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April 10, 2024 20 mins

Welcome to the sixth episode of Loser Talk with Lar, a unique podcast where we discuss more than just shedding weight. We journey through my personal experiences, the ups and downs of my health and wellness journey, and offer a glimpse into my life, while offering a fun way to connect through our shared experiences.

We delve into the detailed narrative of my upbringing – from growing up in a loving, food-filled family home to my encounters with food as a source of comfort and the struggles to control my weight. These personal tribulations led me through a myriad of diets and constant struggles. However, the turning point arrived with self-love, acceptance, and understanding that food, rather than being an enemy, could be used advantageous to my needs.

The episode provides an empathetic view towards treating food as an emotional support during tough times and the courage to maintain control over our health while embracing the joy of food. It is a celebration of breaking free from dieting shackles, learning to enjoy food without guilt, and embracing the love expressed through home-cooked meals.

Find out how I navigated through the anxieties that come with food and weight and used personal hardship to dramatically transform my relationship with food. This evolution has allowed me to maintain healthier eating habits and be at peace with my body and food. Listen in for a fresh perspective on food, weight loss, and self-acceptance.

Engage with us on our social media platforms, LarrysLosers22 on Instagram, The Evolution of Larry on Facebook, and join the exclusive Larry's Losers VIP group on Facebook. For a greater sense of community and interaction, we also have Zoom meetings open to everyone! And if you feel inspired by my journey and this podcast, there are provided links to my Venmo and Facebook for donations. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Here's to embarking on a journey of self-discovery, accepting our imperfections, and becoming in control of our lives. Remember, we are all wired for struggles but equally deserving of love and belonging. So, stay strong, remain hopeful and see you in the next episode!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.

(01:05):
Play it again, Sam.
That's the sweet sounds of Larry's Losers Orchestra.
And yes, one of the requirements is they all have to be named Sam.
It's just easier that way. I mean, think about it.

(01:28):
When I'm yelling at them, I can yell, hey, Sam, and they all listen,
and they all are in trouble.
I'm all inclusive. No discrimination here. Give them some love.
The Sams.
There they go, the Sams. Give them some love.

(01:52):
Oh, I love the Sams. Oh, thank you, Sams. Thank you, Sams.
Anywho, Give it up for the sweet sounds of Sam's, and welcome to the sixth episode
of Loser Talk with Lair, losing a lot more than just weight.
You all have been so good to me, tuning in week to week, listening to my stories and following me.

(02:21):
The reception has been so big that we now have commercials. commercials.
I know, I know you're thinking, screw you, Larry, and your stupid commercials.
You take those commercials. Now be nice, but just bear with me here.
Some podcasts never make it to the status.

(02:42):
This means I have enough listeners that commercials are competing.
They're fighting over me, guys, to have airtime on Lair's airwaves.
Wait, Lair has airwaves?
That kind of sounds painful. Maybe we will discuss that in a future podcast.

(03:02):
But as I was saying, thank you.
I'm making like 0.0006 cents off of every listen.
So that means by that time I am 335 years old, I'll be up to $2.34.
So get to listening. I'm truly grateful though.

(03:25):
Thank you so much. This is an incredible experience, and it has helped me so
much get into my creative space and out of my anxiety stress mind.
It's helped me tremendously. So thank you so much.
So much. It means so that means to continue to find. Anyway, what am I saying?

(03:47):
So continue to find me at LarrysLosers22 on Instagram, The Evolution of Larry on Facebook.
Ask me there to join our private, exclusive.
LarrysLosers VIP group where our family is gathering with all kinds of fun ways
to connect with health and wellness and ways to connect with me.

(04:11):
We even have started our own Zooms.
It's been so much fun. They're open to anyone, so come join us.
I provided a link here to my Venmo and more ways to donate on Facebook if you're
liking the work of this podcast.
I appreciate you listening so much. Thank you.
Do you ever think about food?

(04:35):
Okay, but seriously, what do you think about it? Just when you're hungry?
Do you know what hungry feels like? That's a good question. I never did.
Do you think about it constantly? Does food talk to you?
Do you have that favorite food that you can't have around because you will eat

(04:57):
it all to shut it up because seriously, it will not stop talking to you?
Some of you out there might be thinking I'm crazy, and I am,
but this is a real thing, so hang with me for a bit.
Do you talk about food like it's good or bad, happy or sad, like it has morals?

(05:21):
It judges you. Are you
using food to manipulate yourself into thinking you are out of control and can't
handle eating as much as you want want and then you can never move on from the
situation without abusing yourself.

(05:45):
Think about that question. You're
using it to manipulate yourself into thinking you're out of control.
Think about that. And then you abuse yourself because of it.
That's a pretty twisted question, but it's a real thing that a lot of us, a lot of us do.

(06:06):
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Listen to my story.
Growing up, we always had food.
Surrounded by food.
After dad left us, mom had us three kids to feed, so she broke her back,

(06:26):
waiting tables day and night.
We stayed with our grandparents while she worked, and they always made sure
we were taken care of very well.
And that included homemade cooking. Oh my God, the cooking was so good.
It was so good. good. Mom always said my weight issues started because Grandma

(06:47):
Garrett would feed me a pound of bacon every time when I would go visit her,
and that was all the time.
She and everyone else said, of course, I had to eat a lot because I was a growing
boy, and boy did I grow out and up.
I always had severe asthma, and I was on steroids, so we can blame some of my

(07:10):
growth out and up on that too.
My height stopped at 6'4", okay? But there was a lot of us tall guys in my class in school.
They grow us big here in the Midwest because they aren't afraid to feed us.
So back to food and family. So here's mom.

(07:31):
She had us kids barely making it, worried about feeding us, had idiot father
who left us, who was making good money.
He made good money. He was on the railroad and then he worked for a factory.
He started working for a factory and moved his way up, made very good money.
And it was one of those stories where she had to take him to court to get child support.

(07:57):
And back then, it's not like today. Back then, they didn't care about the mother
as much in the situation as they do today.
So guess how much she was awarded for three kids to feed and clothe for a month?
Just take a guess. I'll wait.
Okay, nope, you're all wrong.

(08:18):
$75 a month. Three kids. So you do the math.
That's $25 a child a month to feed and clothe. Both.
My dad ended up making a very good living, a very good living.
Mom never took him back to court for more support.

(08:39):
Never. The only time she did take him to court is to get him to pay for my college,
since I'm the only one that did go to college.
But other than that, all those years, Here's three of us kids.
She took that $75 a month till each of us aged out at 18 and let the universe, God, handle the rest.

(09:05):
That's how she lived her life, and that's how I live today.
So you can imagine, she was scared. We wouldn't have enough food.
Then she meets my stepdad. He has five kids, lives on a farm.
My stepdad came from a huge, very poor family that had no food.

(09:25):
When it was time to eat, you ate it quick because someone was going to take
yours. He had a very rough upbringing.
So there's his food scarcity before his success. Now with his farm,
and he was a boilermaker, very hard worker.
No matter what he did, farming, working, he did well making money and taking care of us.

(09:48):
So when we moved to the farm, that was both of them making sure that us kids,
now eight of us kids, we were going to have food and lots of it. always food.
We always had set down meals together, always,
always cooking and doing dishes and what's for dinner and what's for breakfast

(10:10):
while we were eating dinner and what's for lunch, constantly thinking about and talking about food.
They were going to make sure that while kids work, that us kids were comfortable
and not wanting for food.
When we moved into town in the house I grew up up in.
Every Saturday was so exciting because it was grocery shopping day. I loved that day.

(10:38):
I got to go with mom and a couple of the older kids. Well, I was the youngest,
so of course, they were all older.
We'd all go to Terre Haute, the big city.
I mean, it's not really big, but to us, it was exciting.
It was about 40 minutes away, and we'd get to go to the big store,
and each of us would have a responsibility of having a shopping cart.

(11:00):
So three of us and mom, four carts full every Saturday, and we loathed them up.
And I was always so worried about her money, and I'd watch her as she meticulously
wrote the checks, and she did the math right there in the checkout line. So perfect.
Her checkbook was never wrong, and her handwriting was so beautiful.

(11:21):
Then the drive home, we'd get McDonald's and fries and the Coke. Always a treat.
All that food surrounded us. As time would go by, I'd always sneak up in the middle of the night.
I was the only kid that had my own room.
Upstairs. Everyone else had to share a room.

(11:42):
Downstairs. Mom and dad were upstairs with me.
I'd sneak into the kitchen at three in the morning and just shove food in my
face as fast as I could, trying to eat away the stress or anxiety or sadness or hatred of Larry.
Whatever it was, of course, food was going to take it away. All that food around was medicine.

(12:03):
It was comfort that I needed to help me.
Of course, I gained and gained and life went by. And as I went out on my own,
I navigated through life.
Food was still always the constant driving force through everything.
It's all I ever thought about. It controlled me and manipulated me.

(12:26):
And did all those things because I let it.
So I started all my dieting and started fighting myself constantly.
All those diets I learned to not like that my family shows love through food,
that something was wrong with that.
I learned that I shouldn't seek out comfort from food when I'm emotional,

(12:48):
and that I shouldn't use food to help me when I need it.
Diets started teaching me a lot lot of things. Trust me, a lot of things I've
learned through diets. We all have.
And years and years of fight and constant struggles.
I kept fighting and beating my head against the wall.

(13:09):
And you've heard me talk about the pandemic and how it changed me because I
thought, how can I stop this madness?
I'm tired of fighting myself. I'm tired of dieting all the time.
I'm tired of of losing weight, caring about what I'm eating all the time.

(13:30):
So the first thing is, what if I'm nice to myself this time instead of ripping
myself apart all the time?
After I started accepting myself, which is always a work in progress,
but after I started liking myself and being more kind to myself,
things started changing for me.

(13:50):
Then mom got sick with lung cancer, and I didn't have control over anything
or everything anymore, anything or everything anymore. more.
I knew I needed food for comfort though.
I knew that that was a thing that diet said I couldn't do, but I knew I needed
it. I needed the comfort.
Unlike the diets had trained me, I needed the food to help me through this horrific time in my life.

(14:16):
And as I was going to be in control, I was going to use it.
It wasn't using me anymore and I wasn't going to feel bad about it.
So I decided on Fridays, I'd start with a large blizzard from Dairy Queen.
I'd sit in their parking lot, eat that blizzard, blast my music,

(14:39):
and cry my eyes out. That's how my day would start.
Then usually I'd order pizza, because me and pizza, yes.
Then I'd go on from there.
I'd eat as much as I'd want to and love every single excessive bite.
And boy, did it comfort me. And God, did I need it.

(15:03):
I did not gain weight during mom's illness and her leaving me.
Unlike with dad, when I gained 150 miserable, deathly pounds.
With mom, I maintained a 50-pound weight loss.
And I did this method every single Friday.

(15:25):
And I needed it. This taught me to let it all go. Let all that diet crap go.
Stop being ashamed of your family for loving you and showing it with food.
Be proud of that. that. Let them shower you with food. Eat the food. Always eat the food.
When it's Thanksgiving, eat the food. Don't sit there and let food control you

(15:49):
and worry about the calories or the fat or all that stuff.
Enjoy the love of the cooking. Eat the food and enjoy the stories and the memories.
It's one or two days.
If you worry and deny yourself, that's when it's a season of eating. and not one or two days.

(16:10):
Once I stopped being afraid of food and learned that I'm in control and food
is nothing, that I'm everything, I haven't gained weight over the holidays since.
That has stopped instantly. Instantly.
As a coach, you will always hear me say, eat the food.

(16:36):
Food doesn't make us sick.
Food is not our enemy. What if we stopped being scared of the food,
just like you hear me talk about the darkness?
Use the food to help us. Use it when we need it.
If we are emotional and we need it, eat it. If we are,

(17:00):
but we are in control and you did nothing wrong.
It's the whole process of eating and normal life after that is healthy.
You might be thinking, Larry, you can't tell me to do this. You can't tell me
to eat like this because food is an addiction.
And you know what? I agree with you. Food is an addiction, just like any other

(17:25):
drug, alcohol, anything.
But the difference between food and those others is we have to eat to survive.
Those other things we don't have to have.
So if we realize that food is no big deal and we can use it for us instead of

(17:46):
fighting against it all the time, what would this do for your health journey?
I can tell you it's changed my life. Let me know what you're thinking.
Find me on Instagram at LarrysLosers22, The Evolution of Larry on Facebook.
And please don't forget to ask on there to join our exclusive private Larrys Losers VIP group.

(18:12):
Our loser family is waiting to greet you with all kinds of fun ways to connect.
We're having so much fun, seriously, including our new Zooms that are open to everyone.
Join us. They're so much fun. We had fun on Sunday night. That was our first one.
So join us. So much fun. Don't forget to follow, like, rate,

(18:35):
review, all the things for this podcast.
And if you're liking the work, you can leave a donation.
I provided a link to my Venmo here and on Facebook, along with other ways to
give. I'm so grateful to you for listening.
Now, before I leave you, here are some words of wisdom. You're imperfect.

(19:03):
You're wired for struggle. But you are worthy of love and belonging.
You're in control. Control what you can and let the rest go.
Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Love you all.

(19:28):
Music.
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