Cody's Story: Life Can Be a Pain in the Butt

Hello. My name is Cody, and I'm a fat guy. Now, I'm not like HUGE but I'm definitely to the point in my life where my weight has started giving me health problems and daily life is just super uncomfortable. I have been struggling with my weight since high school and was overweight or obese throughout most of my 20s. When I was 22 in 2010 I decided I wanted to enlist in the Air Force (Utah Air National Guard) which is where Justin and I met and became friends. I had to lose about 40lbs before I could enlist and complete training which I was able to do by taking up running with my dad. I had been running half marathons all year to prep for my enlistment. Half way through that enlistment in early 2013, just as I was finishing up training for my job I began having horrible digestive issues (stomach pains, diarrhea, losing blood, etc...). Even though I was in pretty good shape at the time doing 2 a day PT with my guard bros and running half marathons with my dad. I started seeing several doctors and getting many delightful tests done involving my butt, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC). UC is an autoimmune disease that causes high levels of inflammation in the large intestine. If medications aren't successful in treating UC then surgeries are the go to option.

Over the past 7 years I have tried just about every treatment option available to get my UC into remission with very little luck. Throughout this whole ordeal, my weight was like a rollercoaster. When I would have a flare my weight would drop because I couldn't stand to eat anything. At 6ft 1in tall, my lowest weight was around 170lbs. Then the doctors would put me on steroids like prednisone until I started feeling better which would cause me to eat everything I could because I could finally eat again without being in pain. I reached my highest weight of 261lbs in 2016 and I was miserable. The medications weren't working very well, the only relief I got was from steroids that I could only take for short periods of time and as soon as I came off of them I would have another flare.

I completed my enlistment in mid 2016, decided it was too much hassle to stay in and didn't reenlist. Don't even know if they would've let me with how sick I was but I wasn't going to stick around and find out. I needed a much less stressful job. I was also struggling hardcore to pass the required fitness tests with my weight gain and not being able to run 10 feet without almost crapping my pants. I did luck out shortly after getting out that I was eligible for VA benefits since I was on active duty orders when I got sick which has been a huge financial help for my family and I.

Me close to my largest. Pumpkins and 2 year old for scale.

In May of 2018 I had the worst flare of my life. I was running to the bathroom 30+ times a day, becoming anemic from blood loss, and could barely get off the couch for anything besides the next bathroom trip because I was so tired and constantly in pain. My diet consisted of eating a popsicle for breakfast and a popsicle for dinner and usually throwing one of them up due to the horrible stomach cramps (that's the real diet hack here. I lost 14 lbs in a week on this diet! Just kidding, don't do this. It's bad for you). My doctor decided to perform a colonoscopy on me (my 5th one in 5 years, lucky me!) but my intestines were so inflamed that they couldn't even complete it without fear of perforating my intestines. After the procedure the doctor woke me up and said "You're not feeling too well are you?" No doc, I'm pretty far from okay. He decided to put me on a biologic infusion called Remicade (Infliximab) on top of the other meds I was currently taking, as well as more steroids. Basically, he said he was going to give me everything in the book to get my inflammation down and then we could work on tapering me off of the harsher drugs. I have now been getting a large dose of the Remicade every 4 weeks for over a year and a half now and it has made a world of difference. I haven't had to go back on the steroids, I've been able to taper off of some other medications, and my weight even started to go down on it's own without me really changing my diet. I went from 261lbs down to about 240lbs by the end of 2018.

This is where the Keto diet comes into the story. Justin decided he wanted to drop some weight and started doing the Keto diet in late 2018/early 2019. I'd heard of it before and even dabbled in it a bit but never gave it a hardcore try or anything. After seeing Justin's results over the first few months of 2019 I decided to look into it and discovered all the benefits people were talking about, especially with lowering inflammation in the body. So, in the spring of 2019 I decided to try it out to see if it could help get rid of some of my remaining UC symptoms (urgency when I had to go to the bathroom and I was still going like 6-8 times a day). After one day on Keto, I had some very epic diarrhea and decided it wasn't for me and that I would have to try something else. So I gave up on the Keto dream and tried to, unsuccessfully, do things my own way.

I didn't stop.

After another 7 or so months of failing to regain control of my weight, symptoms, and seeing Justin have even more success in a few months than I've had in years I decided to try Keto again but this time I would be even more careful with what I ate. Turns out, the first time around I had way too many eggs in one day which did not agree with me and caused the epic diarrhea. To this day, I can only handle about 2 eggs a day without having digestive problems. I stuck to eating mostly meat, cheese, veggies, nuts, dark chocolate, and butter which was much easier to handle. Not only did it help but after only 2 days on Keto, my UC symptoms were almost completely gone. Instead of starting my day with a 45 minute meeting with the toilet I could start it with exercise and a shower. After a month on Keto I was down about 15 lbs. I was over the moon and thought I could keep it up forever. Turns out forever was about 6 week before I fell off the wagon around the holidays in 2019. I've been on and off Keto ever since, getting down to a low of 221lbs but have since bounced back up to about 235lbs after going on a cruise followed by 6 or 7 weeks without Keto. I'm hoping having this blog will help keep me accountable so that I can stick to it and finally reach a healthy weight and get my illness under control.

Starting Sunday March 1st 2020 I'm back on the keto train to start reaping those sweet, hot, tasty benefits! I'll be checking in weekly on this blog with updates on my progress.

Actual footage of me on that cruise.