While many of us have opted to use the extra time at home we’ve had during the COVID-19 pandemic to watch Squid Game and decide for ourselves whether sipping on a can of Flamin’ Hot Mtn Dew is truly as horrible as it sounds, Joshua Swiger has opted for a different path. As Fox News reports, the former Jeopardy! champion has turned what has been an emotionally trying time into an opportunity to focus more on himself and his health. Over the past year and a half, he has shed more than 200 pounds.
Swiger appeared on Jeopardy! in January 2020, where he won $16,400 during his first appearance. That triumph occurred just weeks before the country—and the world—went into a global lockdown. Yet Swiger had no idea that even bigger wins were on the horizon for him.
Swiger, who told Fox that he had been “morbidly obese” for 20 years, had tried—and failed—to lose weight on his own several times over the preceding decades. So in July 2020, he met with a doctor to discuss his possible candidacy for bariatric surgery, believing that was his last and final hope for dropping weight from his then-400-pound frame. As part of the surgery routine includes the prospective patient attempting to lose weight on their own before going under the knife, Swiger once again attempted to lose weight on his own. Only this time he learned more about nutrition and physiology ahead of time, so went in armed with more information.
“I was able to stick with it long enough to see consistent results,” Swiger said. “Instead of losing 20 or 30 pounds and then giving up when things got difficult, I learned to just hang in there and keep going and eventually, start losing the weight again.”
Because of the pandemic, Swiger was also out of work. He had run his own private tour company, which was forced to shut down when quarantine procedures went into effect. While it wasn’t an ideal situation, Swiger admitted that running his own company was stressful, and he often turned to food for comfort. With that stressor removed, focusing on his health goals became easier.
“When I gave up on doing it my way, that’s when I learned how to do it the right way,” Swiger said. He opted to adopt a low-carb lifestyle, because “that’s the easiest place to cut calories out. Because you need some fats and you absolutely need protein, but you can get by without carbs. I don’t necessarily say everybody should do low-carb, but that’s what worked for me.”
Cut to: January 2021. Swiger never underwent that surgery, because he didn’t need to. Establishing new eating patterns and sticking with them was the key for Swiger, who has now lost more than 200 pounds.
He has also made a change in profession: Swiger now works as a personal trainer, helping others to learn about nutrition and find out what works best for their individual bodies.
“There’s somebody out there who weighs more than I did who’s going to be an even bigger success than me and I can’t wait to help that person,” Swiger told Fox News.
Swiger has been documenting his journey on Instagram and YouTube.
(Via Fox News)