I’m pretty sure it was in college that things went fat: Beer, giant burritos, full-sized breaded steaks from a place called Ricobene’s in Chicago, M&M’s, and brownies sent from home. Sadly, bowling wasn’t the exercise method to combat the calorie increase my body was becoming accustomed to.
That was over 40 years ago, when the path to 250 pounds began. God, it was so easy to walk that path.
The path to 180 pounds? Why has that path been so hard?
I won’t completely bore you with 40 years of trying to lose weight, but let’s just say Body for Life didn’t live, Weight Watchers didn’t watch, and willpower couldn’t combat the power of ice cream.
While the “diet” plans helped me roll between 250 and 200, my body seemed to want to live everywhere in the 230s. The difficulty was that I didn’t want to live in the 230s.
Enter 2023
Then came 2023 when two things entered my life: A book by Katrina Ubell and My Body Tutor.
It was April 2023, and I found myself at my annual physical, discussing as I often did with my doctor, my desire to lose weight. I was in my 230-pound weight range, had high blood pressure, and was frustrated. My doctor gave me ideas I had already heard, but then she mentioned a book called How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss by Katrina Ubell.
I know, the world’s longest title for a book, but what the hell? What else do I have to lose except for a few bucks for the Kindle book.
The book reflected on many aspects of eating, things like emotions and the science of food. At its core, though, it worked to have you become more aware of your food and focus on a hunger scale. But then it moved toward the things I never liked or could stick to, the usual “restricting what you ate” concept, specifically sugar and flour.
Look, I know restricting sugar and flour is probably a good thing to get you rebalanced, but in the end, I love a good donut. I just needed to develop the habit that one donut, or even half a donut, is enough, rather than half a dozen.
So, while the basics were there from Katrina, what I didn’t know was that I still needed something more. I needed accountability, someone I didn’t know, someone I would have to explain why I ate the entire cheeseburger, someone who didn’t shame, judge, or even criticize me, just someone I would have to tell everything I ate or drank and any exercise I would do.
I needed Cheryl. Only I didn’t know there was a Cheryl.
Here Comes Cheryl
Still struggling, I heard a dude named Sam Parr on a podcast called My First Million mention he was using this company called My Body Tutor for his diet and exercise accountability. The company rang a bell, and I remembered it being mentioned on another podcast I listened to, from a different dude named Noah Kagan, where Noah gave My Body Tutor accolades for being just what he needed to help get him on a healthier track.
So, there I was, investigating My Body Tutor, and I surprised myself by signing up. At the time I selected the Platinum plan. The plan makes you journal your food every day, and in return you would get comments from your tutor. The more daunting aspect? There would be three phone-call check-ins per week with the tutor. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, the plan isn’t the least expensive thing out there, but after interacting with the founder and owner, Adam Gilbert, and filling out their questionnaire, Adam paired me up with exactly who I needed: Cheryl.
Here’s a question, though: Who in the heck starts a “getting healthy” program three days before Christmas, with Christmas dinner and New Year’s partying on the horizon?
This dude.
The curious thing? My Body Tutor had some of the same core principles that the “How to Lose Weight…” book explained, namely, you should figure out how hungry you really are before you start eating, and you should pay attention to your hunger as you eat. The book had a scale of -10 to +10, My Body Tutor was a simple 1 through 5. There was also an aspect of mindful eating with My Body Tutor, namely, taking a pause before shoveling that cheeseburger into your mouth.
My registration was complete, and there it came, the first call. Cheryl explained in detail how the calls would generally go. She explained what she was expecting from my food journals, and how, in the end, she couldn’t make any changes. Change was up to me, but she would give me suggestions of other meal options that might just be a bit healthier than what I was currently staring at on my plate.
Every day I would send pictures of what I had eaten with a summary. I began using the core guidance, taking that pause before diving into anything I would eat, assessing how hungry I was on a scale of 1 to 5 at the start of the meal, taking my time eating, and paying attention enough while eating to stop the madness before I would get to a 5 on the scale, a.k.a. being stuffed.
I even stopped scrolling through websites and social media while I ate (Cheryl explained that you should pay attention to your food instead of just scooping it up and realizing only minutes later your plate was empty). Instead, I opted to watch nature on my computer screen and got hooked on Jackie and Shadow, bald eagles in California, who have a 24-hour webcam (Rest in peace, Jackie ☹).
The thing was, I actually started to pay more attention to what I was eating. Cheryl would makes suggestions like, maybe not every time, but sometimes if I was eating out that I should go with the side salad instead of the fries. She reinforced what I already knew, that I didn’t need to be a member of the “clean plate club” which my mother had enrolled me in. Cheryl also gave me accolades when things went better and helped me understand why sometimes things would go wrong.
And dammit, things started to work. I also realized one important thing: For this to really work for me, this was going to be a marathon and not a sprint. I mean, I spent some 35 years between college and the start of My Body Tutor, leveling at 230 pounds when I first started talking with Cheryl. While I had no intention of taking 35 years to lose the weight, I also knew that for the new habits to really stick, I needed to give myself years, not weeks, to eventually get to my goal weight.
So, yeah, the food adjustments began, but what else?
Ah, yes, the other encouragement from Cheryl I needed: Exercise.
Exercise?
I wasn’t the greatest at it, hell, I even have a Peloton at my disposal, but what I didn’t have was the dedication. I also lived near a gym within a short drive, but many mornings there was the choice of sleep or drive to the gym.
Andy 1.0 chose sleep. Andy 1.5 chose lying in bed while thinking of the gym. Suddenly there was Andy 2.0, using every ounce of Atomic Habits thinking from James Clear, along with encouragement from Cheryl, and going to the gym took over the “lying in bed thinking about the gym.”
Okay, food adjustments and exercise were now incorporated into my daily life. Physically, I was starting to feel great.
What I forgot about? Plateaus.
Damn Plateaus and Hormones
I’m going to guess that nearly all of you out there who have tried to lose weight have hit them, the “I’ve been doing everything right for weeks, and the weight isn’t coming off. What the hell?” moments.
Well, I hit them, too. A lot.
A few things helped me not care about the plateaus, well, after I got past that first one, in February of 2024, where two months of goodness on the scale came to a screeching halt. One was understanding the diabolical hormone called leptin, and another was focusing on the other readings on my fancy scale instead of my weight.
I learned leptin is this hormone that apparently, once you reach a weight, might try to keep you there, namely by saying “Hello, my name is Leptin. May I introduce you to my friend Hunger because while your body doesn’t really like being fat, I sure do?” It sucks, but as I was becoming more aware of when I was hungry, there were times I felt it was the leptin talking and not my belly.
I know, that might be completely incorrect in how leptin works, but shifting my mindset to that concept, true or not, helped me recognize if I was hungry because I should be, or hungry because leptin was trying to trick me.
Food, exercise, leptin concept. Dammit, my weight still isn’t changing, and weirdly, I was finding myself still having the motivation but just seeming to lack the energy to care.
Little did I know that something even more sinister was going on.
Prolactilo-what?
As I got later into 2024 and started 2025, I felt stuck, but in a weird way. My day job was the same, and sure my wife and I bought a new place and were going to move in May of 2025, which added some stress issues of my life, but I just didn’t want to do much of anything.
I was doing my best to stick to the “Pause, pay attention to what you are eating, and exercise” thing, but even doing my best to try, my weight was drifting up. More concerning, though, was my lack of energy. It’s not like I was exercising like a bodybuilder, I was trying to get enough sleep, but I just felt tired all of the time.
With a yearly physical coming up in mid-2025, it was blood test time, and hmm, there it was, low testosterone.
Crap, I guess I’m getting old. Time to talk to my urologist about it.
Ahh, another doctor visit, more blood tests, and the original thought was testosterone replacement therapy. I would be like a lot of dudes getting older, but that was until my urologist did some extra hormone blood tests.
You know it’s never good when you get a call from the doctor’s office before your blood test results are posted so you can view them.
I think the call was something but nothing like, “Hi, Andy, your prolactin test came back really high. This usually means you have a prolactinoma. It’s just a benign tumor on your pituitary gland, nothing to really worry about. You need to see an endocrinologist. Thanks, and have a nice day!”
“What? A what? A prolactilo-what?”
I’m kidding with the phone call. It was incredibly professional, caring, and informative, but when anyone says something like “you have a tumor,” well, I’m guessing you don’t hear much more.
So, a ton of AI searching came around, Reddit reading, and generally learning about a prolactinoma. As I read more, things made a lot more sense on the “weight-loss” and “fatigue” side of my life, but I still had a tumor that, if not treated, could cause blindness and just keep messing with my hormones.
Thankfully I was connected with a wonderful endocrinologist who calmly explained what was going on, ordered an MRI (which confirmed the tumor), and put me on a drug called cabergoline.
One month later my prolactin was normal, my testosterone was fired up, and wouldn’t you know it, my motivation increased, my constant fatigue went away, and in regard to my getting healthy journey, in the words of Frank Costanza from the TV show Seinfeld, “I’m back, baby!”
The problem? While back, the exercise regular, the eating in the same manner, and there was some weight loss again, quickly it came, the scale seemingly stuck, floating around the 205s.
“What the heck is going on? I’m feeling great! Where is the weight-loss?”
Jacked!
Thankfully I realized the scale wasn’t the be-all and end-all of feeling healthier. Nope, I am lucky enough to have one of those scales that will give you body-fat percentage, muscle, and other metrics in addition to weight. I mean, I started feeling great, I could walk up multiple flights of stairs without feeling like I was going to die, and I noticed I would have to tighten my belt another notch. But looking at the scale one day, I had this sudden epiphany: The muscle value went up, the fat percentage went down, so in my head was the realization of, “Dude, you’re losing fat but gaining muscle. Who cares what your weight is, look how jacked you are!”
Okay, not jacked, but there were muscles showing where before things were jiggly. I needed to buy new pants and shirts at smaller sizes, and holy crap, this year I climbed an office tower of 31 flights of stairs, twice, and hiked up a mountain to the Hollywood sign on a trip to Los Angeles. (Side note: Our tour guide, Katie, hiked most of the way to the sign walking backwards while explaining all things Hollywood. Guess I have a new goal on my next trip to L.A!)
Who knew that all was needed was paying attention to your food, going with a salad sometimes instead of fries, and a person who wanted to see what you ate?
So here I am, just below my most recent plateau in the 180s, finding myself not caring about the weight as much as discovering I was able to jog two and a half miles in just over 30 minutes, all the while thinking to myself, “Self, imagine how awesome this will be when you are 20 pounds lighter.” I find myself walking 18 holes of golf instead of using a cart, and the weirdness of waking up at some ungodly hour to exercise has become welcome instead of torture.
Thank you!
So, thank you, Katrina Ubell for your book, and especially thank you to Cheryl and Adam with My Body Tutor, the final piece of the puzzle I needed to find myself on a path to almost being off my blood pressure medicine, running up stairs, exercising, and having the energy to do the things I enjoy, like my writing, singing, programming, and photography.
A few years ago, while on vacation in Pamplona, Spain, I told my wife I wanted to run with the bulls when I was 60 years old. It sounded fun, but in my head I thought “Dude, there is no way you are in shape to run with the bulls.” Now, though, I am confident I wouldn’t completely embarrass myself, especially because I remember that this journey to health is a marathon and not a sprint.
Hmm, a marathon? Chicago does have its own “Bulls.” Too bad they don’t run through the streets. Or do they?
And I do turn 60 years old next year.
Marathon? Chicago? Nah, that’s just a crazy thought.