For most of my life, I was the Fat Guy.

Not just physically. Mentally too.

The Fat Guy was habits. Food. Excuses. Self-doubt. Fear. Shame. Starting Monday. Starting next month. Starting after vacation. Starting after the holidays.

You know the drill.

I spent decades thinking I needed to lose weight.

Turns out, I needed to change my life.

A little over two years ago, I was pushing 300 pounds. My doctor told me I was getting dangerously close to diabetes and that I could fix it by losing weight.

That sounded great.

Except I’d been trying to lose weight since I was about 13 years old.

Then came GLP-1.

And for the first time in my life, something changed.

A few days after my first shot, I went to my favorite Thai place for lunch. I ordered the same meal I had ordered hundreds of times before.

And then something completely freaked me out.

I got full.

Not stuffed. Not miserable. Just… full.

I pushed away a half-finished plate.

My waitress looked at me like something was wrong.

Honestly, I thought something was wrong too.

That was the first time I realized maybe this thing was actually going to work.

And it did.

But here’s the part that matters.

Losing the weight wasn’t the whole change.

The real change came later.

I started training. I started paying attention to what I ate. I started changing the little things I had done automatically for decades.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something:

When you change your habits, you change everything.

You really can become who you want to be.

The weird part is, while it’s happening, it can feel like nothing is happening at all.

You go to the gym.

You eat better.

You make the same boring decision again and again.

And sometimes you look in the mirror and think, “What the hell am I even doing?”

Keep going.

Because that’s when it’s changing the most.

You stop, you stop changing.

So never fucking stop.

I don’t give a shit what your head tells you.

That voice telling you to quit? That voice telling you none of this is working?

It knows it’s about to become homeless.

And it’s in panic mode.

Pure and simple.

Today, I can’t imagine going back to being weak and out of shape again.

I can’t even picture it.

And that’s what blows my mind.

The life I have now once felt like something I was trying to reach.

Now it just feels normal.

That’s what habits do.

They build your reality.

Good ones or bad ones.

So this blog is going to be about all of it.

Weight loss.

GLP-1.

Training.

Food.

Getting older.

Getting stronger.

Travel.

Changing your habits.

Changing your head.

And probably some completely unrelated shit I think is funny.

I’ve never had a blog before.

Hell, I had the idea earlier today.

Now I’m sitting here writing the first post on rylandgarrett.com.

That’s pretty damn cool.

So here we go.

I used to be the Fat Guy.

Now I’m just getting started.