Hunters Olds is not a name that you will recognize although it is the type of name that sounds like a movie or sports star. Yet Hunter Olds is perhaps more inspirational than many of the stars we look up to today. Hunter is a lifelong baseball fan and after trying to attend a game and realizing he was too large to fit in a seat, he decided to change his life. Hunter has never looked back since that day and is now setting an example for the world.
Hunter is 23 years old and has always been the biggest guy in the room. During his first year in college, he weighed 158kg (350 pounds) and he never saw it as a problem. He never considered his weight before as an issue. He knew he was the biggest guy in school and know the biggest guy in his class in college but he didn’t mind. He didn’t care what others thought and he never made the connection to his long-term health. Yet on the day he went to the baseball game and couldn’t fit in the chair he realized something was terribly wrong and the realization that he needed to change his life washed over him.
That moment was both embarrassing and difficult but it may be the most important moment of Hunter’s life. He went home that day and decide to stop eating sugary food, to stop eating so much processed food, and to eat fewer calories each day. To help him on his journey he downloaded a calorie management application. Here he would enter everything he eats each day and it would count the calories and advised him how much more he could eat on that day if he wanted to reach his goal weight by a certain date. This app takes the mystery out of weight loss.
For many people weight loss is confusing. Of course, we all know that eating the donut is bad but so many people end up crash dieting and losing weight only to turn around and put the weight back on months later. To successfully diet it must be a way of eating that you can sustain for the rest of your life. Yo-yo dieting is proven not only not to work but to actually result in putting on more weight over time.
Apps that allow you to count calories simply show you how much you can actually eat each day and make it very straight forward and easy to understand. They even split the food you have eaten into nutrient groups and will show you when you are lacking in certain food groups.
Hunter realized that he couldn’t rely on simply dieting if he wanted to keep the weight off. He needed to change his life. He started to run after he lost his first few kg and has never stopped. He says that running allows him to clear his mind and gives him peace. There are no complications there is only running. This simple approach to fitness was something that Hunter enjoyed and he has become far more serious about it over time. To date, he has completed two marathons and is now training for his first triathlon.
Hunter’s transformation is like many that we hear about week in, week out. Yet for every Hunter, there is someone losing that same battle. Losing weight is an incredibly difficult task that those of us who have always been in shape will struggle to understand. Once you have lost it, it is even harder to keep it off. Hunter has won a great battle and we hope that many more are inspired to do the same.
