Today I’m going to tell you a story about why I’m obsessed with my health and staying fit.

I sincerely hope this resonates with you.

So, I believe that one of the biggest reasons people don’t stay committed to their fat loss journey because they don’t have a good enough reason to stay committed. The big problem is that their “why” isn’t powerful enough.

The Missing Link to Weight Loss Success is Lacking Intense Motivation or a Genuine Driving Force

Today we’re going to go over my “why” and my purpose for trying to stay healthy.

I hope it helps you find or fortify yours.

My Dad’s Unfortunate Story

When I turned three, my dad got sick. It was like he had suddenly fallen off a cliff. He was hit with a series of medical conditions: Type 1 diabetes, gallbladder removal, and severe liver disease.

These were just the initial stages of his health decline and diagnosed health issues, though I would imagine that his actual decline started decades earlier. Either way, it wasn’t good.

By the time I turned six, my dad's health had deteriorated dramatically. He was in and out of the hospital A LOT. It got to a point where the letters, ICU, didn’t really mean much anymore. He would check in, and a few days later, he'd be back out.

As time passed, his condition worsened, and his doctor delivered some grim news. His liver had suffered such severe damage that it was time to start putting his affairs in order. One to two years left. Tops.

In early February of 1995 my mom woke up in the middle of the night, seeing that my dad was packing some clothes in a duffel bag. He told her he was taking himself to the hospital. "I'm shutting down," he said.

Luck was on his side though. Somehow the stars aligned and he became eligible for a liver transplant. February 14th was his big day. His doctor said that his liver was so obliterated that it was black, as hard as a rock, and about the size of a fist. A liver should be about as big as an NFL football and a dark, deep red.

My dad’s recovery was pretty wild. I remember sitting next to him in his ICU room and seeing how swollen his body was. You could actually press your thumb into his skin on the top of his foot/calf/shin/anywhere and leave a noticeable impression.

My brother and I would massage his feet and legs just to push the fluid out of his limbs. It took months for the swelling to go away.

The surgical scar was enormous, like the inner portion of a Mercedes Benz emblem or an upside-down Y, with three incisions converging in the middle of his abdomen. An incision ran from his sternum to a few inches above his belly button, branching out to just above the top of his hips.

I kind of can’t believe he survived that whole ordeal. The doctors were still pretty pessimistic about his prognosis though - Maybe five years tops.

He ended up making it another 20+ years and had about 10-12 good years sprinkled in there.

Ironically, it wasn’t his liver that led to his death. It was his type 1 diabetes, which is technically an auto-immune disease. And if there’s one thing that I’ve concluded about auto-immune diseases is that they don’t happen spontaneously. You have to earn them.

His last four to five years were horrible. His diabetes (or his poor approach with managing his diabetes) destroyed his kidneys and he had gone into kidney failure. Losing your kidney function isn’t something anyone should have to endure. He was forced to go to dialysis treatments 3-4 days a week, which left him completely drained and depleted.

Seeing him so tired and fatigued reminded me of when I was a little kid. Everything he did was exhausting. If he wasn’t working, he was generally taking a nap or laying down. All his hobbies and house projects he loved completely vanished. Poof.

My dad’s luck came and went though. He was optimistically doing some preliminary testing for a potential kidney transplant and one of the tests was a colonoscopy. The protocol for his colonoscopy was interesting to me, given his brittle diabetes, which would cause him to go into insulin shock routinely. If you don’t know what insulin shock is, it’s when your blood sugar crashes. Normal fasting blood glucose should be below 100. When he would go into insulin shock his blood sugar could plummet into the teens.

This would happen pretty regularly so I routinely got the unfortunate pleasure of witnessing my dad get alarmingly confused, uncoordinated, and we would rush to get him some juice or something sugary to get his blood sugar elevated - one of the main reasons our family became friendly with the local fire department/paramedics.

Back to the colonoscopy. If you’ve done one of these, you’d know that, you go on a clear liquid diet 24 hours ahead of time and then you flush your digestive system with a laxative.

Unsurprisingly, that night my dad went into insulin shock. He ended up falling and breaking his leg just below the knee.

I knew that was going to kill him.

He was already frail from his dialysis treatments wiping him out.

My dad died about a month later.

He was never good about taking care of himself. He basically reached adult hood in the early/mid 1960’s when the processed food industry really started to evolve and take off.

He loved his Spaghetti-O’s, Velveeta grilled cheese sandwiches, Entenmann's donuts, and Mother’s iced oatmeal cookies. It was simple, efficient, and delicious.

How This Affected Me

Growing up I loved to play sports. I still do. But playing any sport outside was the absolute best.

Some of my earliest memories of my dad were me asking him to go outside and play catch. Most of the time he would say he was too tired. Bummer, but understandable (my parent’s didn’t hide much from us). And if we were able to play, we would be out there for 5-10 minutes before he hit a wall. Better than nothing.

I don’t have any early memories of my father being healthy. He was a great dad, but he was just so physically weak, tired, and in constant pain and discomfort.

I can’t really blame him for this, but it definitely sucked.

How I Envision My Future

The situation with my father’s poor health has left a lasting impact on my life - I never want my children to go through the things my family and I went through with my father.

I love my dad, but his poor nutrition and lifestyle choices caused his health to decline to the point where at the age of 42, things went haywire. He was never the same.

My dad died at the age of 72. To me, he represents health in the US (outside of the liver complications).

It seems like health is beginning to decline much earlier in life, which ultimately lowers our health spans and life spans. This is actually happening by the way.

My wife and kids are the most important thing to me. And my staying healthy is going to be one of the best ways I can provide, support, and care for them. If I’m not healthy, it will destroy them - financially, emotionally, and even physically. Everything’s connected.

I refuse to live my life the way my dad lived his. I can’t really blame him, but he was just doing what was easy.

This is why I’m obsessed with my health.

I feel for the kids who have parents who can’t play with them. I feel for the kids who have parents with health complications, like my dad. Kids are just so pure and deserve the absolute best from their moms and dads.

I also feel for those who can’t take care of their families the way that they originally intended to.

So my question for you is - What is your reason for losing weight?

If you don’t know it, put some thought into it. It better be good though because if it’s not good enough, you’re never gonna make it.

Actionable Tip for the Week:

⭐️ Identify your true motivation for losing weight. Stay faithful to your core values every step of the way⭐️

Cheers,

Tim

PS: I take requests and suggestions. Let me know if there's anything you want me to write about or make a video about. Would love to hear from you!