How to lose weight: 190kg podcaster shed 127kg to make it to his 30th birthday – here’s how he did it
- Days after his 27th birthday, Chuck Carroll had bariatric surgery to lose enough weight to live to see his 30th, and overcame his fast food addiction
- But some of the kilos piled back on; only after adopting a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle was he able to slim down to 63kg and forget his health worries
Looking at Chuck Carroll now, it is hard to imagine that the fit and trim 41-year-old American podcaster once weighed 190kg (420lbs).
As a child, Carroll remembers eating whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and gradually developing an addiction to fast food. At the age of eight he weighed 45kg, much more than his classmates.
“I didn’t know what healthy eating looked like or why I was overweight,” says Carroll, who lives in the US capital, Washington. “My diet centred around hamburgers, fries, hot dogs, mac and cheese, cookies, pizza, and sandwiches filled with bologna. Everyone in my family ate the same way.
“My mother did try to prepare healthy meals for me, and once served me millet, but it looked like birdseed and I refused to eat it.”
When he was a teenager, Carroll developed high blood pressure, and although he was prescribed medication, he continued to eat the same way.
By the time he graduated from high school at 18, he weighed 136kg, considered obese for his 1.67-metre (5 foot 5 inch) frame.
