This Guy Lost 80 Pounds With a Little Help and a Fitness Tracker

When John Gallagher, 51, got married in 1994, he weighed 225 pounds and felt “in decent shape.” For the next 20 years or so, though, his weight would go up and down. “I would eat whatever I wanted; there was really nothing that was off-limits. One summer, I printed out the list of the top 10 burger places in my hometown area and tried every one of them over the summer. Of course, I’d accessorize the burgers with French fries and beer. Not the best weight-loss food plan,” he says. “On top of that, besides playing pickup basketball once a week with the guys from church, I was not very active.”

He gained weight and lost it a few times, “but it never stuck because I wasn’t consistent about it,” he says, even though he’d wake up with knee and foot pain and hated how he looked in clothes. A health scare—severely high blood pressure—convinced him he heeded to make a change (ending up in the ER thinking he was having a heart attack, having a family history of early heart attack deaths, and wanting to be around to see his college-age sons grow and planning to be active with potential grandchildren didn’t hurt, either). When he stepped on the scale, he was shocked to see it read 260.

So he made a commitment, which turned out to have a whole cascade of positive effects on his weight, his health, and his life. He realized that as a consultant and executive coach, he teaches others to improve in business and in life, “yet I wasn’t living out those principles myself.” He’d tried the Lose It! app previously, but “I hadn’t really used it to its fullest extent. So I decided to use my Fitbit alongside Lose It!. My motto was ‘what you measure, you control…what you don’t measure, you accept.”

That commitment led to his making one small change that led to another small change that led to him not only dropping 80 pounds and getting past his high school football weight of 190 pounds (he reached 180), but also getting his blood pressure down to the normal range after a lifetime of borderline hypertension.

His tips for change:

Track it!

Track what you eat through an app to monitor calories, macros, and other nutritional milestones, he says. And track what you burn with a fitness tracker. “I also started to track my sleep, blood pressure, water intake, and resting heart rate with my Fitbit.

“After I plateaued in the first year, I added another personal challenge,” he says. “I called it #FatBoyFriday, where I wore the same shirt to my workout each Friday and took a picture at the end of the workout. It was amazing to see the progress, especially when I started to couple the exercise with better nutrition.”

Get Help

“Having someone to guide you is important,” Gallagher says. To get a workout habit going, “I knew that if I was going to transform the way I needed to, I needed a coach. I started looking online and found a gym called 180 Fitness in my hometown of Roanoake. I’d driven by it for years. I walked in the front door and said I needed help, and the rest is history.”

But the first few days were…interesting. “The first workout was miserable, and I was sore and tired the next two workouts. But I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, so I went back! I knew it would be worth it,” he says.

To stay motivated, he put some skin in the game, buying a 20-session package (10 with a Groupon discount) “so I had to go back.”

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Start With a Small Diet Change

“If you’ve had a lifetime of bad eating habits, it might be hard to go cold turkey overnight. I started with cutting out one thing—fries—which turned into cutting out fat,” he says. That was the gateway to a more healthy eating lifestyle. From there, “I cut out white bread, large desserts, and certain breakfast cereals, and reduced my alcohol intake. And before I knew it, I weighed less than I thought I could get to.”

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Add Accountability

“It’s so much more fun to have someone go on the journey with you,” he says. “My brother, Michael, joined my transformation journey with me. We friended each other on Lose It! to follow each other’s progress on exercise, weight loss, and badges earned. We used the tracking app to hold each other accountable and share milestones. Because of this, I became much more diligent about tracking.”

Seek New Challenges

Gallagher had a new breakthrough in 2019 when he was introduced to Jeremy Scott Fitness through a Men’s Health video series. His program helped him drop 79 pounds.

“If you really commit to the process, the results will take care of themselves,” he says. “To say that I feel ‘better’ would be a total understatement. I sleep better, my digestive system works better. I feel better just walking around, I’ve grown closer to my family—it’s been an all-around improvement. I travel a good deal for work and I’m quite sure I used to be ‘that guy’ who folks prayed wouldn’t have to sit next to me on the plane. Not anymore!”

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