The podcast you're about to hear was recorded today after I'd come home from a day of business activity. And I have to tell you, I was just listening to it and I sounded exhausted. So when you listen to it, if I sound exhausted, that's why. So after everything is done and this thing is posted, I'm going to go lay down for a while, but just wanted to let you know.
Have you ever thought about what is the best way to lose weight? Oh, man, I have for years. I mean, just absolute total years. I have thought about this and I just, it's just, I finally something has worked.
But have you ever thought about bringing gratitude into it? Let's talk about that today. Hello, my name is Michael Gross and this is The Daily Grateful. And today I'm going to talk about weight loss.
What's worked for you? All right. I have had things work many times, many, many, many times. As a matter of fact, I was in Seminole yesterday, a little town in Pinellas County, Florida.
I was driving by what used to be Paulette's hairdressing shop. And Paulette was friends with my very first wife back in the 70s. As a matter of fact, my very first wife was a teacher for Paulette's daughter. And she had these shakes that you could buy, came in a little can.
It was like 20 bucks and you made these little shakes and it made you not hungry. I forget what they were called, but, you know, so I bought some from her and they actually worked. And then they went off the market because as it turns out, they had some kind of simulant in them. Hmm.
Government didn't like that. Did not like that. So all the weight lost, gained back. And I've tried other things.
All the weight I've lost, I gained back. Weight watchers. Went to meetings at Sunshine Mall. I remember that.
I said, I am signing up for Weight Watchers. And I go to Sunshine Mall, long since gone mall. But I went there and they had a little meeting room. Weight Watchers, Tuesday, three o'clock.
I show up Tuesday, three o'clock. Room is filled. There had to be 70 people in there. They were all little old ladies.
And there was little 22 year old me with a belly. And I just found a way to get out of there before I even heard anything. So that didn't work for me. That just, and the woman that was trying to sign me up, I said, listen, you know, I don't think this is gonna work.
She goes, well, our main target is women. I said, yeah. And I'm not one of those. And I got to go.
So that didn't work. So I have fluctuated in weight. And I remember when I went over 200 pounds and I said, oh man, this is terrible. This is absolutely terrible.
And I did that in about 1976. I passed the 200 and then I got to 210 and then 230. And I would try these other days and people came out with these pills that were sold by, as it turns out, multilevel marketing people. And I started taking these pills and I got to tell you, I was having palpitations.
I would get, well, I wasn't hungry, but I thought I was gonna have these just did not work for me. I stopped that immediately. In the five days that I committed to stay on it, I actually lost five pounds, but I never could sleep in it. It was just horrible.
You know, it just, just absolutely horrible. I forget what the active ingredient of the product was. I got up at one point to 305 pounds and I just kind of decided nothing was going to work for me. And then my friend Clark, the chiropractor who I went to junior high school and high school with, said, I'm doing something that's working.
I said, what's that? He goes, I'm on an all meat diet. I eat meat. I eat bacon.
I eat pork. You know, all of that. And you can drink milk. And I said, okay, well, let's give that a try.
And at 285 pounds, I went on that and I was just determined. All I was doing was eating ribeye steaks or cheeseburgers. You are allowed to have cheese and the cheeseburgers had no bun, of course. And I had a little grill.
I was making my own every day. I was grilling the steaks. I was making bacon. And when I was eating eggs, you were allowed to eat eggs on this thing.
So I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. And yeah, this is what I did. I dropped 42 pounds. That's pretty good.
But I got to tell you, it wreaked havoc on me. And I finally just went back to eating normal. Guess what? All the weight came back.
All the weight came back. The biggest weight I ever lost was 66 pounds in 2013 when I was hospitalized and had major surgery. And I didn't eat because, you know, when your body is totally, yeah, I just didn't eat. But when I got out, I was very skinny, you know, or compared to what I used to be, I was skinny.
And then boom. And I started thinking here recently, by the way, it was after that that I got up every time you lose weight, you gain more weight back. That's been my process. Anyway, that's been my process.
So in the midst of starting The Daily Grateful, I said, well, why don't we bring gratitude into this and see if that helps? You know, practicing gratitude, it makes your mental health better. And if you're feeling better, you want to stick to your weight loss goals. Yeah, that was all right.
That was good. I was grateful for people that had better self-control than I did. And they were inspiring me. All of that was good.
But I'm gonna be honest with you. I have a whole list of gratitude things here that I researched and printed up, but I'm not gonna use any of them. I've got a whole bunch of them. Let me tell you what worked.
And I didn't even do this intentionally. I went to the doctor and I had blood work and my A1C and A1C is how they judge a blood sugar over a long period of time. And you want that to be under six. My A1C was 8.3.
That is very high. I only have one kidney. That scared the living badoodos out of me. I went to my doctor and you know, my doctor said, Okay, here's what we're gonna do.
I said, What are we gonna do? I'm going to put you on, and do I want to tell you, it's one of those GLP ones. I'm not gonna mention the name of it, but where you give yourself an injection in the tummy once a week, every Wednesday, you do that. And that is how, that is how you do this, is GLP one once a day, I got it, or once a week.
I gotta tell you something. I wasn't hungry. I did not do this to lose weight. I did this very, very seriously to get my A1C under control.
After a month on it, it dropped down considerably. And but not where it needed to be. I just had blood work done the day before yesterday. And the results came in.
I haven't looked at them yet, but I've got a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and we'll go over it at that point. But I gotta tell you, since I've been on this, I'm just not hungry. Zach and I had ordered pizza tonight for dinner. I was going to grill a steak, but I'm just too tired.
I had a very busy day. So Zach said, You wanna, you know, order pizza? I said, Yeah, let's order pizza. I had two small pieces of pizza and I'm full.
And by the way, that is the only thing that I have eaten today. That is it. I've eaten nothing else. Two pieces of pizza with hamburger on it.
That's it. It's all I've had today. And I'm going to, after I'm done recording this, I'm going to go and relax. And I'm going to drink a boost shake that has 30 or 20 grams of protein in it.
So that'll be nice. You know, I get the little bottles of it. I discovered that when I was in the hospital in 2013, it was the only thing that was keeping me alive was ensure and boost. when I left the house, I was on ensure in the hospital.
And then when I went to a rehab facility, I had very major surgery and I could not walk. I could not do anything. I said, go there and have physical therapy and all of that. And my very favorite ex-wife Diane kept bringing me in boost and I said that it kept me going.
So between ensure and boost, it kept me going. And now Diane and I both go to BJ's and we buy a case. We each buy a case of the boost high protein. And I will have that after a while.
I'm too full right now after eating two pieces of pizza. Before I started this adventure, I'd eat the whole damn pizza. I mean, I could, I could, you know, I, I would eat half the pizza, at least half the pizza and whoever else was here would eat the other half. I barely got through two small pieces.
So what's my weight loss so far? Well, I gotta tell you, I've been afraid to look, but I looked, I looked today. When I started this adventure, I weighed, I'm bad at math. When I started this adventure, I weighed 200 and excuse