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Success Stories

When did you become unhappy with your weight?
I grew up as an overweight kid. I was always tired and had very little energy to do anything. As I got older, I knew I had to make some changes.

So, you were an athlete growing up?
Right, I played sports ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I played basketball, baseball, a little bit of football, so I was very active. I kept up with that activity all the way through college as well. I never was inactive, there was always a season where we has some type of sport going on, so I always stayed in pretty good shape through junior high, high school and college and was very involved in college athletics.

After college, what transpired?
I graduated in ‘03. In ‘04 I signed a contract to play professional basketball in Australia. While working out at Prairie Life about 10 days after I had signed the contract, I went into cardiac arrest to the point where my heart stopped. They had to use a defibrillator to get it going again. I spent the next month and a half in the hospital trying to figure out the details and why it happened. Based on my history I had never had any problems and now all of a sudden, this cardiac arrest. After that, I lost confidence in working out, lost confidence in being active and doing any type of physical activity. I had to forfeit the contract to play professional basketball, which was a really big deal. I took about a four year hiatus from doing any type of physical movement other than hand to mouth and flipping the remote. Last September, after four years of inactivity I was presented with an opportunity to be a part of great fitness challenge at Prairie Life and be their male contestant and work out with Brandon Musick. I spent about 3 months of hard workouts and the main thing that we did, for me, was we changed eating habits. Brandon says you can eat yourself out of any workout that you do. Not only that, but I also gave myself confidence to get back into shape and to be physically fit again and to be active in my lifestyle.

From the day that you left the hospital, obviously you dropped everything you were involved in, what did you do to fill your time and that void?
Eat, I guess. I just ate and didn’t do any type of activity. Really it doesn’t take very much to get out of shape, and it doesn’t take very much to lose any time that you put towards those activities, it becomes part of your life. Right now I come to the gym everyday and that’s just part of our lifestyle now. During that time of not being physically active, it just wasn’t part of our lifestyle, it wasn’t something that we talked about.

How did the opportunity to do the Olathe Weight Loss Challenge come up?
My neighbor is part of the Chamber of Commerce and I guess she was orchestrating it a little bit. She was also the female contestant here, Michelle. She was driving by our house and asked me if I wanted to lose weight.
She just started yelling out the car window, and I was just looking behind me and was like, “Man, has it gotten that bad?” Knowing that I needed to do something, I just needed something to help push me there. Mentally I was ready, after four years of not doing anything and seeing my body dissipate to what it had become, I was mentally ready to do something, this just gave me the opportunity to do it.

Had you tried any kind of diets in that four years or were you totally sedentary in that time period?
I didn’t try anything. Probably the bad part was, because I was so active before and I wanted, I kept that same mentality during those four years as well. I didn’t change any eating habits, I just wasn’t doing anything. I was still taking in a tremendous amount of food and not burning it off.

How long do you think you were mentally starting to think about getting back in shape before you had that catalyst moment?
It was probably about a year, I definitely wanted to, I could see the physical changes on my body and I didn’t like them. I just didn’t feel great either.