Wausau man loses 116 pounds to join Marines
3 years of work pays off for him to fulfill dream
WAUSAU - Devon Meyer weighed about 350 pounds when he was a junior at Wausau West High School and first met a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter.
He wanted to join the Marines ever since he was 10 years old, influenced by his great-uncles, who were Marines who fought in World War II. He soaked up movies such as “American Sniper,” “Jarhead” and “Full Metal Jacket.”
“There’s a big sense of brotherhood in the Marine Corps,” said Meyer, now 21. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
Marine weight limits require recruits of Meyer’s height, an even 6 feet, to be 234 pounds or less in order to enlist. The odds that Meyer would lose that 116 pounds were very much stacked against him.
People who are obese have an extremely difficult time shedding pounds. In a study released in 2015, researchers from the United Kingdom analyzed the weight loss potential of 76,704 obese men and 99,791 obese women for up to nine years.
And in any given year, the probability that a person would achieve a normal body weight was 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, according to a Reuters story about the research.
Meyer said he knew it would be hard to trim that much weight off, but he also knew he really, really wanted to be a Marine. So he went to work to shed the excess pounds.
He’s been exercising and watching his diet for about three years now, and last week he weighed in and saw that magic number: 234. He’s lost enough weight to sign up for the Marines in a delayed entry program, and the plans are for him to report to basic training in San Diego on April 19.
The problematic relationship between obesity and military recruitment has been scrutinized as a potential threat to national security. The U.S. Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress that provides research assistance to congressional committees and members of Congress, released a study in December titled “Obesity in the United States and Effects on Military Recruiting.”
Obesity is not a new problem for Americans, but it is rampant and growing, according to the report. The percentage of military-age adults who were ineligible because of their weight for military service doubled for men and tripled for women between 1959 and 2008. In 2017-18, the most current data available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that the proportion of adults ages 20 and older who were or have been obese was 42%. The CDC also determined that the obesity rates for adolescents between ages 12 to 19 was 21% in 201516, the most recent data available.
Meyer said his problem with obesity became serious when he was 17.
“I gained a 100 pounds in one year,” he said. “I just kind of let myself go.”
He was going through a “high school kind of depression” and he turned to food for comfort. After talking to the Marine recruiter at school, he decided he would make a change.
He started exercising more, and watching what he ate. He started jogging for fitness even though “I could only run about a quarter-mile” when he began, he said.
He turned to more unorthodox kinds of exercise, too. An avid hunter and angler, he bought a pair of waders and started running in water because it provided some flotation and resistance.
Meyer had lost 50 pounds on his own when he walked into the door of the Wausau Marine recruiting office on Stewart Avenue. He was about 300 pounds.
“I felt embarrassed,” Meyer said. “But I thought, I gotta get this fixed.”
He met recruiters Sgt. Brandon Sandoval and Staff Sgt. Cody Prisk. The two recruiters knew that Meyer had a challenge in front of him, but they say they typically help potential recruits with physical training and weight loss if they sense that the person is serious about joining the Marines.
Being overweight, Sandoval said, “that’s something that can be corrected.” Other roadblocks to joining the Marines such as medical issues, trouble with the law, drug abuse issues often cannot be overcome, he said.
Sandoval and Prisk say that Meyer’s drive was evident from the beginning. Prisk, especially, started working with Meyer on a weekly basis. Now Meyer checks in with the Marine recruiters twice a week to get workout assignments and other help. After meeting with them, he’ll go off to nearby Franck’s Gym to do the work.
The recruiters often work with people who want to enlist, especially in the delayed entry program. They help recruits prepare for Marine training “mentally, physically and emotionally,” Prisk said.
But Meyer stood out among the crowd, even early on when he weighed 300 pounds. “His persistence is what kept us pushing him,” Prisk said.
Meyer has embraced the work. He stands tall, with broad shoulders, and he looks more like a tight end than a lineman at this point.
He’s not done yet, he said. He wants to be as fit as possible, because he’s aiming for one of the toughest jobs in the Marines, a member of the recon force, which requires many advanced training and special operations training courses.
“I have the work ethic, I have the dedication,” Meyer said.