Ep. 40 - GLP-1 Weight Loss: A Realistic Game Plan with James Graves

Ignoring a creeping health crisis guarantees serious long-term consequences. With weight loss injections dominating the cultural conversation right now, the gap between perceived miracle cures and actual medical reality is wider than ever. Attorney James Graves joins the show to discuss how he successfully lost 74 pounds by combining GLP-1 medications with a highly structured habit-rebuilding system.

We sit down to break down the mechanics of intentional weight loss and physical transformation. The discussion covers stepping onto the scale at 265 pounds, the systemic effects of Tirzepatide, navigating digestion delays, and building a definitive exit strategy from the medication. James shares his distinct philosophy of setting fitness goals so ridiculously low, such as a mandatory two-minute walk or three daily push-ups, that failure simply isn't an option.

The transition back to a healthy baseline came with significant friction, including inevitable bouts of nausea, bouts of lethargy, and the mental toll of realizing how far his physical condition had slipped. You will walk away from this conversation understanding that medication is merely an assist rather than a permanent fix, and you will learn how to leverage that chemical runway to construct sustainable, long-term discipline.

If you care about personal accountability, pragmatic health turnarounds, and leveraging modern medicine responsibly, you’ll get a lot from this. Please make sure to subscribe to the channel and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. What is the smallest micro-habit you can start today to regain control of your momentum?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back, everybody, the Radical Moderate Podcast. I am your host, Pat O'Brien, and today I have a friend on the show. His name is James Graves. Welcome to the show, James.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

So let me give a little context. I didn't get a create a podcast just like, I have my friends on the show. We'll talk about whatever. No, uh, James is a great guy, and we went to law school together. He's an accomplished attorney in Northwest, Arkansas, but none of that is why I wanted to have him on the podcast. Rather, it is what I think is a really incredible personal journey for him, and I'm very proud of it. But I also think something that there's a lot of people who uh have also done in in the last couple of years, and I think there's a lot of people out there who are thinking, wondering, is this something I should try? And I was hoping to just kind of demystify it. And so, James, you lost a lot of weight, so let's talk about that. What happened?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I uh I, you know, background had always I think when I finished college, I was about 175 pounds. I think when I finished law school, I was about 180, and I think in my 40s, I was about 185. I had kind of stayed in that range, and it started to creep up late 40s, and then COVID hit, and I was around the house a lot, and and uh probably snacking and eating more than I I should. Uh, I also had two boys I was chasing around around the country that were engaged in track and baseball and things like that. Probably wasn't eating as healthy anymore because I was on the road, probably sitting around more and not working out regularly. And my weight slowly crept up, and I knew um probably two or three years ago that I was like 240 pounds or so, and then my hips and my knees and my ankles had gotten where they were bothering me. I was going to the doctor, she's telling me uh your blood sugar's going the wrong direction, your blood pressure's going the wrong direction. And I finally stepped on a scale, this was about 14 months ago, thinking, yeah, I'm probably like 240, 245. And I was about 265, um, even heavier than I thought. And uh I you know, my first feeling, and I think I've told you this before, was I won't say despair, but it was I don't even know what to do because my joints and stuff, my body, my frame wasn't meant to carry this much weight around. Uh my joints hurt, and I don't know how to even move to do the exercises that I would need to do to try to turn this around and change it. And uh and so I started researching what what can I do? That was kind of how it started.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So you you hit a high of about 265. Yeah. And then I think you said earlier that 185 had been a thing for quite a while, right? Yeah. And and by the way, the audience, uh, a couple key factors here. You're how old at now? I'm 56. 56, same age as me. And you you used to run marathons at one time, right? Like how long of a period did you run marathons?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I did. There and half marathons. There's there's a combination, I think. In the four in my 40s, I was still uh my kids were young, and I just felt like I had more time to get to the gym. That sounds counterintuitive, but one or the other of us, my my wife and I were usually home and one could watch the kids while the other got to go work out. So I would get up super early in the morning, uh, sometimes even run to my workout and then do my workout and run home and and so forth. And then when the kids started practicing, I sat in a chair instead of doing my workout, and I watched them do their practice, and then we were on the run a lot more, and I wasn't we weren't cooking dinner, and sometimes I was literally on the road at a hotel and so forth, and I just wasn't eating as well. I wasn't working out. I it was just personal choices. I could have gone down to the hotel gym and worked out as well, yeah, but just didn't.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

And you didn't, and you you ended up where you were, and also a little more context, you've got two brothers who I know very well, and they're athletic. One of them played football at Army, you know, like you and you you guys have athletic builds, like that builds, that's your DNA. You have two sons who have athletic builds, they're athletes, and so like it's not a situation necessarily where your genes are really just awful, you know. Like you you were this 185-pound guy, and then all of a sudden you get on the scale and you're uh 80, 80 pounds heavier than you.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah, and and I I think it's because I had never had to worry about it before. I mean, partly it's it's like the choosing your major when you make A's in every class or whatever. I I never had to worry about what I ate. I didn't have to pick and choose and be careful because I was active and I was working out, and I had good genetics, I guess, too. And and uh and so it almost kind of it totally crept up on me. You're you you can probably think like how can 80 pounds creep up on you? First of all, I didn't know I had put on that much. Uh and you I think I think we fool ourselves. You can kind of like, I don't know, suck it in for pictures or you know, tell yourself, you know, it never looks as bad, it seems like in the mirror as it does in photographs, then somebody takes a picture every year like, oh my gosh, uh that that's terrible. Like that let's do let's do that picture again. Right, right, right, right. And but you you it just it happens, and I, you know, especially I th I think I slammed the brakes on things so suddenly I kind of quit working out because uh, well, the gym's closed for a while for one thing with COVID, and for another, I I I kind of got tired of being tired at eight o'clock at night because I was getting up early and working out before work, and I thought, well, I'll start doing it after work, and then I just didn't. I came in, came home from work, and I didn't feel like doing it because I was tired from the day and just didn't so I kind of slammed on the brakes pretty suddenly too, and didn't slam on the brakes with how I was eating and how I was eating had gotten worse as well. So uh it it was just a combination of things. I just wasn't wasn't as active anymore. I was getting older and uh I was eating worse.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So before we get to the thing that helped you kind of turn this around, if to the extent you want to and share, like the mental thing of this having this history and and and no no one wants to be overweight. I mean, like zero people want to be overweight, but yet it happens, you know, to so many people. What was it like from a I know you said the physical standpoint, joints hurting and all that, but just the mental state, what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Well, it's it's on some level I knew obviously that I put on a lot of weight. I would I would see photographs on social media and or I would constantly tell my wife, don't post that one, that looks terrible. Um, I would stand behind people in pictures. I'd I wasn't going out as much, probably. I I just I was kind of self-conscious whenever I ran into people who hadn't seen me in a while. I knew they were looking at me like, oh my gosh, what happened to what happened to Graves? He's, you know, a lot bigger than he was last time I saw him. Uh we took uh website pictures for my law firm, and uh I had to go buy new suits to because my suits didn't fit and I hadn't been in a suit in a little while because court wasn't happening during COVID and so forth. So we you were just emerging from that, and none of my clothes fit anymore. None of my, you know, going to work clothes, and and uh I had to go get a new wardrobe and it was a significantly larger wardrobe, like I'm saying from a large to a double XL and uh things like that. So uh it's pretty depressing, you know. You you you don't want to see people who uh you don't want to uh admit it to yourself really, even though you kind of know and and uh you know, you and then you're thinking, uh how do I get out of it? You know, I don't I don't really know I'd I get out of breath, you know, walking up a flight of stairs or whatever. Uh our families, your your family and mine went on a a cruise uh a couple of years ago, uh and one of the days was in Rome and it was very, very uh high step that day, like 20,000 plus steps, and I th thought I was gonna have to quit. Like I had to sit down on flower pots in the Vatican and things like that that day, if you recall, because I I was and my legs were and ankles were all swollen that night when we got back. I just it it it's just it's a problem, and you don't know your way out of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Well, and just yeah, on that point, this I was thinking about like, you know, we're getting ready to to see uh the you know, you're in the Vatican and you've spent all this money to get there, and then you've got this barrier that sucks that you can't do anything to change at that moment. Before one more question before we get to kind of this the the solution and how that went, how long uh were you at that pr real heavy weight before you made the change?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I know that I I know that I went on a diet, you know, a a a non-carb diet or something to try to get started in twenty twenty three, I think. And I was 241, 242 whenever I started that, and I got down in the 220s. Um so sometime between 23 and 25 during that almost exact two-year period, I gained it all back and then another 20 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Okay. And so when when and what did you do that has made the big change?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Um I uh first of all went in for an annual physical. Um I'm over fifty and I try to go every year, and and uh um I had seen commercials for GLP ones. Um I had heard the term intermittent fasting, but I didn't really know what it meant. Um and so all these ideas were kind of cooking in my head of what are different things I could try to do. Um and I went to the doctor and that's when she recommended, she actually said, I'm a big proponent of the GLP ones like Zetbound and WeGOV and some of those things you do people have probably seen commercials for them on TV. It's usually uh, you know, maybe a heavy or a moderately heavy person dancing and singing in a commercial and looking super happy and talking about talking about that particular narcotic. And again, you're fooling yourself. I'm thinking, well, that's not me. I'm not I don't look like that, but but I did. Um and uh uh and I definitely wasn't dancing around and singing about it, but she she was a big proponent of it. I asked a lot of questions, like it seems like this has just come down the pike, and ever it's something a lot of people are doing or thinking about doing, and all of a sudden there's commercials about it, and you know, is it new? And if it is, what are the studies on it? What does it do to you? There's got to be a side effect, there can't be, you know, you know, a magic bullet or whatever. And um she was very honest and said, uh you know, we don't know the long-term uh effects like 20 years down the road. They are too new for that. We feel pretty good about the studies we've seen so far, and it's not just um weight loss, it's blood sugar, it's blood pressure, it's hair loss, it's sleep apnea, um, it's dementia preventative. There's a whole bunch of other things they're discovering that that apparently it helps with. Um and I'm sure the genius scientists know why that is chemically. I don't know why, but but uh she was certainly a proponent of it in that regard. And then uh she just said one thing we do know the long-term effects of though is diabetes, uh, heart disease, stroke, all of which are things you're headed for at the weight rate you're gaining and at the weight you're at for your b body type, and and uh and so you know this helps with those things that are bad, that are very bad. And uh and you're at an age where you don't want to get you don't want to keep going down the road you're going down.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

And so do you remember so from when you started taking it, and we'll kind of get into like the what that daily routine was like, but from when you started taking it to when you got down, what was the kind of the total weight loss that you kind of keep track of? I'm uh like total that I lost from beginning to end. From beginning of the GLP to end.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Uh seventy-four pounds. Jesus. Um and I I did that. I started taking it in May of 25, and in December of 25, I had lost that much. So it took me about seven months. Um and I I'm not here saying that that's what happens for everybody. You can read the small print on the commercials, and at a certain dose, the average weight is 15 pounds, and it goes all the way up to like 35. I lost far more than the average. I was doing other things besides the GLP one, though. I kind of had a I'm a planner and a thinker, and I kind of had a game plan going into it of how I was going to attack it and and uh when when I could add certain elements to it and everything, besides just uh taking the medicine.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yeah, I mean first I want to be clear, uh we're not getting paid to be here. We're not being sponsored by Magovie Magovi or anybody like that. I don't I don't know that I would take the money anyways because I just want you know I want people to know that it's authentic. But it's it to me that what I was trying to think of is I don't I don't like narcotics first off. And and my wife gets on to me like this, like like I just don't I would prefer not to take medicine of any form, even in aspirin. But I go back to I broke my ankle one time, and the pain was so indescribable that no human should have to do that if there's a way to not have it. And so I got a uh hydrocodone, and and immediately I'm like feeling amazing. Now I can see I can see why people get addicted to hydrocodone because like I felt amazing, but yeah, I needed it. I just need man, the pain was terrible. And I think like in that case, that medicine can be helpful, but it's not, I think it should be prescribed by a doctor, and and you and it was prescribed in your instance. So let's I want to get into the side planning you did because I think that probably has a lot to do with your story, but let's just talk about the first week. So you know you're getting ready to I don't know if it's a pill or shot, but just walk us through like what it was your daily routine for a week or two.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Well, and I'll I'll say that I I'm not sponsored or paid by anybody either. And and uh um I I it was this this whole discussion today was just kind of born out of a similar discussion you and I were having, not in a studio and not talking to each other where other people could hear about it, and and you thought it would be an interesting story for folks, and so uh, and that's that's the only reason I'm here. And I'm definitely a bootstrap, uh, pull yourself up by your bootstraps person. Literally, I I'm probably very odd for being 56 years old, and like I I don't take anything, I don't need prescription eyewear, I don't take any heart pills or blood pressure pills, or I I don't even take vitamins, which I probably should, but uh I I I don't do that. And and I I have a son who at one point was diagnosed with ADHD, and it took some convincing even on on my part with that, because I I just felt like everybody's medicating for something these days, and it seems like that's the answer for everything instead of instead of something else. But uh I was convinced by my doctor that in that discussion that I talked about to do to try it, and so I did get it uh uh prescribed to me. Um and after talking to the doctor and to a couple of nurses that I knew, one of whom had already been on GLP1s as well, uh, she had recommended that I get the shot, that it worked better than the pill version of it, and that I do the shot in my stomach instead of in my leg or hip. And you can go to the doctor's office and get the shot. Um, but I watched the video that the that the company I t I personally took uh uh Zbound terzepitide uh compounded with B12, and uh and I took the shot, gave the shot to myself. They gave me a video that I could watch on how to do it uh properly, you know, making sure my hands were clean and the needle was clean and the site where I was gonna inject myself was clean and all that. And I elected to do it in my stomach because it was supposedly the most effective way to do it. Um and it's was once a week and it started at two and a half milligrams. Uh I eventually went higher than that, but the the first week that you asked about or two weeks, it was strictly uh shot uh on consecutive Friday afternoons after work uh in my stomach, uh two and a half milligrams of it. And uh you, you know, I I wasn't hungry that night. Just right up right off the bat. Right off the bat. And it doesn't work that way for everybody at that at that level, but for me, it it did work that way. Uh I in fact, you probably don't even know this. I went out with you and Robert Hertzfeld. We went out, one of our friend, mutual friends, on on Dixon Street here locally in Fayetteville that night and and uh had dinner and a couple of drinks or whatever, and and um, and I was not eating the bread and all that stuff that they served us that night at at uh uh the place we went to. And um, and it wasn't because I was denying myself, I just wasn't hungry, and I was like, this is kind of weird. Uh just the the I don't know how to describe it, when you put weight on like that, it's some of it is when you're hungry, some of it is when you're bored, and you go, you stroll over there and eat something, some of it is your brain just kind of like telling you, and I'm not trying to sound too mystical about it, your brain is just like you should eat something. No, there's some food over there, you just go munch on something. And I don't know how to describe it uh other than just like noise. And the first thing I noticed about it is it just kind of eliminated that noise. Like that there, I wasn't tempted or being told in my head, go eat something. Um, and so I wasn't hungry at all on Friday or Saturday. Sunday I kind of started to get a little bit hungry, but I didn't eat very much. It was probably I I honestly don't know how many calories I was putting into myself per day, but based on what I now that I pay attention to that sort of thing, it was an unseemly amount. But uh I I was probably half the US daily recommended allowance on that Sunday, and then probably ate a little more regularly, but but better because like I said, I had a game plan on the Monday through Thursday before it was time to take another shot. Did you have nausea along the way? I did eventually, not at two and a half milligrams. When I each time I kind of cranked it up, uh I went to five milligrams. Uh so I I should say I immediately the first two weeks lost about 12 pounds, 13 pounds, the low-hanging fruit, I think. Yeah. And then it got a little tougher. It was I I think people on a diet they say can average about rapid weight loss is considered about a pound a week. And I was losing usually two to three pounds. There were weeks when it was a pound, but usually it was two or three pounds a week. That first drop was pretty dramatic um for me. And uh when I stepped up to five and uh and then to seven and a half, and later I went to eight and a half, but that was right at the very end. When I when I was at five and seven and a half, each time I kind of stepped up to that, I had some nausea and diarrhea and things like that. Usually I could kind of predict what day it was gonna hit. The nausea was usually, you know, on the Sunday after I took the shot on Friday. Uh the diarrhea was af was usually on the Monday or the Tuesday after that. Um it was it was usually pretty predictable. And uh and sometimes I don't know how I'm graph again I didn't need to go sometimes on Saturday or Sunday at all.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

So it changed your body rhythms, but you figured it out. You kind of did like, okay, it's just redirected what I have done.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Well, and sometimes it does cause constipation. And so there's kind of like this uh you're always kind of trying to decide what day do I pull the trigger on helping things along versus letting it happen because part of the part of what it does on purpose is slows down. Your digestion so that the food stays in there longer. And that's part of why you feel fuller and don't eat, is because the food that you ate is slowed way down on how quickly it moves through you. And so you don't feel the need to eat again and again and again. And so you're kind of like, I was always kind of going, uh, am I hitting the uh the point where I should assist or or should I wait it out? And you know, a couple times you assist and a couple times didn't need to, but uh it was fairly regular other than that.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

For anyone who's you know, who who is scared of medication and just scared of like some of those symptoms that you said, uh do you um uh how manageable was it, you know, on a scale of one to ten? Was it ten being just the worst thing you've ever done, or one being like it's just no big deal?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I was only super nauseous uh one time uh where I felt like I had a stomach bug or something and stayed home from work. Um and that that I don't know why it hit me that way that time. Um it was when I was up at seven and a half, so I was at a pretty high dose at that point. Um and otherwise, I did usually have a nausea, what I would call a nausea day. It was pretty mild. It was just kind of like I I don't feel like eating, yeah, that nothing sounds good. Um I think when I get home from work I may lay down for a little while or whatever. And sometimes actually the shot on Saturday made me kind of sleepy. Everything makes me sleepy, so it may just be me. But there were there were days that which is another reason I don't take very many things, but um uh there were there were a couple of times where I remember maybe four or five times where I remember feeling super tired not long after I took the shot. And I I'm sure it was the shot because it hasn't happened before or since.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

One thing I want to do, uh so you get your phone out there. Do you have a picture I think that could uh could pull up of of the I guess I'll call your torso and above if you kind of pointed at whatever camera they should be able to focus in. That is you um before. Before, of course, with our Arkansas raids. The whole James, the whole symbolism there of where that we were as a program in the way that you look in that picture, I'm like, I'm kind of depressed myself. So maybe maybe the the reawakening of you getting in in fighting weight, well, you know, we got a new coach and all that. I want to digress, but I so you talked about, you know, kind of it's kind of depressing, you know, being at that weight. What's it like being the old you again?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

It's been great. I just uh you know I I ran a 5K in November, um, which I had not run, even run a step in years, and to be able to start this process in May of 25 and and by Veterans Day weekend of of uh 25, I'm running a 5K up in Rogers on a terrible pouring rain 25 degree and 40 mile an hour wind day, but I did it and uh I I I got up that morning going, I'm I cannot use the weather as an excuse.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Like any other time I might you had a perfect excuse, but you're gonna you're gonna like grind it through. Yeah. And also, I don't know if we've said this yet. Are you still on it or you off it?

SPEAKER_01 25:34

I'm off of it. I went off of it in December of 25 uh after seven months. I I kind of hit the goal I wanted to hit. And then uh for me and not everybody, some people do what they call microdosing to continue to try to get the benefits of it. They're maybe one milligram, one and a half milligrams, or even either even two and a half, um, to try to get all the benefits, not necessarily just weight loss. There are people that are already thin that want it for the whatever, the the staving off dementia or sleep apnea or whatever the the the other benefits that they're discovering from from these particular uh uh class of drugs. But um I I one of my goals going into it was I'm going to retrain myself on how I eat, on how I exercise, on how I conduct my days so that I don't need this going forward. And there's nothing wrong with somebody who does, I'm not suggesting that, but for me, I didn't want to continue to have to use it. It's nice to know that if I you know suddenly popped up 15 pounds or something and and wanted to use it uh as an assist, I could, but uh I I really had a goal of I w I want to have the discipline to not just fall back in the bad habits that got me here in the first place. So I I mentioned it earlier, but one of the things I had was I had a target weight where I felt like my joints would be in better shape to start walking, exercising, things like that. And uh and it did work out that way. I wanted to get down to 240, which was a about a 25-pound weight loss to start uh wal moving again uh productively and then get to 215 and try to run again. Um and uh that's how I did it. Uh that I mean that was that was uh how I went about it. And then I set my exercise regimen to start off with so ridiculously low that I would have been embarrassed to tell people that that was where I had set my start point and didn't do it. And so on for real, my first walk was a two-minute walk, go walk for two minutes. And then and that was gonna be Tuesday and Thursday, and then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it was uh push-ups and setups and squats. Do three push-ups, three setups, three squats. That was where I started.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

I think it's so, you know, and it doesn't surprise me, you know, in your personality, it's so intellectually smart to approach it the way you did. We're actually we we don't have that much time left. I want to go, I want to uh g just have one last question for you. And I know you're gonna say everybody should make their own decision, and maybe it's as simple as everybody, maybe people are thinking about it should just do more research, you know, and feel more comfortable about it. But what advice do you have to somebody who's listening to this podcast, including people who might be friends of someone who needs it? Because I remember seeing you thinking, this ain't good, and this is not who you are. Like, I mean, you can't be yourself, but I don't I don't even remember if I ever said you know, you the GLP to you, I I thought it, if I'd never told you that I thought it. But what advice would you give to someone who might who was in your position at one time? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

I would tell them to try I think it's worth trying. Do your research, obviously, and convince yourself. Ask your doctor about it, go to the doctor uh, because a lot of people don't. Uh insurance is covering more and more of this now, I know too, than it did even a year ago when I started it. Insurance companies are starting to say, hey, it's better for us to get this weight off this person than it is for them to come to the ER with a heart attack. Um, it's going to be cheaper for us in the long run to cover these things. And then set goals for yourself along the way, realistic goals that you can live by. Not don't set a mountain to climb, set a small hill to climb. And when you get to the top of that hill, set the next hill to climb and and and try to get there. You could because you can. You can.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Well, it I wanted to have you on the story because I think it's I think it's inspiring. And I mean, I don't mind we're not touchy-feely guys, especially in our friendship, but you know, I'm very proud of you and what you've accomplished. And I I think that um, you know, it I think when when anyone's at a dark moment or a low moment, the question is, you know, what am I gonna do next? You know, like I I I tell people who work with work with me, can't change the past, man. Like usually a lot of times when you're in a leadership role, the reason I'm on the phone, I'm in the discussion is the things have been problematic, and that's why they get to my desk. And what I lead with is I can't change the past, but what are we gonna do now? What is the plan? And in that moment, you had a plan. And I I I am not on them, so I can't speak to to the good and the bad in the long term and short term, but I think you kind of addressed all of that. So, folks, uh, you know, James, thank you for coming on the show. Uh, I I think make your own decisions, but I think the message, my biggest takeaway is, you know, what's the downside, right? We know we we know there's downsides in the short term, and and so why not why not give it a try? So thanks again for coming on, folks. Uh, that is another episode in the books, and for this week, that's the POV of POBI.