From Fat To Fittest: Becoming the World's Fittest Man

The World's Fittest You
by Joe Decker, Eric Neuhaus

"The World's Fittest Man" shares his Guinness World Record-breaking personal training secrets.

Joe Decker, who broke the Guinness World Record's 24-hour Physical Fitness Challenge, shows how anyone can get on the road to fitness in just one month. Readers can:

• Get motivated and inspired by Joe's amazing personal weight-loss story

• Harness the secret of interval training to get fit quick

• Boost metabolism with a variety of indoor/outdoor cardio activities that make fitness fun

• Monitor progress and keep on track with a customized workout log

• Jumpstart fat-burning potential with simple strength-training moves in the gym or at home

• Take advantage of day-to-day meal plans and recipes incorporating good carbs and good fats.

I looked over at the bright red lights glaring from the digital clock next to my bed: 6:00 A.M. I had hardly gotten any sleep last night. Truthfully, I had just fallen asleep after three days of nonstop partying. I dragged myself out of bed and stared at myself in the mirror. I couldn't believe what I looked like. And I felt like hell. My eyes were puffed up, swollen and red, almost popping out of my sunken, ashen, white face. The rest of my body was in no better shape. My head was throbbing from the huge meal and cocktails I had whipped up the night before. I was a wreck. I really couldn't believe that reflection was me. How had I gotten here and how was I going to escape?

Looking in the mirror I disliked the image I saw. On top of that I felt aimless and without purpose in life. I was living in a dingy room in the heart of New Orleans with no career or direction to keep me going. I was depressed and felt my life had amounted to nothing. I had hit rock bottom. I did the only thing I could think of doing. I picked up the phone and called my parents for help.

That's one thing about my parents. They were always there for me. From my lowest point, there, in New Orleans, on the verge of self-destruction, to my highest achievement, which I'll tell you about later, becoming the World's Fittest Man, I never lost touch with my family and my farm-town roots. You'll see-I may be the World's Fittest Man now, but I started out as nothing more than a chubby farm boy.

I grew up in central Illinois, in a small town called Cuba. Cuba has a population of about fourteen hundred, if you count the cats and dogs too. Most people either farmed or worked at a factory. It was a great place to grow up but definitely not a very fitness- or health-conscious area. Life in Cuba was simple-just one bar, one gas station, and a general store.

My parents, Daniel and Diane, and my three younger brothers all were raised in an old farmhouse. It was very primitive living. In the winter things got so bad that the pipes would sometimes freeze and my brothers and I would play with Weeble Wobbles on the frozen bathtub or toilet. It was during these cold winter months that we would have to use an outhouse. A wood-burning stove was our only source of heat, so all of us would sleep in the same room for warmth. We would hang blankets over the doorways and throw the mattresses on the floor. I actually liked the closeness of it all.

We all worked hard around the house and on the farm to survive. All of it wasn't so bad, except when the temperature dipped to twenty below. Then, milking the cows and chopping the wood at five in the morning wasn't so much fun. It was a downright pain in the ass. My dad worked hard at the local Caterpillar factory and farmed most of his life, and my mom was a custodian at the local grade school. They are the hardest-working people I have ever met and I think that's where I got most of my drive and determination.

We always enjoyed big family suppers and breakfasts together, the kind you'd probably see on The Waltons. Unfortunately, most of those big meals were filled with fat and lard. My mom was a great cook, but she didn't think too much about fat content or calories. Our typical meals were nice big juicy steaks, fried chicken, and my favorite, biscuits and gravy. Lots of bacon grease, which was kept on the stove in a can, and Crisco fried foods. As you can imagine, all that kind of food made me a chubby boy.

It never seemed fair to me that I was the chubby one and my brothers were thin and lean. They seemed never to gain weight. Why were they so thin and I so chubby? That question drove me crazy, but it made me more determined to work harder at getting myself in shape.

The school bus was the worst. Since my brothers were younger, they could do little to stop the older kids who teased and taunted me about my weight. I vowed somehow to lose the weight one day and get even with those older guys on the bus.

Things changed when I got to high school. I used my "extra" weight to excel at powerlifting and then slimmed down to play football and run track. As I became more popular, I also made honor roll just about every semester. Losing those extra pounds really boosted my self-confidence. No longer was I the chubby boy who got picked on but an athlete who excelled on the football field and in the classroom. But all of that changed in an instant.

In my senior year I suffered a really bad football injury. My left calf got smashed up after a few hard smacks. All the nerves were so damaged that I couldn't feel anything from the knee down. At first the doctors thought it was just a bruise but then realized the damage was much more severe-so severe that they considered amputation. Luckily for me they figured out it was anterior compartment syndrome. They sliced a thirteen-inch incision down my calf to release the pressure and finally ordered me on crutches for a couple of months.

The unlucky part is that those few months kept me off the football field and in front of the television. Not surprisingly, that was a formula for rapid weight gain. I packed on over thirty pounds, consuming mostly pizza, Twinkies, and Coca-Cola. In so little time I had become the unhappy "fat boy" again. More than anything, I was depressed. The football scholarship that I had hoped would be my ticket to college and out of small-town Cuba suddenly disappeared. It was like my worst nightmare had come true and I couldn't wake myself up to stop it.

Since my parents couldn't afford college without the help of a scholarship, I decided to join the army right after graduating from high school. I planned to pay for college after a short stint in the military. I was shipped off to Fort Benning, Georgia, eager to start my basic training. What I hadn't planned for next was failing my first army physical-fitness test. Those months on the sofa eating nothing but junk food had left me in awful physical shape. I could barely do ten push-ups and I huffed and puffed through a two-mile run. I was just about crawling the last stretch. I felt like Bill Murray's character in that hilarious movie Stripes. But what was happening to me wasn't a comedy at all. It was the worst kind of tragedy. My drill sergeant ordered me into the unofficial military "fat-boy program."

As you can imagine, being eighteen and sent off with all the other military physical-fitness failures was completely humiliating and embarrassing. I was even too ashamed to write home to my parents. I was their first boy to move out of the house on my own, so they had high expectations for me. More than anything I didn't want to let them down. What a disappointment it would have been for them to learn of my failure.

So while all the other recruits were relaxing after dinner or on weekends, I was out there working my butt off doing extra push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups. And that's no joke. For meals all the "fat boys" were placed on a special eating program different from the rest of the recruits'. Cottage cheese, fruit, and salad were some of our staples. I remember looking over at the desserts the others were enjoying. Once I got so tempted I couldn't stop myself. One of the drill sergeants learned of my unhealthy indiscretion and punished me with more push-ups (above and beyond the extra we did anyway).

Let me tell you this, that weight didn't just melt away. I'm sorry to tell you that no magic pill or crazy diet got me back in shape. What did was lots of hard work, sweat, and commitment. I set a goal and really stuck to it. I worked hard to lose every single pound. Nothing came easy. But eventually I did it. I passed the next physical fitness test with flying colors and proudly joined the other recruits.

After my three years of service with the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, New York, I headed off to pursue my real dream, college. I moved back to Illinois and enrolled in a prelaw program at Western Illinois University.

After two years at college I became disillusioned and restless. I guess it's pretty common to feel that way. I didn't want to be a lawyer and wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with my life. I figured some time off might help me decide.

I packed up my bags, tossed them in the back of my white Ford pickup truck, and roamed around the country. Eventually, I ended up in New Orleans working as a bartender. If you're a tourist, New Orleans is a great place to visit because the party on Bourbon Street never stops. It's Mardi Gras twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. If you happen to live and work on Bourbon Street, it's easy to find yourself in the center of that never-ending party. And that's exactly what happened to me.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm pretty much an all-or-nothing kind of guy. Without a real focus like the army or school, I turned to eating and partying excessively. So when it came to partying, I became the best partier in New Orleans. I partied hard-so hard my friends had a nickname for me. They called me the "Mess" because I had no self-control or discipline. Working as a bartender at some of the wildest bars like the Bourbon Pub and Razoos didn't help either. I'd get off work, have a few drinks, then start partying, sometimes for three days straight when I had a few days off. During these partying binges I hardly ate. I'd sleep for a day or so and then eat nothing but pizza, hamburgers, and french fries. The whole thing became a horrible, vicious cycle. I'd feel great when I was "flying" on partying and food, but then I'd come down and crash really hard, like falling out of a ten-story window. The only way I could get myself up and off the ground again was to perpetuate the cycle.

My lifestyle was killing my body from the inside out. I had no hope or integrity. The only thing keeping me going was my family. They left many messages on my answering machine, begging me to come home. "Joe, we love you and care about you. Please come home." Those words still echo in my mind. I could have been just another statistic. "Partied till Death." I imagined it might say something like that on my tombstone. The next day I packed my things and drove back to Illinois.

When I got back home, I had very serious lifestyle choices to confront. Emotionally, I had become dependent on overeating, bingeing on alcohol, and other destructive behavior to fill some of the voids in my life. After being dependent for so many years on a self-destructive way of life, I didn't know what to do. I needed something to replace the hole in my life once filled by excessive behavior. That's when I discovered fitness.

I guess you could say what happened next led me on a path that I believe saved my life. In New Orleans I had fallen into some really awful eating habits. A typical dinner for me was thirty or forty chicken wings at Hooters, washed down with a few pitchers of beer. Other days I ate those "blooming fried onions" at Outback and nachos and potato skins loaded with just about every fattening topping. I knew that had to change if I wanted to feel and look better. I bought a low-fat-cooking book from Wal-Mart and before I knew it I was cooking my own meals with lean meats and lots of fruits and vegetables. I also filled my body with lots of water. Up until that point the only water I drank was melted ice from soda or alcohol.

At the same time I started to work out slowly at home with just an old weight set from Wal-Mart, a chin-up bar, and an old pair of beat-up running shoes. Nothing fancy, just the basics to get me going. I also started a program of walking, just a few blocks at first, then gradually building my way up to a jog, then a run. After a few months I finished my first 5K race. What a great feeling that was. The feeling I was getting from working out was keeping me sane and functioning in society. Not only that, I was building self-confidence and a sense of achievement in my life. Without fitness, I can honestly say, I'd be on a road to nowhere.

Because fitness had changed my life, I knew there were others out there I could help too. I earned my bachelor's degree in exercise science with an emphasis in corporate wellness at Western Illinois University. From there, I moved to Washington, D.C., and started my own personal training company called Body Construction, with the help of two close friends, Greg and Karen Jenkins. It was a wonderful experience, sharing in other people's fitness achievements. Later in the book you'll meet some of the people whose lives I helped turn around.

As I told you before, that addictive personality of mine-the one that got me into trouble in New Orleans-loves to take things to the extreme. Now that I had found a way to channel my energy into fitness, I needed something to stay on track. For me it's not enough just to go to the gym and work out, although that works just fine for many people. I needed a fitness challenge to keep pushing myself. Not only that, but I wanted to separate myself from the pack. I wanted to actually practice what I preached to my clients. There's nothing more satisfying than setting a new goal-whether it's finishing a race or shedding a few pounds-and then achieving it.

I started with marathons. From there I went on to try a 50-mile run. The first one, the JFK 50 Miler, was a killer. I was ill prepared and undertrained-boy, did I pay for it afterward. I was almost bedridden for the next month. If you think that 50 miles sounds crazy, just wait until you hear what I tried next. It's called the Badwater 135 and there's a reason they call it "bad." The race is 135 miles and runs through the hottest part of the United States: Death Valley, California. There, temperatures can reach up to a blistering 130 degrees during the day.

That intense heat really took its toll on my body. By the end of the first day of this grueling, nearly two-day race, I was completely dehydrated. Even though I was drinking water like a fish-about five gallons' worth sloshing around in my gut-what I hadn't considered was salt. Because I was sweating so much from the heat, I was losing all the salt in my body and my electrolytes were totally out of whack. My head felt like it was going to explode. My feet were throbbing. I was hallucinating, staggering, and stumbling-taking as many steps to the side as I was forward. A fellow runner passed me and said I was in dire need of salt. But where was I going to get salt in the middle of the desert? Luckily, my quick-thinking crew-my brother Shag and my friend Yukon-found a bottle of Morton's salt in a nearby town. When they returned I started eating the salt right out of the box. Who would have thought an ordinary box of Morton's salt could have saved my life?

At mile forty-one, just as the sun was beginning to set over the desert, I got my second wind. I crossed the finish line at thirty-nine hours in a respectable eleventh place. It was one of the most incredible feelings in my life-happiness, sadness, pain, euphoria, all wrapped into one. Adrenaline surged through every vein of my body. A feeling no drug could ever compare to.

Call me crazy, but Badwater was only preparation for my next big challenge: the Raid Gauloises. If you think that running through the desert is extreme, try a 520-mile race across one of the most treacherous mountain terrains in the world-the Himalayas. For eight days my team of five battled unbelievable obstacles. The worst of all was the air in Tibet. It was filled with yak dung. The stench was horrible and all the dust infected my lungs. As we gained altitude, my lungs began to fill with liquid, a life-threatening condition I later learned was called pulmonary edema. I felt faint, dizzy, and nauseated beyond belief. My body felt like it was turning against me and there was nothing I could do. At one point I honestly felt like I had reached the end of the road, that maybe I had pushed myself too hard, that maybe I would never be able to say good-bye to my mom and dad. This was as close to death as I had ever come.

A race doctor finally treated me with some very powerful medicine. It caused my lungs to vomit up fluid over the next six hours. To this day I don't know what she gave me, but I do know that it saved my life. Unbelievably, a few hours later I felt well enough to continue racing and finished with my teammates in only eight days.

Still recovering from that near-fatal lung infection, I had another challenge scheduled for the year 2000: the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning. It's actually four separate hundred-mile races called ultramarathons, run through some of the most difficult terrains in the United States. "Old Dominion"-one hundred miles through the Virginia Mountains, where I battled horseflies and blood-sucking ticks. "Western States"-a hundred miles through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, where I descended from freezing snowy peaks to scorching desert canyons. "Leadville"-a hundred miles through the Colorado Rockies, where at an altitude of twelve thousand feet I could hardly catch my breath. "Wasatch"-a hundred miles through the Utah mountains, where I climbed trails with over twenty-six thousand feet of elevation gain, like scaling the Empire State Building twenty-one times.

What does not kill me makes me stronger! Those words made me think there must be another challenge waiting to be conquered. I had survived the unbelievable, extreme heat of Badwater and the treacherous, rugged terrain of the Himalayan Mountains, four ultramarathons across the United States, now what? I needed something else to finish off this incredible year.

Could there be something else? Yes, there was. One night while watching television I just happened to catch the Guinness World Records show. A feature on the "24-Hour Physical Fitness Challenge," what's been dubbed "the World's Fittest Man" competition, caught my attention. Now, that was a challenge. It consisted of thirteen varied fitness events performed over a twenty-four-hour time period. I had done one or even two different events in one race, but never thirteen. The next day I wrote to Guinness World Records to find out how to apply and geared up for the challenge.

I was a good runner and biker, but some of my other events needed work. After brushing up on my swimming, kayaking, rowing, and NordicTrack, I felt ready to start. One cold Friday night in December, while most people were out on dates at the movies or home with their families by the fireplace, I was about to attempt a fitness world record. Thankfully, many of my friends and clients came out to support and cheer me on.

First the bike. One hundred miles circling around a quarter-mile running track; that's four hundred laps. (Guinness World Records required that I use a running track so that measurements could be recorded exactly.) Then on to running, hiking, and power walking. Combined I did the equivalent of a marathon. That was another hundred laps around the track. After twelve hours at the track the sun finally started to rise. Next, I raced to a nearby canal to complete six miles of kayaking. There, I started to get my second wind. Maybe I really could break the world record. Next, a two-mile swim in the pool. Luckily it was indoors, otherwise my body would have frozen. Then to the gym-ten miles on the NordicTrack cross-country ski machine, and another ten on the rowing machine. I was really flying through the events now. Only five more events, but these were the real tough ones. Talk about an intense calisthenics workout, worse than anything in that military "fat-boy program." I knew I had to kick some butt now if I wanted to break that record. Three thousand crunches, eleven hundred push-ups, eleven hundred leg lifts, and eleven hundred jumping jacks. To top it off I lifted a total of 278,540 pounds on ten different weight-lifting machines. My muscles ached for a couple days after that.

I notified Guinness World Records. Three months later it was official, I had broken the "24-Hour Physical Fitness Challenge" world record. In no time my amazing achievement had made national and international headlines. The media had proclaimed me "the World's Fittest Man." (Not just for breaking the Guinness World Record, but for all the other extreme challenges I completed that year.)

So that's how I became "the World's Fittest Man." I'm telling you about this journey not because I want to brag about all of my achievements and not because I'm special or different; I'm telling you this so you can see what's humanly possible. And what's achievable is different for everyone. My hundred laps around the track probably sounds like a lot. So does swimming two miles. All of that is relative. For you, the equivalent may be finishing your first 5K race or swimming a few laps in the pool without getting out of breath.

Most important, I'm telling you this so you can see that it really is possible to change your life around. That you can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles-obesity, addiction, and depression-like I did. The only obstacles are the ones you create for yourself. Most important, I'm telling you this because I'm just like you. That if I did it, so can you. Read on and I'll show you how to change your life and how to become "the World's Fittest You."

Copyright © Joe Decker and Eric Neuhaus, 2004 All rights reserved.

About the Author

Joe Decker is an ultra-endurance power athlete, renowned fitness trainer, syndicated fitness columnist, and motivational speaker who has helped thousands of people get fit and lose weight.

Eric Neuhaus, is a writer, journalist, and former television producer for ABC News 20/20. He is also the coauthor of The World's Fittest You: Four Weeks to Total Fitness.