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I grew up as the āfat kidā. By age 7, I was already grappling with my weight and the stigma attached to it.
On top of that, I had ADHD, which made impulse control even harder. I struggled to resist cravings, and the constant need for stimulation led me to seek comfort in food.
I remember classmates constantly teasing me and mocking me behind my back. I would then come home and drown the pain with junk foods. I felt trapped, and my parents didnāt know what to do to help, despite their best intentions.
By the time I reached high school, I weighed 240 lbs. In desperation, my mom started looking for external help. Dietitians, doctors, therapists, trainers... you name it. At one point, she paid $12,000 to enroll me in Jenny Craig for a summer.
In one summer, I lost 60 lbs on their frozen meal plan. But once the plan ended, I gained everything backāand more.
I see parents make this mistake over and over with their kids. Trying to put their kids on a restrictive diet and exercise routine without addressing the root causes of their weight: the home environment, the mental health challenges, and the addictive behaviors around food.
In University, determined to fit in and feel confident, I took matters into my own hands and went to the extreme trying everything I couldācaloric restriction, fasting, keto, veganism, and intense physical training. I even ran a marathon.Ā
My weight dropped dramatically, and I felt great, but without fixing the underlying psychological and environmental issues, I was skating on thin ice, driven by external motivation and relying on sheer discipline. Deep down, I knew I couldn't keep this up forever.
When the pandemic hit, in a matter of weeks, the external pressure of fitting in vanished, and so did my discipline. With stress skyrocketing, I fell back into the patterns engrained in childhood and gained 50 lbs in a single summer.
It was painfully clear: I couldnāt rely on external motivation to be in good health. Despite having a lucrative engineering career in top companies like Microsoft, the external success meant nothing to me, because I was crumbling inside from this life-long battle with obesity.
Just like I had done when I was young, I would come home and drown the stress with food, and now alcohol, up to a point where I had to force myself to throw up most days.
Determined to find the root cause of my obesity, I decided to quit my lucrative engineering career, and started learning everything I could about neuroscience, psychology, nutrition, and fitness, and use this to solve my obesity once and for all.
AndĀ after years of constant struggle, yo-yo dieting, and low self-esteem, I finally pulled myself out of the vicious cycle and beat obesity for good.
The best part is, I no longer struggle to "diet"Ā and exercise to maintain my health. I've been able to use the latest science in behavioral therapy to change my identity from the root so that health is my natural choice at every decision.
After seeing that over 30 million children in North America are currently going through a similar story, IĀ felt responsible to use what IĀ learned to help parents like you, so that your child doesn't endure the decades of pain that I did.
And that's how Step Together was born.
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