Since his heart attack 7 years ago, Neal Bendesky has traded his size 62 jeans for running shorts and finished 16 half marathons.
At age 57, Neal Bendesky weighed 450 pounds. He felt like his weight was slowing him down — not just physically, but also professionally. “I was losing my career in sports marketing because I didn’t look the part,” he said. His shirts were size 5X, his jeans were size 62, and he couldn’t sit in a restaurant booth or airplane seat. “I didn’t fit in society,” he said.
“This three-year-old was there playing on his little iPad while his mother was working out and said to me, ‘Are you Santa Claus?’ My initial reaction wasn’t PG13. I checked with a trainer, and I started learning the value of nutrition. That’s a big part of my world even today,” he said.Bendesky suffered a serious setback early in his weight-loss journey. Unfortunately, the excess weight he was trying to lose nearly killed him. “On August 2nd, 2016, I experienced sudden cardiac death,” he said.
Today Bendesky is 64 years old, and his weight is down to 199 pounds. He calls himself the 199GUY and helps others on their journeys toward wellness as a motivational speaker.Before he committed to losing weight, Bendesky was a binge eater. So, his first step in changing his diet was to scale back the foods he was already eating. For example, he’d have two slices of pizza but skip the third. “I also started to realize that just because something tastes good doesn’t mean it is good,” he said.
He started to eat more protein and learn about macros — macronutrients — and he used MyFitnessPal for tracking. Each day, he aimed for:“More recently to sustain my lifestyle, I use theto identify good and bad foods,” he said. “I’ve identified the foods that work for me. I don’t do dairy or cheese because of the fat content, and I don’t do chocolate. And now, I don’t get so much into how much I weigh. I get more into how I feel.
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