Dylan Wahlstrom thought he loved his job.
Turns out, it wasn’t the job he loved so much. He enjoyed getting out of bed in the morning because he was excited to go to McDonald’s and order his usual two Sausage and Egg McMuffins and a large orange juice.
“I thought the orange juice was healthy,” he said.
Though Wahlstrom legitimately thought juice was a good way to start the day, he admits his life was compounded with lies. Lies he’d tell others, and lies he’d tell himself.
“I would get to work and someone would ask me to go for breakfast, and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, sure. I haven’t eaten yet,’” he said. “I would sneak food when nobody else was around and wouldn’t count those calories. I was constantly making up lies to myself.”
“I would sneak food when nobody else was around and wouldn’t count those calories. I was constantly making up lies to myself.”
It wasn’t uncommon for him to eat two full plates of food and a milkshake for lunch and then head home and have an entire pizza.
By the summer of 2019, the 32-year-old Wahlstrom weighed 307 pounds at five-foot-ten.
The Decision to Change
It took a family vacation to Disneyworld for something to trigger in his brain that it was time to turn the ship around.
“I have two little girls and I grew up overweight, and one of my fears was they’d have to endure a life like I did, getting made fun of, and just the difficulties you experience,” he said. “And sadly, being overweight often means an early death, and I realized I don’t want to not be around just because I have a bad relationship with food.”
On July 8, 2019, when he returned from the family vacation, he announced to his wife he was going to lose weight.
Wahlstrom’s first approach was to basically try to starve himself and eat as little food as he could. He did that for a week, and realized it wasn’t the right approach so he started doing some research. He soon stumbled across CrossFit.
Two weeks after announcing his intention to his wife, he found his way to Dawson CrossFit in Dawsonville, GA.
He quickly grew fond of the community at Dawson CrossFit.
“I remember when I was new and someone saw I didn’t have lifting shoes and says, ‘Hey, I have an extra pair in my car. You can have them,’” Wahlstrom said.
“It was so generous. That’s when I knew this place was the place,” he added.
The coaches, too—namely Joel Hurst and Luke Syfert—have been incredibly helpful from the start. So has owner Lynn Sweatte, who has been helping Wahlstrom with his nutrition.
Falling in love with working out
Just seven months in to his journey, Wahlstrom has lost 99.4 pounds.
“I should lose 100 pounds by the end of the week. I’m super into data and have watched my patterns so I should get there by the end of the week,” he said.
It’s this quick success that has kept Wahlstrom on track, he explained. And it has made him fall in love with working out.
“I legit love going to the gym. I go six days a week. Sometimes twice a day. I love learning and love doing better every time I’m there,” he said.
“It felt so cool to climb the rope. Having been fat my whole life, I could never have done one before.”
In seven months, Wahlstrom has gone from back squatting 150 pounds to 265 pounds, and he can now do push-ups, a pull-up and even did his first rope climb just the other day.
“It felt so cool to climb the rope. Having been fat my whole life, I could never have done one before,” he said.
More importantly, though, he has managed to stop eating until he feels like he’s going to burst, and stop lying to himself about what he’s eating. He said he feels like he has healed his relationship with food.
Changing his relationship with food
Wahlstrom admits the journey has been hard. Sometimes changing how he was eating felt like he was “giving up my best friend,” he said. At times, he knows he wasn’t eating enough, and at one point he was afraid to eat certain foods, but he has managed to find a good middle ground now.
This middle ground for Wahlstrom has been calorie cycling.
Essentially, Wahlstrom eats an average of 1,900 calories per day over the course of a week, but he calorie cycles, meaning some days he eats fewer than 1,900 calories and once a week he eats 4,000 in one day.
“As long as I average out at 1,900 calories, I find I’m still making progress,” he said.
On his low calorie days, he eats around 1,400 to 1,500 calories, including a lot of cottage cheese, chicken, eggs, vegetables like asparagus and broccoli, and always a big salad. And on his high calorie day, he keeps the protein high, but might also have some pizza or go to his favorite restaurant.
Learning about how he can be flexible with his diet and still see big gains has helped Wahlstrom develop a healthier relationship with food where he’s less obsessive and scared of certain foods, and more able to enjoy food without the anxiety, he explained.
“It’s really good for me emotionally, and it means I can eat with my family again, because when I wasn’t eating enough I wasn’t eating with them,” he said. “I will keep taking it week by week, though. If something doesn’t work, or it stops working, I’ll tweak it.”
This trial and error approach means Wahlstrom has been able to embrace a healthy lifestyle for the long term.
“Everything is a learning process. It has been really important to me to realize I can’t assign an end date to this. Like, it’s not about getting to a certain weight so I can stop working out and eating right. It has become a lifelong journey for me,” he said.
Part of this process has been sharing about his journey on social media. Not only does it help keep him accountable, but he has received a lot of messages from people that mean a lot to him.
“People will tell me how inspiring it is to them to see. It’s kind of weird to hear, but it’s super cool if I’m helping other people, too,” he said.
“It’s really good for me emotionally, and it means I can eat with my family again, because when I wasn’t eating enough I wasn’t eating with them.”
Wahlstrom’s journey has also had a positive impact on his 2 and 4-year-old daughters, he explained.
“They’re only 2 and 4, but they have noticed. My 4-year-old does burpees with me now,” he said. “That has made me really happy. I feel like I’m setting the best example in the world to my kids now.”
He added: “I’m still the same Dylan with the same stupid sense of humor, but the changes I have made have created someone who isn’t afraid of doing things with this life I have been given. It has given me a new entire life.”
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