A man has opened up about the heartbreaking divorce that led to his bingeing food and alcohol, as well as the journey back from those depths.
Steven Wright, 37, told Newsweek he’s been “incredibly lucky in a lot of aspects of life and not so much in a few others.” An angel investor who was able to retire in his 30s, Wright has in some ways enjoyed the kind of life most could only dream of.
Yet for much of the past few years, his life has been nothing short of a nightmare following the breakup of his marriage. “I lost what I thought was the love of my life, just to realize that I had wasted the last 10 years with someone who was selfish and did not appreciate me,” he said.
It’s not uncommon for people to gain weight following divorce, especially men. A 2011 study by researchers at Ohio State University, based on data from more than 10,000 people, found men were more likely than women to put on significant weight after divorce.
Wright openly admits he was using both food and alcohol “to cope” as his marriage fell apart. “I used to eat to the point of feeling sick and I loved it,” he said. “I’d binge eat so much that I was prediabetic, and the insulin that my body was releasing to cope with the food was allowing me to sleep, because I was in such a terrible place with my mental health at the time it seemed worth it.”
Wright had gained and lost weight before, but this time around it took something different to kick him out of his existential funk.
“A buddy bet me he could get to 17.5 percent body fat before me,” Wright said. “He was at around 30 at the start, while I was at 34. The deal was the loser had to pay for dinner at any restaurant anywhere in the world, flight and hotel included. That is what really started me on working out consistently.”
There was a little more to it than just that for Wright, though. He was facing a future as a newly divorced single man in search of companionship. “I had no confidence, and I wanted to start dating,” he explained. “So I made a bet to help motivate me.”
The first step was addressing his problems with food.
“I realized I was prioritizing 40 minutes a day of gorging myself, to be disappointed the rest of the time,” he said. “Now, I fight a serious battle to eat correctly for my future self, and I’m happy the rest of the time regarding this matter. Once I realized this, it was a simple decision. Even though that didn’t make it easy at first, as my body really craved bad foods.”
Wright switched to a high-protein diet.
“I get all my carbs from vegetables and fruits and use minimal olive oil or avocado oil for cooking,” he said. “I eat a lot of homemade chili for lunch, where I double or triple the ground beef. I also eat fajitas a lot, but I only partake in the meat and veggies and leave the tortilla and sour cream alone. I eat steak, chicken, fish…whatever our ancestors would eat.”
Steven Wright was partly motivated to lose weight because of a bet with a friend.
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Along with changes to his diet, Wright started going to the gym from Monday to Friday.
“Monday was legs, starting with squats then things like lunges, pistol squats, box jumps to further tear them down for about 50 minutes total,” he said.
On Tuesdays, he focused on pullups, with an initial aim to try to get to 10 before moving on to “full muscle ups.” Wednesday became his high-intensity interval training day.
“I would do body exercises such as burpees, box jumps, jump rope, run, pushups, pullups, jumping jacks, planks for 40 seconds and then a 20-second break,” he said. “I would do this with eight exercises, and then after my eighth one I’d take a whole minute off, which puts you on a 10-minute circuit. Do that whole thing four times and then do a core exercise.”
He returned to working on his legs on Fridays, with a focus on dead lifts. As Wright worked more on developing his muscles, he found he needed to eat more protein to keep up.
“The more you work out the larger muscle groups, the faster you lose fat and your muscles need calories to exist, so the more muscle you have the more you need to eat in order to maintain,” he explained. “Not only do you get the calorie burn from the workout but then that muscle will passively burn calories as it repairs itself over the next two days.”
It was all worth it in the end, though. In eight months, Wright has gone from tipping the scales at 245 pounds, with a body fat percentage of 33 percent, to weighing 195 pounds with just 20 percent body fat. More important, he feels like a man reborn.
“I feel 10 to 15 years younger than I did in January of this year,” he said. “Joint pain from too much weight on me, as well as inflammation from my terrible diet, had aged me. But now that I’ve cleaned that up, my body moves so much more effortlessly and with less pain.”
While Wright would encourage anyone to follow his path, he still feels like his journey has yet to reach its end. He wants to win that bet and has just the trip in mind for when he does.
“My friend is gonna have to take me to Japan for sushi rolls,” he said.
If he wins and loses all that weight, they are going to be the best-tasting sushi rolls he’s ever had.
