Fat Guy and A Mic
One man on a journey to lose 200 pounds.
Fat Guy and A Mic
Starting Over At 415 Pounds (An Introduction)
A brutal gout flare turned ordinary steps into fire and forced a hard reset. I’m a licensed clinical social worker, a Navy vet, and yes, a fat guy with a microphone, starting at 415 pounds and aiming below 250 without the empty promises of New Year hype. This is a frank, first‑person blueprint for change that actually sticks: baby steps, not bravado; coping skills over willpower; community over isolation.
I walk through the arc that got me here—post‑service depression, pandemic weight creep, and the day pain made movement feel impossible. Then we get practical. I share how I’m using cognitive behavioral tools to avoid all‑or‑nothing thinking, set goals I can keep, and treat relapses as data instead of defeat. We talk gout‑friendly nutrition, hydration, and blood pressure, plus how I’m rebuilding activity with micro‑walks between sessions and seated Beat Saber to raise heart rate without wrecking my foot.
You’ll hear the difference between “never again” and “do my best, consistently.” I explain how a simple coping card—writing down the memory of pain and the reasons I’m changing—helps when cravings hit. We dig into sustainable swaps for sugar, adding friction to impulsive choices, and designing an environment that makes healthy moves the easy ones. Most of all, I’m inviting you in: I want a co‑host who can laugh, push, and share the mic, and I want your ideas, wins, and experiments so we can build momentum together.
Subscribe, share with someone who needs a real starting point, and leave a review with your most reliable habit tip. Want to collaborate or send your best strategies? Email me at toxic@awesomelifeskills.com and let’s make the next update better than the last.
Hello and welcome to the first ever episode of A Fat Guy and a Microphone. I am your host, Christopher Donald Patchett, and I am a fat guy who happens to have a microphone. This is the first recording. I've done podcasts before, but I've never done one solo. And before I get into it, I am looking for one other person to do a podcast with because I really don't like doing it solo. It just other than that, if you want to join, please feel free to reach out to me if you have a sense of humor. And if you listen to the show and you like what you hear, and you're also another fat person, we can then have two fats, one mic. With all that being out of the way, let me just give you a little bit of information about myself. My name, as I said, is Christopher Padgett. I am a clinical licensed social worker, and what I do is I do therapy as my main source of income. I decided that I wanted to do this podcast because I'm looking to lose close to 200 pounds. I'm not sure exactly where I want to be. When I was at my best weight, I was about 210 pounds, and that was right after I got out of the Navy. I don't see myself really hitting that weight again. Who knows? Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I guess I would say my main goal would be under 250 pounds. Currently I am at 415 pounds. How did I get up here, you ask? Well, I started gaining some weight when I was leaving the Navy. I went through a bad depression, started gaining weight, starting getting weight, and when I left in 2005, I was about 260 pounds. By the time of 2013, I had peaked over about 320 pounds. 2015, I was about 360 pounds, and I went through cognitive behavioral therapy, and that's actually one of the things I specialize now is cognitive behavioral therapy. It helped me out a hell of a lot. I was able to go from 268 pounds down to 275 pounds. Only problem was that around this time I was going back to grad school to get my master's in social work. And during that time, I wasn't able to do the workout routine that I was doing. I wasn't able to eat the way that I was eating at the time. The weight came back on 2020, something happened. I I forget exactly what it was. Wasn't going out nearly as much as I was beforehand. I think a lot of other people kind of had the same thing going on. I forget. It was just some little glitch. I guess a lot of people just kind of felt that everybody sucked and there was really no need to go out. So just like everybody else, I stayed in a hell of a lot more. I started gaining more weight. And by about 2022, I was creeping up to about 400 pounds, and then by 2024, that's when I finally hit 400 pounds. I moved down to West Virginia of all places in 2024, and I went up to 435 pounds. One of the ways that I was finally able to lose some weight was because I was unable to move. So before I kind of go into that, I know it seems oddly weird that I am starting this podcast right after the New Year's, and this is not a New Year's resolution. I hate, hate, hate the whole New Year's resolution. I am not doing this whole thing of like, I'm gonna go to the gym for 50 hours a day for the next year and lose 200 pounds in the next like two weeks. Resolutions I never understood because people make outrageous goals, and I never when I'm in therapy, I will always ask somebody what is their goals. I won't ever ask somebody what their New Year's resolution is because of the fact that New Year's resolutions don't work because everybody makes it so outrageous. Everybody does the whole I'm gonna go to the gym every day, I'm gonna go to the gym for four hours, and it's something that is completely unreasonable. If you're not going to the gym at all, you're not gonna go from zero to four days a week and guarantee yourself that you're gonna go four days a week, every single week for the next year. If you want to do something like that, yeah, cool. Work your way out to it. If you can start off doing four days a week, then that's cool. But don't hold the bar to that's gonna be it. Because a lot of people kind of get this whole all or nothing attitude when it comes to New Year's resolutions. One of my goals is, like I said, I want to get down to under 250 pounds. Maybe probably 220 pounds would probably be the healthiest for me, especially at this age. I'm 46 years old, so I'm not looking to run a mile and a half and do 50 push-ups, do 50 sit-ups like I did in the Navy in two minutes, or whatever the fuck I was doing at that time. I'm not in boot camp anymore. Nor would I want to go back to boot camp. I had a lot of fun in the Navy, but yeah, I'm too fucking old for that shit now. But the reason why I am here today is because back in November, about a week before Thanksgiving, I woke up and I was walking around, everything was fine, had a wonderful morning, and all of a sudden started having like a little bit of foot pain. And maybe about an hour later, it's about 11 o'clock in the morning, and it's getting a little bit worse. And by 12 o'clock, I was in so much pain. So much pain. If you've never felt the pain of gout, don't ever want to feel the pain of gout. I was warned about it about a year ago that I really should get a better diet, that I really need to get my weight under control, that things were out of whack, and that if I kept on doing this, that I would eventually have gout problems. My doctor even warned me, she said, that people have said that gout is even worse than childbirth. I've looked it up. I've read other people saying the same thing. Women have been saying the same thing, and I will take their word on it. I've never given birth to a baby, but I definitely have felt the pain of this. I would say the best way to describe the pain of gout is having broken Legos surgically implanted into your foot. That was a week before Thanksgiving, and I felt that pain non-stop for a good two weeks. So every time that I had to get up, I had to go to the bathroom. Every time I had to go take the dog out, I had to take such baby steps. I was limping to the door, I was limping to the bathroom. I would take Molly out. I would stand there at the door with one foot raised up when she came back in. I would bring her back to the bedroom. I barely was able to do much of anything. I lost 20 pounds in that month because of the fact that I was just barely able to get up to cook or anything. I was basically doing DoorDash the entire time, and I was eating once a day just because, like I said, I I had to leave my walking as limited as possible. So so that was a week before Thanksgiving. That was a week of Thanksgiving. So I spent Thanksgiving in bed. I ended up having to do all of my sessions in bed. I had to have one foot or both my feet up in the bed. I would uh have my dog lying next to me. So on top of gout or the pain of gout, my back was hurting because I was in bed the entire time. My butt was hurting because I was basically just sitting there in bed. And even my side, because anytime between sessions, I would have to just lie on my side. Uh so it was literally I was bedridden for a good two weeks, and then even after I got out of bed, I was very limited. So I was able to go into the living room and I had to sit in my office chair because the sofa was too low. And if I wanted to sit down in the sofa and get up, I had to basically crawl on the floor and use the wall to pull myself up, and that was excruciating just as well. But at least I was able to start moving around a little bit. I was off for the entire week of Christmas because I was actually gonna go home and see my family. My family is all in Philadelphia, and with the constant some days were better than others, I couldn't take the chance of driving eight hours to go see my family. So I I was home the entire time for Christmas, and on top of that, it was not even like I had the nice vacation or anything like that. I was in fucking pain. So that sucked just as much. If I'm gonna be on vacation, if I'm gonna take a week off of work, I want to at least do something, I want to at least enjoy something. So, like, even playing video games, like I really couldn't enjoy because I had to position myself in a weird way, so that way my foot wasn't on the ground for too long. So, yeah, that was an absolute bitch and a half. So I I made a decision that I never want to feel that pain again. I never, ever, ever, ever want to feel that pain again. And so I had actually made an appointment to see the doctor, and the only date that I they had, and this was actually part of the reason why I never went home either, was they had a date for Christmas Eve. The only other date that they had open was sometime in February, and I was like, I'm not gonna go another fucking month in this type of pain, and so I was just like, okay, one, I really don't want to go home and be babied the entire time, and two, I really don't want to wait around for another month to see a doctor. I'm just gonna stay here. I want to see the doctor. Told him everything that I was going through, and he's like, Yeah, it's definitely gout. So, put me on medication, he checked my blood pressure. My blood pressure is high, it's been high for a numerous amount of years, and that is something I'm trying to get down just as well. And I am trying to take care of myself now because I don't want to get down to the point where I am in my 60s or 70s and having all these problems, and I do want to have a good, healthy, happy life. I do want to be able to do the things in the world. I do want to be able to go out. I don't want to I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone and inside. So there's a lot to it, and I figured that what I want to do is I really want to be able to do the things that I've been helping other people do as far as reaching their goals and being able to look at things in a different way, and I want to be able to do things for myself. I know the tools, I can practice the tools, I can practice setting goals, I can do what I need to do. I know about a diet, I know about exercising, I know all the things as far as calorie in versus calorie out. I've talked to my doctor since I lost a substantial amount of weight back in 2015. My doctor said that it's not the problem of I can't lose weight, it's just what am I gonna do to lose that weight? So there are a lot of challenges this time around that I didn't face back in 2015. One of them is being that I am a lot less mobile to begin with, to begin with, than I was in 2015. Is it's not that I'm less mobile because something is wrong, it's just more the idea that I need to work my way back to becoming that mobile in my life. So it's just gonna be baby steps. I can't do the things that I did when I was 35. I just have to work my way back up to it. Eventually I'll be able to get there. Is just when is it gonna happen and how am I gonna get there? I want to be able to use this time and be able to work with everybody listening, be able to talk to everybody and let you all know what are the steps I'm taking, and hopefully other people are able to listen in, get some ideas, maybe even give me some ideas. Even though, as far as like therapy goes, like I've been doing therapy since 2018, I've been working in mental health since 2013. I don't know everything. I I don't believe there is such a person that does know everything. So I'm always welcome to new ideas as well as hoping to open up doors for other people. And like I said, I would like to do it with one other person because of the fact that I like to joke around, I like to have a good time, I like to laugh about things. So, one of the things that I am looking to do this week is just starting off small. So, since I am limited in the amount of time that I can stand up and the amount of pressure that I can put on my foot, I have been doing like little things such as trying to walk around at least a little bit between clients. So I get like maybe the five, ten minutes between clients, just using that time to kind of walk around. Rather than taking that time to do notes, I'll just do notes later on at the night. Adds on a little bit of time, but it adds on a little bit of walking time throughout the day. Another thing that I've been doing, I actually just tried this out tonight, and it worked out pretty good. I have an Oculus and I love Beat Saber, and I used to play that all the time back when I was a little bit more fit, so maybe like 2020, 2021. It was a lot of fun. I can't stand for that long, like I said. So I actually just sat there and I was able to do it. Uh, it was surprising. I thought I would have to stand, but I was able to do it sitting down. At least it got my arm moving, it got my heart rate up a little bit, so no amount of activity is going to be wasted, it's just the idea that again, building up little by little. So, like I said, it's gonna be a long journey. It's 200 pounds, close to 200 pounds. I am gonna keep people updated, and like I said, if you want to join, please feel free to email me. Best place to email me right now is toxic at awesomelife skills.com. That is actually an old podcast I used to do. I still have that email address open, so if you want to get together, that's probably the best place to get a hold of me as of right now. Other things that I'm doing just to kind of get things as far as eating-wise, I am trying to follow the diet down to tea as far as with gout. My doctor did recommend a good diet as far as uh sticking with chicken, turkey, and things like that, and staying away from red meats, trying to stay away from like candy, shit like that. It's already shown to be a little hard because already I'm having days where I want to go back to that those sugary foods and everything like that, and it's an addiction, man. It's it's really an addiction, but at the same time, it's being able to remember of what I'm going through. And thankfully, right now, one of the things is is that uh I still have a bit of pain of what I just gone through, so that is a good motivator when I am having those moments where I'm just like, ah man, I just want a fucking candy bar uh because I don't want to feel the pain of gout again. One of the things that I am probably gonna do sometime this week is just really write down pretty much everything that I talked about today of the experiences that I had with gout and how much it hurt, because I am now on medication for it and trying to relieve the pain. And the biggest thing that I don't want to happen is that I get to a point where I feel comfy, cushy. And I'm like, oh, my foot feels so much better. I'm just gonna eat whatever the fuck I want to. Because I'm not gonna sit here and say that I'm never gonna have a fucking candy bar again. That's again when when I hear people saying that we we call it a dead man's goal. Because the only person that is going to get that type of goal is a dead person. So when when you say like I'm never gonna do this again, I'm never gonna have a candy bar, or I'm never going to, you know what? I I wish you the best of luck, but you can do your best to stay away from it. You can do your best to kind of make sure that uh you are able to stay away from it, and you can do your best to learn better coping skills from it, whether it is food, shopping, drugs, money, gambling, whatever it is, but you don't want to sit there and say, I'm never gonna do this again, because once just like New Year's resolutions is once we kind of go into this whole all or nothing thinking, if we do end up relapsing, and and relapsing is a really real part of the whole change aspect of everything, we we take that as oh well, I fucked up, I guess I'm no good, or I've I've gone this far, I might as well go all the way. So there is definitely a difference between I am never gonna do XYZ again, and I'm going to do my best to stay away from these things, or I'm gonna do my best to learn better coping mechanisms, or I'm going to find alternatives to these things, or healthy alternatives to these things. And that is what I'm gonna do to kind of stay away from the candy bars and the pizzas and the cheeseburgers and all the other good shit. Uh well, no, I won't say good shit either, but that's a whole nother story. So if you do want to join me, like I said, please feel free to message me. And like I said, this is my first episode doing it by myself. So yeah, it was a little bit on the messy side, but hopefully as time progresses, I'll get a little bit better. I get a little bit more used to it, and hopefully you will enjoy listening to me and following me. And hopefully, if you are on a mission to drop weight just as well, hopefully you are able to pick up some things and you are able to drop me a line and tell me some things that have worked for you. I'm more than happy to hear from you. I'm more than happy to listen to some of the things that have helped you along the way just as well. So until I oh, last thing that I will say, I'm not sure how often I'm gonna do this. I am looking to do this at least once a week. I might do it more than once a week. I might try to go for two or three since I'm just gonna do like short little podcast. Maybe not since it does take a little bit of time to edit, and I do work during the week. But yes, at least once a week you will get a nice little 25, 30, 40-minute podcast of things that I have been doing, ways that I've been able to kind of get through things, and a little bit of therapeutic advice. I am not your doctor, I am not here to give you therapy advice. I am just speaking from the knowledge I have on things that I am doing for myself. And with that, I will also say please consult your doctor before starting anything. And if you do have any topics that you do want to speak to therapists about, please go out and find a therapist. Therapy is always a wonderful and beautiful, beautiful thing. So I hope you like the introduction because next week when we get together, I will definitely be going into a little bit more of things I've been doing and some of the therapy aspects of what I've been doing. So until then, this has been Christopher Patchett, a fat guy with a microphone.
