Transformation: Brandon Daugherty Drops 85 Pounds!

March 2014 to December 2015  |  21 months  |  @BDaugherty03

Brandon's brother pointed out there were exactly ninety days until a family wedding, and that a ninety-day program existed. They started that Monday.

Where he started

Brandon grew up active, playing sport with his friends and hiking in the mountains whenever he could. Then he graduated college, took a desk job, and his diet became Mountain Dew and fried food while his activity fell off a cliff. Evenings that used to be spent outdoors were spent inside on the Xbox.

The weight came on, and with it a tiredness he could not shake and a negativity that did not feel like him. He describes the loop plainly: tired at work, so another soda, so more weight, so more tired.

The turning point

It took three separate events, which is worth noting for anyone waiting on a single dramatic moment.

First was a winter hike with his aunt that should have been easy and instead wrecked him; he got home brutally exhausted. He did nothing about it. A month later he wore his graduation suit to a business seminar, found it painfully tight, and spent the day uncomfortable. He did nothing about that either.

What finally worked was his brother telling him there were three months until their friend Nicole's wedding, that a certain program ran exactly ninety days, and that they should do it together. They started that Monday, and Brandon has not stopped since.

What he changed

The first year was structured home programs, one after another, until one of them taught him to lift and he found he loved it. Since then he has run his own program: common bodybuilding work mixed with the three big power lifts. He lifts around six days a week and does cardio about three.

Food was a clean break rather than a gradual taper. He cut out soda and fast food, switched to drinking water all day, added fruit, moved to whole grains, and by his own account came around to broccoli. He tracks his macros daily to stay honest.

The hardest part

Finishing the workouts at all in the first few weeks. He calls them the hardest thirty minutes of his life, and the only thing that changed it was getting a little further into each session than the last one.

Resisting soda and fast food was the other battle, and he says he has not gone back.

He does not offer a list of technical mistakes. His answer is that letting himself get that heavy in the first place was the mistake, and that there were ups and downs but he never quit. Lifting, he says, carried him through some rough stretches.

Where he is now

Eighty-five pounds down and at his lowest weight since high school. He is working on getting his body fat lower and his three big lifts higher.

Three lessons, and they are good ones. Change takes time, so the goal has to be long term rather than tied to one event. You cannot diet or fast short-term and expect lasting change; you have to build habits that keep working years in. And it is very hard to do alone, so find people with the same interests who will pick you up when you are flat.

Pictures will show more progress than the scale will. The scale can't be trusted. Brandon Daugherty

His advice if you are starting today

Do not give up. Most people who say they want to change quit after a few weeks because nothing visible has happened yet. It does not happen overnight, so trust the process and stay with a program. And measure with photos and a tape, not just the scale.

Results vary. This customer's results are not typical and depend on individual effort, training, nutrition and consistency. Statements on this page describe one customer's personal experience and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. No product mentioned is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.