Obesity is more than just a physical battle. It is also an emotional, psychological, and mental fight that could push you to rock bottom. Despite hitting your lowest point, the hope for lowering your weight and living a more comfortable life is never lost. Daniel Weinberg chats with lifestyle behavior change specialist Jonathan Boulware, who opens up about his own battle with obesity. He emphasizes how exercise and medication will only lead to weight loss if new positive habits are created and done consistently. Jonathan also discusses how obesity-related problems can trickle down into your personal relationships and why self-forgiveness is needed to silence your harsh inner critic.
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Stop Waiting For Rock Bottom – The Fight With Obesity With Jonathan Boulware
In this episode, we talk to author Jonathan Boulware of Take Control of Your Body Before It Takes Control of You. Jonathan, so good to have you on the show.
Thank you, Dan. Thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.
We are going to be talking about the journey of obesity. For the audience, I’m going to just explain really what obesity is to start with, and then we’ll start digging in. Obesity is a disease characterized by the abnormal or excessive accumulation of body fat that poses a health risk. It’s defined for adults as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher. Do you know, Jonathan, what your BMI index was at its peak?
It was well past the 30. I never really had it measured because I was scared to have it measured, but I knew just by looking at myself and that was well past the highest measurement. That I can tell you.
Give us your weight at max. Your peak weight, let’s say.
My peak weight was 305 pounds, and I was at that weight. I fluctuated, but that was my peak weight. I fluctuated back and forth for a while, but I was never lower than 290 pounds or 280 pounds for any length of time.
Looking Back To Jonathan’s Journey Into Obesity
Three hundred and five pounds into kilos is 140 kilos. I don’t know anyone that’s 140 kilos. From where I’m from in Australia, that would be like a very big front-rower rugby player, but that’s big. Do you want to talk about your journey into obesity? Is it something you recall from when you were a young child that you were overweight from very early on, from in your preschool days? Did it start off that early, or is it something that evolved over time?
It was definitely something that evolved over time because when I grew up, there were no computers, no cell phones, so we were outside all the time playing and running around and never really had any weight issues until actually I graduated from college. That’s when the weight really started to come on and I started to get bad habits. It really happened in my late 20s into my 30s. It wasn’t anything I dealt with as a child but later in life.
What was your diet at the time? My take on how one gets there is a combination of it’s an emotional state of mind together with bad habits or bad eating habits, etc. How would you describe how obesity presented itself to you? How did it creep up on you, let’s say?
It was definitely bad habits. There’s no question about that. Daniel, I can’t remember the exact point in which I really flipped to using food as a way to deal with some of the emotional things that I was going through in my life, some of the anxiety and stress that I was going through. At some point, there was a point where food was a way for me to comfort myself.
I had wired that at some point in my brain to say, “Jonathan, when you’re going through some difficult times, you’re going to eat. This is your reward. This is how you’re going to relax. This is how you’re going to face the stresses.” that just developed over time, and it was just very hard for me to get away from that. Unfortunately, I didn’t really realize that that was my automatic thought until later, but that’s how it started. It started in my late twenties and just continued.
How many years were you in that pattern?
I would say from my late twenties. I had times where I wanted to lose weight and I did lose weight, but it was never a permanent. It never took for long periods of time. I would say in my late 20s, throughout my 30s and 40s, off and on, and then it was pretty consistent from my late 40s on that I was carrying that I was overweight.
We’re talking like twenty-plus years.
Yeah, it’s been many years, and I have a lot of pictures to really show that.
Can you talk us through the cycle or let’s say the pattern of eating? It’s not always emotional eating, I guess. It would be dialed up depending on your emotional state. What’s your diet? How does it get away from you?
What really where it really started with me and where it really continued was the late-night eating, binge eating the wrong foods. During my day, if I had stress at work, the habit that really contributed to my obesity was late night looking for a way to not deal with the stress, not deal with the emotional challenges that I put on myself of climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak, in my career.
When I faced adversity, when I faced challenges, it was always late night. I would eat fast food, and then the worst thing you do is eat fast food and go to sleep. That was my pattern. That was what really got me into this cycle of eating and then the mental challenges that came along with that that I didn’t realize were going to happen to me at the time.
I have some experience or exposure to people who’ve had eating disorders, more on the not eating, the bulimia, the anorexia those patterns I’ve seen that, and it’s almost the opposite, but it’s got a very similar emotional component to it in that you have a self-hating, almost like an in your ear, telling you how bad you are, why you do that. Basically, you’re in your head.
Self-critic. That’s the word I was looking for. Your self-critic, which is that little person in your ear that tells you whether you’re doing a good job or not. Did your self-critic kick in after you finished the bingeing and saying, “Jonathan, what’s wrong with you? Why what are you doing to yourself? You’re fat. You’re ugly.” Does that happen with people with obesity, or is it the opposite, where they’re more getting comfort in it? Do you understand my question?
No, I understand what you’re saying. For me, that was absolutely the case. The first phase of it what I call it is a justification. I knew at the time when I was making a bad decision, ” I really shouldn’t be eating this food.”
Before you take a bite, you mean?
Before I take a bite. I go through this process of “I really shouldn’t be doing this,” then I look for reasons to justify why I should, “I’m going to start working out on Monday. It’s just one meal. I’ll start tomorrow.” I look for ways to make me feel good about my decision. Once I felt comfortable in my decision, then while I was eating, it didn’t bother me. Afterwards, of course, what you said, “What am I doing? Why did I do this? It didn’t help me. I have a daughter. I’m killing myself.”
All these different things the attacks just came into my head. You just had to find a way for me, find a way to subdue those attacks. Yes, that was the pattern. Make yourself feel good about your decision, and then your inner voice says, “You’re horrible. You have a daughter, you have a wife, you have a life to live, you’re a young person, why are you doing this?” That was the vicious pattern.
Even if you make yourself feel good about your decisions, your inner critic will always say something horrible. Share on XHow Jonathan Got Out Of His Vicious Pattern
Tell me how you got out of the pattern.
I got out of the pattern when my mother passed away in June of 2014. My mother had been dealing with obesity for a long period of time, and I had a good conversation with her in April and I was trying to write her motivational notes. I had had a health scare during that time where I thought I was having a stroke, but fortunately I wasn’t. When she passed away, she had said, “Jonathan, your notes are not going to help me, but you need to help yourself and help others and promise me that you will.”
At that point, I made the commitment. I didn’t know what I was going to do or how I was going to do it, but at that point, I made the commitment that I was going to change my life and I was going to overcome this not just the physical part, but the mental part. The journey started for me. What that journey looked like was, the first thing was I had to educate myself as to why am I making these decisions when I know they’re bad for me? Why did my mother which was a bigger question when we know lifestyle change will save our lives, why can’t we do it?
I sought the answer to that question, and I finally got the answer to that question through my journey of I became a certified personal trainer, health coach, master coach, behavior change specialist, because I wanted to be educated about what was going on with me and then how I could help others. It started with me first, and that’s how I started. I started with going back to school, going through certifications, understanding human behavior, and then developing a plan of how I was going to change mine.
With your mother, was she always in your memory in an obese state or did she also become like that over time?
As far as I can remember, my mother always battled weight. Her worst weight was as she got much older, but she always struggled with weight. Never really had any health issues until she became older, and so that probably was a bad message for me to think that, “It’s okay, you’ll be okay. Your body’s not going to penalize you the way.” I certainly didn’t think about the mental aspect. She always battled with it, but it wasn’t until she got older until her body said, “I’m not going to give you this chance if you keep going down this road.” Yeah, that’s when it really started to take control of her.
When she passed, she didn’t pass from obesity. It causes other health issues, correct? What they say with obesity is that it heightens the risk on a whole lot of other potential health risks. What happened with your mother?
What happened was she was on blood thinners. She had had congestive heart failure. She had gotten a wound on her lower leg. At the time, we thought she was going to make it. She went into a rehabilitation center for her wound, and for a while, we thought she was going to get better from that wound, but the wound would not heal. That’s when her obesity really started to affect because her body wasn’t operating in optimal capacity.
She started to have kidney failure over time. What eventually killed her was sepsis in her blood. Blood poisoning. It was all complicated because of her being overweight with her heart failure, with eventually her kidney failure, and she had had a heart attack. At the time, the medical doctors had told us that her body was not in a position not only just because of her age, but because of her physical condition, she was unable to fight off the challenges that she was facing.
In the end, the gift she gave you was the inspiration and motivation to change your life and to pass on the knowledge and, I guess, mental power or the skills that one needs to change mindset and enforce positive action. To go from a 300-plus-pound weight and bring yourself back to what would be considered to be a healthy and fit state, it’s funny because it’s like you’re going from big to small, but really you’re climbing the mountain.
Getting Rid Of Obesity Through Self-Forgiveness
To do that takes just a huge shift in not just mindset, but in the way you operate. Your whole operating system needs to change. I want you to talk us through, just from the strength of the mindset and what you did to dig really deep into yourself to say, “Enough.” It’s not, “I’m going to start tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow.” it’s “I’m going to start now,” and getting on that track. I can only imagine the first phase of that is the hardest phase.
Actually, Daniel, the answer’s probably going to surprise people because the first phase was not the hardest phase when I started with the first thing that I did. Back to what you said about my mother giving me the gift, the gift she gave me was realizing what you said. Mindset was where I had to start. It wasn’t diet, it wasn’t exercise, because it wasn’t, “Let me get a meal plan, let me go work out.” That’s not where it started for me.
The first thing that I did was I forgave myself. I gave myself self-forgiveness and I said, “I’ve got to start here. I’ve got to start being angry with myself.” That point of you’re this person and you’re terrible because you have a daughter that you don’t care about. I forgave myself, and I started to show myself a lot of self-compassion. Not excuses, but self-compassion saying that, “It’s okay. You’ll get through this.” The first thing I did was forgive myself, and I wrote out my self-forgiveness and every day, I just forgave myself for the decisions that put me in the situation, and that was a huge mindset shift for me.
Was that a journaling exercise?
It was a journaling exercise it was the initial statement of, “I forgive myself for the decisions I’ve made. I’m not this horrible person.” I’m telling myself, “I’m okay. I love myself, and you’re okay.” That was a journaling exercise for me every day. After a while, I didn’t need to do it every day, but that first step was the first thing that really changed my life.
How long were you doing that for consistently?
At least a year. After about a year, I didn’t have to do it. It just became part of who I was. It takes a while to undo the damage that you’ve done yourself mentally, because there was a lot of damage there that I didn’t realize. I spent the time just when I looked in the mirror, I no longer saw this fat, obese person. I saw someone that I loved and I cared about that I was going to do everything in my power to help.
It’s pretty much the same as if you have your best friend. You would never say to your best friend, “You know what, you’re fat, you’re going to die, you’re this horrible person.” You would give them encouragement. You would do everything in your power to help them if they were your best friend. I looked at myself and I said, “You’ve got to be your best friend. You’ve got to forgive yourself and tell yourself it’s going to be okay and you have the strength to do this.” That’s where it started.
You did that before you started exercise, before you started changing your diet habits.
That’s right because I knew exercise wouldn’t take. I knew being on a diet and exercise would never sustain itself because I tried so many times because I would look in the mirror and I’d step on the scale and I’d be, “I’m not making progress,” then I just took a step back and let go of the anger. Just because you do it once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s a process. I let go of the anger and the frustration and just forgave myself and showed myself self-compassion. The world opened up to me at that point, of the possibilities. That’s where it started for me.
That’s insane.
It is. That’s why I said it’s going to be a surprising answer for folks because a lot of people think, “Alright, let me get up in the morning, let me fix my breakfast, let me do this.” That will never, ever last if inside you’re going through some so every little adversity you face, you start beating yourself up. You look in the mirror after working out for a week and you see no changes, it’s like “this’ll never work.”
If that’s your mindset, it doesn’t matter what you do, because you’re always going to come back to that. As soon as you change that, high-five yourself in the mirror and say, “You’re going to be okay,” “I love myself and I forgive you, Jonathan. I forgive you for what you’ve done.” For that to start taking hold, my world opened up at that point, that’s when I started to see the success.
Tell me what happened.
Once I started to forgive myself, so then I started to understand, “Okay, what is it about your human behavior that’s where you’re making these decisions?” What I learned was that 43% to 70% of the decisions that you make are by your habits. Some of them are automatic habits where you’re just automatically making those decisions. Sometimes that’s okay because you don’t want to have to think about every decision that you make, because that’d be mentally exhausting.
Can you give those stats again? You’re saying 43% to 70% of decisions that we make effectively autopilot decisions.
Autopilot, yeah. There’s been research that shows anywhere from 43% to 70% of the decisions that you make are already pre-wired in your brain through the habits that you’ve developed. Once I realized that “It’s not willpower, it’s not motivation, it’s these habits that I’ve really developed that are pre-wired.” Once you start having these habits, it’s pre-wired in your brain that when you face in my case, when you face adversity, the brain is going to take the most comfortable route, and that was “Okay, go eat. Find a way to justify that you can eat this food and go eat.” Once I started to really understand the human behavior and how I thought and why it was so difficult for me to change, I just went on the attack of that. I just said, “Okay, this is where it’s going to start for me.”
The whole game plan, effectively, what you’re saying is, because it’s such a significant part of one’s daily decision-making that 43% to 70% chunk the game really is to go rewire. If we rewire, you’re attacking that 43% to 70%, which is just a huge part of our decision-making set, let’s say.
It is. I read books like Dr. Gina Cleo, which I still have on my desk here, The Habit Revolution, James Clear, Atomic Habits, to really dig into what a habit is, how do you change your habits. It’s not about willpower. I broke down a habit between a trigger and then the response and then the reward. I just started writing down the habits of I wanted to become this person. I wanted to become the healthiest 59-year-old person on the planet, one of the healthiest. You once you define who you want to be, what your why is, then it’s much easier to see these habits aren’t supporting that person.
Once you define who you want to be and what your why is, it is easier to see which habits are not benefiting you. Share on XTapping Into The Pattern Of Habit Triggers
Let’s take a little step back because you started talking about the understanding of habits and how they work. Why don’t you give us your take on how you perceive, let’s say, the pattern of habits, triggers, etc.? Why don’t you explain that?
Yeah, okay, thank you. The first part is identifying the trigger, because a habit doesn’t happen without a trigger. Something has to trigger your response.
Can you give me an example of a trigger?
A simple example is you walk in your house and it’s dark. The trigger is it’s dark, the response is you turn on the light, and your reward is you can see. That’s really a simple example. In my case, my trigger would be my stress from work. That’s my trigger. My response would be, “I’m going to look for something to eat,” it’s not chicken and broccoli.” My reward would be “That relieved my stress.”
In order to attack it, you either got to attack the trigger or the trigger, the response, or the reward. In my case, I really couldn’t attack the trigger because I needed my job, I had a very stressful job. I had to focus on the response and then not change the reward my reward was I was going to feel less stressed. I really focused on what’s my response. The trigger was still there, I’m not going to stress out about the trigger, I’m going to work on my response. I started to realize, “Okay, every time I have this trigger, I’m looking for fast food.” I started to replace that response little by little.
What’d you replace it with?
I started to eat healthier, just healthier options. What I did though, Daniel, for example, if I had three bad meals a day, I didn’t say “I got to replace all three bad meals. Let’s just do one meal at a time.” For example, if I had an unhealthy breakfast like a big breakfast burrito filled with eggs and sausage and cheese and that type of thing, I just think from memory replacing that with yogurt.
The bigger point is I didn’t say, “I had three or four bad meals a day,” I’m not going to try to replace all three of those. I’m just going to focus on breakfast. Let me get that down. Let me focus on lunch. Let me get that down.” I was okay with that. That’s where the forgiveness came in. I wasn’t trying to replace all meals at once, let me just focus on one. The rest of the day, I’m going to celebrate that one meal that I did perfectly. It started with that.
Instead of trying to solve anything, you started chipping away at everything. One step at a time and you’re like, “Just be cool, be patient, one step at a time.”
What I realized, which I teach now, that one step at a time started giving me confidence and giving me momentum. I just realized I was capable and I can do this. I started to feel good about even that one decision. I wanted more. It just motivated me to continue on. I gained so much self-esteem, confidence, and the fact that I was capable of achieving this.
It just started with that one simple, “I’m not going to change the world, my world tomorrow, let’s just focus on breakfast.” Once I got that down, “, that felt good. Let’s focus on the next,” then eventually, my brain got rewired, so now if I have stress at work, I’m not even tempted. If I do choose to eat something, it’s because it’s a choice, it’s not something that’s pre-wired. It’s changed my life. That’s where it started.
You’re talking about changing eating habits, you’ve changed the way you’re responding in general, like the stress, it’s like you’re becoming a little bit more understanding of it, letting go of “You’re not in control of everything.” There’s that component. There’s also, I guess, the physical activity now that you’re able to do and that you start doing, which is also increasing your confidence and your endorphins and the feeling good about yourself and looking yourself in the mirror and saying, “I love you, Jonathan.”
Let’s talk about the physical part. The physical part, yes, I started walking and then eventually running. How I helped myself physically was through my personal trainer certification and through my health coach I realized the changes that are happening inside your body just by going on a ten-minute walk. When I would work out and I’d go into the mirror and look exactly the same after I did a nice hard workout after a week, my mindset shifted to, “You know all the positive things, all the metabolism, all the cell interactions, all the things are going on inside your body to make you healthier. You are healthier even though you don’t see it.”
That’s what kept me going there. I didn’t focus on what I looked like, I focused on the fact that I knew my body was getting healthier just by going on a ten-minute walk even though I may look the same when I wake up in the morning. The reason why that was significant was because that was part of derailing me, I’d wake up, I’d look in the mirror you got to start your day brushing your teeth or whatever the case is it would be a daily reminder “You’re obese. What are you doing?” A daily reminder. I had to shift that mindset. When I started that, “You’re overweight, but you went on that walk today. Your body’s getting healthier, you’re getting healthier, you had a you’re going to have a great breakfast.” It just built from there. That’s how it started.
How Self-Forgiveness Can Help You Feel Better Immediately
Can you tell me how long that whole process takes? When you’re in the situation, I can only imagine how daunting and overwhelming it is because you know it’s not a quick fix, and we’ll go into the quick fixes that are happening, but it’s not a quick fix. That whole, let’s say, arc or that whole journey you just took us on there from the year of being self-compassionate, slowly changing habits, rewiring the mind in how the trigger response works, the eating better, the adding the physical exercise in, etc., where you’re now having what I would call a balanced, healthy, happier lifestyle. What is that if I come to you with, “Jonathan, I’m 300 pounds. I want to emulate what you did. I can’t deal with this anymore,” tell me how long it’s going to take me to get to where I need to get to.
Let me answer two ways. The first way for myself, it was about four years, only because I was learning as I was going. I didn’t have this knowledge, so I started from scratch about self-forgiveness and learning and going to certifications, so it took a lot longer for me to get there. For someone that comes to me at 300 pounds, you will start feeling better immediately.
The reason why it’s immediate is not because you’re going to wake up the next morning because you’re going to see this big change, but because you’re going to wake up immediately because you’re going to forgive yourself and you’re going to declare that your health is the number one priority in your life. Just by making those statements, you immediately start to feel positive and better about yourself and that will set you on the path for success.
It’s immediate from a mental standpoint, and from a physical standpoint, it’s immediate as well too because you start to realize that, even though what I mentioned to you earlier, “I’m getting healthier even though I may not still like what I look like in the mirror.” I’ll give you a quick example, there’s a person that I was working with and over 300 pounds, and I had that same conversation. He went to his doctor, his doctor said, “You’re pre-diabetic. I think your A1C was 6.2 or 6.1,” or something like that. He said, “You got to start doing weights in order to get some reduce your insulin sensitivity.”
We started working and working, and to make a long story short, he still doesn’t like the way he looks in the mirror he’s still got a lot of weight to lose because he started down this journey of, “I’m going to change my habits and forgive myself,” all these different things, he went to his doctor, he’s no longer pre-diabetic. His A1C dropped down to 5.7, I think, whatever the score is. He’s still got a lot of weight to lose because his body was his body was getting healthier, so now he’s one of the most motivated people there because he realizes the benefits of what’s going on inside of him. It’s going to be immediate, as far as how you start to feel better.
The Impact Of Obesity On Your Personal Relationships
You mentioned you have a daughter. Are you married?
Yes.
Can I ask you, when you’re in that obese state versus where you are now, can you please, if you would, elaborate how it impacted your relationship with your wife? I want to ask you, what’s changed with the impact in how you’ve been able to turn up for your daughter as a father and how that changes as well. First, let’s talk about your romantic partner.
Yeah, my wife beautiful person. We’ve been together with her over 30 years and a lot of the before pictures that I took, or I think almost all of them, she took. She was my number one fan, and honestly, the relationship with her was never impacted by my weight. Thank you to her, she never was the type of person that would look at me and say, “You’ve got to do something about this,” in a negative way. She would be loving and communicate that message.
Thankfully, my relationship with her was always wonderful. She was always encouraging. However, it was me in my own mental state. If there was any ever any issue, it was because of the anger and frustration and anxiety and depression that I had for myself that manifested not because of anything she did but because of how I hated myself.
Surely, that would have impacted your interaction with her, the physical relationship, the how you are together versus how you are now.
Yeah, the physical impacted in the sense that how I was with her, in the sense of how I treated her, as far as not being very confident, not wanting to be as intimate because I was embarrassed. To take my shirt off I was embarrassed, “She’s not going to want to stay with somebody that looks this way.” It impacted it that way because I pulled away, because I didn’t want to be in the bedroom or intimate in that way because I was embarrassed about my body and I was embarrassed that I let myself get this way.
I was really embarrassed because I had a child and I couldn’t change who I was. That was the biggest sense of anxiety and depression for me like, “Here I got this beautiful daughter, she’s young, she’s an only child because we couldn’t have another child at that time, what am I doing? Why am I like this?” That was by far the biggest mental challenge for me in my life. It pains me to this day to think about the fact that when I look back at that part of my life, that I couldn’t change and I’m looking at this beautiful baby girl looking up at me, needing everything from me, and I still was doing what I was doing and that I was so angry at me.
That impacted our relationship that way because she could feel that anger even though I tried to hide it. To this day, when I talk about it, I have to really talk myself out of not being mad at myself still. It affected me to this day. That’s a long time ago. I have pictures of what I took with my daughter. There were times when I’d take a before picture and say, “Okay, this is it. I’m going to do the things that I said I wasn’t going to, I’m going to eat right, I’m going to exercise, I’m going to do all these things.”
I have a lot of before pictures that my wife took with my daughter, and I share those because I want people to know that this has been a long battle for me for those people that are trying to change obesity. The mental aspect of obesity is a killer. It is absolute killer. The physical part for sure, but the mental will beat you up long before the physical gets to you.
Do you believe that is a common theme with people who face obesity, very much the mental game?
Absolutely. You know why? It’s because every day you wake up, you’re reminded that you’re obese and it’s not okay. Every single day, from the when you look in the mirror, to when you get dressed, to when you go to work, to you just have constant reminders that “You know what, you’re obese and you’re obese because of what you’ve done and you’re this horrible person.” There are always reminders that tell you this is not okay, no matter where you go. It pierces every part of your life.
Obesity will always remind you when looking at a mirror that you have to do something about yourself. Share on XAt the core of it I have often wondered when I would see someone who was severely overweight, in an obese state, I often wondered for them, “Don’t you wake up and think ‘I don’t want this’?” You can eat healthier. It’s attainable. I often wondered “Why do you let yourself be in that state?” Now, the way you have presented it, it’s all that self-hatred, non-self-compassion, self-critic just telling yourself it’s a cycle you really can’t get out of until you break the cycle starting with that mental cycle or that mindset shift.
That is exactly right. You get into this cycle of no one wants to be that way, but you get into the cycle of I guess self-hatred and you don’t know how to get out of it. It’s not that you’re not telling yourself, “You shouldn’t be this way, go work out, eat differently, you shouldn’t be doing this.” it’s not that you’re not telling yourself that. It’s just that once you have established that as your operating model. It is hard to get out of. It really is and it’s tough. That’s why I started with the mental. Beating obesity does not start with diet and exercise, it starts with the mental side of getting out of that loop that you just spoke about because once you have a plan to get past that, the rest of it is much easier.
A Course To Help People Change Their Overall Wellness
What are you doing now to help others try and replicate some of the changes that you made in your life?
I spent the last few years, as I mentioned, learning about getting the certifications, and then I really wanted to spend time helping people change their lifestyle behavior. Not just losing weight, but just changing your overall wellness. I developed a plan. It’s going to be an online course and a blog, and now I’m ready to share that of how do you change your lifestyle behavior because it’s all about lifestyle behavior even the people that are doing weight loss drugs and they’re losing weight, you still need to change your lifestyle behavior in order to be healthy, in order to live a healthy life.
I’ve sent you some of that I don’t know if you’ve received that or not but just a twenty-step plan and how to, from a mental standpoint, we don’t talk a lot about diet and exercise, we talk about from a mental standpoint, how do you have fun on your journey, how do you measure progress, how do you feel good about yourself and love yourself and soar long before you hit the finish line. That’s where I help people now, mostly with that mental, because I understand how devastating it is mentally.
Is there a website that they can go to?
Yes, they can go to YouCanBeatObesity.com. On that website, I share a lot of my pictures because I want people to come to that website and see me at my biggest weight to say “I understand,” or when someone comes, they understand. I share progress pictures. Even though it’s not about the physical, I share my progress pictures I have a couple more coming up.
I also share what I call The 432 Playbook, which is a lifestyle behavior change plan. I share components of that to help people through blogging. I’m going to start my YouTube channel to really help people. We’re not going to talk “You eat this,” or, “This is the type of exercise.” we’re going to talk about what are the mental things that you have to do in order to break this cycle of self-hatred and anxiety and, “I’m ashamed,” how do you live your best life while you’re still obese and you’re working towards it. How can you soar in those circumstances?
Why Every Medication Needs Lifestyle Change To Truly Work
There’s a whole new set of drugs that have come out that we’re all quite familiar with now they’re called GLP-1s. They’re like of Ozempic and Mounjaro. Quite extraordinary, the WHO, the World Health Organization, literally on December 1st of 2025, has issued a global guideline on the use of these medicines in treating obesity.
They are making a recommendation for those that suffer from obesity to be taking these medications which help lower blood sugar, support weight loss, reduce the risk of heart and kidney complications, and can even lower the risk of early death in people with Type 2 diabetes. What’s your take on that? What I’m hearing from you is that’s only one element in the treatment of obesity.
It sounds like the more superficial part of the solution for obesity. This sounds like it’s like a magic pill, “Take this and we will get rid of your problem.” What seems to me to be the problem after hearing from you now is that it’s very much a mindset or a mental state as well, and taking a magic pill isn’t exactly going to just change your mental state overnight. What’s your take on that?
My take is a couple of things. One, from a physical standpoint, absolutely. If your doctor recommends it, from a physical standpoint, you will definitely lose weight, and weight management, no question. From a physical standpoint is important and will make you healthier. The way the drugs work suppress your appetite, you don’t eat as much, so your body is cannibalizing itself in order to supply the energy that it needs to survive. You’re going to lose weight on it.
It will help you from a mental standpoint because losing weight does help your self-confidence in many ways. However, unless you want to be on the drugs forever, if you want to achieve overall happiness and wellness, until you have dealt with the situations that got you into that situation in the first place and obesity in the first place, then once you get off the drug, you’re going to put the weight right back on.
Every person that I know that are taking these types of drugs, their doctor says what is critical is lifestyle change along with this drug. You will never hear them say, “Just take the drug and you don’t need to make lifestyle changes.” You absolutely need to make lifestyle changes. If you don’t focus on the mental, even though you’re losing weight, your mind’s going to shift to, “I got to stay on this pill because I’m going to put the weight back on.”
If you take drugs without making lifestyle choices, you will never get better. Share on XForever, basically.
Forever, yeah. I don’t think you want to be on it forever. Why not make your lifestyle change so you’re comfortable and confident so “I can get rid of this pill anytime,” because my lifestyle has changed and I’m ready to go and mentally I’m good, in a good place, and I’ve focused on me as a person and my overall wellness. When you do get off the pill, it just goes right into your new lifestyle person. That’s my take on that. Otherwise, research has shown as soon as you get off people put on the weight because they haven’t made the changes, underlying changes that got them in the situation in the first place.
Part of it too is we live in a world now where we want quick results. No one wants to wait the time that it takes to really do obesity without the drug. This is quick. You start taking the pills, suppress your appetite, you start losing the weight. However, like I said, unless you want to do this forever, even if you are doing it forever, you still want lifestyle changes because I have people that still eat unhealthy. You still want to eat properly, you still want to exercise, because exercise has so many more benefits than just losing weight. It’ll extend your life, it’ll prevent so many different things. Lifestyle change along with the drug while you’re on the drug is critical to overall great health.
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions
Okay, Jonathan, thank you. Before we finish up, I always ask my guests fine, quick-fire questions, so give it your best shot. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?
My mother. I wish that I knew what I know now to really help her when she was really battling with obesity and she was listening to everything I was saying. I apologize to her. I still apologize to her saying, “I wish I would have known this sooner. I don’t know if it would have saved her life, but I could have been much more effective.” Feel bad that I was trying to help her when I was 300 pounds. My mother.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I am proud from a health standpoint that I’m living my best life. I go to the doctor, get all my stuff checked out, and for the most part, at 59 years old, I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been from a physical standpoint. From a mental standpoint, I no longer worry about obesity in any way, shape, or form. I love that.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting it least?
I said it earlier. My wife of 30-plus years hung in there with me through all of this, never wavered in her support, was always kind to me even though I wasn’t always kind to her because of my weight. Her level of kindness, I thank her every day for it. She’s my best friend, my greatest supporter, and her level of kindness got me through this.
What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
So many things. My mother and father were really big on just being yourself. We grew up during a time and my dad’s a neurologist he’s 88 years old, still going strong. We grew up during a time when he was a neurologist one of the first African American neurologists in Nevada, when we came to Las Vegas, Nevada. That was a very different time then for African Americans living in the 1970s. He always taught us and my mother as well don’t look at your skin color, be your best person. Don’t walk into a room realizing, “You’re the only African American in the room.”
I’m a person in the room and I have something to contribute.” Don’t worry about your ethnicity as far as concerning yourselves, just go in there and be your best person and develop a skill and everything will take care of itself. They raised us that way even during a time when it would be easy to say “These things are happening to you because of this.” They never really allowed us to have that mindset.
Be your best person and everything will take care of itself. Share on XFinal one, which I’m very curious about, what is Jonathan’s superpower?
My superpower, I guess is both good and bad, my superpower was I was able to have a very successful career in the hospitality game industry even while I was going through these mental challenges that we spoke about. I was able to compartmentalize that when I was going through my career and still learn and grow and get promotions and nice positions in my industry to this day. I was able to do that while I was mentally suffering from being obese and how I tried to navigate that in the workplace, and I was able to successfully do that. That allowed me to take care of my family. That was probably my greatest superpower that I think of.
Jonathan, thank you so much. I’m really blown away by your journey and really quite surprised what it takes to make such a drastic change in one’s life.
Thank you for having me on. I really loved this experience. Thank you for allowing me to share the story brought a lot of emotions in me and hopefully in others as well in a positive way. I really, truly appreciate the opportunity, very grateful. Thank you.
Thank you, mate.
Important Links
- Jonathan Boulware
- Take Control of Your Body Before It Takes Control of You
- The Habit Revolution
- Atomic Habits
- The 432 Playbook
About Jonathan Boulware
Jonathan Boulware is a lifestyle behavior change specialist for people who desire a new lifestyle to Take Control of Their Health but do not know what to do, where to start, how to deal with overwhelm, how to create new habits, or how to stop bad ones.
Since his mother’s death due to obesity in 2014, Jonathan has dedicated his life to understanding why it is so hard for people to change their lifestyle behavior and provide them with a solution. He helps people build their personalized lifestyle behavior change plans to take control of their health and live the lives they thought were not possible.
In addition to self-publishing his book, Take Control of Your Body Before It Takes Control of You, he is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and a Certified Level 2 Master Coach. Jonathan also has a specialty designation as a Behavior Change Specialist.
