S0 E3: Confronting the Prison Within: A Journey of Redemption

You know, they say if you neglect your body, it eventually becomes your prison.

And man.

I lived in a 500.

Pound prison for years.

And I built that prison brick by brick.

But here's the kicker.

Nobody tells you I dropped the 250.

Pounds, I beat the cancer.

But when I check in the mirror today, sometimes those walls are still standing.

And that's what we're gonna today.

Welcome back to redeemed and rebuilt.

I'm Nick Grace.

And if you're new here, this show isn't a lecture.

It's basically my survival diary.

I'm just a guy documenting the rebuild of his life.

We've already covered the mind men's mental health in the last episode.

Today we're tackling the body.

And look, I'm going to be real with you.

I'm not here to give you a workout plan.

I'm here to tell you the truth.

About losing 250 pounds, about surviving cancer twice, and why the mirror is still the toughest fight I have every single morning.

But before we dive in, I want you to ask yourself, ask yourself something.

What part of your body are you at war with right now?

What do you see in the mirror that you just can't stand?

And I know that that sounds like something our wives would talk about with their friends, but it's something I think we need to talk about as brothers.

So keep that in mind and let's get to work.

So for me, for me, it started with the doctor visits.

You know the drill.

Like, they sit you down and say, nick, it's getting serious.

You're £300.

Nick, it's getting serious.

You're £400.

You have high blood pressure.

Your knees are falling apart, bone on bone.

There's no cartilage left.

You know, the works.

I felt invisible on the outside.

But my labs and every other test I would take would say that I was a ticking time bomb.

And here's the classic catch 22 that they always feed you this.

You need to lose the weight so we can fix your knees, but your knees are too bad to work out.

It's a trap.

But honestly, it wasn't the pain that.

Stopped me at all.

It was more the fear.

I was terrified of the pain of working out, sure.

But I was more terrified of just being seen working out.

I really didn't want to be that fat guy at the gym.

I felt like everyone was watching me, judging me, thinking, look at that guy trying.

He's got a long way to go.

You know, it's funny, I see those guys at the gym now, and I honestly don't feel that way at all.

I don't think most people ever felt that way.

If anything, I've discovered that it's more about people being impressed that you're doing it.

It's crazy how your mind really plays tricks on you, especially when you're 500 pounds, because the reality is that you do turn heads and you do notice it.

You notice the fact that you are noticed.

Believe me, I don't know.

Something needed to be done.

Eventually, I hit a wall.

I tried everything else.

Nothing stuck.

So I made the call and I decided to get weight loss surgery.

At the time, we didn't have GLP1s.

In fact, I can remember always saying, if only there was something we could take that would make us skinny.

I would love to take it.

Crazy how things change over, what was it, eight years?

But I didn't just drive to the street, although I did try to go through the system.

Here in Alberta, Canada, we have a public health system that does allow for the treatment of severe morbid obesity through weight loss surgery.

But the hoops, you have to jump through the wait list to get it done.

It's just another challenge that comes with our public health system.

So I couldn't wait.

I couldn't wait on the system anymore.

I mean, I was at the point where I thought I only had maybe years on my life.

So I did something that maybe sounds crazy to some people.

I think it happens more often than people think.

I packed a bag and I got on a plane and I flew to Mexico.

That's right, Mexico.

And if you're listening to this podcast from Mexico, beautiful country.

Loved it.

The food, amazing.

Ironic.

I mentioned food when we're talking about this, but that's how desperate I was.

I was willing to leave my country, walk into a clinic, into a foreign place, and put my life in the hands of strange strangers just to escape the prison that I was in.

I remember being terrified going under.

I mean, you're in a different country, you're alone on the table.

You don't know if you're going to wake up the same if you're going to wake up at all.

What happens if you don't wake up?

You're in Mexico.

How are they going to get you?

Like, those are legit thoughts that go in your head.

But that's how serious this was.

Was, yeah, those fears are real.

And those fears would stop people who were, maybe I won't do this surgery, but that's how serious it was for me was I needed this surgery and I was willing to overlook that fear.

Looking back now, that takes tremendous courage.

So for anybody who's made this decision to do that, that takes a lot of courage, man.

Good on you.

Good on us.

So like I said, I didn't know if I was going to wake up the same, but I did.

And looking back.

Best call I've ever made, hands down, saved my life.

But here's the thing.

Surgery is just a tool.

I mean, it fixed my stomach.

It.

Didn'T fix the demons upstairs.

My appetite changed, my body changed, and to some degree, my brain changed a bit.

I mean, there is studies out there about how a successful weight loss surgery almost changes the stomach brain relationship.

I'll have to add that in the newsletter.

I'll look into it.

But for the most part, my brain was still operating like a 500 pound man.

So let's fast forward a bit.

I'm down over 100.

I'm feeling fantastic.

I'm moving better, better than I have in decades.

And one day I'm at work and I'm just doing my job and I reach back and scratch my neck.

I felt a lump.

Now here's the part that still messes with my head.

If I hadn't lost the weight, I probably never would have found that lump.

When you're £400, £500, there's just too much stuff in the way you can't feel the structures of your throat.

Hell, I remember the first time I saw my Adam's apple.

Losing the pounds actually exposed the cancer.

It revealed the thing that was literally trying to kill me.

So, yeah, I guess in a, in a weird, twisted way, vanity saved my life.

Just not how I expected it.

Was throat cancer, HPV related?

And yeah, guys, listen, we need to talk about that.

Here is a stat that terrified me when I found it.

HPV related.

Throat cancer has now surpassed cervical cancer as the most common HPV cancers in the US Most guys would think HPV is a woman's issue.

It's not.

It's hitting men five times harder than women right now.

We are the ones at risk and nobody's talking about it.

So we know the famous people.

Mike Douglas, Val Kilmer, just to name a few.

The irony is brutal, right?

Like, I just got healthy, I just did the work.

And I did do work after the surgery.

It didn't just happen.

It takes work.

Like I said, it's a tool.

I did the work and now I'm sick.

The treatment, it was hell.

It was scars and pain.

Totally wiped out.

You Know, I remember the time I got diagnosed.

It was right at the beginning of COVID Couldn't have happened at a worse time.

Doctors were wearing full hazmat suits just to come in, do tests.

At first I was told that it was nothing, that the results were negative.

And then once I let my guard down a bit, I got the call saying that they wanted to see me regarding the results.

Out of confusion, I was okay, and they were inconclusive.

Okay, what does that mean?

I said, well, we're going to send you to a specialist.

And the doctor told me, the specialist I'm going to send you to is the head of the ENT department at the University of Alberta.

He's one of the foremost ENT specialists in the world.

I felt lucky.

So we, in a nutshell, went and did some more tests, and, yeah, there it was.

You know, it's funny.

I was just starting my relationship with my wife at the time.

We were together maybe a month.

What a time to meet someone, right?

COVID 19.

I was raising two kids, met a young woman.

Bam, cancer.

And I can remember saying to her, nobody chooses this.

Nobody a month in chooses to deal with this.

So if you want out, I'll understand.

Well, she's still here.

So we did the surgeries.

I got the scars.

We chose not to do treatment because at the time, we were pretty confident that it was gotten rid of, basically that we were told that with head and neck radiation, that really you could only have one shot at it.

So we chose okay.

We did the surgery.

We feel confident.

Let's go on about our life.

We had our twin girls.

We were just living life.

There was a recovery from being off work for five, six months financially.

So, yeah, life was just trucking along.

I thought I beat it.

But then it came back, round two.

And I remember that's when anger really set in.

This time.

I don't know if it was because I had the girls.

I mean, they were only three at the time.

But I remember thinking, why me?

I did everything right this time.

I went to the gym.

I've eaten the food.

I was getting to a place where I was content.

I'm not going to say that it nearly broke me.

The treatment broke me.

This time.

We went through the whole gamut.

There was treatment, there was radiation, chemotherapy at the same time.

And it wasn't the chemotherapy that was a challenge, honestly, that just made me tired.

I didn't struggle with hair loss.

I didn't struggle with nausea.

But the radiation, that's what they warn you about.

They warn you about that.

And then you start going on the Internet and going down these rabbit holes.

Sure enough, it really has an impact and for some people has a long lasting impact.

You're never the same, you know.

With the treatment came some pretty significant events in my life.

One was I had gone about seven days without really drinking much and eating anything.

I was incredibly dehydrated, incredibly malnourished.

I mean, I looked like a ghost.

So we went to the hospital.

They tried to put feeding tube through my nose.

The damage was just from the radiation was just too much.

Ironic thing is because I had weight loss surgery, they couldn't do a feeding tube in my stomach.

That's another ironic thing.

I just thought of that now, actually.

However, they did manage to get a feeding tube in my intestine.

But what that means is that you're hooked up to a slow feed machine 24 7.

Not that I wanted to go anywhere, but I couldn't go anywhere.

And I was miserable.

I'm telling you, I was miserable.

The pain, the mouth sores, the radiation burns, it was.

It was hell.

But I recovered slowly and I went right back to the gym.

So here I am today.

I'm down £250.

That's a whole human being's worth of weight gone.

I mean, you'd think I'd be strutting around checking myself out in every window, right?

Well, sometimes I do.

If the lighting in the gym is just perfect.

I mean, every guy, if there's guys who are listening to this who are gym rats, you'd understand when that lighting hits, bam.

If I could set my house up like that, be great.

But no, most of the time I check that mirror and I still often see that 500 pound man, that prisoner.

That's body dysmorphia.

And it's very real for us.

I mean, the weight just dropped off my body like fast.

That's the thing about the surgery is combining the surgery with the cancer is it comes off fast, but it's taking a hell of a long time to leave my mind.

You know, I often say when I was trying to be positive for what I was going through with the surgery is I often told myself, hey, this is one hell of a cut.

It's crazy what you say to yourself just to get through it.

So let's.

And let's be real about that after photo.

When you do those before and afters, it's not all six packs.

We don't all look like Sebum or Arnold.

Probably look more like Arnold now.

It's loose skin and a lot of it.

And it hangs and it's heavy and it's the scars from the cancer surgeries.

And I used to think if I could just have bigger arms, I'll be happier, or if I could just get a chest, I'll be happy.

But the goalpost just keeps moving.

It never stops.

And we have to talk about why that goalpost moves.

It isn't just us, it's really the phone in our pocket.

I mean, we're constantly scrolling past guys with perfect lighting, perfect angles are at the peak of their physical form.

Let's be honest, probably a lot of performance enhancing drugs.

You know, I saw a study recently that said 56% of men feel that media promotes a body image that is completely unattainable.

And 42% of us feel pressure to look a specific way just to be considered man enough.

Which I think is weird.

I think that's in our own head because, you know, I've spoken to a lot of women friends of my wife's and that, you know, that image that we think we need to look like as men is not what I think that they want.

Not all of them anyway.

Maybe that's us.

Maybe it is us.

I pursued that image for quite a while.

For me, it's so I could look good.

For me before I wanted to lose the £500, lose the £250.

I wanted to lose £100 at hoping that it would just make me look good for them.

That means half of us are walking around feeling inadequate because we don't look like a guy who edits his photos for a living.

It's a rigged game, guys.

And honestly, it's not just the images anymore, it's the information.

I mean, we're drowning in health hacks.

Every time you open your phone, there's a new protocol.

One day it's Carnivore, the next day it's vegan, the next day oatmeal is poison.

Now we have the medical wave.

We got GLP1s like Ozempic, WeGovy, we've got peptides for longevity.

We've got TRT clinics popping up on every corner of the Internet and every corner of your city telling you that you aren't man unless your levels are optimized.

And look, I'm not anti science.

I've gone down those rabbit holes and I think what's coming down the pipeline for just general health and longevity is going to be absolutely just incredible.

I mean, you listen to the drive with Peter Attia.

It's mind blowing or anything.

By Andrew Huberman.

What's coming down the pipeline in medicine is like, incredible.

So I'm not anti science.

I mean, I flew to Mexico for the surgery, remember?

But I believe in using tools.

I believe in medicine.

But maybe, maybe we're getting dangerously close to obsessing over the chemistry of the body.

Well, maybe we ignore.

We ignore the discipline of the spirit.

We are looking for the injection that fixes the discipline problem.

We want the peptide that fixes the character flaw.

And it is a character flaw.

And I'm telling you, you can optimize your hormones, you can inject the semaglutide, you can take the cold plunge, but if you haven't rebuilt the man inside the body, you're just painting a house that has a cracked foundation.

Use the tools, but don't worship the tools.

And here's the part that I'm ashamed to admit.

Sometimes, despite the surgery, despite the cancer, despite the optimization, I forget.

I forget that I survived cancer twice.

I forget that I used to not be able to tie my shoes.

I forget that at one point in my life, I needed to brace my arm against the wall just to clean myself after using the bathroom.

Think of that.

Now that hits for me.

If I sit and I just think about it.

I literally had to brace my arm against the wall to maneuver it to a way where I could try to clean myself.

And I'm gonna be honest with you.

I'm gonna be real and raw.

I didn't do a good job.

And I'm pretty sure you could tell.

I'll be in the gym, critiquing my abs in the mirror, picking myself apart because there aren't any abs.

I'll be picking myself apart instead of thanking God that I have lungs that work.

It's messed up, isn't it?

I mean, I've basically got two modes.

Mode one is thank you, Lord, I'm alive.

Mode two is I hate how I look.

And honestly, I bounce between them every single day.

I'm still trying to learn how to live with both of them at the same time.

But just recently, recently, something might have shifted.

I'm realizing now that this isn't just about me.

It ain't about having that beach body.

It's about my daughters, my wife, my friends, my audience.

Cancer has showed me how fast it can all end.

And let me tell you, it can end like this.

And I realize now that I do have a responsibility to stay in the fight as long as I can.

So it stopped being about punishment.

I stopped going to the gym to punish myself for eating a burger.

It became stewardship.

It became about taking care of what I've been given for as long as I have it.

You know, the Bible puts it pretty clearly.

In First Corinthians, it says, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?

You are not your own body.

You were bought at a price.

That is hard.

If your body is a temple, why are we treating it like a dump?

Or worse, why are we treating it like a prison?

So here's my challenge to you this week.

Pick one hard thing that you've been putting off.

Just one.

Maybe it's a 20 minute walk.

Maybe it's finally making that doctor's appointment that you just are dreading.

Maybe it's just cooking a healthy meal instead of ordering out.

What are you avoiding just because you're scared to be seen trying?

Go do that thing.

Not for the mirror, but for the stewardship.

If this conversation hit a nerve, don't just listen.

Join the fight.

Coming in the near future, every Thursday, I'll be sending out raw field notes from my week.

I'll share the photos, the specific struggles, and the things that I can't say on the Microsoft.

Go to redeemedandrebuilt.com and join the brotherhood.

It's free and it's where the real conversation happens.

And hey, if you know a man who's struggling with his health right now, share this episode with him.

Don't let him fight alone.

We've covered the mind, we've covered the body.

Next week we're going into the deep end.

We're going to talk about the spirit.

And honestly, that's one that I'm wrestling with right now the most.

So I'll see you then.

And remember, every man deserves redemption.

Every man can be rebuilt.

Let's get to work.