Announcer: 0:02

If you're a whiny snowflake that can't handle the truth, is offended by the word fuck and about 37 uses of it in different forms gets ass hurt. When you hear someone speak the absolute, real and raw truth, you should leave Like right now. This is Shut Up and Choose, the podcast where we cut through the shit and get real about weight loss, life and everything in between. We get into the nitty gritty of making small, smart choices that add up to big results. From what's on your plate to how you approach life's challenges. We'll explore how the simple act of choosing differently can transform your health, your mindset and your entire freaking life. So if you're ready to cut through the bullshit and start making some real changes, then buckle up and shut up, because we're about to choose our way to a healthier, happier life. This is Shut Up and Choose. Let's do this Now. Your host, jonathan Ressler.

Jonathan Ressler: 1:14

Welcome back to Shut Up and Choose the podcast that cuts the noise and nonsense and all the garbage that you're hearing out there from the weight loss industry, from the so-called internet gurus, from all the people that seem to know more than you do about weight loss, but the truth is they don't, because you already know what to do. There's no sense in kidding. We're all programmed within our bodies. We all know how to lose weight. So let's talk about, let's catch up on something I was talking about last week, which was the fat activist and this thing, fat Con. I did try to find some the fat activists, and this thing, fatcon. I did try to find some. If you listened last week, you know that I read something. One of the sessions there is basically BDSM rope suspension for big fat people. I tried to find some pictures. I wasn't lucky enough to find any, but if I do, I'll surely share them on social media.

Jonathan Ressler: 2:00

Having said all that, I want to talk again a little bit about fat activists, but, more importantly, about how being fat, being obese, is nothing short of slow motion suicide. So look, let's be brutally honest here. If you're fat, if you're obese, you are definitely not living your best life. You're slowly killing yourself, one bite, one excuse and one delusional thought at a time. And believe me, I know. Before I started all this, I weighed 411 pounds. I lived all the excuses, I convinced myself that my size wasn't a big deal. I told myself hey, I'm just a big guy. Guess what? I was lying to myself. I couldn't walk a hundred feet. I was in and out of the hospital nonstop. I had uncontrolled gout. I had atrial fibrillation. I had everything short, for whatever reason. I didn't have diabetes, I don't know why, but I had pretty much every other ailment you could have from being obese. My joints hurt all the time, I was always in aches and pains and it was just a miserable life. But the truth is I've learned over the last year or two years since I've been doing this is.

Jonathan Ressler: 3:11

Fat is not a body type, it's a fucking burden. Is what it is. Obesity is not a disability, it's self-inflicted. I did all of that to myself. Nobody did it to me. I'm not a victim of circumstance, I'm a victim of the choices that I made.

Jonathan Ressler: 3:29

There's no such thing as fat and healthy. It just doesn't exist. You can't be fat and healthy. Sure, I always said, yeah, my doctor said I'm perfectly healthy, which is obviously a crock of shit. But you can't be fat and healthy Even if you're not feeling the things that are happening inside of you. They're happening if you're overweight. They're happening if you're obese.

Jonathan Ressler: 3:54

I'm not talking about five pounds overweight, I'm talking at least 20 pounds, and in my case I was probably 150 pounds overweight. I'm not a small guy now, so I'm not saying I'm thin and I'm not saying I'm the most fit guy in the world, but I'm a hell of a lot healthier than I was a year and a half or whatever it is, when I was at my max. And even when I was down to 350 pounds, I was still morbidly obese. And fat and healthy is just a fairy tale that's made up by lazy people who don't want to change and, like I said, I'm no exception. I did it, I get it, I lived it, but I escaped it. But I had to face some harsh realities first, and you do too if you're overweight.

Jonathan Ressler: 4:36

Remember, I always say that being personally accountable is the most important thing. You have to get to that point where you can admit to yourself okay, this was a choice, this is a result of the choices that I made. It didn't happen to me by accident. It didn't happen to me when I wasn't looking. I knew exactly what I was doing. I chose not to pay attention to those things, but I knew I was eating too much. Like you know, if you're a 50 or a hundred pounds, you're eating too much. Like you know, if you're 50 or 100 pounds, you're eating too much.

Jonathan Ressler: 5:04

I love people who tell me I've tried everything and nothing works. Well, that's also a big fucking lie, because you haven't tried everything. The thing that you should try, if you're one of those people that says, is maybe pushing the plate away or maybe really taking account for what you eat, taking responsibilities for what you eat. If you're eating ultra processed food and I'm not saying you can never eat that, but if you're eating all that shit and drinking soda and it's choices, man, you're making choices and I guess I didn't want to face the fact.

Jonathan Ressler: 5:34

But being overweight, being obese, being morbidly obese, was affecting my body, because obesity is not just an appearance issue. I know a lot of people want to be thin because it'll look better. But obesity isn't just an appearance issue. It's a full-blown systemic breakdown of your body. It affects every single organ and it slowly grinds your health to the ground. I learned that I made this miraculous change when, honestly, I was laying in a hospital bed ready to die. It took me that long, honestly. I was laying in a hospital bed ready to die. It took me that long. So I hope that if you're listening to this, and I hope if you're in a similar situation where you're 50 or 100 pounds overweight, that you take some action. You do stuff, you do what's necessary to lose the weight and get yourself healthy.

Jonathan Ressler: 6:16

Like I said, I had atrial fibrillation, I had congestive heart failure, I had all kinds of heart issues, but I convinced myself again that I was fat and healthy. But your heart just isn't designed to push blood through layers of excess fat. That should just be common knowledge. But when you're overweight, your heart has to work overtime, every single second of your life. It's working overtime every second of your life. And why do you think? You have high blood pressure. You get high blood pressure and your arteries become clogged with fat, forcing your heart to pump even harder. You get all kinds of heart disease, other things. The fat buildup narrows your arteries and that certainly increases risk of a heart attack. Now, thankfully, I never had a heart attack, but I was surely a prime candidate. And also, your stroke risk goes to the roof when your arteries are blocked, your blood flow slows down and you're one bad day one who knows crazy incident away from a stroke.

Jonathan Ressler: 7:17

And how do I know that? Well, a, it's common knowledge. But B, because at 411 pounds, I couldn't walk across a parking lot without wheezing. I could actually feel my heart struggling, my chest pounding, like I was ready to explode. If I walked 100 yards, I had to sit down and take a little rest before I went any further. That should have been a wake-up call for me, but it wasn't. I kept eating, and eating, and eating until I was laying in the hospital ready to die.

Jonathan Ressler: 7:43

So if you're listening to this and you're in a similar situation where you can't walk, you can't do things it's time to do something about it. It wasn't until I lost the weight that I realized how close I was to actually dropping dead in my 50s. That's a scary thing that I had to look back. Now the second thing I don't know how I didn't have diabetes, but I didn't. And you might think that diabetes is just about cutting back on sugar, but you're completely wrong. It's a full body disaster. Your insulin resistance goes through the roof, meaning your body can't regulate your blood sugar anymore. Your nerves and blood vessels start to die off, leading to amputations, blindness and kidney failure. Now I did have some kidney failure, so again.

Jonathan Ressler: 8:29

I don't know how I didn't have diabetes but I did have some kidney failure and your body literally starts rotting from the inside out. That's really an awful thought. When you think about it, you ever see like a diabetic lose a foot. Yeah, that's a real thing and it's 100% avoidable. But if you keep eating like shit, you're going to find out firsthand. I was pre-diabetic at 411 pounds. My doctor told me I was on the fast track to insulin shots and neuropathy. And losing weight didn't just change my life, it saved it Really. It saved it and, by the way, it wasn't the doctor or anybody else telling me to lose weight. It was when I came to the realization and I took accountability for what I was eating and how I was living.

Jonathan Ressler: 9:16

Another thing that really affected me and honestly, the residual effects I still feel today is that your joints are literally breaking down your knees, your hips, your spine. They weren't built to carry 100 or 150 extra pounds. That's why, for people that are morbidly obese, people that really need to lose a significant amount of weight, arthritis sets in early. The cartilage in your joint wears away faster, causing constant pain. I will tell you again it's in my hands. It's weird, but I went and I had to have a little hand surgery and the doctor told me like five of my fingers the cartilage was gone and there's no way to repair it. I don't know, my hands were never fat, but I will tell you that I have a smaller ring size, probably two sizes smaller than I did when I was at 411 pounds, so I guess it was affecting my joint. Your back gives out. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that extra belly weight pulls your spine forward and that leads to herniated discs. It leads to all kinds of back problems, back pain, and the last thing which I certainly experienced was that basic movement becomes torture.

Jonathan Ressler: 10:26

Walking up the steps that feels like climbing fucking Mount Everest. You just think, oh my God, I'm not going to make it, and you dread it and you avoid it at all costs. At my heaviest I avoided stairs like they were poison and I always said, hey, lucky I live in Florida, there's not a lot of steps. But that was definitely the wrong approach. I should have been thinking, wow, I can't walk up steps, I better do something about this. But I didn't. Every step felt like my knees were being crushed, like they were going to explode. Now, since I've lost the weight. It gave me the freedom of movement back. It sounds if you're not a big guy or a big girl, if you're not a big person. You don't really understand that. But you really can't move.

Jonathan Ressler: 11:07

When you're 100 pounds overweight, 200 pounds overweight, even 50 pounds overweight, moving around, just general movement, becomes difficult, and I certainly had this. And you can't breathe literally, not figuratively. Literally can't breathe. Excess fat doesn't just sit there, it presses against your lungs Again one of those things that you may not feel right now but you will in time. The fatter you get, the more pressure that's going to go on your lungs and that leads to sleep apnea, which I definitely had. You used to say I snore like a bear. I'll tell you you couldn't be in the same, literally, if someone was in another room they could hear me snoring. I didn't do anything about it because I'm an idiot, but I never wore a CPAP or anything like that. But what sleep apnea is basically? Your throat closes when you sleep, cutting off your oxygen supply. That's because the fat is pressing on your throat and your lungs.

Jonathan Ressler: 11:57

One of the side effects, one of the effects of sleep apnea is you have chronic exhaustion. You wake up more tired than you went to bed. That was me. When I got up I was tired and then walking around got me even more tired. I always had shortness of breath and that's why just basic walking was a struggle for me. It was a nightmare. Just think about that in your life. If you're having a hard time walking, you need to do something quick. So I would wake up from the sleep apnea in the middle of the night gasping for air. I needed a sleep apnea machine, but I didn't get one. But here's the crazy thing when I lost the weight it fixed all that no machine, no choking, just deep, restful sleep and, most importantly, absolutely no snore. I'm sure I snore every now and then, but I snored every single night like a freight train. Now I snore every now and then, I guess I think I certainly don't wake up like oh, in the middle of the night. So it's I just.

Jonathan Ressler: 12:56

It brings me back to the whole thing with the fat activists. I just they're promoting this unhealthy. They're basically promoting early death. I talked about that last week. How many of them have died at a very young age? It's scary.

Jonathan Ressler: 13:09

One of the biggest threats to your health is the fat acceptance movement. They tell you diets don't work. Well, yes, they do. You know I don't believe in quote-unquote dieting, but losing weight definitely works. You just have to start whatever you're doing. If you're not doing it my way and you're doing fat diets, you're doing whatever. You just have to stop quitting the diet, whatever diet it may be.

Jonathan Ressler: 13:33

I've heard people say, oh, weight loss is impossible. No, it's not. You just don't want to do the work to get it done. Fat activists are telling you you know, that's just the way your body is. You don't need to lose weight Bullshit, you need to lose weight.

Jonathan Ressler: 13:47

And then, of course, the biggest lie is you're beautiful at any size. Well, that part may be true. You're beautiful at a big size. But your looks aren't the issue. Your health is. It's not about how you look. You could look great and then die at 40 years old Because you're so goddamn fat and you're too fucking lazy to do the work. And you believe these asshole fat activists who tell you yeah, you're beautiful in any size, don't worry, you're great.

Jonathan Ressler: 14:15

The ugly truth about those people is they're afraid of accountability and they don't want to admit their size is self-inflicted. They have every excuse under the sun. They lie to other people to make themselves feel better, right? So yeah, no, fat is beautiful. The whole fat con thing is just weighing on my mind all week no pun intended was weighing on my mind all weekend that those people are there celebrating their fatness. They should be celebrating their early deaths, because I would imagine most of them and I saw, did see some pictures. They're humongous.

Jonathan Ressler: 14:49

I'm not talking about people who are 20, 30, 50 pounds overweight. I'm talking about people that are two or 300 pounds overweight. They're honestly I'm not a chubby chaser they're disgusting to look at. They have fat hanging all over the place. It's great that they're out there in bikinis and showing off their bodies. I do. I think that's great because don't be ashamed of who you are. That's your body, but you should be ashamed that you're not healthy. You should want to get healthy, no matter what.

Jonathan Ressler: 15:17

And the crazy part is these fat activists demonize weight loss because it exposes their own lack of effort. So fat activism is not about self-love at all. It's about denial. Fat activism is not about self-love at all. It's about denial weakness and dragging other people down. So don't fall for that bullshit. It's a bunch of bullshit. I don't know what else to say other than really. The choice is yours. You can die fat or you can choose to fight back. I chose to fight back.

Jonathan Ressler: 15:51

You got to stop eating like you're a dumpster, like cut out the processed shit and that doesn't mean never eat it but you should eat real food, mostly real food like proteins, vegetables and healthy fats, and definitely control your portion. That's a huge piece of the puzzle. I always used to think well, I'm a big guy, I could eat two or three. If a normal person eats one, I could eat two or three. No, that's not the case. I wouldn't be such a big guy if I ate normal portion sizes.

Jonathan Ressler: 16:18

So the second thing that I would tell you is move your body. It took me a long time to figure that out. As you know, for the first year, I didn't do any exercise at all. I still, to this date, have not gone to the gym. But exercise I guess I always thought exercise was going to the gym, doing these workouts that fucking suck, doing shit that I hate. But the reality is you can do anything and move your body.

Jonathan Ressler: 16:40

As you know, in the first year of my weight loss journey, my average step count my daily average step count, was 931 steps a day. That's not even fucking getting out of bed. You know what I mean. That's like getting out of bed, going to the bathroom 931 steps. Now I'm averaging five to 7,500, sometimes 10 or 11,000, depending on the day. So move your body right.

Jonathan Ressler: 17:03

You can walk, you can lift weights. Hey, if you like lifting weights, by all means do that. It's definitely better to exercise than to not exercise. But I always tell people, if you're so fat that you can't and again I always say that may be, that's what I said and it may have been an excuse or it may be the truth I didn't exercise for the first year. Then I started to walk and it's pretty amazing.

Jonathan Ressler: 17:25

So you don't need a gym. You just need to stop sitting on your ass all day, get up and walk around. Every step counts. If you take a break in the middle of the day and walk 100 steps, walk around the office, walk around your house, walk around the block every single step counts. If your thing is dancing or yoga, do what you'll do, because if you hate the gym, like I do, going there is not going to help you. Because you're not going to stick to it, you're not going to do it.

Jonathan Ressler: 17:51

Something as easy as walking or dancing or yoga. You can do that at home. You don't need to join a gym, you don't need to do any of that. The only thing you have to do is start, and start small. You don't have to say I'm going to walk 10 miles, you're not going to walk 10 miles. Walk a quarter of a mile and then the next day walk a quarter of a mile. Maybe the next week you walk a little bit further. So every single step you take counts, and when I say step, I mean every yoga thing you do, every bit of dancing, every movement counts, and it's getting you towards your goal.

Jonathan Ressler: 18:22

And then, of course, you have to own your choices, because every single meal you eat is a choice. I don't give a shit what you tell me. Every time you open your mouth, you have an opportunity to eat more or eat less, to eat food that is in line with your why or food that's not in line with your why. And every day that you choose not to walk or move or do something, that's a choice. And, more importantly or most importantly, every excuse you make is a choice. And it's not about making huge changes in your life, it isn't. It's about making small choices every day that add up to big results. So those are the things that I think are the most important.

Jonathan Ressler: 19:06

Look, when I was 411 pounds, I had every excuse in the book. I told myself I was big boned. I'm sure you've heard people say, oh, I'm big boned. I convinced myself that diets didn't work, that it was just. There's no way I could do this. That diet's bullshit, this diet's bullshit and every diet. It honestly is bullshit. It's just a short-term fix. But I convinced myself that I just couldn't diet anymore and I totally let my cravings control me.

Jonathan Ressler: 19:30

And then one day I was laying in the hospital bed. I realized nobody was coming to save me. Man, if I was going to get healthy, if I was going to do shit, I had to do it on my own. It wasn't going to be my doctor. He wasn't going to save me. Not my family, not some magic pill or not some fucking magic shot, just me. That's the only person that was going to save me.

Jonathan Ressler: 19:54

And I stopped making excuses and I started making choices and I lost over 140 pounds. And I'm still losing. I'm still losing weight and I'm not going to tell you I don't go up one week and down. I do, but I'm very aware of the choices that I make when I open my mouth. So you can do this too. It's not hard if you actually think about it and you take responsibility for the choices you make.

Jonathan Ressler: 20:18

But you have to choose it. You have to wake up and admit the truth that your weight is killing you, and then you have to do something about it. So, like I said before, fat isn't a body type, fat isn't healthy, and fat sure as shit is not your identity. Fat is just slow motion suicide, and you don't have to go out like that. You're in complete control. You're the only one that can make the choices that are going to keep you alive, keep you healthy and get you living your best life. You have to decide what's going to be Keep slowly killing yourself or shut up and choose and take control of your life. The choice is yours. All I can say is it's your move, man. Start today, make the hard choices and take your life back, because, like I said earlier, you're not meant to die like this. So that's it for today.

Jonathan Ressler: 21:20

I'll tell you, as usual, you can get my book Shut Up and Choose. It chronicles my journey of losing over 140 pounds, eating all the foods that I loved, didn't spend a minute in the gym, didn't do any exercise for the first year, but I did it by making small, smart choices that add up to big results. I also have that. By the way, that book is available on Amazon and I'm getting tons of great reviews, still selling like crazy. I'm grateful that people are using it and getting great results from it. I also am about to launch a brand new video course called the Effortless Weight Loss Academy. I'll give you more information on that as we go, but again, it's going to be over 20 modules, 20 videos. Rather, it's got a bunch of downloads, a bunch of quizzes, just to kind of keep you on track.

Jonathan Ressler: 22:05

I'm really really, really, really excited about this thing, and I'll make an announcement next week or the week after, when it finally goes live. It's in beta right now, which means I'm basically giving it to a bunch of people for free so they can test it, find the kinks, find the bugs and help me to make it the best possible course out there. And again, it's all about mindful eating, making small, smart choices and really living your best life. I'm living my best life and I'm really excited about that. So that's it for today. Make sure that you get up off your lazy ass after you listen to this and get out there and move a little bit. It's just a matter of getting started. That's it. If you don't take the first step, you can't take the second step. So really you have to take responsibility for your choices and get into action, and by action I don't mean walking Action, I mean make the decision to get yourself healthy. So right now, the only thing left to do is to shut up and choose.

Announcer: 23:06

You've been listening to Shut Up and Choose and choose. You've been listening to shut up and choose. Jonathan's passion is to share his journey of shedding 130 pounds in less than a year without any of the usual gimmicks no diets, no pills. And we'll let you in on a little secret no fucking Jim, and guess what? You can do it too. We hope you enjoyed the show. We had a fucking blast. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find Jonathan on Instagram at JonathanWrestlerBocaRaton. Until next time, shut up and choose.