Creme-filled? Not for Long: 

“I was the Twinkie guy,” says John Dodd, and he ain’t kidding.

 

The 50-year old Belly Off! member was a Hostess sales representative for 11 years, meaning he sold crème-filled sponge cakes, cupcakes, and mini-pies to 24-hour stores throughout the Midwest. “The doctor asked me if I sampled all of the products.”

 

A trunkful of trans fats and a demanding schedule—Dodd’s shifts got him up at 1:30 a.m., only to return at 4:30 p.m.—got into his gut. The former Marine who could hike 30 miles at a clip ballooned to 305 pounds.

 

“When I got up to that weight, it was like, ‘Wait a minute. What am I eating?’” the Louisville man says. His diet had forged a steady climb from his mid-30s, when he weighed less than 200 pounds, to the big guy he’d become. “I’ve been married for 20 years, and I’ve grown up with really good cooks. But I told my wife, ‘For 20 years, you’ve been trying to kill me.’ And now she wants me to eat healthy!”

 

He was still active, lifting weights and participating in an occasional running or cycling event, but food was making him fat and less athletic. “It’s just a matter of … sometimes you fall off the wagon.”

 

Dodd found two reasons to get back onboard: his sons. Both are wrestlers, one in high school, the other a 10-year old. Dodd the Dad—now a Red Bull sales rep—didn’t want his sons to resort to the yo-yo tactics many grapplers cling to.

 

“I told my son he wasn’t going to starve himself. If he was going to make weight, I wanted him to be healthy,” Dodd says. “We got together with a trainer, and we started looking at what we needed to eat.”

 

Around the same time, Dodd encountered the Men’s Health Belly Off! program. He’d been reading the magazine for almost a decade, and decided to incorporate our new program into his healthy lifestyle.

 

“After two weeks, it’s not a diet where I feel like I’ve got to sacrifice. I don’t feel like I’ve had to be on Weight Watchers, counting everything,” he says. “I’m a big guy, and I’m full.”

 

Eating chicken breasts “as big as your hand,” heaping portions of green vegetables, and the occasional Healthy Choice meal from our Eating Plan, Dodd has lost 15 pounds in just 2 weeks.

 

“I’ve always liked when you pretty much draw out the week or the month as far as what you should eat,” he says. He’s powered up for workouts at a nearby gym and with a basement set of dumbbells using a wrinkle from The Abs Diet: smoothies. And it’s caught on with his wrestling boys.

 

“They were always joking about the Abs Diet book, about the smoothies,” Dodd says. “Then the personal trainer said something about them, and all of a sudden the books came out. We photocopy them from the magazine and post them on the refrigerator.”

 

And the plan hasn’t just been a success for Dodd the Dad: His son is making weight, the healthy way.

 

“You’ve got the wrestling team, guys trying to cut weight by starving themselves, spitting into a cup,” he says. “My son has maintained his weight with an eating regimen of tuna, peanut butter sandwiches on whole wheat bread, apples, bananas, and vegetables.”

 

The younger Dodd has taken so much interest in nutrition and exercise that he’s considering a future as a personal trainer. Even better, Dodd says, is that the Belly Off! program may have performed a miracle: There’s a teenager out there who isn’t a grouch.

 

“He’s one of the few on the team that isn’t grumpy because of the diet.”

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