Ashley: Hey, guys. It's Ashley with MacroEd, and I'm so excited to see you tonight. We are back with another member spotlight. And tonight we're gonna be joined by Dennis [inaudible 00:00:13]. And I think you're gonna be so excited to hear about his story. He'll be on in just a second, but to give you some cliff notes to give you a little teaser, he is the gentleman who won a lot of money last year from 1st Phorm as one of their Transphormation Challenge winners. He is a great friend of MacroEd, and he's a different guy. If you guys have been checking out the before and after pictures that we've posted this week, Dennis doesn't look the same, he doesn't act the same, he doesn't do any of the same things. So I'm super excited for you to get to learn about how he made all those changes.

And what's cool about us talking to him right now is we can learn about how he's made those changes stick. Because he was really done with the bulk of the weight loss at the end of 2017. This is the dicey time. I don't want to say "Anybody can lose that kind of weight, because that's not true or fair." But it is sometimes easier to lose than it is to maintain it. So that's one of the things that I love about his story is that you guys will get to hear about what it looks like now. Like what phase two of building that healthy lifestyle looks like.

So just let me see if I can bring him in here. Yes, I think I can.

Hey, buddy.

Dennis: Hey.

Ashley: How are you?

Dennis: I'm good. How are you?

Ashley: Doing well. Thank you for doing this with us tonight. I'm so excited.

Dennis: Of course. Of course. Happy to do it.

Ashley: All right. I gave them the little teaser that you're rich and skinny and a different dude from before. That's how you've been introduced so far.

Dennis: I can't disagree with any of that, so I won't argue with you.

Ashley: This worked out. Could you tell us a little bit about your background as far as like, give us your place in the world. What do you do? What's your career like? That kind of stuff.

Dennis: Sure. So I am born and raised in Virginia. I'm a finance guy by trade, so my job today is I manage a finance team for a payment processing company, but just been in financial services for close to 20 years. So I sit behind a desk and do a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of numbers. It's not terribly glamorous. But that's what I'm good at and that's what pays the bills.

I have a wife and four kids, four little kids. Well, some of them not so little anymore. 13, 11, eight, and five. Can you still see me? 'Cause I can't see myself.

Ashley: No. You went blurry and pixelated.

I'm hoping it will come back. There you go. There.

Dennis: Okay. There I am. Sorry about that.

Ashley: That's okay.

Dennis: Sorry. So I have three boys and a girl. I say that it took me four tries before I got the girl on the fourth try. So she's the little one. Yeah. And so I guess that's me. So it's pretty busy around here and tonight with swim practice and tomorrow will be some other kid event. So there's lots of juggling when you have that many children.

Ashley: Absolutely. But I think that's one of the things that makes your story so great. Some people have the luxury of putting themselves in a hole, encapsulating themselves, and just working really, really hard on transforming themselves. There are different seasons in life for different people, but you managed to do this while doing all of those things. And I think, for a lot of our people, they're where you are. Maybe they have two kids, but they're in your shoes.

So that's one of the things I want to hear from you about is how that whole balance worked out.

Dennis: You know, honestly, the way I balance it is really I get up at 4:00 in the morning. I find ways to, as much as I physically can, when I set out to do this back in the beginning of early 2017, in order to be successful, I was going to try to make it the least amount of disruptive to my home life as possible. So exercise, for instance, exercising in the evening when kids have activities and such is just not possible. Not to mention that fact that I don't terribly like working out in the evening. I'm more of a morning person myself.

Waking up early and exercising worked out well. Everybody's still asleep. I can go to the gym or I can go do whatever and I'm done as people are starting to wake up. So that was one thing.

Then as it related to diet, I'd prep my food and do my thing during the week, but then, with some exceptions, we would have dinner and stuff as a family, I would just try to find ways to make whatever, as much as possible, whatever was being made work for what I was doing at the time. I'm sure we'll get into this, but a part of the year that I was counting macros and there was a part of the year I was doing the keto thing and there was a part of the year that I was doing some other different things towards the end of the year. And each time, I just try to work it around what my family's doing. Taco night, I'm not eating taco shells. I'm making a taco salad. And over the course of the year, it just became a tradition where at my seat, I'd have my little food scale to the left of my

plate. If I'm portioning out my food, I'm weighing it first and getting a little thing to weigh it out. So I'm still eating with the family, I'm still eating what they're eating, but I'm just taking a couple extra steps or maybe an extra minute before I sit down to eat to just, I figure out what I have room for and then I just make it work.

So that way, again, if they wanted to have pizza night, we have pizza night, and I just would eat something else. So I think my kids would probably give me a hard time and say that for that year, that they felt deprived. But in reality ...

Ashley: Poor things.

Dennis: Yeah. They were really not made to suffer at all. We still went out to eat on occasion. We still, yeah, like I said, had pizza night. So I just found ways to make it work around what the other five people in my household are doing.

Ashley: Absolutely.

If we flashback, so it's December 2016 to January 2017, can you describe yourself? What were you like? What was that guy? Who was that guy?

Dennis: I was in a pretty rough spot. My background ... At the time, end of 2016, I'm 40 years old. I've been heavy my whole life. I literally, as long as I can remember, was always embarrassed to take my shirt off. I'd find reasons to not go to the pool with my family or just not go to the pool in general because I just was embarrassed. And so being heavy for that long takes a toll on your self confidence and just how you feel about yourself and how you just operate, not just in the physical sense, but just in every aspect. And you don't really realize it until you get past it and look back.

But looking back, I was in a pretty low spot at the end of 2016. Just feeling really bad about myself and 280 pounds. Probably the heaviest I had ever been. And I had done the diets and I had done the roller coasters and I had done the minus 20, go 30 days really hard, lose 20 pounds, and inevitably it would always rebound over the course of time. I'd gain 20 plus 10 and so on. Because I wasn't looking at it the right way.

Towards the end of 2016, I really started to get into also just self improvement, some personal development, and really one of the biggest things for me was using ... So the [inaudible 00:08:14] podcast was something that was a big instigator for me, more from a mindset standpoint of just changing the way I thought about making a change. And so yeah, I think it's very common for people to look at diets and weightless as this defined thing where I'm gonna do this for six weeks or eight weeks and then after I do that and I come out the other side and I suffer those eight weeks, then I'll just be good and everything will be fine. Everything will be magical and I won't have to worry about it again.

What I started to get in my head at the end of 2016 is I don't have to tolerate being heavy like I've been for my whole life and I don't have to put up with it. But if I'm gonna make that change, it's gonna take a really long time. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be

frustrating. It's gonna take ... I'm 280 pounds at the time. So I think a big part of the beginning of my journey was just getting my mind right. If you don't, looking back is if I hadn't accepted that this was going to be a long term thing and find ways to approach it differently, then I was gonna fail like I had however many other times.

So that mindset piece. And then really finding ways to stretch myself out of my comfort zone. That's where the Transphormation Challenge with 1st Phorm came into play for me in the beginning of 2017 in January. Because it was a way for me to hold myself ... I was trying to find ways to hold myself accountable and stretch myself out of my comfort zone and I'm sure anybody who's tried to lose weight or is in the middle of it now can relate to this. Uploading my 280 pound shirtless pictures to the internet for who knows who to see and whatever to be done with them was terrifying. You're already suffering from [inaudible 00:10:12] self confidence. So I went up and I took a selfie.

That night is still burned into my brain in terms of I remember how I felt, I remember that hesitation before I leapt in. What I thought about it at the time, it was a whole year long thing, and I'm like "Okay, well, I'm gonna commit to this for a year and I'm gonna hold myself to it. I'm gonna have each picture that I upload be better than that last one. It may only be better by a little bit or it may be better by a lot, but that's the way I'm gonna do it."

So those were the things I was doing at the very beginning is I was trying to get my mind around finally making a change I just had never been able to make in the past.

Ashley: I love that you tried to find ways to make yourself uncomfortable. I love that. I think that that's so important. You're just gonna go all out and make yourself accountable and stretch yourself out of your comfort zone. I think so often, and this probably applies to everything, this is [inaudible 00:11:10] exclusive conversation, but I think so often, we insulate ourselves to not be uncomfortable and then we miss so much growth. I get it. I'm guilty of it too. But the fact that you went and you were like "How can I make this harder? How can I make myself more accountable? How can I share this with more people that are gonna push me?" I think that's a really big deal.

So that was where you were then. Can you describe yourself now? Who's this guy?

Dennis: Yeah. Post 2017 and really into 2018, I can honestly sit here and say that I've really made it my lifestyle and the people who interact with me on a day to day basis, I'm sure, have observed. Especially the people who knew me before and who know me now, the things I'm interested in, the things I care about, the things I spend my time doing, the things I post about on social media. If you look back, kind of pre-2017, and you look at it now, it's night and day and it's really around fitness has become a big part of my life. When people ask "What's your hobby," my hobby is training for triathlons and marathons and really big, hard things and learning about that process. It's really a continuation of what I did in 2017, where it became my hobby then, where it's like I'm gonna learn about nutrition, I'm gonna learn about fitness. I quickly realized how much I didn't know and then it became fascinating around learning about this stuff and how does it apply and then figuring out "Okay, if I'm gonna truly make it a lifestyle, what do I

like to do? What do I enjoy doing? What type of fitness do I enjoy? What do I not like doing?"

For me, if I think about myself now, I really gravitated towards finding big and challenging things that I can't do and training my ass off to try to figure out ways that I could do it. In the endurance arena has really been something I gravitated towards that I never thought in a million years I'd say that I'd do a triathlon or that I'm gonna do a marathon. My sister, Megan, who ran marathons, she went to college and ran long distance and she'd always ... I'd dabble in doing 5Ks and runs and I even did a half marathon before I lost weight. Not well. It was pretty bad.

But she'd always say "Oh, well, we can get you to do a marathon one day." And I'm like "There is no way on God's earth I'm ever gonna do a marathon." Now, not only am I training for a marathon, but I have my eyes on doing a full Iron Man next year.

That's fun for me. I enjoy it. I enjoy learning about it. I enjoy doing it. In a perverse way, I enjoy the suffering that goes on with training for these crazy events. That's what I get a charge out of.

Then as I've met new people along the way, I've built a lot of new relationships, yourself included, along the way. So it's like finding ways to interact with those folks and do some of these things that I'm describing, along with those people. I did the 100 mile bike ride with Jeremy and Dave last year. I'm gonna do the half Iron Man with Jeff Roth and hopefully Jeremy and some other guys next year. That's the stuff I get excited about. That's my main hobby.

And I think that's what makes it so much easier for me to maintain my weight and my cloths size and all that is because it's something that I enjoy doing. I don't look at it as a burden. I look at it as fun and just who I am now. But I can honestly say if it hadn't taken me a year to get here, I don't know that I'd be able to sit here and say all of these things. I don't know if it would have baked in as deep as it did if it was just a quick three or four month thing for me. I just don't know that it would have [inaudible 00:15:17]. I'm really thankful for the fact that it took me a really long time and that it was really hard, because that's what trained my brain to really think differently after going through that for a really long time.

Ashley: And that's probably what gives you the discipline to be able to train for these things that you can't do. None of those happen in the spaces that are easy and comfortable and fun. [crosstalk 00:15:39] As much as you're enjoying it, and I'm so happy about that, it's a different discipline. It's a different mindset.

One of the things you said, and it actually leads right into where we were going, so 10 points for that, is that you are not the guy who would have said this before. So many times, people are like "Oh, that's awesome that your friends do that or that's so great that you like to do that thing, but I could never. I don't like. That's not for me. I'm not a person who." And then there is some limiting belief or some BS that "I would never train for a marathon. I would never want to swim. I would never ..."

And it's important that they hear that you would never either. You're sitting here doing these things, but you're also the guy who would never before you got here. So I think that that's ... As we look at the ways that we want to change when people come to MacroEd and we're telling them about "You're gonna really like brussels sprouts once you learn how to cook them. Or you're gonna really like pushing yourself to do something that you haven't done or to be uncomfortable." Just giving themselves a chance to consider that they may become a person who, versus just putting up those walls and stopping their own progress. I think that's really important.

Dennis: I agree. You touched on it when you were just talking just now. The that's not for me, it is BS. You said it, and that's really the best way to ... But it takes opening yourself up to just the possibility and I'm not saying that if you lose a bunch of weight you're all of a sudden gonna want to run marathons, but ...

Ashley: You might not.

Dennis: There are plenty of people who don't. But chances are, you're gonna come across something that you would say "You know what? I really do like doing this." And even, for me, it's not even ... I still don't like running. [crosstalk 00:17:35] I woke up this morning and ran. I didn't wake up and go "Gosh, I just can't wait to get my shoes on and go run." But what I do like is I like the feeling of accomplishment and I'm hooked on that drug of working really hard towards a goal, whether that's running, whether that's running, whether that's something. I like that feeling of accomplishing something that you set out to do and then having fun along the way.

I think it's a matter of, but you've gotta open yourself up to that being a possibility before it can really set in. 'Cause if you're just resistant, you're resistant, you're like "Oh no." Then you won't even try it. It's like when you're a kid, like you said with brussels sprouts, and my kids deal with this all the time. They look at something, they're like "I don't like that" just because it's green.

Ashley: Right. Right. Kind of ugly.

Dennis: Right. And then sometimes they try it and they're like "Oh, this is pretty good. Are there any more of them?" It's like, try it. You just might like it.

It's this exact same principle.

Ashley: Absolutely. So we talked about the people who are not people who. But ca you also talk about the people who are too busy? I love that I get to ask you, of all the people in the whole wide world. Can you talk to me about people who are just too busy?

Dennis: You know, I have yet to come across somebody who says that they're too busy and they truly are too busy and they truly are, and it's a pretty rare thing that I come across somebody who's busier than I am. I'm not saying that I'm the busiest person in the world, but I've got more children than most people out there. When I say I have four kids, most people give me the "Whoa."

I've got a lot of kids, I've got a busy job. I've got the whole list of things that are that list of the things that make people busy. But when I go through and I knock down those ... It's really just a matter of how big of a priority is this thing you want to make it. Because I guarantee you, if you take anybody who says they're too busy, or oh gosh, they have so much on their plate, you can go down that list of where they spend their time during the day and I guarantee you, they're watching a show on Netflix or I guarantee you they're spending some time on Facebook or Instagram or I guarantee you they're doing something that if you just trimmed a little bit off that, you can fit in time for this other stuff. There's stuff that, in that moment where they're really busy, that they're making a priority and they're making time to do whatever this other thing is.

It's the same thing. You just have to decide that getting in shape and losing weight is important. If it's important enough ... In the grand scheme of things ... That's the other thing. People think it takes so much time. A lot of my workouts, most of my workouts, in fact, unless the long training ones, are under an hour. I could even some days get workouts in that are less than a half an hour. They're just really intense and food prepping is not hard. I keep, for the most part, I do pretty simple stuff.

Now, does that require you to maybe eat the same thing five days in a row for lunch? Yeah. But anybody who says that losing weight and getting in shape, you can do all of, and it's still sexy and exciting every single day, it's not.

Ashley: No.

Dennis: So making it a priority is really what it comes down to. Like I said, I have yet to come across a person, and if the person out there that happens to be watching this that is too busy would reach out to me, I'd love to hear it. Because I have yet to hear someone who's really, truly too busy who cannot find the time.

There's people, famous people on the internet, you come across guys like Gary [V 00:21:40], guys like these guys are super busy and out there. They're still finding time to work out. Maybe it's just 30 minutes a day, but that's okay. It doesn't have to be two hours. It doesn't have to be two hours. It doesn't even have to be in the gym. Go walk. Go run outside. Go do something. It just takes a little bit of creativity and maybe take a few minutes that you were gonna surf on Facebook and go surf for workout ideas to do at your house or something.

It's just little changes here and there and it's amazing. You'll be able to find the time.

Ashley: Yeah. Absolutely. What about the people ... And this is legit. This is a parent struggle, I think, more than anything. The people who feel guilty about taking time to take care of themselves. You did it by going when your kids didn't need you. Nobody needs you at 4 AM I would hope.

Dennis: Sure.

Ashley: Is that how you got around that? So you didn't have the dad guilt?

Dennis: Yes, that's part of it. But I would also say, just to address shat, and this is my personal philosophy and not everybody may agree with me and that's okay. But one of the things ... I honestly say this is a new philosophy just in the past, going through this.

I believe that you do, each person, each individual, and especially if you're a parent, but it really applies to everybody. You've gotta take time to take care of yourself. And if you don't take care of yourself, you're not gonna be your best self, your happiest self. And by extension, you're not gonna be the best parent, you're not gonna be the best spouse, you're not gonna be the best employee. If you're not being a little, call it selfish if you want, but if you're not taking care of yourself.

I think that really ... Not just taking care of yourself, but making it a priority in your life that says there's this stuff that's important to me and I'm going to make sure that I find time to do it. Most of the time, you can find ways to do it in a way that accommodates your family and stays out of their way. But there's gonna be other times where it is a priority and you're gonna take time away from your family to take care of yourself, and I did that with long training rides that would be four or five hours. My wife was taking care of the kids for the full first half of a Saturday and the first half a Sunday and sometimes on really long runs or rides, I'd just meet her at the soccer game. There's stuff like that.

Again, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of time and the payoff, at least in my opinion, is tremendous in the sense that you can then say "Okay, I'm making sure I'm making time for me." I know as a parent, it's very easy to get wrapped up in these little people that you're taking care of and you're responsible for. It's very easy to get wrapped up in their lives and then it becomes all about them. It's very easy, in my opinion, to lose yourself and you're spending all your time worrying about these little people, and you should. But then a lot of times, your own personal, what you like to do, takes a backseat or a third seat in some cases. And I think that's where that can get lost really quick as a result.

I'm certainly not saying swing that pendulum all the way the other way, but just make it a priority and I think me doing that for me, I can only speak to my experience, I think it's made me a much happier person. I think coming out the other side and then having all the fitness stuff that I talked about before be an important party of my day to day life, it's just made me a happier person. It's as simple as that. And then certainly in my view, and hopefully the people around me would agree, I'm a more pleasant person to be around and hopefully I'm a better parent. I'm certainly, by no means perfect.

But I think when you feel better about yourself and you feel happier, that shows in everything you do. When you feel miserable and you feel shitty about yourself, that's going to come through too. And that's where I was before. I don't feel that way now. I have a lot more self confidence. I still just feel a lot happier about who I am and how I look and all that. And that comes through.

I think making time for yourself is a big foundational aspect of it. And I think as you're going through the journey, too, if you're the only one in your house dieting, you're

gonna have to carve out time to prep your food. It's not gonna be something that everybody's a part of. That may mean you take a couple hours to yourself on a Sunday afternoon and you get it done and then you go back and you join the family. That's okay.

The payoff over the course of that next week from a food standpoint is gonna be tremendous and it's gonna take a lot more stress off you. You're not gonna be worried about where you're gonna get your meals and all that stuff.

So these little investments in yourself pay big dividends down the road.

Ashley: And one of the things that ... I have two little girls and so one of the ways that I try to think about it is I have to set the example that it's okay for them to take care of themselves because I'm 35 and I'm just now learning that it's all right for me to serve myself, maybe not first, but not last. And I don't want them to have to wait until they're old to figure this out. It's okay.

To keep them ... The same thing about why we make our kids try all the crazy food and why we teach them how to eat. I don't want them to repeat my mistakes. And one of those is making sure that they take care of themselves and I think by saying this is mom's time to do her mom thing is important so that when they're moms, they don't have to feel guilty about that.

Dennis: 100%. Absolutely.

Ashley: And with you, I know that you're setting an example because your kids saw you before and they see you now. Even if you were just as grouchy now, even if you didn't become happier and you weren't a better dad, for them to see that true change, dramatic change is possible and it takes hard work and consistency. If that's all they got out of it, that example is worth it. Even if it didn't improve everything, which I know that it did.

Dennis: No, I agree. I think it's sort of, in my mind, trying to break a little bit of the stereotype or at least the desired result that's out there where everybody wants the quick fix, everybody wants the magic pill, everybody wants the cleanse or the juice or whatever.

Ashley: Detox please.

Dennis: Yeah. And showing that if you really want to do it right, it's gonna take a long time. It's gonna be really hard. It's not sexy and it's not glamorous, but that's the way that works.

It's not just applicable weight loss. It's applicable for having ... If I look at my career, the things that have helped me advance in my career are putting in and investing in and taking the time and working hard and paying attention to details and doing it over a really long stretch of time and doing the things that other people weren't willing to do. It's applicable in all areas of life, and so I agree, that is a life lesson. Hopefully it's coming through to them.

I think if I was to pull my kids in here, of course they wouldn't necessarily agree with me.

Ashley: Of course.

Dennis: It'll sink in later when they're a little older and wiser and they realize that their parents actually do know something.

Ashley: Right. They need a decade or so and then they can tell you how right you were.

Dennis: That's right.

Ashley: All right. What are some of your strongest beliefs and values? Obviously integrity in doing the hard stuff.

Dennis: Yeah. I think you hit on one of the biggest ones, is being willing to do the hard work and pay attention ... I'm a big detail oriented guy. I think a lot of times that can get glossed over. So paying attention to the details is a big part of not just what we're talking about here, but just again, more broad, like in my job it's something for people who work for me, I really nitpick on the smallest little details and then that comes down to things like paying attention to ... Again, in my line of work, to use an example, paying attention to the format of the chart you're putting together for that presentation. If it's not just right, it's not consistent, it doesn't look like, I pay attention to all that stuff.

Attention to detail, I think, has a lot of benefits in all aspects of life. It teaches people not to rush through and not to gloss over things that end up being important. That's one of the big things for me.

And then just being willing to work hard and have that just be something that you enjoy doing and that you're willing to do and being willing to do the things that other people aren't willing to do. I think one of the other principles is I'm a pretty blunt and straightforward person, so I like not BSing. And sometimes that rubs people the wrong way and sometimes the people don't like necessarily when you're that direct. But I'd rather have someone tell me to my face, even if I don't like the answer, than dance around it or tell me something that I know that they don't believe.

I think it's like having integrity with how you communicate with people and even if that means sharing a tough message and that's something that I certainly don't have a problem doing. I wish more people were more direct and didn't maybe take things so personally. I think people would get a lot more done and be a lot more, honestly, they'd probably get a long better because everything's out on the table. I'm a big believer in just open and honest communication.

Those are probably some of the big ones that just guide me on a day to day basis. Then the last one is just having an element of discipline. That touches on a lot of the things that I already mentioned there, maybe. But I just think that it's, again, not the sexiest thing in the world, but having an element of discipline just in terms of how you conduct yourself, I think is important and I think it shows an element of ... I'm trying to think of the right words here, but I think it sets you apart I guess is what I'm trying to say because it's very common for folks not to have an element of discipline or frown upon it

or they don't want to be constrained or they don't want that kind of thing. But I think there's an element, and I'm sure I'm gonna get a quote wrong, but there's an element of freedom that comes along with being disciplined in terms of how you live your life and having rules and order and I'm comfortable when I have the order in my life. When things are a little chaotic, I don't feel, maybe it's a control thing, but I like having an element of structure, 'cause it's calming. I think just an element of discipline in all areas of life is big for me.

Ashley: And I think that's probably one of the reasons that we jive so well, you and I, but MacroEd and your are of discipline, is because the idea of it not being sexy and doing hard work and being disciplined and also being really straightforward with that, that's one of the reasons that we're not for everybody.

A lot of people want to hear "It's so awesome, and anything you want to do is gonna get you do the finish line" and that kind of stuff. Science says that not right and Jeremy says scientific things all of the time. The idea that there are right ways and there are wrong ways and we'll put grates over anything that goes wrong as long as you're working toward it. But I think that it's about being disciplined and not being motivated and not looking to feel like you want to do it. Not only running on the mornings that you feel like running. I think that that's a really big deal.

Dennis: And I think I can always tell when someone isn't in that mindset. 'Cause I've had a number of conversations, obviously, after losing a bunch of weight and people want to know how you did it and "Gosh, I really want to do that too and how did you do it, 'cause I want to do what you did."

Ashley: No, you don't.

Dennis: And then when I sit there ... Yeah. I start to go through it. I wish I could give a sexier answer, but it's like "Look, I dieted for a year and I worked out all the time and I didn't cheat on my diet and I made it a really high priority and I woke up at 4 in the morning and worked out all the time." It's like the eyes rolled back and they're like "Wow." [crosstalk 00:35:12]

Right. Is there something I could do with less work or something that gets you the same result? You can tell very quickly the ones that tune you out, so then I just stop talking after awhile, 'cause it's like they're not terribly interested. Which is okay, but then don't expect to reap the same results doing whatever it is you're doing.

Ashley: Right. Absolutely.

What problems, when you got started, were you looking to solve? So you were 40, 280. Not terribly happy with yourself. What was the game plan?

Dennis: Yeah. So the main thing I was trying to solve was my big thing was I didn't want to wear ... There was a couple things. I had this magic number size 40 pants. There was no

way I was going to wear something bigger than 40. Don't ask me why 40 was the magic number. [crosstalk 00:36:15]

Ashley: Everybody's got a magic number.

Dennis: Yeah. That was my number. 40 was getting too tight, and I was like "You know what? I'm never gonna wear a 42 or more."

Plain and simple, I was trying to lose weight, I was trying to look better, I wanted to feel better about myself. But in terms of my game plan, I really set out and I very quickly learned I didn't have a game plan. I started down the road doing a lot of the things that I had done in the past, because I didn't know any better.

So as I got into the challenge and I joined the Facebook group and I started, they have podcasts and I started to listen and try to soak in as much as I can, I quickly, as I said before ... Like I didn't know what a macro was. I had never hear the term. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know that proteins and carbs and fats, you just do some simple math and they're related to calories. I thought they were different things that were separate.

I told this story a bunch of times, and I'm fast forwarding a little bit, but one of my first interactions with Jeremy was asking, he's telling me "Okay, here's the macro plan and start doing this and just shoot your numbers." I'm like, "Okay, but what's my calories I have to hit?" He's like "Don't worry about calories." I'm like "Yeah, but what about should it be this many calories?" He's like "You're overthinking it."

And so when I got introduced to ... I'll back up a little bit and explain how I got in with MacroEd and Jeremy and stuff. I was stumbling around and as you're part of the challenge, you're brought into this Facebook group and at the time, they were a lot less structured in terms of how they communicated. So you're thrown in there and it's like "Okay, well, go." I was trying to, saw people were hooking up with trainers, and I didn't really know anybody, so I'm like "Okay, well, how do I meet a trainer?"

It was actually one of the MacroEd people, Vanessa, that replied to one of my threads on the my transformation starts today. I still remember this interaction where she said "Okay, well, you should reach out to Jeremy [Mullens 00:38:28]." And I'm like "Okay. I don't know any of these guys. That seems fine."

But when I started to look into his communities and he sent me these groups and I looked into it and I started just seeing what everything was about, I quickly realized that the communities that he runs are ones that I can relate to. There's a big contingent within 1st Phorm. There's a body building community. There's some pretty super athletic folks that are associated with the brand as well, and at the time, certainly, I didn't relate to either of those groups. But it was fortunate that I had that interaction with Vanessa in that Facebook group because I can definitely relate. Then he introduced me to MacroEd and fast forwarding a little bit, I started to just basically throw myself into everything that I could and try to soak up as much as I could.

As I became part of Jeremy's Transphormation group, there was some MacroEd challenges going on or getting ready to happen and so he said "Okay, well, you can certainly join that." So I'm like "Well, I'm gonna join that." I basically was gonna say take every opportunity, try everything that I could, because once I realized "Hey, there's a lot I don't know, I'm just gonna open myself up to everything," and Jeremy would hold Q&As and I'd be at every single one and I'm asking questions or I'm just listening. I'm joining a MacroEd challenge and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm just trying to touch as many things as I could, and I'm listening to the T&T podcast that 1st Phorm puts out and I'm listening to Jacob Wilson who puts out a lot of great content. I was looking up old videos that Jeremy had done way back when.

I'm literally bringing in everything. It just became a little bit of an obsession. As I started to soak all that stuff in, it became a lot, I could look at what I was doing and I could start to adjust on my own a lot easier. Because in the beginning, what I knew how to do was go to the gym and do your standard chest and tricep workout, three sets of eight, and do that. Do six sets and then call it a day. I didn't really know much about different types of cardio and when to do what kind.

But then fast forwarding and learning, as I just described, I was able to look at my plan and go "Okay, if I lift this way, if I lift heavy, then that does this. If I lift light and do a lot of reps, that does this. If do that ... And here's how I should do this type of cardio and this is what this ... This is interval training and here's how you do that correctly."

Where I'm going with this, it starts to snowball on top of each other. So then I start to tweak my plan and then I star to try different things and I'm like "Okay, well, I hear about this. I'm gonna go try sprint work and I'm gonna go try ..." That became this evolution of finding your things and keeping it interesting and keeping it different, because one of the other things that I knew early on, but came to the forefront a little bit later is if you do the same thing day in, day out, week in, week out, it's gonna get really boring really quick if you don't find ways to spice it up.

But at the same time, you don't know what you don't know. I think going back to something I said before, if you open yourself up to ... Chances are, if you're overweight, you've been overweight a really long time, there's probably a whole lot you don't know. So if you just start with that as your premise and you just try to soak in as much as you can, you'll quickly get exposed to ... Well, sorry. Then you have a willingness to try some of those things that you get exposed to, then you'll start to say "Okay, there is more out there. There is different ways of doing this. There's these different exercises." Whether it's weight lifting, whether it's cardio, whether it's this, this, this. Whether it's approaches to that. The Macro thing, like I said, I know what it was. When I talk to people about Macro, most people I talk to, they're like "I don't know. What does that mean? What's a macro? I don't understand."

In my experience, just in my sphere of interaction, most people don't understand it. Most people don't understand that having a protein foundation to your diet's important and why it's important, 'cause they had never been taught. The masses understand that if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less calories. And yes, that's true, but then

you start to learn about "Okay, well, if you eat these types of foods, you're gonna lose weight, but you may lose more muscle than fat. If you do things this way, you're gonna lose more body fat than muscle and you're gonna hold onto your muscle and you're actually gonna tone up your muscle and then you're gonna lose body fat." But you have to do things this way not just cut calories and still eat tons of processed carbs, as a for instance.

That was how ... I'm skipping around here a little bit, but hopefully I'm painting a picture of how my process evolved. So the early part of the year, I was counting macros. I got dialed in. I think I did my first MacroEd challenge in April [crosstalk 00:43:52], May, somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere in there. Then towards the end of that challenge, that's when I dialed in. Won my first $10000 and then it was off to the races and started doing keto and playing around with some other things. I know we haven't gotten to the back half of the year, but that was the contrast between the first and second part of the year. It's really a walk before you run concept. I didn't do anything fancy until I had done macro counting and just getting my exercise right for a good six months of doing it consistently, week in, week out, day in, day out. To me, I look at it as you earn the right to do the fancy stuff.

Ashley: Thank you. That's exactly what I was gonna ask you to come back to.

Dennis: Yeah, because keto is a very ... You hear that everywhere now and people think it's [crosstalk 00:44:50]. Everybody's doing keto. And some people it works for, some people it works for their lifestyle, some people it doesn't, but at the end of the day, if you can do it and it works great, but it's not easy. It's really strict. There's not a lot of wiggle room to do that. If you haven't learned all the disciplines that go into doing keto successfully, tracking your food, weighing your food, measuring your food. 'Cause you've got to not just hit numbers, you've got to hit them at a very specific way, or else it doesn't work. You're not in nutritional ketosis if your protein's too high, as a for instance. Which is what screwed me up for the first part. Not in an arrogant kind of way, just like "Oh, well, I didn't really take these rules seriously." It's like "Okay, well, your protein can't be that high." It's like "Well, yeah, but ..."

So I'm still eating 200 plus grams of protein. I'm not getting [inaudible 00:45:46]. I couldn't understand that. So you quickly realize, well, in my case, not so quickly, it probably took me four to six weeks before I really got in. You realize I have to literally follow it to the letter of the law.

If you haven't done any of the tracking, if you haven't measured, if you haven't done any of that, how in the world can you expect to do this really disciplined form of dieting if you haven't done the ones that leave you a little bit of wiggle room? It just doesn't make sense when you think about it.

Ashley: My favorite is people will tell me they do modified keto. Those people who are listening and you don't understand what he means by getting in, so there is a biological thing that happens to your body when you're in nutritional ketosis. You can measure it with at

home labs or whatever. So if you're doing a modified keto, like keto plus vegetables and fruits, I get this all ... I can't tell you how many times I get this. That's not real.

Dennis: That's not a thing.

Ashley: To make your body make that biological change that you cannot fudge and it doesn't matter what blog you read or how many times you melted butter and ground beef, it does not matter. It has to be that discipline.

So Jeremy and I talk about it all the time and I know that you have talked about it with him. You have to earn the hard. When people first get here and they're like "What about carb cycling? What time should I eat? I shouldn't have anything after seven." We're like, "Hit your numbers. Did you write down what you ate today?"

Dennis: Right.

Ashley: Once you do that, awesome. Hit your numbers. And I know we frustrate the daylights of people because we won't give them the answer to how many meals should I have, what time should I eat, how much protein can you have in one sitting, and what do you do within 20 minutes of working out. Show us that you're showing up consistently. Be diligent in the small things and then we'll get fancy. We've got all sorts of fancy stuff in the arsenal, but you've got to earn it.

And for some of our friends, it's not even hit your macros. It's love what you eat. Did you love what you ate? Did it involve something that came from a gas station and was in a wrapper with chocolate inside? Once we get past that, then we'll go. Just show us.

I'm really glad that you talked about that because you did all of the things. There toward the end, you were doing all kinds of nutritional acrobatics, and that's awesome because you had earned them and you had a goal.

For those who aren't familiar with the 1st Phorm challenge, there's money involved in changing your life. So we [crosstalk 00:48:16]. Not a lot. We've partnered, beside 1st Phorm has their own thing that they do and they offer their own nutritional coaching and that kind of stuff and Jeremy has a lot to do with that, but we just come alongside and say "If you're on that journey, awesome. Here are the tools that we think will help you get in the winner circle." Our odds are really good. Our track record is ... [crosstalk 00:48:38].

Dennis: Jeremy's had someone in the finals almost every single time. So the results speak for themselves. If you look at the people who follow this approach, Dave Lowry just one $50000, Jeff Roth won $10000, I won $20000. The proof is in the pudding. These are winning results in fields of thousands of people.

I talked to [Sal 00:49:09] [Persela 00:49:08] directly and said the same thing. He said publicly and privately, Jeremy's always got somebody there. And the reason why is 'cause he knows what he's doing.

Ashley: Right.

Dennis: The program works. Like I said, the proof is in the pudding. I'm obviously a big believer in the challenge. If you know me on social media in any way, I'm obviously a big believer in the brand and it's done a lot of good things for me. But it's also ... It's just another way to keep yourself accountable.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Dennis: Is there an opportunity to win money? Yeah, but it's also just an opportunity for you to find yet another tool that's gonna hold you up on the line and keep you on the straight and narrow and for me, the challenge did wonders in that regard.

When you combine the support you get from that community with the support you get from MacroEd, that's gonna help you through those times, especially in the beginning. I described it before. In the beginning, especially when you're first starting out, you need that support. You need to be around people who are doing the same thing that you're doing because it's a really lonely place in the beginning and I've been there certainly when you're just starting out and you're dieting and you're the only one that's in your circle, so to speak, that's doing that, whether that's your circle at home or just more broadly, in your job or what have you, and you're not seeing the results and your clothes aren't fitting and you've got no one backslapping you and you've got no one, or you haven't won any money. You have nothing to fall back on that's reassuring you, it's a pretty lonely spot.

I think these communities, and I think also one of the things I really found beneficial in the transformation community as well as, especially in MacroEd is the support you get. But I think part of that, the key there is you've got to put yourself out there. You've got to ... That was something that didn't come naturally for me in terms of interacting with people that I had never met on social media and being part of posting your My Fitness Pals every day and interacting and asking questions and attending the Q&As and interacting with people that you don't know and asking questions that you may think "Well, this is a dumb a question. Maybe I shouldn't ask it." Just ask. Put yourself out there. Meet some new people.

I think that's important and it gives you, again, that support. Especially at the beginning when you're going through a tough time to talk to somebody, even if it's just for a hot second on social media. That could be the difference between hitting your numbers for the day and having a bowl of ice cream before you go to bed and falling off the wagon.

Those are some of the big side benefits of these communities and then the relationships that come out of it. I've made a bunch of new friends. I'm talking to one of them right now. As a result of being part of the communities. But I don't think that I'd have these relationships if I didn't put myself out of my comfort zone and interact with people that I didn't know and that kind of stuff.

I felt like that's important to put out there for people to ... I think there's some people that it doesn't come naturally to. It certainly doesn't come natural to me, bu tit's important that people do it.

Ashley: Absolutely. And for those who are from the MacroEd side and they're not familiar with the 1st Phorm challenge, it's just a great way to add that extra element of prize and community and something to hustle for. Everybody can do both. So if you're here and you're like "Oh, there's money? I'm gonna get small jeans and there's money?" Yes, come talk to us. We'll help you with that.

And if you're here for the money, and you're like "How do I get small jeans?" We can also help you with that. I think that's what's so cool about your story is that you just rode that line and benefited from everything and that's how you built your story.

Dennis: Oh, we have another person.

Ashley: We do. You can get some water, but you need to go to bed. You can go grab a snack. I'll see you in a little bit.

All right.

Dennis: I can totally relate.

Ashley: Just gonna be a mom. If she had pajamas on, I would let her say hi to you guys, but she doesn't.

All right. I think we did all of those. Did you doubt yourself when you got started?

Dennis: Absolutely. I just expected ... I really try to harp on the fact that when I say I was heavy my whole life, I really was heavy my whole life. I had failed at this 100% of the times that I had tried it before. In terms of doing it and being consistent and really seeing the big results.

Never in a million years did I think ... Well, I shouldn't say that. I certainly didn't have the confidence to say I can lose 85 pounds and get in the best shape, literally, that I've ever been in, get down to a size 34. Where I was able to go were things that I didn't even consider as a possibility when I started. Because when you fail that many times and you're so used to being in this bad place, for lack of a better term, there's nothing that you could hold onto that gives you any confidence.

I really, there's a quote in one of Andy's early podcasts that just became my go to and I listen to it more times than I can count. The quote is the work comes before the belief. And that, to me, encapsulated everything especially at the beginning. You're gonna have to do a lot of work for a really long time before you start to see results that are significant enough that are gonna then create the belief and create the confidence and create the momentum. It's gonna take some time before you see any of that.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Dennis: It's gonna take a good amount of time. And there's some saying, I can't recall it, but it's something to the effect of the time frames in terms of when people around you start to notice the changes and it's really true. The people who see you every single day are not gonna notice the change probably for, I don't know, four months in, five months in. Where then, you've got people around you giving you that positive reinforcement.

Every time, all the time leading up to that, heck yeah I doubted myself. I doubted myself every single day. It was just like holding onto that work comes before the belief mantra. I'm just gonna believe wholeheartedly that if I do this every single day it's gonna pay off. Then eventually, you get momentum and certainly winning $10000 halfway through the year helps and there's stuff like that that was helpful along the way. But in that early part, it was just a slog. But again, I'm glad I did it because I can now, I can honestly look back and I feel like one of the things that hopefully, when I talk to people or people hear what I did, I want people to look at what I did and say "Okay, that guy took a really long time, but he did it day in and day out and if I do it just like him, this guy who's unremarkable in every sense, doesn't have genetics or any of that stuff, he's proof." I think it's good to have someone you can relate to and go "Okay, he did it and it worked." It's not just hyperbole that you can ... "Oh yeah, you have to work really hard." There's a guy who actually did it and it works.

That's really what I try to harp on a lot is you just gotta fight through that. You've got to basically believe that the end result that you're going after is more important than those periods of self doubt, and you've just got to be willing to fight through it. The pay off's going to be there. If you fight through those periods, like [inaudible 00:57:24] I say all the time, there's 100% chance of success. If you hit your numbers every day and you workout every day and you do things as prescribed, it will work. There's no chance it won't. But you've got to be willing and you've got to not go off the straight and narrow. You can't kind of do it. You can't do it five days a week and the weekend's do whatever you want. You gotta just go all in. That's my philosophy if you really want [crosstalk 00:57:50].

Ashley: That's exactly what Matt Pox said when we did this the first time. He said you just gotta go all in. I think that that's crucial.

You said you're unremarkable, and please hear me say the thing I love the most about telling your story is that you're unremarkable. Your results are remarkable, but you didn't have any special legs up. There were no secret match pills or superpowers. That's what makes your story great to me. So please know that your unremarkability, if that's a word, is one of the best things about the story.

You talked about how, at the beginning, it takes a long time for people to notice and for you to believe. Rachel Hollis, who's my current favorite author ever in America, she wrote "Girl, wash your face." And she talks about how you default to the last level that you've achieved. If you're the person who always makes it 20 pounds in four weeks, you

will trust yourself to that. That's your default. And then when you try to go past that, you're like "Oh, no, no, I'm the person who does this."

Setting that bar and accepting that you're the person who does more than your last default and building some trust that you're the person that can keep doing that I think is a really big deal. Obviously that has more to do with mindset than diet or exercise or any of that stuff, but just knowing that you can trust yourself. Like I said I was gonna work out today and I'm gonna work out. And just building that relationship of trust between who you are and who you say you are and what you follow through with. None of us would let anybody down the way that we cancel on ourselves.

Dennis: 100%. And I would just add on, I think what you just said is fantastic and I think I would add onto that. When you start to get into that point where you're past that point you've been before, just think about how cool it's gonna feel to break through that barrier and if you're the guy who could always lose 20 pounds and never get past that, think how cool it's gonna be to see 30 pounds. That payoff is so much more worth it than falling off the wagon and just regressing. That's part of what got me hooked on the stuff I talked about earlier around setting big goals and going after them. A lot of that was born out of ... I never in a million years thought I could lose 85 pounds. I got my weight, at one point, below 200. I never ever ever would have thought that. I never really would have thought I'd see my abs. I saw them for a hot second there at the very end.

Ashley: They were there at the beach.

Dennis: They were there. Yeah. They popped out. They do pop out from time to time. Yeah, I never thought I would see that. But that's such a cool feeling to be able to ... That, to me, is worth more than going "Oh, well, screw it. I'm just gonna have ice cream. This is too hard" or whatever. It's worth all of the early mornings and the foregoing beers and the foregoing this. That payoff, if you could bottle up that feeling of the payoff that comes from all that hard work and sacrifice, you'd be a billionaire, because there's just no feeling like it.

That's the thing, and it's easy for me to say, 'cause I've done it, but what I try to really harp on is to tell people who haven't felt that yet, it's coming. But you just gotta hang in there a little bit longer and you gotta power through those barriers that you talked about.

Ashley: And once you get there, I think that's why you've just been like "Okay, let's see what we can do now that I'm here." Because you weren't gonna be that guy. Never been that guy before. So why not run? Why not do tris? Why not prep for an Iron Man?

Dennis: Right.

Ashley: 'Cause you didn't expect to be here anyway, so what else could you do that you didn't expect to do? And that's awesome. [crosstalk 01:01:46] That has to be freeing.

Dennis: That's exactly the mindset now. Yeah. And it's fun. I mean, it's fun to be able to say I can do that. I may not be ... I have no illusions. I want to do ... I know I can do an Iron Man. Am I gonna win it? No. Am I gonna be in the top half? Probably not.

Ashley: Nobody is.

Dennis: But I'll finish the damn thing. Yeah. But I know I can do that. But it's like I have that confidence 'cause I did a really hard thing for a really long time, and you build on that and now it becomes ... Like I said, before, at the beginning, now I get a kick out of it and I have the confidence that I know I can do it. And I also know with confidence that I can maintain my weight. I know I've built the habits and I know that I can check myself if I need to check myself.

Like right now, I started tracking two days ago, yesterday. I'm gonna do an eight week run of tracking again, just to get myself re-leveled. It's a process that never ends. It's never gonna be something that I just can never think about again. It's kind of like I'm genetically, I'm a fat guy by nature. So I know I can't just go back to eating whatever I want, however much I want, the volume that I ... Those instincts are still there. If you put a counter full of appetizers and deviled eggs and this and that, I will crush that if left unchecked. So I always have to think about it. It never goes away.

I'm not suggesting that you do this and it all of a sudden is magically like you never have to think about it again. But you just, it becomes part of your life and that's just the way that you're gonna live life from that point on in order to maintain what you've worked so hard to get.

Ashley: Right. And one thing I do want to point out is that you don't have to track all the time. You're getting ready to buckle down and do a series, but the goal is that we track you until you get down to goal weight, and then you let go of that part of management. So you're not necessarily eating a whole lot differently, but you're not weighing, you're not measuring, you don't have your food scale at your family dinner table. That is for the season to get to goal.

Then it's a matter of get your favorite pants. When they don't fit, you know what to do. You've got the tools. You've got the experience. But I don't want people, and we get this a lot where they think that they're gonna track food and weigh and measure everything they eat until they're in the grave. That is not the goal. We want to get you where you're going and then teach you how to live there. And sometimes that means checking yourself and other times, that means all is well until you lose a belt loop and then we gotta get serious about it.

Dennis: Well, and part of intuitive eating is also just balancing everything else you're doing that day. I didn't track for the first six months of the year and I maintained my goal weight pretty much the whole first half of 2018. Part of it is I know if I'm not gonna work out that hard, I'm not gonna eat as much. But if I go out and I run 10 miles, I can have a few beers. I don't have to weigh it all out and measure it all, but I just know if I burned 2000 calories that morning, the few beers I have that evening aren't gonna kill me.

I know it's a little cliché, but you earn it. You figure out ways to find that balance and make it work. So I agree with you 100%. Yeah, your goal should be to make it so you don't have to track all the time. I just, I'm doing a series because I want to support the, I want to do it alongside the people I'm working with in the Transphormation run this next go around. But also for me, it's just a good reset for me, 'cause it's really easy, and I know Matt said this in his interview. Those portion sizes can creep up a little bit and sometimes you can catch yourself, I use the term eat like an asshole.

Ashley: It happens.

Dennis: You can find yourself sometimes doing that. So it's a good way just for me to do eight weeks and just reset the discipline. So I'm gonna be posting my macros in my little group and I've got a text string with Jeremy going and we're gonna keep ourselves accountable and when I come off the eight weeks, that'll have been a good run, kind of a reset. So it's just finding ways to reset your ... And going back to the discipline point I made before.

Ashley: Right. And people who want to work with you, put comments and he'll come find you. Just as you're listening to this and you're like "Oh, he's got a group." He's got a group and it's great. I get to creep on them so it's kind of fun. Fun deal

And everybody who heard you say intuitive eating, we're gonna back that up, and this is not sanctioned. Dennis did not say everybody can do intuitive eating. This is something that you earn.

Dennis: That's right.

Ashley: If I ate intuitively right now, I would just creep cruising the direction I've been going. And that is not what anybody wants. I cannot trust my intuition right now and you couldn't have at other times either. So for everybody's who's like "Oh yeah, Dennis said this with intuitive eating." No, he did not. He earned intuitive eating with a year and half of discipline. This is what he did.

Dennis: That's right. That's right. You want to do intuitive eating, do the other stuff I did first and then come talk to me.

Ashley: Absolutely. I pierced my nose when I was 26, because I was registering for my last doc class, and I was like "Man, I'm gonna have kids and someday they're gonna be like, oh, well, you pierced your nose. I want to pierce mine." And I'm gonna use that same thing. Do all the stuff I did before. If you are finishing up your doc degree at 26, I'll take you and I'll pierce your nose myself.

Dennis: I've got the same thing with tattoos. My eight year old has already told me he's going to get tattoos too, and I'm like "Well, I didn't get my first tattoo until I was 24 and I had my own job and I was out of my parent's house. So if you want to do that at that point, knock yourself out." I didn't get all the rest of these till I was 40. You want to do it like dad did it, be my guest. 'Cause you won't be under my roof anymore.

Ashley: There are new ones. Can you tell me about the new ones? Are they fitness related? I feel like they probably are.

Dennis: Honestly, I have not gotten anything fitness related yet. That's coming.

Ashley: Okay.

Dennis: I honestly, I turned 40. I had a little tattoo before and I really like them. I really like tattoos. I like the way they look. I'd have a Jeremy Mullen sleeve if I didn't have a corporate job. I look at the work that he's got, I'm like, I want that. I just dig it. I like the way it looks.

Yeah, I do have my kid's initials. They're a weave throughout my shoulder and stuff, so I'll keep adding to it kind of along this side. The big tattoo that I'm really looking forward to the most is getting that Iron Man on the back of my leg. That's probably the one I'm gonna, I'll enjoy that one the most.

But I don't know. I can't really give a good ... I just think they look really cool. I like the way they look and I'm gonna keep getting them and I'm gonna be the old man at a tattoo shop getting more ink. But it's just what I like to do, I guess. I don't know. It's not something that people usually think. People who know me in my job and stuff like that, when they see what my shoulder looks like, and I'm a finance guy and a numbers geek and it's a little bit of a discrepancy there. But it works.

Ashley: Your shoulder tattoo is the most controversial tattoo on the internet. When Dennis took his first picture, this is so great, and we answer this question ... I don't know. You probably answer it every time you take a breath. But he took a picture in a mirror and for everybody who can science and math and life, things look backwards in a mirror. So he takes this picture in a mirror and it's super obvious, you can see the phone. It's not like a selfie, like you can see the phone in his hands.

I'm gonna open a gogurt. Excuse us. I'm sorry.

Anyway, so then all the after pictures, somebody else has taken them for him. So you have this big guy who doesn't even look the same in the face anymore, clean shaven. Then you get these bearded shredded dude and the tattoo is bigger and on the wrong shoulder. So this is clearly not the same guy. This is fake news. And every time we post a before and after, somebody's gotta say something about that tattoo.

Dennis: Every single time. So I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, people, if it's a selfie, it's gonna be backwards. It got to the point where it happened so often that there's an app you can download that you can mirror a picture and flip it on your phone. So I flipped my day one so that the tattoo would be on the normal side, just so that I could post my side by sides and wouldn't get the "It's not the same guy." It's funny. So Dave Lowry, he's got a bunch of tattoos too, and it was the same thing. I think Jeremy got tired of it, 'cause every time, like "Oh, tattoo's on the wrong side, not the same guy."

At one point, he's like "Dude, you've gotta stop saying that, 'cause people are gonna think you're serious." It just, it was without fail, there was always ... I got a kick out of it, because I'd reply to every comment. I'm like "That's me. I promise it's me. It's me." "Oh, no, I didn't mean anything by it." But for me, it's something that's so terribly obvious, it's amazing how many people don't realize, like you said, how mirrors work.

Ashley: Right? How mirrors work. And I think that it has to be the biggest compliment ever that you look so different that they just can't accept that you're the same guy. That has to make you feel good.

Dennis: Right. I'll take it as a compliment all day long.

Ashley: Talk to me about the second half of the year.

Dennis: So the second half of the year, that's when we got a little fancy. I mentioned I did a keto run and we really, in addition to the dieting stuff, I was doing keto, one of the other things I really started getting into was Jeremy challenged me to do 100 mile bike ride. I started getting into cycling. I dusted off my old bike and just keeping with trying new things. I had my old bike from college, still had the 1997 sticker on it. Started riding that. After I won the first $10000, I bought a proper road bike. I just really like cycling. We have a good path that's 45 miles, you can actually take it into DC here. So it's really cool.

So I started riding and Jeremy ... Hello, there. Jeremy challenged me to do 100 mile bike ride and he said we'd meet up and do it together and I'm like "Okay." So I started training. In addition to my normal daily workouts, I'd be doing long bike rides and training runs on the weekends, really ... 'Cause I didn't even, when he texted me, I still remember he texted me. I didn't even hesitate. All right, I'm gonna do that. 'Cause I was already getting in that mindset of I'll try anything.

Ashley: Right.

Dennis: So it was a lot of ... So building in more endurance stuff, pushing the limits of my workouts and such. So that was, as we started to really get into towards the end of the challenge after the year, and so in the last I'd say six weeks, we felt pretty good that there was a chance that I'd be in the money for the end of the year. So we started doing some fasting work in addition to the keto. Staying on keto, but then mixing in fasting.

That's another one where fasting's a little bit popular these days. Fasting, it's not easy for everybody. It certainly was intimidating for me. Hello, there. But you start small and you build up to it. So by the end, I was doing three 24 hour fasts a week and it was really with a goal in mind. It was a goal to really power through and get that last little bit off. I knew that come the end of the challenge, I'd go back to eating seven days a week.

But it's another tool that I have in the toolbox now. 'Cause I did like the way I felt fasting. I don't know that I'd want to do it three days a week, but ...

Ashley: Or for that long.

Dennis: Right. But it's a tool. And it's like all this stuff. It's all a tool, but the fancier tools, in terms of whether it's keto, whether it's carb cycling, whether it's fasting, you've gotta earn, like we said before, you've gotta earn your way to do it.

So that was really towards the end of the year and then I submitted the final pictures right there at the end of December. Obviously didn't win the number one prize, but got another silver, got another $10000 which is nothing to shake a stick at.

Then that was the end of the hard dieting for me. I really reached my goal weight at the end of the year. I moved into maintenance mode right after that. It felt really good. I floated up a little bit. I ended the year at 194 and then I've been floating between 200 and 205, which that just feels like the right walking around weight.

Ashley: Probably more sustainable.

Dennis: Yeah. Getting down that low for me, I'm still a big guy. I'm not ... I'm just built big. So I think getting down that low is tough. It just, it doesn't feel as good. I feel good at 200 to 205. So that's where we ended.

And we did the bike ride, by the way. We did the bike ride in October in West Virginia. Myself, Jeremy, Dave Thomson. So that was another big event. That's nine hours, 100 miles. Jeremy picks the course that was uphill the first few miles, which was not [crosstalk 01:16:32] necessarily something I was looking ... Yeah. It was really good planning on his part.

We did that and that was just, it was such a cool, going back to stuff I said already a couple times, but it's such a cool feeling when you get to the end of a nine hour just really long endurance event, just the feeling of accomplishment. Looking down at my phone and seeing that thing click over to 100 miles, that's ...

Ashley: That's wild.

Dennis: It's cool. Yeah. I think that's probably where I got the first real taste of that adrenaline, that pay off that comes from something that you really worked a long, a lot of hours training for and doing that with friends and that payoff was just huge. I think I got another taste of that when I did my first triathlon and I'll get a taste of it again in the marathon. So now, that's a drug for me. I just get hooked on it. So that was another big part of the second half of last year was getting more involved in some of those bigger challenges that I had to really work hard to be able to tackle.

Ashley: I love in your social media when you talk about setting goals, you say find something you can't do right now and I think that that's really crucial to the whole theme of your journey of just doing stuff you can't do that makes you uncomfortable.

Dennis: And that was something that I jumped right into with the triathlon. That was the next thing that I did. And I'm gonna just keep doing that. It just keeps you interested too. Putting aside all the stuff I just said, for me, that's a way that I could stay motivated with

fitness. For me, I need a goal. I need something I'm gonna chase. It keeps my interest. It keeps me focused. Not everybody needs that maybe, but I do. THat's why I really recommend it, because it keeps people ... It's very easy to get into the monotony of going to the gym. You're like "I gotta go do chest and triceps again."

There's nothing you're holding onto and you're going "Here's why I'm going to the gym." Yeah, you're going to the gym because you want to lose weight and you want to get in shape, but if you go with a purpose, like if I go to train or something, not every time I go to the gym, but if that's an undercurrent, for me at least, that just keeps me going and keeps me motivated and keeps me dialed in and keeps me interested. If you're not interested, after awhile, everything fades. You've got to find some ways to keep it interesting.

Ashley: Absolutely. If you would not have made these changes, where would you be?

Dennis: I don't like to think about that. 'Cause like I said at the very beginning, if I'm being completely honest, as I said before, I'm a pretty open and honest guy, I was in a pretty low point. I'd probably be heavier. I'd probably be a pretty miserable person to be around. I probably would have developed some worse habits. I'd probably be drinking too much if I'm being honest. I'd just be all around just in a bad spot. Not terribly happy. I'd be a middle aged, overweight, unhappy guy who's just going through the motions of life and just zombied out. That's how I'd be.

I can say that with confidence because that's the way I was feeling towards the end of 2016 before I made the change. And I can say I'm the exact opposite now, but that's definitely where I was and where I was headed to continue. It's a pretty miserable place.

A lot of my social media posts, I say it's life changing and it's not an exaggeration or I don't mean it to be dramatic. When I say the stuff that I say in these posts, it may sound dramatic, or it may sound like I'm over the top, but it's no exaggeration. It's really it is truly my life is completely different than the way it was a year and a half ago. For the better.

I know how it'd look if I hadn't made these changes, and it's not a pretty picture.

Ashley: What advice would you give somebody who is sitting there where you were before? If they are looking to make a change, what would you tell them?

Dennis: Well, so I would say just start. Start and then reach out. Reach out to people. Certainly you can reach out to me, but reach out to somebody. There's communities like this one, like MacroEd, the first one, Transphormation. Find people that have been where you want to be and reach out to them. I have yet to come across somebody who's done ... Well, with maybe one or two exceptions, I have yet to come across somebody who's not just open and willing and eager, honestly, to help somebody on their journey and starting out. So reach out.

I've talked to people on Instagram more so than other platforms, but on a number of platforms. I've talked to people that I haven't talked to ... There's friends of mine that I've reengaged after 20 or 30 years that I just haven't talked to in a long time and they're starting trying to get themselves going and I love that. I love helping people out and getting people going. So I would say just reach out. Find someone you can relate to, whether that's if you're 30 to 40 something year old guy living in the suburbs and you've got a few kids and you're overweight and you want to make a change, I'm a pretty relatable guy to your situation, 'cause that's exactly where I was.

If you're a female who's got some of those same attributes, find somebody. There's a bunch of people out there in these different communities that have done this. Find somebody that you can relate to and reach out and then look at their story. And then just start. Don't try to make it fancy. Don't try to over complicate it. Just commit yourself to doing some work and then just start going. And then know that it's gonna take ... Don't put an endpoint to it. Don't put "This is a 30 day or I'm gonna try it for a week or blah, blah, blah." Just start going and just say "I'm gonna do things differently and I'm gonna start tomorrow." Wake up in the morning and it's gonna be a new day and yeah, you're gonna be clumsy and you're gonna screw things up the first couple times and that's okay. But ask.

The other thing I would say is ask questions. Realize that if you're heavy and you've been heavy a long time, there is a very good chance that you don't know what you're doing. Learn.

Ashley: Right.

Dennis: And just try to soak up as much as you can and make it fun. Make it interesting to learn new things. If you don't have fun in the process, if you don't enjoy the process of getting there and figure out a way to enjoy the process, it's just gonna be a miserable slog. So figure out what elements of the process that you can gravitate towards that you can find fun and interesting and will keep your interests and then hold onto those. So if you like running or if you want to learn more about running, then focus on that. If you hate running and there's no way on God's earth you ever want to run, maybe look at cycling. Maybe look at swimming. There's any number of things, activities. Weight lifting. Take a class. Another thing I learned to do spin classes this year. I've never thought in a million years I'd do a spin class. I love spin class now. So try some new things. You'll figure out some that you like.

Put yourself out there. I think these are kind of the main things, these are all things that I did that got me out of my comfort zone, especially early on in that lonely place where you don't have a mentor and you don't have results. If you do all those things and you really get out of your comfort zone, that can help get you going. But if you approach it closed off and you're resistant and you're not really sure and you're tiptoeing in, just go all in. Just go in and just let yourself go and then I think you'll find that it's a lot easier to get into the momentum and get into a groove if you just let go and just get into it. Don't be apprehensive.

Again, these communities, they're so encouraging, they're so supportive, and people who have been through the journey, like myself, like I know how shitty it is. I know how hard it is. I know what it feels like to be fat for 40 years and how miserable all the shit that goes along with that. I know what that's like.

Find people in communities that you can relate to and interact with them. You'll find that that will help carry you. And sometimes you only need to get carried through for one day and sometimes you have a rough week. Sometimes you're going into vacation and you're terrified because that's your trigger point. Everybody has their thing that triggers them. Some people, it's the weekend. Some people it's whatever. Find somebody who's done it and reach out to them, like "Hey man, how do you handle this? How did you handle that?" You'll find that again, 99 times out of 100, they're gonna be very responsive and they're gonna be very willing to give you advice. Then take their advice. Try it their way.

Ashley: Do the things.

Dennis: Do the things. Don't just ... If you think you're just gonna go into situations and just figure it out, there's a reason why you're heavy in the first place and it's because you haven't been able to figure it out so far, and that's okay.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Dennis: But rely on the people and the resources that are out there, especially the internet and social media and stuff. It's so much stuff and it's just a click away. And then that will snowball in the momentum. That will snowball into knowledge. That will snowball into new relationships. As I said before, you'll make new friends and that will be, those types of things that you get eventually, then it becomes easier. But in the beginning, you're gonna have to get yourself out of your comfort zone if you truly want to make big changes like someone like myself or Jeff or some of the other people that you see that have done it.

That's the way they do it. It ain't easy for anybody.

Ashley: My phone says it's gonna die, but I've got some rapid fire questions. So first, in case I lose you, let me say thank you. I've been looking forward to this so much and I know that so many people are gonna get a lot of inspiration and a lot of knowledge and understanding and belief in the process, that this terribly unremarkable guy has this totally remarkable story. Which is my favorite thing. So thank you for doing this.

Then I got some questions.

Dennis: No problem, I've enjoyed it. Shoot.

Ashley: How do you take your coffee?

Dennis: Black. Darker the better.

Ashley: Okay. So dark roast?

Dennis: Oh yeah. I'm a big Americano guy. So espresso and hot water, nothing in it. That's how I roll. There's no foo foo drinks in my life.

Ashley: We could have coffee in the same room, but I don't want any [inaudible 01:29:02] of that. If you had to do one workout for the rest of your life, which I know you would hate, but what would you pick?

Dennis: So I would do the [emom 01:29:11] workout every minute on the minute. I'd do six different exercises. It's just you're doing multiple rounds. That's the style that I have become addicted to as of late. So if I have one workout, it's gonna be an [emom 01:29:27] style workout where I could rotate six moves, four rounds, 24 exercises, rapid fire, and you hit all your body parts. That's the way I'd do it.

Ashley: Max results. What's your mantra when things are hard? Like when you're in the dark place, what are you telling yourself? What are your lines?

Dennis: So especially early on, it was the work becomes before the belief. That was my early on mantra for sure. I think today, I boil it down to its simplest form. Private, most recent example where I've really gotten into a dark place is I really had a hard time learning how to swim this year. That was a big goal I set out for myself to do a triathlon. That was hard. I'll be honest. It was not easy for me to learn how to swim and it was very humbling. I had to hire some coaches and get coached like my little kids do.

But the thing that kept me going there was if you do the work, if you put in the time, you're gonna get the result. That's what I kept telling myself and after training sessions or weeks where I couldn't swim more than two laps at a time, I'm like "How in the hell am I gonna do a triathlon if I can't swim two laps?" But I just kept coming back to just keep at it, keep at it. The worst thing you can do is stop, so just keep trying, keep hammering, keep learning, keep watching, watch YouTube videos, ask questions. I hired a coach, like I said.

It just comes down to if you do the work, you'll get the result. So that's what kept me going. And it's true. It's true with weight loss, it was true with swimming. I did a triathlon two weeks ago. I'll do a nother one. So I've swam over a mile now. I can do it. And it's only because I put in the time three, four days a week every week. Even when I didn't feel like it. Going to the gym in the snow and the winter when I was tired and knocking out swimming. Simple as that. You put in the time, you get the result.

Ashley: Absolutely. What snack is always in your bag?

Dennis: Probably ... I'd probably say mixed nuts and stuff is a go to for me. That became a go to for me. Don't get me wrong ... If it's a good snack, like a good for you snack, it's nuts. If it's a bad snack that will not give me any benefit of eating it, I could crush some chips and salsa like nobody's business and it'll be gone before you know it. If we're going to a Mexican restaurant and I'm letting myself go a little bit, like we're going through baskets

and baskets. So that's ... I'm a sucker for appetizers. I just, I can crush them. It's like a puff of smoke and the whole thing's gone, like I don't know what happened.

Ashley: I love it. All right. Well, thanks you so much for everything and for those of you who are watching, we will strip off the audio so you can listen in the car if you need some Dennis inspiration. We will pull out the text so that you can read through it if you're a nerd like me. We'll have the video here and up on our YouTube channel. So we'll have it in any form that you want to take it in if you missed any parts. And I encourage you to make sure that you listen, especially to the part where he talks about what he would say to you when you're getting started. I think that that boils down the lessons that you use to have the success that you've had.

And we are all just so daggone proud of you. Please let me say that.

Dennis: Thank you. Thank you.

Ashley: What you have done is fantastic and we're just so happy to have you as part of our crew and to help motivate those who are coming behind you. You're so good to pay it forward.

Dennis: And I love that. That's the last thing I'd say is I appreciate it. I made a lot of great relationships out of this whole experience. You're obviously one of them, but yeah, I am all about paying it forward now. So as I said before, reach out. I may not have all the answers, but I know some things that work and if I don't know, I can get you the answer. But I'm also, like I said, I can relate to anybody who's going through the struggle and there's nothing remarkable about me, so I'm one of those guys that I mentioned before that you reach out and ask me a question, I'm gonna answer you. I'm willing to help whoever, because I get a charge out of seeing people try to do, and have some success trying to do what I did. 'Cause I know how cool it feels on the other side, just see people that I come in contact with try to do the same thing. That's the juice for me now.

Ashley: Absolutely. Well, we appreciate you. I'm gonna get small fry to bed.

Dennis: All right.

Ashley: We will be back not next week, in two weeks, and we'll do this again. So I'm super excited.

Thanks so much, Dennis.

Dennis: Thank you. All right.