Transformative Journeys: Losing Weight and Gaining Life

Alan & Angie Thomas

[00:00:00] Ed Watters: You were both overweight and you took the journey together. How did it affect your relationship before and after this transformation period?

[00:00:15] Angie Thomas: Well, before I was not the nagging wife, his mother nagged him about his weight. So I had seen too many other couples where one would nag the other and I did not want to be that spouse. I supported him, work, at home, our relationship. There was not, you know, we, we were not apart in any way as a married couple because of our weight. Um, but certainly when he began the journey, I will say, I was, um, scared and whatnot, because we do everything together. I knew I had weight to lose. And so when he made this public declaration, I was scared because I knew I was going to be, and, and

[00:01:03] putting my weight for the world to see as well. And while I was 188 pounds, I wasn't 300 pounds, 5'7, anyone that I was friends with on Facebook would see that and it was intimidating. But I was not going to be the, you know, you've, everybody has the cute little, um, pudgy wife of the sexy, hunky husband.

[00:01:28] Alan Thomas: Oh yeah.

[00:01:28] Angie Thomas: Well, I was not going to be that, I'm putting that sixty-three pounds off Friday. And I did what you said, 190 days. It also, as far as our relationship, it only, I mean, it's gotten better and it wasn't bad before but as the spouse who needed to lose weight on my own and I did, when at bedtime, as the spouse of someone though that was obese, I also had the hidden fear of, would he wake up the next morning or would he have

[00:02:10] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:02:10] Angie Thomas: a heart attack or some God forsaken ill, you know, something happen overnight.

[00:02:21] Ed Watters: To overcome, you must educate. Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best conversations happen with ourself. Reach out and challenge yourself; let's dive in and learn something right now.

[00:03:11] Today we're speaking with Alan and Angie Thomas, Alan is the founder of Rethink Dieting. Alan, could you please introduce yourselves and let people know just a little more about you, please?

[00:03:26] Alan Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And uh, again, I'm Alan and this is Angie. If you're, if anybody watching on the video side will be able to figure that out pretty quickly. But, uh, you know, we, we had a, sort of a personal journey of where we dropped 192 pounds in 260 days back in 2017. And it came out of me stepping on the scale, uh, one morning, March 2nd, it was the day after my, our 31st wedding anniversary. And, uh, I saw there 304 pounds and it was, if it had, if the scale had read 299.

[00:04:05] 99999, I would have just said, Pass me another cheeseburger. I'd have been okay with it. Because it went to that tipping point, it just got my attention. And I, I spent, uh, I spent a lot of years in the, what's called the senior market insurance, which is people that are predominantly over sixty-five years of age. And I realized that I had never met a man that was more than a hundred pounds overweight

[00:04:29] that was over sixty-five and I was fifty-five. And so the reason I've not met a man that was over 100 pounds overweight at sixty-five is because most of them are dead. Now there's, there's a few of those unicorns out there and we've met a few of them since then, but they are few and far between on the male side. And, but I also realized it would be,

[00:04:50] that I would be like one of those guys that would be called the first husband. Not because Angie was searching around for, for a new one, as far as I know, but because of the fact that I couldn't put down the fork and spoon. And, and it was, and that's a big deal. But it's also a big deal with, with just letting her down, letting our family down, letting our kids down, and, and then all of the, all of the things that I believe I was called to do, I wouldn't get done.

[00:05:20] And all of those things that I've been putting off because I was, I was too fat. You know, in my mind, we, it's, it's popular in today's culture to say it's okay. But I've not met many people, I've, I've met really no one that I've ever been on the phone with that struggled with obesity to the level I did, that deep down really thought it was okay.

[00:05:41] I mean, they, they, they might make jokes about it. I made a million of them, Angie will you tell you. You name it, I had every joke in the world about being fat. And, and it was just to hide that struggle. I mean, it was the coping mechanism. And it's not that people are bad because they're, they're obese or overweight, it's the fact that they, it's, they don't get to live this life to the full.

[00:06:05] And I'm not talking about from a health perspective. I'm talking about when somebody's, when, every time you go into a public setting, into an interaction with somebody, you're, you're wondering, is somebody making a judgment call about me because of my weight? Is, you know, it is number three, uh, number three reason for divorce in the United States behind, uh, infidelity and financial, yeah.

[00:06:29] People, and we get so many people that tell us, My spouse loves me even though I'm 100 pounds overweight, or 50 pounds overweight, or 200 pounds overweight. But what's interesting is we've never had a spouse that was unhappy that their spouse lost the weight either. That's never happened.

[00:06:47] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:06:48] Alan Thomas: And you would, you would think that it would be kind of obvious, but it's not because we build these coping mechanisms. So, you know, a few years after that, after that journey, we were getting asked to help a lot of people and we'd help anybody that we could. But we just have this core belief that we're never telling you what to eat, because that is not the problem, that is not the problem. If, if, I've yet to meet an individual that didn't intuitively know what to eat to lose weight,

[00:07:19] I really didn't. Now, now does it mean that education on food, nutrition, exercise doesn't matter? Of course not. But that's never the problem, that's never it. And in fact, we, we, a client of ours that, he's really, really a sweet man and he's a father too and he was over 450 pounds. And he's the first guy I've ever met that, um, that had more than a hundred pounds to lose and never been on a diet in his life, never been on one.

[00:07:44] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:07:44] Alan Thomas: And, and I said to him in our, in our first interaction, You know, I explained I wasn't going to tell him what to eat, but we'd get the weight off of him. And he, um, said, But what am I going to eat? Now, this guy was in a wheelchair if he had to walk more than ten feet. And I said, Well, I said, You love your wife and daughters very much, I know.

[00:08:04] I said, What, um, if they were taken hostage and the only way to get them back alive was to lose a pound a week until you reach that ideal weight that you know you were created to be at your current age. So could you save their life? And he said, Yeah, I think I could. I said, What would you do? What would you eat?

[00:08:25] And he paused for about thirty seconds and he thought very, and he was, it was, he was really thinking it through and he gave a real answer. It sounds like a joke when, when I say it out loud now, but it was a real answer. He said, I know what I'll do, he said, I'm going to eat less. I said, That, and that sounds silly to say it,

[00:08:46] I mean, it does, but that's how much we get in our own way. We get our, Oh, you got to have the perfect diet, you got to have this, this. I said, That's where you start. Now 170, 180 pounds later, he's still going, okay. Now, did he have to educate himself on himself? Of course he did. But if I say, Vegan, you want to do corn, and I'm not saying you personally, but I'm saying an individual that struggles with weight,

[00:09:06] if I say, Vegan, they want to do carnivore. If I say, if I say Weight Watchers, they want to do Jenny Craig. Well, not Jenny Craig anymore, but they, no matter what it is, it's always wrong. We become, people who have been on diet after diet after diet become microbiologists when it comes to the diet. And the diet is always the excuse.

[00:09:23] That was always my excuse. Oh, no, I couldn't stick to that, you know, I, I like, I like bacon too much. Oh, we can have bacon on this. Well, well, I still want to have some of this, I want to have, there's always this excuse. But when you put the responsibility between the elbows of the person that has to do it, then, then it gets real, real fast. And you figure out real quickly that it was not the diet that was stopping them.

[00:09:48] And, and it's really, it's fun to see people who come alive. And, because this is the thing that we're after, we want to bring people's life alive. I, I could care less if somebody eats [00:10:00] broccoli, or whether they're vegan, or whether they're carnivore, or whether they eat keto, or whether they do this or whether they do that, we want people to come alive. And I was, it's like one of our, one of our clients said about a year ago, he's, he's a pastor that was 260 pounds at 5'8.

[00:10:14] More or less morbid obesity, just so y'all know, even though our culture would not say that it was, but it is. And, uh, and he wanted to be 170 pounds because that's what he knew he was in, in college. He hit that in about eight months. And there's a video of him jumping out of an airplane because he'd always wanted to jump out of an airplane.

[00:10:35] Now, I don't want to. I think airplanes are good to land with the wheels on the ground and everything, that's me. But it was so neat, he went to 18, 000 feet and jumped out of a plane just so he could kind of get that experience. And he wouldn't have been able to do it. But now, here's what's interesting.

[00:10:52] His church is growing again, his daughters are thriving in school, his marriage was probably good, it's even better now. I mean, he's, he's stepping into other areas of his life that he, that he wasn't taking action in. And all of a sudden you get this momentum in one area called weight, which is super hard to handle.

[00:11:09] And I'm not going to say it's easy, there is no easy path. The easy path is a simple path, but it, but it's, but it's not easy. There's no magic pill. But you get momentum there and it's funny how it's almost the Creator of the universe opens up possibilities in other areas that you never would have thought possible.

[00:11:28] Ed Watters: Yep. That's, that's a lot to unpack and it's, it's a great story. You know, I want to go back to the 304 pound days. These, these are obviously days that you never want to return to once you felt the glorification of being alive. So you say it's not about the diet, it's about the decision. I believe that 100%.

[00:11:59] And you say it well because a lot of people, they want an excuse to have a doughnut, or whatever, ice cream. You don't need an excuse, you just need to be accountable for what your intake is. And when people start counting these calories, it gets so confusing. I know when my wife and I, we started down that health journey and discovering new things, and how many people have different diets, and it's really about the intake overall. So what, what made you focus on that intake in the first place? And did it happen only after the 304 pounds was reached? Or did you think about that many times before and just sloughed it off because, eh, I'm doing okay.

[00:13:08] Angie Thomas: And if I can just say, Ed, there was a point a few years ago, we counted up how many eating plans, diets, books, recipe books, etc, we were over seventy and we had thrown

[00:13:21] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:13:21] Angie Thomas: away many of them. We had a major move to Florida from South Carolina back in 2005. So, yes, I just had to interject that.

[00:13:31] Alan Thomas: Yeah. There's, yeah, no, no question. I mean, it, we, the answer is yeah. I mean, I, you know, lost and gained the same five pounds a thousand times. I mean, certainly, I mean, it wasn't the first day, but, but it wasn't really, I mean, the intake, and it's important, don't get me wrong, you have to change what you eat to lose weight. There's no way around it. There is no, if you're, if you're, you know, if you've got extra 25, 50, 100, 200 pounds that you're trying to, trying to lose, you have to change what you eat. But, but people say, Well, how, how are you, how are you able to get people to drop all this weight without telling them what to eat?

[00:14:06] It's because we teach them not to quit. We teach them how, we teach them not to quit because we, we, we quit things before, I mean, we quit, we quit marriages too soon, we quit on our kids too soon, we quit on businesses too soon, we quit on a lot of things because we're a microwave society. I mean, we, we want everything. I, I want it now,

[00:14:24] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:14:24] Alan Thomas: I want it, I want it in thirty seconds. Don't, don't make me wait. Could you, and you know, I want the steak rare so I can get it faster or whatever. But, but at the end of the day, And then at the end of the day, you do have to change, change. But what we, we focus on is thinking. We focus on the thinking because that's what's gotta change first. When I say decision, it's the thinking that's got to change. And there's a lot to unpack. And we've seen, and we've seen people who've had, I mean, we've got clients, we had one recently, we did a video on weight loss surgery. I, you know, mean, weight loss surgery does, it'll take weight off temporarily. You might lose hair, you might lose teeth, you might have, uh, all kinds of, uh, gastrointestinal, oh, it's, it's, there's a ton of side effects for a lot of, it's huge.

[00:15:05] Well, you're taking out a perfectly good organ or altering a perfectly good organ, okay? I mean, and, and at the end of the day, and they'd never had success with it. They found us, they're searching for a high fiber diet, I guess they got one with us. They're searching for a high fiber diet and they got it.

[00:15:21] And it's so interesting, this lady, she's, she's a really neat lady. She struggled her entire life. And all of a sudden, in about ten weeks, she got forty pounds gone. And, but what's different now than it was in the past, she wasn't taking the responsibility of the weight, of the weight gain and trying to shift it to somebody else,

[00:15:43] okay? It's taking the personal responsibility for it. And when, what we get to what's called the watch me stage, that's what we're looking for our clients to get to. And what that means is, when I was on my weight loss journey and Angie was on hers, we, we actually did it very publicly. And, uh, not, not to be braggadocio, just to, just, just to, but it really added some fuel to the fire.

[00:16:05] And, and I had a lot of people were commenting on it and, and very positive. But I had, had some guy who is a fitness guru up in the Carolinas who somehow started following my journey, and he was very negative. He says, There's no way you make your ideal weight by the date you got selected. Now, I believe that Abraham Lincoln said, If you, if you, if you want to, um, it's better to be silent on social media

[00:16:33] then to speak up and remove, and be thoughtful and remove all the doubt that, I don't think that there's social media then, but they're all kind. But I butchered that pretty well. But, but at any rate, so, but I, but I, in this instance, I said something to this individual in text form. He said, There's no way, for this reason, this reason, this reason, this reason, this reason.

[00:16:55] And I had a two word answer for him. I said, watch me. And he was right, I did not hit it on the date that I, that I projected. I hit it five days early. And I don't say that, I don't say that to impress you because he didn't understand. He'd only been able to experience and this is what I run into with a lot of people.

[00:17:16] They don't, they've been, they work with people with weight and they've never personally lived in it. They've never personally lived the journey and it's really hard, it is. And I, and I respect people, there's people with a lot more knowledge, a lot more skills, a lot more, a lot more, uh, letters behind their name than I have and, and all that.

[00:17:33] But at the end of the day, it's like I told a client of ours last year that, uh, dropped seventy-five pounds with, he said, But, but I don't even know you hardly. And I said, I said, but I know you better than you know yourself and you already know that, don't you? He said, Yeah. And, and he, he in our program dropped seventy-five, eighty pounds, whatever it was. Because we, it's very difficult to face that demon,

[00:17:58] it really is. I mean, you, because you're in a culture, and when we think about it, you know, we talk about alcoholism, that's really bad. And people know that. And while alcohol, you know, I don't have a problem with somebody having a drink that can handle it, but alcohol is just a big deal. Pornography, really bad, but really out there a lot.

[00:18:18] Gambling addictions, really bad stuff. These are all classified really bad, and people know aren't positive. Even if you're a cigarette smoker, and I mean that's, you know, really bad, you need to quit smoking. You need to, if you're a drug addict, you've got to quit that, all those things. But when you talk about obesity, okay, when you talk about obesity and talk, talk about that, it's culturally acceptable. There's, I'd have to add it up real quick, but there's one person dying from an obesity related illness every seven seconds worldwide. 650

[00:18:52] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:18:52] Alan Thomas: million adults are obese or morbidly obese worldwide, it's a worldwide number. 4. 72 million die a year worldwide, adults. There's 350 million adolescents and kids that are obese, morbidly obese. That's, that's one million of the eight million that are obese and it's growing. It looks like our national debt that's growing. It's, there's a counter there,

[00:19:15] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:19:15] Alan Thomas: A line that counts. It's amazing. And we're, and we're acting like the emperor with no clothes. We're acting like, you know, remember that

[00:19:26] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:19:26] Alan Thomas: fable?

[00:19:27] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:19:27] Alan Thomas: And it's, we, we want to act like it really doesn't exist. It's like, if I could just have, you know, maybe a looser fitting outfit or garment. And we're both, we're in dark color right now, we usually wear light colors. But, but the point is, but, but it got down to fifty this week. But the, but the point being is that we, we act like it doesn't exist and like we can hide it. And, and it's, and, and you can't. And it's, and I'm not saying this to shame people. I'm saying that to wake them up, wake up, [00:20:00] wake up. I mean, that's really the message is, wake up. There, there's nobody's being fooled by it. If that makes sense.

[00:20:08] Ed Watters: Yeah. Well, our culture is drenched with acceptance, you know, and it's not just obesity. It's many other things, and many of them's toxic. But how we got there is through dismissal of what is in front of us. And that avoidance is, you know, sometimes not so obvious to people. And it's, thirty-five million people in the United States are obese, that just blows me away. And that happened pretty rapidly in the U. S. culture, because I remember back in the seventies, pretty much everybody was physical fit. And, you know, you saw a few obese people here and there and they were kind of shamed. And our culture has turned into an acceptance, and I don't want to shame people for who they are, or what they are, where they are in their journey, because that doesn't help. But the acceptance of who we are, and the love of ourselves for who we are, that really truly matters.

[00:21:35] You both, Angie and you, you were both overweight and you took the journey together. How did it affect your relationship before and after this transformation period?

[00:21:54] Angie Thomas: Well, before, I was not the nagging wife, his mother nagged him about his weight. So I had seen too many other couples where one would nag the other and I did not want to be that spouse. I supported him work, at home, our relationship, there was not, you know, we, we were not apart in any way as a married couple because of our weight. Um, but certainly, when he began the journey, I will say, I was, um, scared and whatnot because we do everything together. I knew I had weight to lose.

[00:22:34] And so when he made this public declaration, I was scared because I knew I was going to be, and, and putting my weight for the world to see as well. And while I was 188 pounds, I wasn't 300 pounds, 5'7, anyone that I was friends with on Facebook would see that and it was intimidating. But I was not going to be the, you know, you've, everybody has the cute little, um, pudgy wife of the sexy, hunky husband.

[00:23:07] Alan Thomas: Oh, yeah.

[00:23:07] Angie Thomas: Well, I was not going to be that, I'm putting that sixty-three pounds off Friday. And I did what you said, 190 days. It also, as far as our relationship it only, I mean, it's gotten better and it wasn't bad before, but as the spouse who needed to lose weight on my own and I did. When, at bedtime, as the spouse of someone though that was obese, I also had the hidden fear of, would he wake up the next morning? Or would he have

[00:23:49] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:23:50] Angie Thomas: a heart attack? Or some God forsaken ill, you know, something happen overnight. So, as the weight, as he really got up closer to the larger size, it really started to worry me for that last year, maybe two years about that. Um, so, but, um, I just did what I thought I could do preparing our meals and so forth as best, I thought

[00:24:18] I was doing, however, like you said, we have to make our own decisions. So when he was out working, I wasn't with him to say, Why are you picking up that? I'm not, I wasn't his mother, he had free will. And so he made those choices and I did too. We ate, you know, we still had, we weren't teetotalers, if you will, when it came to just chicken, and like he says, broccoli, or whatever. We enjoyed, we enjoy cooking, we enjoy entertaining, we enjoy going out. And we had children still at home and

[00:24:54] Alan Thomas: General thing too, to understand, if I can take you back on what Angie's saying is that, you know, we have this, we have this belief that, have to find a way of eating that I can sustain my entire life to lose weight, okay? Pretty common belief, would you agree?

[00:25:11] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Alan Thomas: Yeah. It's, it's pure hogwash, okay? And here's, it's an excuse that I used. It's an excuse that I use, excuse I see people using, because what you do is you learn as you go. When you started, I don't know how many podcast episodes, how many podcast episodes have you done?

[00:25:32] Ed Watters: Oh, I couldn't even tell you Alan.

[00:25:36] Alan Thomas: A bunch, a bunch, right? A lot.

[00:25:38] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:25:39] Alan Thomas: Yeah, clearly. And so, do you know more now than you did when you did the first one? Um,

[00:25:46] Ed Watters: So much more, yes.

[00:25:47] Alan Thomas: Yeah, and it's no different. And it's like with our clients that we work with, we've got one of our clients, we call him the apple pie guy. And it's about two, two years ago. And he, you know, he came to one of our, one of our trainings and he said, You know what I had for breakfast this morning?

[00:26:04] I said, what'd you have, Chris? He said, I had apple pie. I said, Good for you, you figured it out, didn't you? And he said, I did. He said, he said, I knew it was Easter yesterday, and he, you know, he kind of walked up, he said, You mean you're not going to be upset about it? I said, No, I'm glad you had it. I mean, I think all food's good at some level. I mean, not to be eaten all at once, of course. But, but at the end of the day,

[00:26:25] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:26:26] Alan Thomas: I said, No, you, you now have figured out this magical thing called, that you, you have fitted into your eating and you didn't have, you, there's no suffering involved. There's no guilt and shame involved. He said, he said, Oh my gosh, this is like the guilt free diet.

[00:26:41] I said, Yeah. I said, Cause there's no condemnation here, man. I said, You got to learn. I know we had a lady recently, kind of had a similar experience. She, she was, she said, I had a doughnut Sunday and she thought we were going to yell at her or something. I don't yell at people about it. I said, Good for you.

[00:26:56] I said, You didn't eat all dozen either. She said, No. Her husband's really thin. And she, she dropped sixty, seventy pounds, whatever, about, over about twelve weeks. And it was, but she, but, uh, it was so interesting. She said, No. She said, I realized I could have one and it wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't the end of the world and, and it wasn't something that I have to do without for the rest of my life.

[00:27:20] That's exactly right. That you're, you're deciding what you want most and that's what, that's what you have to decide. It's like, eating is a lot like time, okay? You can't, we all get twenty-four hours, man. We all do. I mean, we all, that's all we get. And when each day, 168 hours each week, and you have to decide how you're going to spend that time.

[00:27:42] And the challenge I would say to people that might be listening, that might struggle is, What, what would you like to have done thirty days ago? If you could go back thirty days and recreate the last thirty days with your time, with your, with your eating, maybe, with your exercise, maybe. I mean, I, I'm believer that exercise is good. You know, it's going to burn a little bit actually, but the fork's way faster than any run, any running you can do. It'll outrun, it'll, the fork will beat the, the exercise every time.

[00:28:14] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:28:15] Alan Thomas: But at the end of the day, but what, what, what are you doing? If you could go back and you can't, I mean, we can't do this. It's a little bit like the tree story, you know, it's like with the proverb that says, The best day to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best day to plant a tree is today. And so it's very similar. And if you start looking at it that way and say, You might not get a second chance. I mean, I've, I've talked to people that have had thirty, forty pounds to lose that had no medical conditions

[00:28:43] that we're thinking of and, and thinking about doing our program, we don't invite everybody into our program, this, this individual I did. And this, this one really changed the way I look at things. And he had no medical history of any kind of problems, not even having high cholesterol. And we, one of our team members did a follow up call with him, and he was dead two months later. Two months later, dead from a heart attack. It was his widow. I don't know if it was, yeah, you don't know when it's coming. There's nobody

[00:29:11] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:29:11] Alan Thomas: sitting at, there's nobody in the emergency room, they don't make reservations a month in advance for emergency rooms.

[00:29:17] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:29:17] Alan Thomas: And the reason is they're surprised and half of the people that have a heart attack die. Half of the people that have them die, it's just a statistic. And so, so you may not get another shot, you may not. So take action now. You're not going to get the time back, you're not going to. And, and it's, and it really is kind of interesting how people, when they start realizing how simple it is, they start making the decisions that, that we help people in our, in our process that we train them how to do. They realize that they could have always done it. So one of the biggest things that we guard against is that people not beat [00:30:00] themselves up for not figuring it out twenty years ago, because,

[00:30:04] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:30:04] Alan Thomas: because you don't, you know, there's no reason to. It's like, it's like, one of our clients right now is down, I don't know, thirty, forty pounds and he's, he's, all kinds of success in his life. It's the one area that has kicked him, the one area that has beat him, until now. And he's like, Oh, my gosh, I didn't realize how simple this was. And, but at the end of the day, there's something waiting for you out in the future, that if you don't, if you don't get that weight off, you may not get a shot at it.

[00:30:35] Ed Watters: That's right. I'm, I'm about to turn fifty-eight myself, and I believe it was when I was fifty-two, I went through that heart attack scare and, you know, the little dynamite pills for slapping them under your tongue, you know, that really wakes you up right there. And I, I had the same awakening about, Wow, my wife, you know, what about, we've been together forty years and what would she do without me?

[00:31:13] And, you know, that second husband thing kind of sucks, doesn't it? So yeah. When you, when you decide, yes. And you know, a lot of, you know, Angie, that's interesting because a lot of the times we, as husbands, don't think too much about that until sometimes it's gone too far and then it's even harder to reel it in.

[00:31:42] So, you know, having somebody there alongside you, holding you accountable for, you want to do this, or you don't want to do this, that really matters. And the success rate without partnership, I don't think it's too successful because they don't have a lot of accountability behind them. I wonder how much, go ahead, Alan.

[00:32:14] Alan Thomas: No, no, no. And I agree with you completely. I mean, we're, we're, we're a big believer in what we call extreme accountability. And so,

[00:32:21] Ed Watters: Yes.

[00:32:21] Alan Thomas: which, which, which, you know, you may have a spouse who's not going to go along with it, you may have. But, but at the end of the day, it still is your responsibility. It still is a, And here's

[00:32:32] Ed Watters: Yes.

[00:32:32] Alan Thomas: whats interesting, like we, go ahead you can talk.

[00:32:34] Angie Thomas: I can talk?

[00:32:35] Alan Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's,

[00:32:36] Angie Thomas: Yeah. We were on a call with, um, our,

[00:32:38] Alan Thomas: One of our alumni.

[00:32:39] Angie Thomas: alumni and he was like, Honey, honey, come over and meet Angie and Alan. And we had not met his, his wife and he's lost quite amount of weight.

[00:32:49] Alan Thomas: Almost 200 pounds now.

[00:32:50] Angie Thomas: And his wife has lost about a hundred pounds and we didn't even know. Yeah. Over the time that he's been on his journey.

[00:32:58] Alan Thomas: More is caught, more is caught, and that's the thing, and I would say, and I would say to people, you know, it's like, Angie, Angie was not obese. She was like two pounds away from being obese at 5'7 but, but it was, she was not at where she really wanted to be.

[00:33:15] But because, you know me, you know, it was, if I got mine in line, it was kind of interesting how she, she got hers in line. And she, we, we both have, you know, we're blessed with amazing health, we don't, we're not on any medications for anything. And we, we, but at the end of the, at the end of the day,

[00:33:33] Ed Watters: Congratulations.

[00:33:34] Alan Thomas: It is, it is about the decision because somebody's got to stand up and lead. It's kind of like in a relationship, and we're not, we're not, we've been married for thirty-seven years so I guess we are relationship experts, but not about other people's relationships. But, but we know relationship coaches and they say if they can get one of the two people involved to stand up and take a stand, the marriage can be saved a lot of times, okay? So I really, and I've never really thought about this from our perspective, but you're asking about, the combination just kind of brought it out. It was a great question. But, but I really, and that's the same way with, with weight, it is easier if both are on the same page. It is easier if everybody's fighting for the same goal.

[00:34:17] But if you've got one who stands up and says, I'm not going to tolerate this crap anymore. I'm not, I'm not going to tolerate it in myself. I'm not talking about the other person, it's not, if I'm sitting there and I'm, if she's beating me over the head, I'm resisting. But if she just leads, or I lead, well, I don't want to get left behind. And then you start taking action,

[00:34:36] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:34:36] Alan Thomas: it really is interesting. So the accountability does happen kind of, kind of on its own sometimes. So, and we see that a lot. Because it, but if you're, if, but you've got to draw the line in the sand. And I say you, I'm talking about an individual who struggles with their weight.

[00:34:51] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:34:51] Alan Thomas: They've got to draw that line in the sand and say, I'm sick and tired of this. I'm sick and tired of going into an airport and having to worry about who, about being that person sitting on the airplane and, and, and people dread sitting beside me. I'm sick and tired of wondering if I didn't get a promotion because of my, because of my obesity. I'm sick and tired of going to the theme park, not wanting to get on a ride because, because I don't fit in there and I don't want to be embarrassed in front of a hundred kids and everybody laugh at me.

[00:35:18] I'm sick and tired of on and on and on and on. They got to be sick and tired of being sick and tired and draw the line in the sand. And if everybody in your family's obese, okay, and you make the, you draw the line in the sand and you say, I'm not taking it anymore. And this is possible, okay? It's not easy this way, but it's possible.

[00:35:35] I will, I'll be shocked if other people in the family don't start losing weight. We have seen it over, and here's, here's the other thing that's crazy, and this is what we kind of live for. It's all the other stuff that happens. It's like one of our clients, one of our clients, this is from almost what? Four years ago or so. His sister, she struggled with stuttering and stammering her whole life. Because he faced his weight really boldly,

[00:36:01] he, and he was down at sixty, seventy pounds. And he sends me this video of her doing this Bible study. I didn't, I didn't know she struggled with stuttering. I said, Well, I said, Is that your sister? Uh, you know, Oh, great. I mean, I guess he thought I wanted a Bible verse or something for the day is what I was thinking.

[00:36:15] No, no, you don't understand. She stuttered her whole life. Because I lost this weight, my sister has now faced her stuttering boldly like I faced my weight. And we had another client, their nephew, became this leader on his college campus about pornography. He had his father, his father of his girlfriend, holding him accountable about his pornography addiction.

[00:36:39] And, and they said, and so people see change, plus, plus we've seen countless people, family members, who've lost weight too. So it's like the world is waiting for somebody to stand up and take a stand.

[00:36:53] Ed Watters: That's the key.

[00:36:56] Alan Thomas: Yeah. I mean, are you going to be that person? And what our mission is, I mean, I can't get to everybody, Angie can't get to everybody. But I, I believe that we're here for a reason. I don't believe it's just, uh, just, uh, microwave popcorn and sit in front of the TV and watch Netflix till we can't breathe. Nothing wrong with some of both, you know, nothing wrong, but at the end, at the end of the day, there's things for us to do that will never get done.

[00:37:22] And if, and I won't preach to people, but you know, we're, we're believers, we're Christians. And, and we're not perfect by, by any means, but, but I believe that there's a God in heaven that loves us more than we know. And, and He didn't put us on earth to be obese and morbidly obese and have it, have literally our whole reason for being here stolen from us because we want another bowl of stew. And, and that's what, that's

[00:37:47] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:37:48] Alan Thomas: where, and that's where the enemy's winning and, and it breaks our heart. And when you, when you see, I mean, we can go on and on. I won't belabor it. But at the end of the day, it is, you're this close, you're this close. I don't care if you weigh 500 pounds, I don't care if you weigh 600 pounds, you're this close to the decision. You're this, it doesn't mean you're going to get out of obesity in thirty minutes, okay? You might have a long journey, it might be a hard journey. And I tell people, I said, This is no joke. I mean, I've, I've had rocket scientists that I've, that have, that, literally rocket scientists

[00:38:23] and I tell them, I said, you know, This is no joke. You, you've got weight to lose, it is no joke. You, you, it's not going to be a snap of the finger or push a button and done, this is going to be a battle. And, and we show you how to get through the battle so that you come, in fact, one of our clients just wrote a book and he sent me a, sent me a, and I'm not saying this to boast, but it was interesting,

[00:38:43] the battle thing came to my mind because it really touched me when he said it. It said, what was it? Hang on, give me a second. It was, it was so interesting because I'd never heard him say it. He lost quite a bit, he said, um, in the, in the book, it was, it was, I came to you with my, with my problem and you gave, and you gave me a sword to fight with. Or something like that,

[00:39:06] I can't get the, uh, get the exact quote. But that's really all it takes and you've got it within your two elbows already, every, everybody does. We're not, we're not people who were, who were given this, you know, God's not a sadistic God. He didn't intend to put this, you have a desire to lose weight. There's a reason,

[00:39:27] okay? And I would, I would question, yeah, I came to you with my problem, you saw my gift and you gave me a sword. There you go. That's what he said, not what I said. That was a preface in a book that he wrote about our acknowledgments. And, because when people think about the diet industry, I mean, when they start talking to me about how many calories, how many carbs, how many macros, my eyes glaze over. I'm just going to be honest with you, okay?

[00:39:53] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:39:53] Alan Thomas: Now do you, do you have, do you have to have that data to lose weight? Yeah, you absolutely do, okay? Absolutely, can't, [00:40:00] can't, can't ignore, but what I get excited about is when somebody calls me from New York with a company that has 40, 000 employees and a very, very humble, meek individual who's in operations goes on a really bold journey.

[00:40:20] And he says, Alan, he said, My CEO was just talking about you from stage. I said, me? I don't know your CEO. I mean, I'm never, I was, why would he talk about me? I hope he didn't say anything bad. I mean, or something like that in front of a worldwide company. He said, No, you don't understand. I just won the international sales award.

[00:40:38] I said, International sales award? When did you change departments? This guy's been in operations for years. He said, That's the point, I didn't change departments. I'm still in operations. I'm the first guy or first person ever to get the international sales award, and it came out of my weight loss journey. People got attracted to, to what was going on

[00:40:56] and it drew in a client that ended up doing a massive amount of business with this corporation. Because here's the deal. Your weight is a gift, okay? Now, you can, you can be a drug addict, you can be this, you can be this, you can be this, you can be this, and nobody sees it, okay? Now there's signs, obviously, but they can't pick you out of a lineup.

[00:41:14] But you, I just had this happen recently, where somebody was, uh, in a conversation about this, where somebody was asking me to reach out to somebody, but didn't want to be too obvious because they're morbidly obese. Personally, you can't hide it. Unless you're sitting

[00:41:29] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:41:29] Alan Thomas: in a dark room all the time, you can't hide it.

[00:41:31]

[00:41:31] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:41:32] Alan Thomas: But people, we, one of the things we do is we attack that shame immediately in our process because there's no shame in it, okay? It's a gift. And it's like one of our clients who's seventy-two, he came to us and he calls me the lunatic. Because, um, at seventy-two he was, he's one of those unicorns. He was 388 pounds at age seventy. At age seventy, he's seventy now, at age seventy, 388,

[00:41:56] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:41:57] Alan Thomas: that's a big boy. That's a unicorn. There aren't many of those walking around alive because they're usually dead. He is a heart attack survivor too. Oh, by the way, he walks with a walker. He has a whole fused vertebrae. So, um, all his exercise is off the table. That's not an option for him basically, except small things.

[00:42:13] And, and I said to him, I said, No, we'll get this weight off you. And he says, How can you say that? I failed for fifty years. So I said, Because I know stuff you don't know. And he said, I said, But I want you to take a snapshot right now because you don't have any. Just take a picture of yourself, I said, because you're going to wish you had it.

[00:42:30] He said, I don't like pictures of me. I said, I understand, but you're going to wish you had it. He posted that picture a while back, it was funny. He said, The lunatic named Alan, that's me. He said, he said, and he doesn't look like the same, he's down about 140 pounds and still going. And he, so, but it's interesting,

[00:42:45] he got his life back. He got his life back. I don't, I want him to be healthy, I want him to live to 100. But the people that, these are good people. These are people that the world needs more of. These are people that were in the live America, okay? They were in the America that, you know, when you talk, they were the, they're the people that you, they're the salt of the earth people, they're the people that a hundred years ago wouldn't have been fat, but they are now,

[00:43:10] okay? And they're running from it out of shame and desperation all because they don't think there's a chance for them, and there is. And it's not in, in the, in the next night. Do you have to change what you eat? Of course you do, be real. Do you have to do some exercise? Well, I'd like you to, if you, if you're physically able. But some people, like the guy we talked about, like Rick, we talked about, he can't. He couldn't.

[00:43:31] But we've seen people come out of wheelchairs, we've seen people lose weight with walkers, we've seen people that, that had, their eyesight got better through it, which is, I didn't, I don't think it's medically possible. It was neuropathy, I mean, um, myopathy to be, to be improved and all because they dropped, dropped so much weight. Because there's this life waiting for you right now that you won't get unless you put down the fork.

[00:43:54] So put down the fork, step away from it, it's not going to kill you, you don't have to stop eating. You know, it doesn't mean that you have to, that you have to do without everything forever. But for a season, you may have to, have to make changes and you're going to learn. Just like you learned with podcasting.

[00:44:10] The person who struggles with obesity says they don't know what to eat, bull, they do. I don't believe them, I never believed them. Never had it, never seen it, never, but, but at the end of the day, they've got to start becoming an expert on themselves and take personal, now this is a really weird phrase, and a lot of people don't, don't even know what it means anymore, they've got to take personal responsibility for it.

[00:44:32] Ed Watters: What? That's true.

[00:44:36] Alan Thomas: You don't even hear it, but it's the same thing. I mean, it's no different. But here's the other piece to that, you can't hide it. That guy who, that guy who, who called me the lunatic because I wanted to take his picture, he couldn't hide his weight. But guess what? He can't hide that it's come off either.

[00:44:58] And guess what? There's somebody out there with a challenge that might look like a James Bond model, a man, a woman, whatever, but they can hide their problem. And they see somebody obese or overweight or morbidly obese drop weight, then all of a sudden they get this unique thing that they can't get any other way, and it's called hope.

[00:45:17] And when they get hope, because of somebody like the guy I was talking about, Rick, the guy seventy-two years old, has dropped over 140 pounds, still going, okay? When they get hope, what do you think the chances of Rick adding his weight back on now? Like, zero?

[00:45:34] Ed Watters: That's, that's awesome. Yeah.

[00:45:37] Alan Thomas: He's got a different identity now. He always had it, but he just didn't know it. He realized it. It's like, wake, waking up and find, finding out you're the king of Egypt or whatever. So,

[00:45:48] Ed Watters: Yeah. That shame/guilt, it, it really holds you back in a lot of areas. That's for sure. So what, what is the best part, other than life itself, what is the best part of recovering from obesity?

[00:46:06] Alan Thomas: I mean, it's life itself. I mean, realizing, realizing that you likely, and I've seen, I've never seen a definitive study on this, but, but enough of it. Basically, somebody who, the, there was an European study a few years ago I found, I can't quote it exactly, but I've seen a few like this where they, they equate about, for every pound that you, every kilogram, which is 2. 2, um, pounds, so every pound, every kilogram is worth about two months of life. Every pound, that would mean every pound's worth a month of life.

[00:46:39] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:46:39] Alan Thomas: And I don't, I've, I haven't seen many studies on that, I search for this all the time. But, but what if you added two weeks of life? What if it's, what if it's half wrong? With every pound that

[00:46:50] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:46:51] Alan Thomas: goes away, and what if you added some life to your years too, that you're adding, and all those?

[00:46:58] Angie Thomas: Because it, for us, um, well, we live on Amelia Island, beautiful, beautiful mouth from the Atlantic Ocean. We have a state park and with our journey, when we were beginning, um, we were looking for something to do outside. Alan had begun biking and I joined him. And we started out, was just a mile or two, now we're up to over fifteen, but the majority of it's in a

[00:47:22] Ed Watters: Wow.

[00:47:22] Angie Thomas: beautiful state park. And I don't, that's not to brag, it's just that we enjoy it. And so many days where we're seeing deer.

[00:47:31] Alan Thomas: And you, and, you know, the, the real bikers heard fifteen miles a day and just laugh.

[00:47:35] Angie Thomas: I know. Well,

[00:47:35] Alan Thomas: You know, it's not professional.

[00:47:37] Angie Thomas: Professional.

[00:47:39] Alan Thomas: But we do it because it's fun.

[00:47:40] Angie Thomas: Yeah.

[00:47:40] Alan Thomas: We do it because we like it.

[00:47:41] Angie Thomas: Yeah. We're not, yeah. We're not wearing

[00:47:42] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:47:42] Angie Thomas: the fancy clothes, but we,

[00:47:45]

[00:47:45] Alan Thomas: We're not spandex bikers yet.

[00:47:46] Angie Thomas: we're not living the provincial life. And part of it is just routed in nature, we're seeing the ocean, the birds, the turtles, the deer. And six years ago, seven years ago, we were in the house. We weren't doing any of that. We, we've enjoyed seeing

[00:48:04] Ed Watters: Huge.

[00:48:05] Angie Thomas: much of our creation that we were missing

[00:48:08] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:48:08] Alan Thomas: Yep.

[00:48:09] Angie Thomas: because we weren't,

[00:48:10] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:48:10] Angie Thomas: we weren't able to. I mean, yeah, we could have been in the car and ran through, but it's very different when you're actually on a bike and the deer actually is running in front of you as it did today.

[00:48:21] Alan Thomas: I almost hit one today on my bike.

[00:48:24] Angie Thomas: And that's happened frequently, that they're very close. We can almost touch them. And I don't think I expected that type of benefit because it really is. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing

[00:48:39] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:48:39] Angie Thomas: to be able to do that and enjoy it.

[00:48:44] Ed Watters: Yes. Yeah. I live, uh, out here in the wilderness, like, Crater Lake, Oregon. And just being out away from it all, it's healing in itself. So, that nature, it can really change you if you're in tune and pay attention to it.

[00:49:07] Alan Thomas: Yeah. We, we enjoy that.

[00:49:11] Ed Watters: So, do you have a call to action for our people today?

[00:49:16] Alan Thomas: We do. They can, we actually have a training that, um, if they'll go to transformmyfuture.com/ew, for Ed Watters, we created it especially for your audience, okay? They go to that training, and it's a five step strategy that Angie and I use to lose 192 pounds in 260 days. And how we show our clients that, even if they travel, even if they, we've had people, we've had airline pilots that have lost weight with us. We've had people that have never been able to lose weight that have lost weight with us.

[00:49:49] And people, all these things that matter, and they watch it. It's a totally free training, and it's real. When we've had, we've literally had people contact us, they dropped twenty pounds, thirty pounds, just because they followed what [00:50:00] we said, said to do in it. And, and that, that training is really, nothing to buy on it, but it's a legitimate training.

[00:50:06] In fact, we probably, the most impactful one was a lady that was watching it for her husband and she figured out that she was having a heart attack in the middle. And because she watched the training and she sent us an email on Mother's Day, and then she was a client. She was, from the hospital, from ICU, she said, she said, Thank you for your training,

[00:50:23] you saved my life. I'm like, What? I mean, I said, I mean, you never know. Because I'm not a doctor. Listen, I'm not a doctor, Angie's not a doctor, we're not nutritionists, we're not dietitians, we're not physical fitness experts, we're just people that failed miserably and know the way out. We know the way out.

[00:50:40] Ed Watters: Yep.

[00:50:41] Alan Thomas: And we share, and we share it in that training. So if they go to transformmyfuture.com/ew, they get that free training. And um, and then if they wanna contact us any further, they can just go to Transform My Future. There's all kinds of stuff on there and happy to help.

[00:50:56] Ed Watters: Well, when you're deep in the stuff, it's way better to have somebody that's been there and climbed out to coach on the way out.

[00:51:06] So it's exciting what you're doing and so needed in our world because of the obesity structured within our society anymore. And I want to say thank you for sharing that with us. What's the best way for people to get ahold of you?

[00:51:24] Alan Thomas: They go, they go to transformmyfuture.com and they can, there's contact information in there where they can, they can link up with us. Easiest way, if they're, if somebody is really wanting to have a conversation, they can go to transformmyfuture.com/apply and they can, and they can schedule. We do a free break through session with people.

[00:51:44] There's no, there's nowhere on our site where people can buy our program. And the reason for that is because, listen, we got to know that somebody, how bad their problem with weight really is. Because a lot of people are happy where they're at. And we don't, and we don't beat people up for being that. I mean, we want them to be healthy and all, but listen, I, we don't believe in pushing rope uphill.

[00:52:05] But we got to know. But that call, on that breakthrough call, we get really clear on how bad your problem weight is. How committed you are to really solve it. Is this something you got to do? Or is this something you hope to do one day and still, you know, continuing the same behavior along the way? You got to make changes.

[00:52:21] And then if we believe that we can help and, you know, those, those people, we invite in a certain number of people into that, but they can reach out to us that way. But Transform My Future, they can see a lot of our client stories on there too. And, and more than happy to speak to any of your guests of your, or your listeners, I should say. Or guests for that matter.

[00:52:40] Ed Watters: That's an interesting business model. You know, most people have the 1995 straight up front and that, that's unique. So congratulations on that.

[00:52:53] Alan Thomas: Well, we, listen, I don't, if I don't, it's like me, if I don't think somebody's ready, and, and we're pretty good at identifying that. It's just like the guy, and I used that guy, that seventy year old guy who failed for fifty years, and we know what to look for. He's like, How can you? I mean, I was 100 percent confident we'd get them there. And he's like, How do you know? I said, Oh, we know. And because there're, there're things that we look for that we've learned after doing this for a long time and helping a lot of people. And, and it's, but you got to be ready, you got to be ready.

[00:53:26] I get, I get, there's a lot of people who they just want the magic pill. If you're looking for that, Hey, in fact, I will tell your listeners, If they find any magic pills, the ones that are, you know, really the magic ones, because there haven't been any invented that don't have massive side effects and all these things, they'll find out that they kill, kill them one way or another.

[00:53:46] But if they, you know, they can send me a box of them, I'll pay them double for the magic pills, but we're, we'd love to find that too. But because this obesity thing, it's real, but it's generally something underlying and we, we dig into that and how we can help them out of it. Because the biggest thing I would say to people, Be hopeful, be encouraged, there's a way out. If you fail forever at it, you don't think it's possible. I say, um, You're wrong. There's a way, always a way.

[00:54:14] Ed Watters: Yeah, I believe that. It's, it's nice for you to be out there doing that. And, you know, if we just start doing it, people mimic it, like you stated earlier in the conversation. I believe that a hundred percent.

[00:54:33] The world will change if you keep doing that head on, straight up, and truth, you have to be truthful with yourself and everything will come right together. Alan and Angie, thank you both for being here, part of the Dead America Podcast. We've enjoyed our conversation today.

[00:54:56] Alan Thomas: Thank you for having us, Ed.

[00:54:57] Ed Watters:

[00:55:02] Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of Dead America Podcast. I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you may be.

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