were in Hawaii and noticed all the well.
[32:08] The problem is I went to a different island this time,
[32:10] right? So I did.
[32:10] I did. I didn't know, but I went like,
[32:12] like you guys Maui, like where Lahaina was, It's literally all
[32:15] the mountain. And that's the second-half of
[32:16] the marathon is all literal mountain up and down.
[32:19] Mountains and volcanoes, yeah. So I was like, I got heat stroke
[32:22] and, you know, I was this close to like jumping into an
[32:24] ambulance. At the very end, there's like a
[32:26] funny clip or like my sister's like, you need to go in the
[32:28] ambulance. And I'm like, all eyes are all
[32:29] glazed over and I'm like, I don't know, I think I'm good.
[32:31] Just give me give me a can of coke and I'll be good.
[32:34] So she had to lie to like the the nurse and tell her that I
[32:36] had that hip. She told him I had diabetes
[32:38] because I'm like, can you go get me some of that coke?
[32:40] Like I was falling for the diabetics.
[32:42] Like my brother is, I think diabetic.
[32:43] Yeah. And then I'm not.
[32:44] Look at him. He's fucking yeah.
[32:45] Look, look. At how big he is, of course he's
[32:46] diabetic. So now you got the high, high
[32:49] rocks coming up this weekend. Even that, like I'm sure when
[32:52] you show up to that, there's still people going like, the
[32:54] fuck is this guy? How's he gonna do this?
[32:56] Yeah, and that's got to give you some some real push and like get
[32:59] your edge up going like I'm gonna fucking nail.
[33:01] This well, the nice thing about races is like all the haters
[33:04] come from outside of the race community, right?
[33:06] Like I ran the New York City Marathon in in November, right?
[33:09] Like everybody is wildly positive.
[33:11] I did a, a, my first high rocks was like a high rocks pro in
[33:15] Boston in September. And like they wanted, they
[33:17] featured me on their, on their page.
[33:19] Everyone was so supportive. It's only the people who are not
[33:21] doing anything that are the ones talking.
[33:23] It's all the lazy ass people. 100% Everyone else like like I,
[33:26] I have a buddy who, his name's Corey, he's from Windsor.
[33:30] He's the beer mile world record holder.
[33:31] This guy runs a mile in under 4 minutes, runs a beer mile in
[33:34] like 4 minutes, 23 You know what a beer mile is?
[33:37] You have to drink a beer in between every lap.
[33:39] So 4 laps on a track, you have to drink a beer in between every
[33:41] lap. This guy does.
[33:42] This guy holds the world record. The last, you know, his one
[33:44] last. Do they have one of those
[33:45] around? Yeah, You're.
[33:46] Gonna have to send me some. Yeah, but but he has like a four
[33:50] minute, 27 second beer mouth. So that guy can run 4 laps and
[33:55] run and Chuck four. I can't even Chuck 4 beers in 30
[33:57] seconds and that guy's like guys like those.
[34:00] I, I have some other like who are the most supportive people.
[34:02] They don't they don't gatekeeper sport.
[34:04] I have, I have people who online trip and go like, you know, 6 /
[34:08] 6 hour marathon, 6 1/2 hour marathon is not a marathon,
[34:12] right? You walk for part of it like
[34:14] you're like. You show up and do it fucking 7
[34:16] hours. Yeah, like the race community is
[34:18] wild. High rocks go to high rocks and
[34:20] it's like basically like just the most like bro Y like it was
[34:24] almost like the WWE version of of a race.
[34:27] Like everyone gets in the tunnel before the guy is like hyping
[34:29] everybody up. There's music playing, there's a
[34:31] DJ in there and everyone just in their vibrant.
[34:33] Everybody yells at everybody like you got this, keep going.
[34:36] People are screaming at me like people message me like I was the
[34:39] person screaming at you on the sideline telling you to keep
[34:41] moving. It's just a cool community and
[34:43] anybody else that's talking and saying something stupid is not
[34:46] doing anything. You've learned how to shout that
[34:48] out then. Yeah, yeah, the elites, the
[34:49] elites love it. Like the, the guy who kept
[34:52] jogies was the, the marathon GOAT.
[34:54] He's the only one to ever, you know, first want to run under a
[34:56] 2 hour marathon. Yeah, guys, like I want
[34:58] everybody in the world to run. I don't care if you're a 7 hour,
[35:01] you know, because at my, at my like time, you're on your,
[35:04] you're on your feet for six hours.
[35:06] Like I ran the the New York City Marathon in six hours, 6 1/2
[35:09] hours. It's like it's basically an
[35:11] ultra marathon at that point on your, from from a feet
[35:13] standpoint. Like you've been on your on
[35:14] your, on your feet for that long.
[35:15] Like it takes a lot out of you. And so, yeah, the running
[35:18] community is awesome. I did not see that on like, my
[35:20] my bingo card was that they would be the most supportive
[35:23] people. So I've gotten wildly more, you
[35:26] know, positivity than than hate. Anyway, good for you, man.
[35:28] But it's, you know, there's some dweebs out there for sure.
[35:31] No matter what you do, no matter what, they don't hate nobodies.
[35:33] Yeah, yeah, I so I did a few of those things, man.
[35:37] So I'll go back to fasting, Kozub.
[35:39] And I did that at the beginning of last year.
[35:41] I thought you're gonna say drink the beer.
[35:43] So we're. Also good at that, yeah.
[35:44] You're not supposed to drink beer when you're fast.
[35:46] That might be a sport I'm good at, but we did that and I had
[35:50] like a pretty wild experience doing it.
[35:51] And I'm a huge fan of it. Like I don't know why it's life
[35:55] changing. Unless there's something you
[35:56] know of like you're you've got some illness where, you know, it
[35:59] might be diabetes or something where, you know, you have to
[36:02] watch, like you should try that shit.
[36:04] Yeah, it's free. You can do it right now.
[36:06] And and it's cheap and it's cheap.
[36:08] You. Just you.
[36:08] Know how much money I saved for 30 days?
[36:11] Yeah. Well, crazy, yeah.
[36:12] You could figure that out man. It's 3000 bucks.
[36:15] So basically when we did it, it was hard, but for me, I'm like
[36:21] you, I love to eat like I'm and I'm never full and like I'm just
[36:24] a foodie. I love to eat.
[36:26] But when I was doing it, I'm like, okay, this is neat.
[36:28] And I had these little check in moments and I remember one time
[36:31] driving home from a restaurant because I had to go to this this
[36:35] it was a family dinner. I didn't want to miss it.
[36:38] Drank club soda the whole time I was driving home in the snow.
[36:41] I was about 3 days into the fast at this point and it was snowing
[36:45] outside. And I had this moment of clarity
[36:47] that was like, I could see every snowflake in detail and I could
[36:50] hear the tires going through the snow.
[36:53] And I just had this like total moment of clarity.
[36:55] And I'm like, I wonder if that's like, it's probably survival
[36:58] instinct kick. Yeah, it's probably like, OK,
[37:00] you better go hunt something or you better go find a food source
[37:03] or something like that. And that was an incredible
[37:06] moment. And then the big thing for me
[37:07] too, yeah, I lost some weight doing this, but I had the same
[37:10] thing with the inflammation drop down.
[37:12] I didn't realize how much I was carrying.
[37:15] Like you could see it in my face.
[37:16] Like I literally shrunk up during that period.
[37:19] So it was a great reset. And then that that kicked off
[37:22] ours because last year I ran 1/2 marathon, which I told you
[37:26] before, like I fucking hate running.
[37:27] Like if there's one thing that I don't want to do, it's running.
[37:30] And I, I was last year one and done, like I might go do one
[37:34] with Oscar this year 'cause he's going out to do a 5K.
[37:37] So I, I might go do that just to support him.
[37:39] But. Like that's a warm up.
[37:40] He like that's like that's where he.
[37:42] Starts that's where they there's Eddie Eddie running you run a
[37:44] mile is great 5K is right anything.
[37:46] Yeah, and I, I try and like I'm still a big dude.
[37:48] I'm, you know, 290 lbs. I, I still try and do a 5K in
[37:51] sub 30. So like, that's my pace on those
[37:54] and it's not impressive, but. Like in 30 days.
[37:56] Yeah, yeah, do it. 3030 minutes. 30 minutes 5K is is fast.
[38:00] Yeah, it's. 90 or five. I don't have a 30 minute 5K.
[38:04] Yeah, I get I'm gassed at the end, but I can do it.
[38:06] So I, you know, it's all relative.
[38:08] And then my half marathon time, I was like 2, almost 220.
[38:12] So again, like super hard and yeah, tired and yeah, but it was
[38:16] fun. It was great to do it, man.
[38:18] Yeah, it's, it's cool like that. The energy.
[38:20] The runner's high is wild. Like the runner's high, you get
[38:23] crossed. The finish line is pretty,
[38:24] pretty insane. Yeah.
[38:25] Yeah, but it's fun to do it, man.
[38:27] And I think you just got to figure some shit out and I think
[38:29] you got to go as you as you learn.
[38:31] Like I think you got to go and just do shit and find community
[38:35] too. Like that's the other thing.
[38:36] I had that exact same experience too, because, you know, I'm a
[38:39] way bigger dude than most of the guys that were at the start line
[38:42] for that. And it was the same thing.
[38:43] It was all positivity. It was all, yeah, you know,
[38:46] we're going to go, we're going to go get it done.
[38:48] And then same thing with gym culture too, man.
[38:50] I know there's some people that I talked to that are kind of
[38:52] intimidated when they're out of shape to go to the gym.
[38:55] And it's like, no, trust me, you just got to go.
[38:59] Like, and there's guys, and I'm sure you're the same as me.
[39:01] Like I'm never going to laugh at somebody at the gym.
[39:04] I'm never going to throw shade. If anything it's the opposite if
[39:07] I see you. Struggling.
[39:09] I went with you in the gym once. Well, you're fucking legs.
[39:12] You. Know I made him do a leg Dad,
[39:13] I'm like, well, and fuck you, I know you.
[39:16] So you know, that sense of community is out there if you
[39:19] just kind of put yourself out there.
[39:20] And sometimes the more you put yourself out there, the more
[39:23] positive it gets, which is like kind of counterintuitive.
[39:26] Right. And and you will get sometimes
[39:28] like the losers, you will get like, like I've just people go
[39:31] like it's intimidating. Yeah, it is intimidating and
[39:33] doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
[39:34] You you might get someone like I might get somebody that laughs
[39:37] at me running shirtless. And that's the reality of it.
[39:39] But at the end of the day, they laughed at me and like, it's, it
[39:43] seems like the end of the world, but it's really not.
[39:45] And like, I'm not going to stop living my life.
[39:48] And for a while I did. And I stopped living my life
[39:50] that I wanted to live because I was worried about public opinion
[39:53] and other people. And I just, you know, I'm just
[39:55] like, I'm not going to do that anymore.
[39:56] And if that's their coping mechanism, let it be their
[39:58] coping. It says way more and that's why
[40:00] like people ask me all the time, like, doesn't that bother you on
[40:02] your social media? Like hater comments?
[40:03] I'm like, it says so much more about that person than it does
[40:06] about me. Like not you could.
[40:07] I've never had a comment that like just made me like I got
[40:10] buddies that in the weight loss community who are posting or
[40:13] even much much bigger than I am in the social media world have
[40:15] more followers. And they're like, they'll
[40:17] they'll lose sleep for two days over a comment.
[40:19] And I'm like, dude, like I can see how sad they are through
[40:23] their comment. Like the more outrageous the
[40:25] words are that they're saying, the more I'm like, your kind of
[40:27] your life probably sucks. And if this is the way you need
[40:30] to do it, especially from a burner account, like you can't
[40:32] get punched in the face when you have a burner account, right?
[40:34] So it's it's sad that that's why it never bothers me ever.
[40:39] Good, that's awesome. So go back to as you're going
[40:44] through this weight loss journey, making all these great
[40:47] changes physically, we've talked about it.
[40:50] What about like the mental side of things?
[40:52] Like how do you keep yourself in check through that and what do
[40:55] you do to take care of your mental health?
[40:56] Yeah, so I mean, it's been a process like at 500 lbs I had
[41:00] basically the worst mental health you can get.
[41:01] At 500 lbs. I was trying to eat myself into
[41:03] early grave. And then to be honest, tried
[41:05] some attempts to take myself out like in in the moment too,
[41:08] right. So I basically needed an
[41:11] overhaul and everything, but I did the same approach that I did
[41:14] with my physical health, with my mental health.
[41:15] Like when I first started running, it wasn't because I
[41:18] believed in myself or I loved myself, anything like that.
[41:20] I was just like, I was just pissed off.
[41:22] I was mad, but the way that my life was.
[41:25] And I just said, I'm going to go do something that's going to
[41:27] cause me, you know, to be in pain, to suffer through it,
[41:31] right? Because this is the position I
[41:32] put myself in, right? I take full responsibility for
[41:35] how I got to the way I got. And so as I started to kind of
[41:39] build my confidence and hit some goals and stuff like that, that
[41:42] slowly became less of hatred and more of loving myself and trying
[41:46] to treat. Because before it was just like
[41:47] the pain of running and the pain of lifting felt great because at
[41:51] least there was some sort of pain that was another dopamine
[41:53] fix, right? And so I just got obsessed with
[41:55] the process. OK, what can I look at today?
[41:57] What, what can I look up in my mental health today?
[41:59] How can I start rewinding my perspective a little bit more?
[42:02] And, and that's, that's just been a process throughout the
[42:04] whole thing, Like the exact same process I've done with my
[42:06] physical, I've done with my mental.
[42:08] And I and my, my wife always laughs at me because like she
[42:11] never, I'm like one of the only couples who's wife that I know
[42:13] of the wife never negs. Like my wife never negs me
[42:16] because she's like, I never have to go and point at things in
[42:19] your life that you have to fix because you come to me once a
[42:22] week and say, Hey, you know how I did this thing last week?
[42:24] I think I was doing it from a place of like, you know, an
[42:27] underlining selfish reason. And I just want to talk because
[42:29] I got obsessed with like digging deep for the reasons why I was
[42:32] doing stuff. And and it just made me 10 times
[42:35] more healthy and 10 times my perspective just way better.
[42:39] How's that been with the kiddos? Like they've watched that where
[42:42] how they feeling about things? What kind of conversations have
[42:44] you had with them? Yeah, so one of the things I did
[42:46] as like a dad is like one of the things that I've, I've, I've
[42:49] always wanted, I'm a protector. I'm a, I'm this dad who wants to
[42:52] take care of them. And, and the one of the things,
[42:53] cuz I have daughters. So daughters will change you if
[42:55] you, if you let them change you. And so like I used to, I used to
[42:59] try to like make my daughters have mental, mental like health
[43:03] and strength like I did So like they would come home and some
[43:05] kid said something to them and you know, five years old and I'm
[43:08] like, just don't let it bother you.
[43:09] Or, you know, would, would kind of speak again and say, Hey, but
[43:13] but you're not, you are beautiful.
[43:14] You are amazing. And I thought I was doing the
[43:17] right thing. And then I kind of as I dug
[43:19] deeper into my in my daughter's perspective like that is
[43:21] amazing. I do got to speak life and, and
[43:23] things into my daughter. But I'm saying, what does my
[43:25] daughter need right now? Does she need me to constantly
[43:27] correct her perspective as if she's like a full, fully
[43:30] developed, developed adult and say, hey, listen, don't let it
[43:33] bother you? Or does my daughter just needed
[43:34] me to go, hey, I understand how that feels.
[43:37] I understand that's the pain, you know?
[43:39] I understand that that makes you upset.
[43:41] I'm here to be available for you to talk to, right?
[43:45] Because at the end of the day, I'm not trying to make my
[43:46] daughter a perfect behaved human or make her fully developed, you
[43:51] know, person. Now what I'm trying to do is
[43:53] make that connection available so as she turns 161718 into
[43:57] adulthood, that she now knows that dad's a safe place who
[44:00] validates the things. I'm not that guy who's like, oh,
[44:02] my kids can just run rampant and I don't have to have to
[44:04] discipline them. I'm definitely a disciplinarian.
[44:06] But when my kid comes to me, I, I don't want to sit there and
[44:09] correct every single feeling that they have and not let them
[44:12] sit in it because that's what I think I should do.
[44:14] I think I should constantly correct if I'm upset.
[44:15] I got to just be happy. Oh, let me, let me, let me give
[44:18] you this treat to be happy because that's what I always
[44:20] did. But I'm like, my kids just need
[44:21] to know that that I'm available to be with them and mentor them
[44:25] as they get older. That's way more important than
[44:27] kind of correcting what they're feeling in the moment.
[44:30] And that's kind of like been a massive change for me is like, I
[44:33] look outside my perspective. What does this kid need now?
[44:36] Because you got a generation of, you know, people our age now who
[44:40] are, don't talk to their parents who who, you know, have gone no
[44:43] contact, all this crazy stuff. Because they might have been
[44:46] corrected and taught and, you know, had this, but they never
[44:48] built a relationship with their parents that exceeded this like
[44:51] authoritative figure, right? So I want my kids to be able to
[44:54] kind of connect and and approach me for anything that's more
[44:56] important than than them kind of behaving.
[44:58] Yeah, that's powerful, man. Super powerful.
[45:01] And then you know, and I know your, your kids are young and
[45:03] Congrats again on your, your newborn.
[45:05] Thank you. Fast forward a couple years,
[45:07] your kids are sitting right there and we asked them, tell us
[45:11] about your dad. What?
[45:12] What's the legacy piece you want them to say?
[45:14] I want them to know dad came back from rock bottom.
[45:17] Like like I've been very open with my kids and obviously
[45:21] there's details. I don't tell my kids, but I want
[45:24] my kids to see they're they're they're lucky because out of all
[45:27] the people that follow me and all the people that are watching
[45:28] this journey, they got a front row seat to go, OK, this guy can
[45:32] come back from basically the farthest you could possibly go,
[45:35] right? And so I don't have to be
[45:37] perfect. I don't, it doesn't matter what
[45:39] situation I find myself in today, whether that's financial,
[45:42] whether that's whatever that built a legacy of it doesn't
[45:44] matter where you started, it matters where you're going.
[45:47] And that's, and that's what I want from them.
[45:48] I want them to know that life is messy.
[45:49] Life is hard. They're going to, they're not
[45:51] going to be perfect. They're going to go through
[45:52] struggles, but they can always kind of come back because Dad
[45:55] did it first. And then how about your dad?
[45:58] So super hard working guy, big Family Guy, What?
[46:01] What's his legacy piece? Yeah, so my, my dad, my dad's
[46:04] like a courageous, courageous guy, right?
[46:07] My, both my parents, my, my, they, they escaped communism,
[46:10] you know, Faith. My dad's a pastor.
[46:12] Faith is very much a, you know, a driver in the family.
[46:16] They had nine kids. They just, they were very much
[46:18] like a we'll just make it happen.
[46:20] Like my, my parents, like you, you tell anybody that they had
[46:22] nine kids, escaped A communist country, got smuggled out.
[46:25] You know, they had to leave two kids behind at one point, you
[46:27] know, when they first left because they couldn't say bye to
[46:29] anybody. They just left.
[46:30] They're getting smuggled with mobsters.
[46:32] You know, my sister's drinking mud water in a ditch when she's
[46:35] nine months old because, you know, the cops are kind of going
[46:38] over top of the ditch. And she was crying as a baby.
[46:41] So the scoop that mud water gave it to her.
[46:42] Like my parents, just like they got to this country.
[46:45] My dad is now, you know, has a doctorate degree in theology.
[46:48] My mom started a business. This is like, they made it
[46:49] happen against all odds. Everyone else would have counted
[46:52] it out. Everyone else would have made
[46:53] some sort of excuses. At least my parents are like,
[46:55] they just made it happen. They went and they grinded and
[46:57] they worked really hard. And that's a legacy.
[46:59] And I hope to take that hard work mentality and now take it
[47:03] and evolve it to like hard work, but also let's now, you know,
[47:09] take care of ourselves too, right?
[47:10] Because my, my parent, my, my parents are very much like that.
[47:13] Everyone else kind of gets the best and we'll give ourselves
[47:16] the worst, right? And we won't take care of
[47:19] ourselves, but we'll take care of everybody else because
[47:20] they're very serving and loving and all that kind of stuff.
[47:23] Now I'm going, I loving my kids is loving myself because that's
[47:27] how I'm around for longer, right.
[47:28] And so that's that's kind of legacy that I hope to take that
[47:31] hard working, evolve it, and then my kids will take that and
[47:33] become even better than and that's every dad's dream, right?
[47:35] Is their kids just turn out way better than they are.
[47:37] Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it should be.
[47:40] Yeah. And so look forward a little
[47:43] bit, man, we know we got high rocks coming up.
[47:45] What's what's fitness look like? And where do you want to be in,
[47:48] you know, 12 months, 24 months? Like what do you?
[47:50] What do you? Got on the yeah.
[47:51] So like I'm at my plan is to drop the, the last like kind of
[47:54] £70 that I'm going to just kind of on this journey.
[47:57] I mean, I'm sure I'll drop weight further than that, but
[47:59] I'm going to get down to about £250 and I got some like wild
[48:02] goals. I want to you know, we in, in
[48:05] June, we ran me and a couple buddies ran across Tennessee or
[48:09] attempted to run across Tennessee to raise awareness for
[48:11] for a girl named Callie. And and so we're doing that
[48:15] again. We kind of just want to do these
[48:16] really long runs, like like on 11 days notice, I found these
[48:19] guys were running across Tennessee and I'm trained for it
[48:21] and I'm like, I'll just hang for as long as I possibly can and
[48:25] ended up making 82 miles out of the 175 miles ended up in like
[48:29] in in Tennessee at the ER, they found I had a blood clot
[48:32] potentially. But it was like such a cool
[48:34] experience. And, and I just want to continue
[48:36] to keep pushing my body and to see if I can use my body to now
[48:39] raise, you know, awareness or build belief in somebody else.
[48:42] It's all just about the reason I didn't like I'm just going to go
[48:45] to the gym and walk every day on an incline and, and which is
[48:48] much better for fat loss and much more sustainable and, you
[48:50] know, eat in a super low calorie deficit and drop all of my
[48:53] weight super fast is because I wanted to kind of say this is
[48:56] what my body can do while it's at where it's where it's at.
[48:59] I can do amazing things in the pursuit of getting better.
[49:02] Right. And that's why you see me as a
[49:03] guy who's, you know, I get, I get all the time.
[49:05] People go like it's so dangerous for you to run that, that, you
[49:08] know, at your at your size. I'm like, I do it multiple days
[49:10] a week and I don't get injured. I've been injured in a couple
[49:13] years, right, other than some I did something stupid in in
[49:16] September and got hurt a little bit.
[49:18] But but I do handstand push ups and, and I'm building body
[49:21] weight dips. You know, I'm doing handstand
[49:22] push ups at 370 lbs And people like you shouldn't do that.
[49:25] It's going to destroy your shoulder.
[49:26] And I'm like, I know a little bit more about my body and the
[49:29] capabilities of it, but I want to be able to do amazing things
[49:32] where I'm at because I don't want people, you know, you
[49:35] don't, when you put food in the oven, you don't put it in that's
[49:37] already cooked. It gets in the oven to cook.
[49:39] And so I don't need to be perfect before I start trying
[49:42] and becoming somebody that I'm really proud of.
[49:44] And that's kind of been the whole process.
[49:45] So dropping the last, you know, 70 lbs this year, I have a, a
[49:49] little redemption with the Honolulu Marathon.
[49:51] I had to, I took a DNF at the Honolulu Marathon in December.
[49:55] I got like super sick and yeah, I ended up puking multiple days
[49:59] before and then I ended up puking.
[50:00] I only ran half of it. So I have a I got to do a sub
[50:03] five on the like a under 5 hour marathon by December.
[50:07] That's kind of the the main goal.
[50:08] So good for you, man. That's kind of the redemption.
[50:10] And then a lot of little side quests in between.
[50:12] I got high rocks and you know, you know, I'm doing the we're
[50:15] doing the the run across Tennessee.
[50:17] We turned into a relay this time.
[50:19] So let's talk about that's 172 miles it.
[50:21] Was 175 miles, yeah. So me and two other guys, Clay
[50:25] and Tyson, they're just, I just knew them from social media and
[50:27] then they say they're running it and I'm like, they're not like
[50:30] creators or anything. So I'm like.
[50:31] What do you do? You run for 8 hours.
[50:33] Go to. Sleep 8 to 12 hours.
[50:35] Yeah, you go like literally you get up at 4:00 in the morning,
[50:38] run to the start line. We drove to Virginia, right?
[50:41] That's we started, we went to the line.
[50:43] We did 31 miles the first day, right.
[50:45] And then you just for over 5 days we tried to do 175 miles.
[50:48] And I knew it was a bad idea for me because it was June and I
[50:52] hadn't run more than like 5 miles since January since I ran
[50:55] my marathon because I was cutting some weight.
[50:57] So I knew I wasn't prepared to the slightest.
[50:59] But I'm like, it's a good 'cause you know, this girl Callie has a
[51:03] rare genetic deficiency. You know that.
[51:05] So it's like there's only like I think like 20-30 thirty people
[51:08] that have it worldwide. And so they don't know what life
[51:11] is like effects her motor skills and all that stuff.
[51:13] So they, they suffer. They don't choose to suffer on a
[51:14] daily basis. They just suffer.
[51:16] They have to figure things out. So I'm like, why don't I go down
[51:19] there and, and do some manufacturing suffering to at
[51:21] least bring some awareness to, to this girl.
[51:23] And those guys ended up becoming like my, my closest friends and
[51:26] you know, I'm close to the family now and all that kind of
[51:28] stuff. But six or six or eight days of
[51:30] fucking? Yeah, so like I like I said, I I
[51:32] ended up only making 82 of them. I did ended up by the third day
[51:36] I had done like 60 something miles and ended up in the ER and
[51:39] and another one of our guys, you know, ended up in a bad spot
[51:42] too. And then at the very end, we saw
[51:44] Cali with her Walker, who they said would never walk and is
[51:47] actually now walking without a Walker.
[51:49] She she kind of crossed into the Georgia Line like first, which
[51:52] is like the coolest experience. And so that's the kind of stuff
[51:55] I just love doing is like, what can my body now?
[51:57] My body was always the thing that disqualified me, right?
[52:00] Like I, I, you know, you, you on paper, I had a great life.
[52:04] I, you know, I buy my, my cars are paid for cash and you know,
[52:08] I built my house, all that kind of stuff.
[52:10] And then but I was £500 and that was the one thing that I always
[52:14] felt disqualified me. And now I get to use the journey
[52:16] of overcoming the thing that one time disqualified me to, you
[52:19] know, help people and inspire people and kind of push real
[52:22] change. I think that's kind of like what
[52:24] I was put on this earth to do. Well, go back to how we started
[52:27] about you getting shade for being an athlete, Yeah, and
[52:29] listen to that fucking resume. Yeah, right.
[52:32] Yeah, I mean, it's awesome. I'm and I'm so for like I, I,
[52:36] and I understand for a while I was like, you know, I always say
[52:38] I'm like, I'm not the outlier. Like I, I now will admit that
[52:42] like I'm a different person than most people my size.
[52:45] Like I got buddies who have dropped.
[52:47] I got buddies who they're starting like they couldn't walk
[52:49] at 3:50 and I'm running a marathon at 360 lbs, right.
[52:53] So like I, I'm like, I have kind of now feel like I'm the bridge
[52:57] between the overweight and the athletic.
[52:58] And kind of my whole mission is like take up space where you
[53:02] don't feel like you belong and you don't get to the start line.
[53:04] You belong there. If you put in the work and you
[53:06] showed up, that's all that matters and you just belong.
[53:09] You belong there, right? So that's kind of the mission is
[53:12] just like how many people? Because there's so many people
[53:15] in like there's so many, I mean, forget dads, every person,
[53:19] there's so many people with potential that don't have belief
[53:22] in themselves that end up getting into a bad spot and
[53:24] ended up never coming out of it because they think they're the
[53:27] only ones that struggle. They think they're the only
[53:29] ones, you know, we have live in a mental health epidemic where
[53:33] like everybody struggles with similar things and everybody
[53:37] thinks they're completely alone in it, right?
[53:39] And people die because they think they're alone and they're
[53:42] isolated. And so like the more people that
[53:44] can talk about it, the more people that can do things on the
[53:46] forefront, the more we can push kind of.
[53:49] And it and it might not be this massive change and you know, the
[53:51] entire world is going to transform.
[53:53] But if one or two people get inspired by somebody else who
[53:56] you know, started even worse off than them and was able to
[53:59] accomplish something, then, then there's really no excuses out
[54:01] there. Not only do you do all these
[54:03] things like sometimes shirtless, but you also do them in one bone
[54:06] clothing. I can see look at this
[54:07] transition. One bone.
[54:09] One. Bone, yeah.
[54:11] We, yeah, we were talking, dude, we're actually wearing the same
[54:13] T-shirt right now. And One Bone has been a huge
[54:16] supporter of ours and good, good friends of ours.
[54:18] And I know they're good friends of yours as well, too.
[54:21] What's great about One Bone is if you're listening to this and
[54:23] you're a bigger dude who, you know, puts their arms up and
[54:26] their shirt rides up the belly and, like, can't get into
[54:29] anything comfortable. Think that fashion isn't really
[54:32] for you because you go to the mall and you can't find shit.
[54:35] That's where one bone comes in and, and mine with them.
[54:38] I've I've been rocking their stuff since 2019 probably.
[54:43] And I've gone up and down a little bit.
[54:45] But you've gone up and down quite a bit in the the line size
[54:48] wise, right? Yeah, like 2019, I think I was
[54:51] in a 2 and then I blew up at the COVID era was like 2021.
[54:55] So my biggest I have is A5, which I still have which crazy
[54:59] enough like these bullet Tees, they still look brand new.
[55:02] I have because every fact I know is that you have that one shirt
[55:05] you wash 10 times more than any other shirt because that's your
[55:07] like good feel, you know, your good fitting shirt.
[55:10] And so I've washed that thing 400 times and it still looks
[55:12] brand new. And so, yeah, I have a 5 and now
[55:15] I'm down to a, I'm currently wearing a three, but I should be
[55:17] in a 2. It's a little bit, a little bit
[55:19] big on me now. But yeah, I, I, I like, I like
[55:21] those guys. I like to rock with local guys
[55:23] and, and, and for me, like I'm all torso.
[55:26] So for me it helps. Like I got, I'm just, I'm like 6
[55:28] feet tall, but I got a 30 is my leg like my leg length?
[55:30] So I'm super short legs. So for me it works out great.
[55:33] That's funny. You were talking about like
[55:35] other people see you when you're doing stuff and you're doing
[55:37] these runs and you're like, man, but you don't even like sweat.
[55:39] It's like, yeah, it's the fucking clothes I have.
[55:41] That's that's the number one comment I have on this one.
[55:44] One of my first videos that went viral was like, you're not
[55:46] sweating. There's no way.
[55:47] I'm like, I'm sweating here because I say like I'm 365 lbs.
[55:52] I've been running for 2 1/2 hours.
[55:53] Everything hurts something something like that.
[55:54] But like I'm still, but I'm still going And they're like,
[55:57] you're not even sweating. I'm like, yeah, it's the shirt.
[55:59] Like, yeah, so, but I'm a black shirt T-shirt kind of guy, so.
[56:03] You and I both, man, we're we're probably was this episode like
[56:06] 41 or something like that? I've worn the same T-shirt every
[56:09] episode. Super predictable.
[56:10] It's a uniform. Yeah.
[56:11] Hasn't washed it for. Hasn't maybe five times.
[56:14] Maybe 5 I just. Leave it here.
[56:15] I just put it on every time I come in.
[56:17] Yeah, yeah, I did a couple of the runs.
[56:19] I I was wearing a scoop as well, too.
[56:21] It's just a just. A if you look at any of my
[56:22] races, I'm literally wearing I'm pretty sure I'm wearing A1 bone
[56:25] in my first marathon. Yeah, second marathon high rocks
[56:27] everything. Shout out, but also shout out to
[56:29] be honest. Makes it look makes me look
[56:31] better. Yeah.
[56:32] Like if you you take my shirt off and or put this on like
[56:36] people are like that is not the same body.
[56:38] Like it. It does good, good things for
[56:40] all the right places. The boys got magic.
[56:42] And if you're listening there, Adam and Jake, he needs a size
[56:44] 2. Yeah.
[56:45] Hook our boy up. It's like women with makeup,
[56:47] right? It's one bone for men.
[56:49] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that might not make the
[56:51] brand catalog, but and then tell the people where they can
[56:57] connect. Man, how do we follow the
[56:58] journey? Yeah, so I'm Johnny Goes running
[57:00] on Instagram, on YouTube. That's kind of the two main
[57:03] things I rock with. And yeah.
[57:05] You got a big following too like 180,000 or something on.
[57:08] There, I think between the two, yeah, so I have 129 on Instagram
[57:12] and and like I don't know, 40,000 or something little
[57:15] little bit on TikTok, but not much little boy.
[57:17] What, what, what was your breakthrough there like?
[57:19] How did you figure out how to get that kind of audience?
[57:23] I just, I just started like, yeah, I just started posting up
[57:26] leading up to the to the marathon there.
[57:28] And then really it was just the transformations doing some
[57:30] crazy. Like I think my I had a video in
[57:33] last year in the spring hit like 119 million views and I was just
[57:36] like going viral hitting couple million like multiple times a
[57:39] month, like for like a ton. So I just had this steady growth
[57:43] of like 34500 followers every single day for like I think like
[57:46] 11 or 12 months. So it's just like steady growth
[57:49] and it's, it's mainly just like the, you know, the
[57:51] transformation. People see what I do at my body
[57:53] size, it kind of is a jaw, jaw dropper.
[57:56] Like for sure. Not that, not the sound, you
[57:58] know, whatever, but you know, the burpees, the, you know, the
[58:01] handstand, push ups, all that kind of stuff, people.
[58:02] Not the norm. No, you know, right, like so so
[58:05] kind of drops them and they're like, oh, you ran a marathon at
[58:07] that size, like that kind of that kind of does it.
[58:09] And that's, and that's the whole point is like, if you go to a
[58:11] race, like there's all body types, like there's people who
[58:15] are my, I went to the New York City Marathon.
[58:16] There's people my size running it.
[58:18] There's like, and then you're getting passed by a 65 year old
[58:20] lady as well. Because because the marathon is
[58:23] like, it's hilarious. You got like all different
[58:25] bodies. You got the, the, the Jim Gurley
[58:27] who's perfectly so very fit in the same, you know, same pace as
[58:31] me, same pace as the 65 year old like, and everyone's just doing
[58:35] their own thing and everyone's on their own and everyone's just
[58:37] happy to be there. How about the power walkers?
[58:39] That's. The one that blows my mind.
[58:41] They look so smooth. So smooth and the pace is just
[58:44] so. If you complete a marathon is a
[58:46] distance, it's not, it's not a method, right.
[58:48] So I got AI got a bunch of hate on, you know, you can't because
[58:51] for my last marathon, I ended up hurting myself doing, I was
[58:54] doing a box step up with like 100 LB sandbag and I was doing a
[58:57] lateral 1 and, and I hurt my, my hamstring.
[58:59] And so I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to run 2 minutes
[59:02] on one minute off and walk the whole thing.
[59:05] Well, everybody that's not that is a marathon runner is like,
[59:08] yeah, that's a great strategy, just as valid.
[59:10] And people who are not like, oh, you walked part of your
[59:13] marathon, your average pace was in the 14.
[59:15] Like it's like, no, if if you show up and you do the thing
[59:18] like you, you, you deserve the the the $15 medal that they give
[59:22] you. Like you, you paid 200 bucks for
[59:23] this race, this race bib. Yeah, yeah.
[59:27] That's great, man. So a couple things to close us
[59:30] out today. One of our favorite things on
[59:33] here is telling dad jokes. Did you bring us a dad joke?
[59:36] I I have one, yeah. Let's have it.
[59:38] Why? Why did the peanut not walk in
[59:40] the alley? I don't know.
[59:43] He's afraid to get assaulted. Salted peanuts.
[59:47] There you go, and. You got to tell the other one
[59:48] too though. I don't want to set you up.
[59:51] With the Mario one, Yeah, Yeah. What kind of jeans does Mario
[59:54] wear? Denim, Denim, denim.
[59:57] Denim, denim, denim. There it is.
[1:00:01] Anything else you wanna add, man?
[1:00:02] Anything we haven't covered? No, I think it's all good.
[1:00:05] Being at dad is the best you guys are, obviously.
[1:00:07] You can be posting about this weekend, about the high rocks
[1:00:09] this weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, be there and
[1:00:12] yeah, gonna have some fun. Got a little videographer there
[1:00:14] and meeting up with a cool team and so it'll be fine.
[1:00:17] I'll love that. Yeah, good luck at it for sure.
[1:00:19] Yeah. I'm excited.
[1:00:20] This is my first solo. Like I've never done a high rock
[1:00:22] solo, so I gotta do. I don't know if you guys know
[1:00:24] much about high rocks, but the solo is kind of a big deal.
[1:00:26] So yeah. Yeah, we learned just a little
[1:00:28] bit. We had, I think, you know, Lexie
[1:00:29] and her husband Brett that were on.
[1:00:31] They taught us a little bit about it and then we got him
[1:00:34] down to, there was a Toronto event going on that we had
[1:00:36] another friend go to. They sure put on a show.
[1:00:39] When they do those, man, they're they're a big deal.
[1:00:40] And this one's like, this was a State Farm Arena in in Phoenix.
[1:00:44] Like, so first NFL stadium. It's tailgate ever.
[1:00:47] They're tailgating all on Saturday.
[1:00:49] Like it's gonna be absolutely wild.
[1:00:50] So yeah, I'm excited for it for sure.
[1:00:52] That's cool, man. Well, we'll be rooting for you,
[1:00:54] dude. Appreciate it.
[1:00:55] Appreciate your time coming in today.
[1:00:56] And yeah, keep keep doing awesome things.
[1:00:58] That will follow up on your journey too, so we wanna see you
[1:01:01] get to 250. Oh yeah, by the end of the year
[1:01:03] I will. I'll come back with that 5 hour
[1:01:04] marathon medal. There you go.
[1:01:06] Welcome. Anytime.
[1:01:07] Buy it off for 15 bucks. He said it was only 15.
[1:01:12] Yeah, alright bro. Appreciate you.
[1:01:14] Sounds good. Awesome.
[1:01:15] Thanks guys.

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