Walking the talk: the true story of my transformation from obesity and chronic disease to outstanding health

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I was recently talking to a reader of this site, and he was commenting on some of the pictures (body shots) that he'd seen of me on the website. He said to me, "You know, you were born that way! You're just one of those people that's naturally thin, that naturally has defined muscle mass. You're just one of those lucky people, and you don't really have the right to talk about how other people can be healthy. Because it's so much more difficult for them."

And I was truly shocked by that statement. But it also taught me something: that there are many people out there who are thinking the exact same thing. They assume that just because a person is healthy today, they must have been born that way. They think it didn't require effort. For some reason, it's easier for people to believe that than to think it took thousands of hours of discipline and giving up many other comforts that everyday people take for granted in order to achieve results.

It's just easier to believe that someone who has been able to achieve a high state of health didn't have to work for it. That's an easy, convenient belief. And why? Because it takes away the self-responsibility. It means that an observer of this information can simply dismiss everything with a simple statement. "That Adams guy! He was just born that way!"

I really respect my readers, and I know you are open-minded people, and that you take care of your own health far better than the average person. And because we're both health-minded individuals, I want to share with you a bit about my own health history and how I was able to achieve this healthy state over the last several years.

I used to be borderline diabetic. I was suffering from a blood sugar disorder that was clearly hypoglycemia. I would get the shakes and almost pass out a few hours after breakfast. I was also overweight. I weighed 220 lbs, and if you look at the Body Mass Index charts, you'll see that's borderline obese for a person of my height and age.

And I got that way by following the standard American diet. I ate a whole lot of McDonald's food. I remember there was time in my life that I ate McDonald's every single day. And I remember thinking at one point that I was getting healthier because I switched to Taco Bell! Now I was getting burritos with lettuce and cheese, rather than Big Macs. And boy! I thought that was a huge improvement.

So I'm not alien to the misconceptions about nutrition and health that may be common out there. I've been down that same path. I've had chronic disease, and I can tell you today if I hadn't made changes, I would be diabetic right now. I'd probably be on all sorts of prescription drugs. I'd probably look 15-20 years older than I look today. And I would no doubt be suffering from a variety of mental disorders.

In addition to the diabetes and the obesity and hypoglycemia, I also suffered from severe back pain. I'm talking about hard-core, chronic back pain here. The kind of back pain that a person who is in their twenties shouldn't be experiencing. And that's when it started with me. Maybe I was 21 or 22, but it was very early in my 20's that I started experiencing this chronic back pain.

And how bad was it? Well, it was so bad that I couldn't sit for more than a few minutes without experiencing excruciating pain. And yet, I was a writer. I used to work for a software company writing documentation. And the pain got so bad that I just couldn't sit anymore. That was a big impairment to my career. I think a lot of people would have just said, "Okay! I'm going to collect workers compensation. I'm injured, I can't work. I'm gonna live out the rest of my life on OxyContin pain killers and be a victim."

Now I don't mean to say that everybody who is suffering from workers compensation, is going through that thought process. There are certainly many justified injuries that do prevent people from working. But there are just as many people who decided to take on the victim role because it was easier to do that than to make changes in their life.

Well, I decided to make changes. Problem was, I didn't know how. I didn't know what was causing my chronic back pain. Being uneducated about health and nutrition, I thought, "Well, there must be something physically wrong with my back." And so of course, I started visiting chiropractors and eventually even medical doctors and surgeons. And they all said, "There is nothing physically wrong with your back."

And meanwhile, I was in such excruciating pain that I had to start standing up while I worked. So I created a desk where I could stand up and write. And that worked quite well. Other times, when the pain got too great, I would have to lie down and use a mouse and computer keyboard across my torso. And I would have a monitor propped up in front of me, hanging suspended from a large desk.

My next thought about the back pain was that maybe this was a flexibility issue, or maybe there was some muscle weakness. So I started getting into stretching and physical rehabilitation. And you know, that worked for a while, and it did improve things, but it didn't solve the problem.

The only thing that really worked long term was to just completely reform my lifestyle: avoid all unhealthy processed foods, get outstanding nutrition through supplements, engage in all sorts of strength training, flexibility training, and modalities like Pilates and Yoga, which today I just absolutely swear by in terms of their effectiveness at enhancing core strength and eliminating chronic back pain.

So I did these things and I educated myself about the true causes of health. And as you well know if you read any of the info about me on the site, I spent more than 4000 hours learning about nutrition and how we can use whole foods to heal ourselves. And in all this, I became a huge believer in the wisdom of the body and the wisdom of nature, and our innate ability to achieve health if we just provide the proper nutrition to our bodies while avoiding dietary and environmental toxins.

So today, it's rather rewarding to announce that I am now 100% free of back pain. I don't ever experience chronic back pain these days. I can sit for hours if I wish. And yet, every day, I invest in my own health. I spend several hours a day stretching, strength training, engaged in physical activity, and continuing to learn and research foods, the healing effects of medicinal herbs, and how we can become healthier human beings by relying on the wisdom of nature.

Weight loss was a major challenge

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