This man traded his 'dad bod' for 6-pack abs after losing 131 pounds
Wellness Wins is an original Yahoo series that shares the inspiring stories of people who have shed pounds healthfully.
Shimmy Godwin Mekbeb is 39 years old, is 5-foot-9, and currently weighs 164 pounds. In 2009, after realizing the costs of being overweight, he rediscovered his love of long-distance running. This is the story of his weight-loss journey.
The turning point
I was married with two kids and an overweight wife, and my “dad bod” was justified because I was basically just a life support unit for the family. I stopped caring about my personal health and well-being.
The real turning point was when I had to go to a big and tall store to buy a pair of jeans. I had never been in a store like that before, and my regular store brand jeans rang up for $59 for just one pair. I remember being offended by having to pay a premium for the pants. That was the last straw. The economics of being fat hit me.
The changes
I started exercising while in Canada one cold winter. I’ve always worked from home in the early morning hours; then, once my kids got up, I would be on daddy duty for the day. There was a gym with an indoor running track nearby that also had a daycare center where they would watch your kids for two hours a day. So I signed up for that and started running around the track for two hours every morning. I was a long-distance runner in high school and basically started running again to feel like myself and to do something familiar. Running made me feel younger instantly.
When I first started, I couldn’t even complete one lap. After my first month, I had lost 40 pounds just going from doing nothing to doing something. Running wasn’t a dreaded workout for me. I like audiobooks, so I would listen to those to pass the time. I think if you classify something as work, your brain will make you dread it, and you’ll start making up excuses for why you can’t do it.
Initially, most of my weight loss was a result of exercise, but about three years ago I decided to modify my diet. It had a huge effect on my appearance. I count protein content and am mindful of sugars. I read the label on everything I buy. No high-fructose corn syrup. Nothing frozen, rarely canned, no fast food, no soda, almost no dairy, minimal juice, and not much bread. My diet is strict, but I believe you have to experience some pain to get the desired results. Buddha says all living things suffer, some too little, some too much, but all livings things suffer. So, in other words, if you go through life trying to avoid pain, you’re only making yourself weaker in comparison to those willing to walk through the fire.
The after
After losing weight, I was going through a failing marriage and child custody family court ordeal. I felt pretty miserable, and I think the running and workout time was my only refuge. There were lots of external things going on, so I didn’t really take notice of how I was feeling. Honestly, I didn’t care about the results; I was just running to stay sane. Now I like to think it all worked out OK.
Emotionally, I felt the same. I think all ex-fat people still feel fat on the inside. I don’t really notice that I’m lighter/faster than other people until I do a race and see the other people struggling. I didn’t give up, because I don’t really give up on anything. I think that is a mentality unique to long-distance runners. I looked forward to it because I just wanted to get faster, which was my ultimate goal.
The maintenance
Now I’m doing 16-hour intermittent fasting. I wake up before sunrise, run for an hour, then eat and have two or three BCAA [branched chain amino acid] shakes with banana, coconut milk, orange juice, ginger, kale, and sometimes pineapple or watermelon. I eat a lot of food for breakfast around 9 or 10 a.m. A typical meal would be three bowls of cereal, two to four egg whites scrambled with tomato and avocado on a small piece of bread. For lunch, I’ll have something like rice and beans, veggie pad Thai or sushi. Then maybe one last shake in the afternoon around 4 p.m. Then no more calories until the next day. I don’t know any other way to get the results I want other than fasting like this.
I keep running because it’s fun. I also do a HIIT [high-intensity interval training] cardio workout before bed every night. I work out to exhaustion, and I sleep to recover after workouts. Refueling and rest is crucial when hitting it hard. Good exercise can and should be a little strenuous to feel good.
The struggles
Stretch marks are not cool; they last almost forever. And living in America is tough for me. I feel like being fat has become a way of life here. Not enough people are pedestrians in America, let alone runners. It’s like people don’t use their legs as much here.
Advice
Your personal daily habits will make or break you. You’re better off following the advice of credible people with results than trying to be a know-it-all and reinvent the wheel. It also helps to restrict your diet to just healthy good stuff — meaning, do an audit of your fridge/cupboard and remove everything that’s not healthy for you. Sodas, corn syrup, bread, chips … stuff with no protein or nutrition value that even ants avoid should probably be removed.
In general, try to be more self-aware. Travel the world, learn, and look in the mirror often to self-reflect and make sure you are happy with what you see. If not, modify and make changes, but do it for yourself. A healthy body begins internally with what you digest and how you spend your time. Our bodies need food, exercise, sex, sleep, massage, etc., and many people neglect their body in many areas, which is very easy to do if you are in relationships, working your ass off, or are just plain uninformed.
Lastly, don’t forget the obvious: Most changes are painful. Weight loss is painful; so is muscle building, so is fasting, so is getting six-pack abs. There is no permanent solution other than giving yourself more pain to realize your gains, and the pain is at its highest when you are heavy and just starting out. It does get easier with time, but it’s never a cakewalk. Daily motivation and habits/routine are crucial to progress. It’s a very unorthodox lifestyle, and it’s especially trying to go at it alone and to go running alone for hours every day or to do floor exercises at home while juicing kale and banana shakes with BCAA powder, but it feels good and makes me Shimmy. So be it.
Ultimately, it boils down to being selfish enough to love yourself and do more for yourself than you are willing to do for others. If you cannot take care of yourself, you are a liability to yourself and everyone around you.
Need more inspiration? Read about our other wellness winners.
Wellness Wins is authored by Andie Mitchell, who underwent a transformative, 135-pound weight loss of her own.
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