The ironic thing about Anthony Boggs’ weight gain is that he didn’t even realize it was happening until the scale had reached what he calls “a scary place.” Unlike many, Anthony explains that he felt confident about himself and was mostly unaware of his weight gain for many years—he calls it his own “reverse body dysmorphia.”
“Since I was around 14 or 15 years old, I would put on weight, and then plateau, and that would happen over and over again,” Anthony says. “It was just something I kind of accepted … until about two years ago. That’s when I started to notice myself in photos and realized I may not look as good as my mind was telling me I looked.”
The Struggles of a Busy Life
Anthony, 40, is a North Carolina native who lives in Kernersville, North Carolina, with his fiancée and chihuahua. As a healthcare IT professional, he travels often and keeps a busy schedule.
“My weight gain really crept up on me,” Anthony explains. “It wasn’t that I ate a lot, and I wasn’t sitting on my couch stuffing my face with chips and cookies all the time. Rather, I had poor eating habits—I would do things like eat large meals late at night. Plus, due to my travel schedule, I wasn’t taking the time to exercise with any regularity. I also felt so comfortable in my relationship with my fiancée that nothing was really motivating me to change my habits.”
On and off over the years, Anthony experimented with various diets and exercise routines, but nothing ever stuck. He tried the keto diet, the Atkins Diet™, WeightWatchers®, Beachbody workouts, CrossFit®, P90X®, and the Hip Hop Abs™ program—and even restricted himself to only lettuce and grilled chicken for a time. While some methods would work as long as he followed them carefully, as soon as he loosened up, the weight would come back—plus some more.
