Episode Transcript
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Music.
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Oh my God, aren't they so delicious?
That's the Larry's Losers Orchestra.
So delicious. So delectable.
I like to enjoy them on a cracker with a little salt and pepper.
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Just a simple saltine, simple elegance.
Someday maybe I'll be bold and try them on a Ritz cracker. Wow, that sounds amazing.
Wait, is anyone listening, like the police?
Okay, because I was just kidding. I'm kidding.
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I don't enjoy Larry's Loser's Orchestra on crackers.
Like, I mean, who does that? I mean, criminals do that, right?
And I don't see any of those here. So don't look at me.
I do enjoy Larry's Losers Orchestra, though, for their talent.
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So yeah, so let's give it up for them. Yeah.
Yes. Celebrate their sound. Let's celebrate their sounds. Yes.
Yes. There you go. Yes. Celebrate their sounds.
Yes. Okay, welcome to the 12th episode of Loser Talk with Lar,
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Losing a Lot More Than Just Weight.
Thank you so much for being with me and supporting me.
This experience is incredible. It's just been so healing for me.
I think my stories are connecting and maybe helping some of you out there.
I know it's helping me. So, I mean, it's just been one of many avenues that
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Larry's Losers is traveling and letting life take us to new heights in many different directions.
This is truly an exciting growing period for me.
I'm evolving and going with the flow, and it feels so good, and I have all of you to thank for it.
Please continue to follow my socials, Larry's Losers 22 on Instagram.
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The Evolution of Larry on Facebook.
On there, you can leave a review for me and ask to join our private Larry's
Losers VIP group on Facebook.
Our loser family gathers there as well as my new website.
Have you seen it? the evolution of larry.com
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it's brand new it's a
work in progress stop by and leave your email to get on our mailing list for
our link letter that is coming out in june and then monthly we will provide
all the latest news happenings with our loser family all things health and wellness and happy happy happy.
(04:02):
There will be a featured recipe, a loser luminary that will be showcasing one
of our loser family that we are so proud of.
It will highlight our theme and topics for our Masterclass Zooms for the month.
And by the way, everyone is invited to our Masterclass Zooms, so come join us.
And maybe even some surprises.
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I said it. Some surprises here and there, so make sure you are in the know.
We even have a Loser Loot merchandise shop on the website.
I'm having so much fun designing merchandise to add to the shop to sale.
We have a t-shirt, a hat, a journal, and even a water bottle. Love it.
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If you're looking, oh sorry, if you're loving the work of this podcast,
I've left my link to Venmo for gifting on Facebook and on the website.
There are other ways to donate also.
You being here with me fills me with gratitude. Thank you so much.
(05:09):
Welcome to our special Memorial Day edition of Loser Talk with Lair,
losing a lot more than just weight.
Memorial Day weekend is such a special time to slow down and reflect. Slow it all down.
Reflect. My niece and I and our kids, well not our kids, but you know what I mean.
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I always say our kids because they're mine too.
Anywho, we all decorated our family graves on Thursday, like we always do throughout the year.
Mom and I always did it. Grandma and mom always did it. And then I did it with grandma and mom.
It's always been a family tradition to honor our family memory.
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It's so beautiful to me. I cherish the time and effort.
It makes me feel good and it helps me stay centered and helps me to slow down in life.
There's where we are with this podcast. If I was to ask you,
do you want to die today? day?
Your answer would most likely be no.
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Or do you want to die next week? Same thing. Probably not. No.
But I want you to stop. What I want you to stop and think about is,
as I tell my story in this podcast, is how you live your life.
And maybe when we are finished here, we all have discovered a few things we
(06:32):
can work on, so I will come back to these questions after my stories.
I can recall my whole life wanting more.
Wanting the next thing. Waiting for that next day, or month,
or year, or Christmas, or Halloween.
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Always waiting for it, whatever it was. because and then when it got there,
the next it was the next thing to wait for.
Life was just too slow. I needed everything right now.
When I was five, I couldn't wait to be five and a half and six.
And even when we were so excited about getting older, we measured our years
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and half years to get us to the next marker.
When I was in first grade, all I could think about was second grade.
Couldn't wait to get through all of that so I could get to high school.
During this time, I ran through scenario after scenario of mom dying from cancer
because she smoked cigarette after cigarette.
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I anticipated her death because it would be the worst thing that would ever
happen to me. I imagined it over and over again.
All through my childhood, all through being an adult, I imagined it over and over again.
I guess it was just a defense mechanism.
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Prepare for the worst. My mind was getting me ready.
Or maybe I'm just morbid. Or maybe I'm just negative Nancy. Fancy, probably, yes.
But do you see how I wasted all that time rushing, rushing, rushing,
worrying, worrying, worrying, projecting, projecting, projecting?
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I wasn't wanting to rush to it, but I certainly was not living in the moment.
That's the trap we get caught in so many times, is wishing life away,
and we don't even realize it until it's too late.
So then came college, and my weight struggles continuing through life. But now it's magnified.
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I'm in Boston in front of people performing. So now I need to rush to lose 100 pounds. 100 pounds!
So I did. I started Nutrisystem. I worked at Burger King to pay for it and lost
that 100 pounds in four months. Bam!
Overnight, the weight was gone. I barely ate anything. The food was so disgusting.
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I'm sorry, Nutrisystem. I'm so sorry, but it was disgusting.
But at that time, it was freeze-dried hamburgers, freeze-dried everything.
I barely ate, but I sure did look good. My body took a hit.
I was young. I didn't understand that rushing and losing weight fast was unhealthy,
healthy, but I lost all kinds of muscle mass too.
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I had to retrain myself how to breathe for my singing.
I went home that summer for break. I got my old job back at Hardee's and when
I started eating real-ish, real-ish food, right?
Hardee's, real-ish food again, I promptly put on 60 pounds just over summer.
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60 pounds blew up balloon.
So there it was. My body rushed right back up again.
In a few summer months, I was home for summer. Back to Boston in September and back to Nutrisystem.
And the whole cycle starts again. Bam!
Rush, rush, lose it overnight. My poor body. I mean, seriously,
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it's no wonder my body is suffering now and in so much pain.
We don't stop to think what we do to ourselves. But we want what we want and
we want it right now. Right now.
We're not happy until it happens right now. I eventually was asked to work for
Nutrisystem and even did radio commercials.
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Seriously. So the rushing through life continues.
I moved home and the self-hatred really was amped. Hated myself so much.
Couldn't stand that I was back in Indiana.
Hated being and living in Indiana.
The weight came back and came off and came back and came off.
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Indiana was hard for me to keep the weight off. Lots of emotions here that led me to eating.
But eventually, I had to face all of that, face all of that darkness.
So the drinking bar came back more and more, the drinking and the drinking.
What does drinking do? It makes life go by faster and faster.
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It makes the world spin in as well as your head, faster and faster, around and around.
Most nights were a blur. Most days I worked 12 to 15 hours, just working,
working, drinking, drinking, waiting tables right out of college.
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But then I went into retail management and started traveling and opening stores
for different companies.
I eventually wanted promotions faster and faster, more money faster and faster.
So I'd leave one company and go to another. Whatever company was offering more
and more and more, I was always looking.
And you know, that wasn't rare.
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I wasn't the only one. It was widely known that most everyone in retail did that.
You created your own path, and it was constantly looking for more. That was how life was.
I didn't really understand that I was throwing my life away.
I was wishing away, wanting so much more, that the end of that was the end because
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the more I ultimately wanted didn't exist.
I was aging myself on purpose without realizing it. My body started giving me warning signs.
Every couple of years, red flags saying, hey, you better slow down.
Yes, I was sick with a horrible illness, but I'm grateful for that illness because
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you see, without it, I really don't think I would have stopped.
I'm not sure I would have slowed down enough to be the best son I could have been.
I seriously am not sure I would have changed.
I honestly can't say I would have. I'd like to say yes, but I can definitely
tell you that HIV whispering in my ear every couple of years was some horrible incident.
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Some horrible something.
I'm really not sure that would have, you know, without that putting me in the
hospital, shook, shaken me.
And finally, that made me slow down, made me move home to help mom with dad.
It made me finally face it and get tested.
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It changed my priorities. It slapped me across the face and made me start facing myself.
I'm so grateful for that darkness. It's done so much for me.
I can't tell you how grateful I am.
Life is so much different now that I'm learning to slow down.
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I'm a completely changed person.
If you've listened to my Mother's Day podcast, I base my mom's eulogy around
the serenity prayer, and I've always leaned on that through my life.
I really feel like I'm trying to live in that serene place of understanding
things I can't control and letting go, not trying to rush and force life anymore.
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Actually letting life take me where it wants, letting it unfold before me,
and listening when it speaks.
Now that mom is gone, I'm even more changed.
I'm more vocal, if that's even possible. I've always been vocal and upfront. front.
I've always had strong boundaries, but now I'm definitely changed. I don't care now.
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Not that I don't care about people. It's quite the opposite.
But after watching the love of my life, the person that gave me life being taken
by a monster in her chest that made her wheeze and hiss from the lung cancer,
after I had to sit there and let that happen, I had to sit there and watch that
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and be okay with it. I don't care anymore.
I'm not worried about food or the scale or dieting or any of it anymore.
I'm done with all of it. I'm done with it and all the BS that comes with it.
It's time to be happy and live life.
I'm going to live in the here and now and celebrate what I have and what I've
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been given and what's been given and I've been given so much.
Mom has given me so much and I'll never take any of it for granted.
Oh, and I forgot to tell you that I've changed so much, I don't even fast forward
through commercials now when I watch TV.
I just let the TV play. When it's done, it's done. I don't rush through recorded shows.
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Something has seriously clicked in my brain. I just watch TV,
let it play, I don't care, they don't bother me, blah, blah.
Okay, so now let's get back to those questions and let's think about you and your lives.
I asked, do you want to die today or how about next week? Your answers would
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probably still be no, right?
But now I want you to think about how you're living. Are you wishing you were thinner, less gray,
more money, better job, different job, better house, different city,
different state, different spouse, find a spouse.
You need this. You need that. More of this.
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More of that. Can't wait till this. Can't wait till that. Do you see what I'm saying here?
We are ourselves. We rush ourselves to the grave, and we don't even realize it.
We don't live.
We don't live in the here and now. And I hate to tell us all this.
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All of us need to know this. The here and now is all we have, and time is fleeting.
Stop wishing your life away. Your life is perfect the way it is right now.
You are perfect the way you are right now.
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And until we accept that, we aren't living at all.
I can look back on all that life I threw away. All the wasted life I wished away for nothing.
And I'm wanting different for myself now. How can you do that for you now if you want to change too?
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Please don't think I'm perfect and I have all the answers or think I do because trust me, I don't.
I'm a work in progress always.
But you see, that's the beautiful part. Understanding now that I have work to do,
that I recognize that what I was doing in the first place, I'm so grateful that
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I can stop the behavior and rework it so it works for me.
That's called living, right?
So this Memorial Day, as you're remembering those that came before you and gave
you life, take time and remember you.
Take time for you, the past you and what it did for you and what you can learn
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from that beautiful self of past you.
Sit with past you and make friends with it. Don't be afraid of it anymore.
It's there to help you live and flourish. Let it help you.
Past You also wants you to follow Larry's Losers 22 on Instagram.
It told me. It really told me. Past You calls me. It told me.
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Seriously, also the evolution of Larry on Facebook.
Don't forget to ask to join our private Larry's Losers VIP group on Facebook,
where our loser family gathers with all sorts of fun ways to lift each other
up on our health and wellness journeys.
We even have our own Zooms and everyone is invited.
So join us don't forget
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to go to my new website the evolution
of larry.com it's so beautiful
there's pictures of me my family my fur babies hummingbirds
boston berkeley purple all mom all things that mean something so special to
me make sure you leave your email so you can keep up with all the latest information
(19:47):
we will be having a link letter coming out starting in june and then monthly
that will alert you with all the happenings with our loser family.
It's all happy all the time. If you're liking the vibe of this podcast,
you can leave a donation.
I've provided my Venmo link on here.
On Facebook and the website, there's other ways to gift also.
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Thank you for being on this journey with me. I'm so thankful.
Before I leave you, here's some words of wisdom.
Remember you are the sky everything else is just the weather thank you so much
for listening see you next time love you all.
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Music.