LOSE WEIGHT IN LOCKDOWN THE MOST INSPIRATIONAL FAT-BURNING
Maynor De Leon might not look like an athlete, but he trains like one. Having dropped a colossal 120kg – and with many more to go – That Big Guy’s very public transformation has been as much a fight for survival as a personal challenge. This is how he’s hitting back against all odds. Be inspired
MH first meets him on a cold Wednesday in January, amid the New Year gym rush. His base of operations for the day is On Your Mark, a training space in Chicago’s East Garfield Park area that served as a bomb shelter during the Second World War. The 1,765m2 site is packed with lifting platforms, heavy bags and sprint tracks. A dozen or so athletes gather to work with their coaches, moving between stations, their faces masks of determination.
Weighing 195kg, De Leon stands out among them. But watch him for five minutes and you’ll see that this is a man in his element. Dressed in black trackpants, a black velour shirt and Nike running shoes, he hoists a canvas ball over his head and slams it down with a guttural “Humph!” over and over, the impact echoing through the gym like a cannon blast.
Beside him stands his trainer, David Carson, correcting and motivating him. In between sets with the ball, De Leon steps laterally, up and over, back and forth, between yellow markers, pulling his knees up. “Ten seconds,” says Carson. “Give me 10 more seconds.” His face now shining with sweat, De Leon presses on, Carson helping him maintain balance in what looks like a kind of workout dance. After that, he moves on to the cable machine for a set of biceps curls, Kanye West booming from the gym’s speakers.
And on it goes, for more than an hour. By the end, De Leon is pouring with sweat, as he gulps from his bottle of water. Carson taps his shoulder and says, “Good job.” Smiling through the perspiration, De Leon nods, then claps, then throws back his head and shouts, “Yeeaah!”
Protective Armour
He was always big. For as long as he could remember, De Leon dwarfed his friends and, in girth at least, his three elder brothers. “I guess I haven’t ever been ‘normal size’,” he says. By the age of seven, he was wearing size-10 adult shoes. Children’s shoes were fine lengthwise but too narrow. To make them fit, he had to stuff the fronts with socks.
At school, he longed to be invisible but his size made him conspicuous – a target. He wasn’t just bigger than everyone else.
He looked older, too. When he was 12, people assumed that he was 16.
He was an intelligent, thoughtful boy, but on the rough-and-ready streets where he and his family lived in west Chicago, you kept such things to yourself. “When you’re that size, a lot of people want to test you,” he says. “It’s almost like a prison mentality: pick on the biggest dude.” One of his earliest memories was of a teenager being shot and killed outside his home. His brothers and father shrugged it off.
As he entered high school, De Leon realised he could go one of two ways: be shy, compliant and try – at least with his personality – to be as small as possible, or he could become bigger, tougher and defiant in his heaviness. He wouldn’t wait for someone to call him fat – he would do it first. He would welcome the teasing and learn to give back better than he got. He would be funny when he needed to and aggressive when it failed.
One factor in his obesity was his address. His family lived in a “food desert”: an area filled with fast-food restaurants and off-licences but lacking supermarkets selling fresh fruit and vegetables. McDonald’s, Burger King and Pizza Hut were staples. Breakfast often consisted of a couple of cinnamon buns and buttered toast, washed down with three or four bottles of juice. At home, food represented comfort, acceptance and family. His mother was from Mexico and his father from Guatemala; both could lay a table filled with enough traditional
+0
Work out your calorie intake by adding a zero to your short-term goal weight in pounds, Carson suggests. If your goal is 200lb, eat 2,000kcal.
dishes – corn, rice, pork and refried beans – to tempt anyone to stray from their diets.
Food was also a way to numb the growing shame and depression he felt over his appearance. “I tried to cut myself off from my emotions,” he says. Food became, in effect, a drug – one soon supplemented by a more common form of escape, alcohol. He started drinking beer when he was 13. Nihilism suppressed any concerns about his alcohol use: what does it matter? I’ll be dead by 25 anyway. Might as well enjoy myself.
By graduation, the 5ft 9in De Leon weighed more than 250kg. He could no longer rise from the sofa without the help of one of his brothers. To get out of bed, he had to heave himself into a sitting position, slowly swing his legs over the edge, then try to stand without collapsing. He remained defiant. But he was trapped.
A Seismic Shift
The turning point came when De Leon developed an infection, which caused his leg to become badly inflamed. It felt hot and painful to the touch. “I didn’t know what it was,” he says. “I just felt weak.”
His parents took him to Rush University Medical Center, where he was kept overnight. In the morning, a surgeon came into the room and announced that he needed to prepare De Leon for surgery.
“We don’t know how bad the infection is,” he explained, “but if it has reached your bloodstream, we’ll have to amputate to prevent it reaching your heart.”
The surgeon was able to save his leg, but he was kept under observation for 10 days. It was, De Leon says, “the worst experience of my life”. But it also proved to be a revelation. Above De Leon’s bed was a light fixture with a large, reflective surface: essentially, a mirror. “Prior to that, I didn’t look in the mirror,” says De Leon. “I hated myself so much.” But now he was forced to confront his reflection, 24 hours a day.
At first, he was angry – angry that he was in a hospital bed that he couldn’t get out of, angry that he’d put himself in this position. Then anger gave way to depression. He’d never been a crier, but several days into his hospital stay, all of the fear and shame that he had numbed with food and alcohol flooded out of him.
“Food was a way to numb the growing shame: ‘I tried to cut myself off from my emotions.’”
On 30 April 2016, De Leon sat down on a couch in his home, propped his iPhone in front of him, and tapped the video button. “I am a little over 700lb [318kg],” he said. “I need to make a change, because if I don’t, my weight is going to kill me.” He decided to start a video diary, which he’d revisit on his birthday to see how far he’d come. He started visiting a gym. He hefted a few weights and walked on the treadmill. He tried to teach himself boxing.
De Leon had long hated social media. Why would people put themselves out there to be mocked, or to end up on a YouTube compilation like Fat Boy Funny Fails? But he wondered if there might be another way to go about it. So, he created an Instagram account that was honest, one in which he admitted to his struggles as well as celebrating his successes. People would laugh, but so what? This was his life, and social media offered him a way to tell his story, rather than allowing others to impose their own narrative. It would also be a way to hold himself accountable.
Ten followers became a hundred, then a thousand. Viewers responded not with jeers but with messages of support. “I’m
x5 De Leon trains five days a week. Even for total beginners, Carson advises doing three weekly strength training sessions.
fat, too, and I want to do this.” “Man, you have a lot of courage.” When trolls inevitably weighed in – “Why’re you such a fat ass?” – De Leon didn’t even need to respond. His fans would do it for him.
Within a few months, @thatbigguy700 had attracted more than 100,000 followers. Nike took notice and used De Leon in one of its “Just do it” videos. Suddenly, De Leon had multiple trainers asking to work with him. He tried a few, but he got the sense that they weren’t really in it for him: they were using him to burnish their brands, to boost their social media accounts. He needed someone real. Someone who understood. But who?
“I told De Leon he was an Olympic athlete. We were working for a goal he wouldn’t reach for four years”
Second Shots
David Carson is a strong and sculpted 6ft 7in, with a client list including Olympians and athletes at the top of their game. He and De Leon would seem an odd pair.
But their successes are both ones born of adversity. Or, as Carson puts it, “I know how it feels to wake up and be like: what the fuck happened?”
A college basketball player with NBA aspirations, Carson was driving home to Chicago from Indiana for a graduation party in June 2010, when his car was hit by a woman trying to kill herself. She died
at the scene. Carson was cut out of his car by emergency workers. He emerged with a broken arm, a broken leg, a fractured sternum and eight dislocated toes.
Like De Leon, Carson sank into a deep depression. He couldn’t get into a car without fighting panic attacks. He stopped working out for months, only returning to the gym when his mother, who was struggling with health problems brought on by her weight, asked him to help. After working with him, she lost more than 60kg. “I’d found my calling,” Carson says. “I love helping people.” He started a fitness company, 24Life.
When someone alerted him to De Leon’s story, Carson told anyone who would listen, “I want to work with that guy. I want to help.” But their first session wasn’t a slam dunk. “We didn’t connect like I wanted us to,” says Carson. To him, De Leon seemed apprehensive. To De Leon, Carson came off as a little too polished, reeling off platitudes and fitness speak. Was he just another opportunistic trainer trying to capitalise on his raised profile?
Things changed when another trainer shared Carson’s story with
De Leon: his accident and his subsequent depression. De Leon was stunned. He texted Carson shortly after that first workout: “Why didn’t you tell me you know what ground zero feels like?”
“I wanted to say: I’m your ally and
I’ve got your back,” says Carson – to tell him that it didn’t matter if he struggled, or regained a few pounds. “We’re in this together, not just as trainer-client, but as friends.”
A Fighting Chance
This is not going to be a quick transformation. To reach a “normal” bodyweight, De Leon has to lose roughly three-quarters of his mass at its highest point. Carson doesn’t baby him. “I told him he’s an Olympic athlete,” he says. “When I train Olympic athletes, we [work together] for four years. We understand that you’re practising today for something you may not see for years.” This was the mentality De Leon needed to acquire.
As part of De Leon’s four-year plan, Carson wanted to get him squatting, deadlifting and holding a plank – all milestones he has since achieved. But the initial goal, he says, was simply for De Leon to be able to “own his weight” – to be able to carry himself with stability and strength. “Some people think early on that their struggles are a balance issue, but it’s really a strength issue,” Carson explains. “They’re just not strong enough to find their centre of mass. I want to get to a place where if [De Leon] loses his balance, it isn’t, ‘Oh, shit,’ but, ‘All right, I’m strong enough to balance on one leg.’” When people fear falling, they protect themselves. But that self-protection prevents them from progressing.
Another primary goal, Carson explains, was to create muscle. “If all I do is put muscle on your body, you’re going to burn three times the calories,” Carson told De Leon. Reversing obesity is far more complicated than simply moving more and eating less. Changes to metabolism, hormone balance and appetite regulation mean weight regain is always a risk – albeit one that can be fought against.
De Leon is not immune. He still loves food and feels the pull towards bingeeating. But he works hard to ensure that the food he eats is healthy. Gone are the Big Macs, replaced by grilled chicken and vegetables. He has had his share of setbacks – rewarding himself after a tough day with a couple of ice cream sandwiches, for example. But, for the most part, it will be one made with high-protein waffle mix and low-fat frozen yogurt.
Instagram keeps him accountable, though rarely through admonishment. Each slip-up is met by more support, which only motivates him to push himself harder and to do better.
It isn’t glamorous, and it certainly isn’t easy. After some of the sets in today’s workout, De Leon folds at the waist, looking dazed, sweat streaming, only to have Carson in his ear, urging him on. None of the exercises is entry level. De Leon dreads the prospect of pushing a sled with Carson – all 108kg of him – riding on it: he hates it because it’s hard. But he loves it precisely because he hates it.
Now, three-quarters of the way through the four-year plan, De Leon has lost more than 120kg. He feels better physically, of course, but the pay-off doesn’t end with his increased mobility and strength. Through his partnership with Nike and his new-found fame, he has visited places he’d never been before: Los Angeles, New York and
Austin, Texas. Through social media, he has developed a group of committed supporters whom he considers friends as much as fans. Carson is foremost in both categories.
One day recently, De Leon noticed something strange. He ran his hand over his left arm, then his right. Were they lumps? He felt them in both arms, in the same spot. Standing nearby, Carson watched, smiling. “You’re starting to get definition,” he said. “Muscles.” If, in that moment, someone had walked up to him and handed him a winning lottery ticket, De Leon could not have been happier.
x3
By weight, muscle burns three times as many calories as fat, making big lifts a highly effective weight-loss strategy.