Hi, I'm the former fat forker
(aka - Jeremy)
I was always a fat fucker. I know people say that, but I was. Does that term offend you? If so, this is NOT the website for you. I'm not trying to offend - I use that word with pride. I'm taking it BACK. Because it's not a derogatory word - it's in the dictionary for shit's sake. It's an adjective that means "a person or animal having a large amount of excess flesh". And until recently I was very much a person who had a large amount of excess flesh. If you're offended by the word fat it's because you're fat and you don't like being fat, so maybe this is the right place for you after all! Either way - get over it. Have a sense of humour about it - and let's move onto the important shit - like my backstory...
I had a brief thin stint as a toddler before I blew up, and about a year in high school when I was playing sports where I looked healthy (but ate terribly) but that’s about it. I was always fat. You don’t believe me? Here’s some embarrassing photos of me at every stage of my life to prove it.
And I was fat because I was okay with being fat - though of course I would have loved to not have been, it just never became a priority to do anything about it and eating stuff that tasted good and not worrying about exercise is a really utopian way to live, don’t ya think?
I was always a very focused person but I’ve spent my entire life driven by my passions and my career. I’d wanted to be a filmmaker since before I could want anything and so every fibre in my being and every spare moment was devoted to that - and because of it my health and nutrition was never even a consideration. The idea of getting healthy and losing weight seemed like something that would be time consuming and pull focus from what was truly important to me. Around this time I got up to my heaviest weight - around 360 pounds.
Enter Emily. Within a few short years of meeting her she would become my wife and mother of my children. Emily was a vegetarian when I’d met her and had been for many years. She never asked me to do join her lifestyle, and I didn’t. She never ever made a comment about my weight despite her being a super healthy and tiny thing. Just being around her naturally got me moving more and eating better without any effort at all. Somehow I managed to lose around 60 pounds without even trying. It just happened by being with her over a couple of years. During this time I actually had some false starts of joining different gyms to try and actively lose more weight, but it was always half-assed and I never stuck with it and quickly found new excuses around why I couldn’t devote the time and energy - even using my kids to that effect. What a dick, right? I made all the excuses because, honestly, I liked eating what I ate and I didn’t want to take any of my precious spare time away from my family and the focus of my career. The closest permanent health choice I would make would be to become pescatarian when Emily and I got married - so I cut out most meats except fish - but I’d still eat the fuck out of those whenever I wanted with a preference towards deep fried and breaded. Fish and chips are tasty, yo.
Just over two years ago I could safely say that my career was going well. I’d made a number of feature films and was starting to work in television as a director as well. I had a big job coming up in a few months and money saved up. For the first time it was impossible for me to say that I couldn’t devote at least an hour a day to my health. I’m lucky - I didn’t have a medical scare or a doctor telling me that I was screwed if I didn’t change my ways (though that would have happened eventually I have no doubt). So I decided that I would get off my ass and start doing some research into a better lifestyle - I knew a diet would be useless, I needed something that I could stick with for life. By that point Emily had gone through some wonky medical stuff that had essentially turned her into a gluten-free vegan and so I was already being introduced to a very different way of eating and was able to lean into that as it prepped me for the changes that were to come.
Over the next two years I stumbled and tried a ridiculous amount of things to get me to the point where I now weigh roughly 170 pounds (fluctuation is a bitch, yo!). And that’s where you currently find me. And I realized that there was no reason I couldn’t have made this a priority no matter how busy I was. Yes, it helped that I had time off to really focus - but that was another bullshit excuse at the end of a line of non-stop bullshit excuses, but at least this time it panned out. My career and time with my family never suffered, in fact I feel like with my new found lifestyle it continued to flourished.
And now I want to share all of my newfound information with you because I’m full of it - and I know some others that are too! And please remember I am not a medical professional. I’m just a former fat guy who lost a shit load of weight trying a bunch of different things. Through-out this website I’m going to share a bunch of stuff with you that you’re welcome to try on for size and see what works for you. Please check in with your doctor before doing anything, obviously. Don’t sue me for not being smart and doing your own fucking research. The last thing I came across on my journey was Dr. Joel Fuhrman and his Nutritarian lifestyle and discovering that was like fireworks going off in my head (fuck do I wish I’d found it earlier). It’s become what I think the key is for my lifelong maintenance. But trust me - my journey is not over. I JUST got to my goal weight and I imagine there’s going to be some new things I’m going to learn and share as I figure out how to transition away from being obsessed with weight-loss to figuring out how the hell weight-maintenance works.
What are you going to find here? Well, like my journey itself, this is going to be a work in progress. I think the building blocks of good health are based around three things: the way you eat, move, and think. And also this fundamental truth: No one can change unless they want to - and the hardest thing you’re going to have to do is be willing to look at your life in a different way. To reprogram your brain and unlearn what you’ve learned. No one can change if they don’t ultimately want to. I’ve been successful for that primary reason: I wanted to change and I stuck with it. I fell in love with the ideas behind it, and the way I was starting to eat. I focused on the positive parts of it and just let the negative ones fall away. If you can find ways to fall in love with all the positive aspects of your life: choices, lifestyle, behaviour, you’ll automatically lose all the negative ones, or at least give them less power.
So this site is going to be filled with resources - recipes - articles about my (and others) various tactics - videos and a maybe even a podcast down the line that will dive deeper into some of this stuff. My aim is to make it fun and engaging. I can’t promise that updates will be consistent - I am a working filmmaker and a father of young-ish and often big projects and family life keep me pretty busy - but I can tell you that having devoted all this time to this new lifestyle that I’m pretty fucking jazzed to be here - I’ve got a lot to share with you - and I look forward to hearing from you too. So take a look around - get in touch with me - share my shit if you find it interesting - share your shit with me if you’ve got anything cool, or even want to challenge anything I talk about it. Let’s get into it!
Thanks for taking the time to read this. It’s a lot of words. Now look around and learn some shit about how you can think differently, eat better, and get off your ass and become a former fat forker too.
-Jeremy
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