Chick-fil-A Saved My Life
How I lost 132 pounds in 1 year eating Chick-fil-A every single day for lunch (yes, even Sundays)
I’ve been wanting to write this essay since July, hence my only other Substack post being a two-word entry from July 2nd reading, “Coming soon.”
Turns out, that wasn’t true.
It was going to take a lot more time for me to build up the courage to tell this story the way I felt like it needed to be told.
I also had this sinking fear that I would tell this story, and then immediately gain all my weight back. As you’ll read, that type of thing has been commonplace for a guy like me.
But not this time.
As of July of 2024, I am down 132 pounds. And more importantly - as of today, I have kept all of that weight off.
And the biggest reason for that weight loss and successful maintenance is…
Chick-fil-A.
Yes, you read that correctly.
This fast-food restaurant both saved my life and changed my life forever.
Chick-fil-A helped turn a healthy habit into a way of life, and I’m not sure I can ever truly thank them for what they’ve done for me.
I’ll try to do my best with this essay. And hopefully, this helps inspire the next guy like me to take control of their own life, because that’s exactly what I did with the help of Chick-fil-A.
The short version of the story:
Since late November of 2023, I have eaten a Spicy Southwest Salad nearly every single day for lunch, save for the dozen-or-so days where travel has gotten in the way of this ritual.
This has been the pillar meal for me each and every day, and is what I attribute the bulk of my success to.
I’ll explain more later, including how I keep those salads in rotation on Sundays (hint: it involves a fridge).
But for now, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout this process - friends, family, and the amazing employees at the Chick-fil-A in South Attleboro, MA.
360 pounds.
That’s what the scale read on July 3rd, 2023, the day after my wife and I returned from a wedding in Syracuse, NY.
I had never seen it so high. But if I’m being completely honest with myself, it had probably been higher at various points that summer. I never would have known, because that was the first time I had stepped on a scale since the fall of 2019.
At that point, the nurse at my new doctor’s office told me I was 346 pounds.
“That’s good eatin'!” I joked with her, trying to make light of a situation that was completely devastating.
“Until it ain’t,” she quipped back.
Was she implying that I was about to die?
I didn’t ask for a clarification, obviously - had internally died on impact as soon as she said it. I just nervously laughed as she continued to take my vitals, while saying to myself, ‘I’m never coming here again.’
One thing I also decided that day - ‘I’m never stepping on a scale again.’
Both of those statements were true, until that July 3rd day in 2023.
…360.
I was numb with disbelief.
Two things led to me breaking the oath I had set for myself at the doctor’s office back in 2019:
When looking back at pictures from the weekend, I hated every single shot of myself. I know it’s vain, but it’s the truth. I looked bad. I was wearing the largest clothes I had ever owned, and they weren’t even fitting comfortably. It was hot that weekend in Syracuse, but not hot enough to have me sweating the way I was at every single event. At various points, it appeared as if I had just gone bobbing for apples with how sweaty I was. I truly looked unwell, and I knew people noticed in the moment. A friend at the wedding even made a completely unprompted passing reference to a 40-pound weight loss I had back in 2016 (which I promptly packed back on and then some shortly after shedding it).
“Remember when you lost a bunch of weight a few years ago?” she said between vape hits while a group of us were smoking cigars out on the patio.
"Yeah, that didn’t last long,” I said as quickly as I could before taking a massive hit of my cigar, mortified to realize that the jig was up - someone else noticed how bad I looked, and was drunk enough to (basically) mention it to my face.
Within minutes of this comment, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I had been quiet in the cigar circle since receiving my not-so-gentle fatness reminder, so it wasn’t like any of the fellas were going to notice. But I know I visibly winced. Something was going on, and I was scared. But, I did what I always did. I didn’t say a peep, and kept on eating and drinking until the very end of the afterparty, with three chicken-bacon-ranch slices from Nick’s Tomato Pie a little after 2:00 a.m. as the cherry on top. I was never going to be the guy to ruin anyone’s good time, and I certainly wasn’t going to let someone’s wedding day be the first. Call 911 because of a little chest pain while smoking a cigar? What are you, nuts?
But when I was back home, looking at pictures of myself on Instagram, thinking about how that passing pain in my chest probably had something to do with the fact that I was the heaviest I ever was in my life, it was time to break the oath and see what I was working with.
…360.
‘Well, what are you going to do about this, dude?’ I asked myself while looking in the mirror.
I surely wasn’t going to go to a doctor. That was out of the question for me. That 2019 trip to the M.D. cut me so deep, I could not bear the idea of feeling an embarrassment like that again. Sure, no doctor visits since 2019 meant I hadn’t taken my blood pressure medication since the early spring of 2020. So what? What was worse - dying from a stroke, or being ashamed of what the scale would say the next time I stepped on it?
So from that day on, I made up my mind: I was going to get healthy. I wasn’t going to make a big show of it, and I certainly wasn’t going to start working out. Small changes to my diet, cutting out late-night fast food trips, not snacking as much between meals, cutting out soda - goals I thought were both attainable and would go mostly unnoticed by those around me. But regardless of the physical changes I was hoping to see, I knew I still wasn’t going to step on the scale again. I figured that if I could see the changes and wasn’t getting the chest pains, I didn’t need to know my weight, and certainly didn’t need to see a doctor.
Some weeks were great. Some weeks weren’t.
Some weeks saw me opting for the salad at the family cookout instead of my normal two Saugys and a cheeseburger. Some weeks saw me sneaking out after my wife fell asleep for three tacos and a burrito with a large Mountain Dew a little after midnight.
Some weeks saw me buying a bag of baby carrots at the grocery store instead of a party-sized bag of junk food. Some weeks saw me throwing those carrots away because I didn’t come close to finishing the bag before they expired. After all, a dalliance with a bag of salt & vinegar chips was just way more fun.
There was progress, and then there wasn’t. The diet would be copacetic Monday through Thursday, but then Friday would arrive and the beers would start flowing. Booze always led to late-night food binges. Hangovers always led to bad dietary choices. And sometimes, a hangover from drinking on Saturday night would have me making excuses for myself to eat like crap until the following Tuesday or Wednesday. And at that point, it was almost time for yet another weekend of eating and drinking whatever I wanted.
Here’s a great example of the song-and-dance I was playing throughout that summer:
A couple weeks before Labor Day Weekend, our friend Gemma texted my wife and I for our food orders for a couple different restaurants we would be ordering from during a friend’s weekend on the Cape. Knowing it was a group order, and that I had been on a good streak of eating leading up to that text, I remember requesting a fish sandwich and a salad from one place, and a grilled chicken sub from another. Healthy choices hidden within a large group order - a win for my stop-and-go diet, and a big enough order where no one would notice my change in habits.
But in the days leading up to the trip, I was off the rails again. Pizza, tacos, hot dogs - you name it, I was on it. So by the time we arrived on the Cape for the holiday weekend, it was as if the stop-and-go diet had gone full-stop. I remember the first thing I ate that weekend was a BBQ pulled pork burrito with extra sour cream from the Corner Store in Chatham, MA. I was off to the races that weekend, and a couple healthy-ish sandwiches from the order two weeks prior were just minor pit stops.
That’s how the summer-into-fall went for me with the diet. On, off, on, off, on, off.
Two weeks of good, six days of bad.
Three days of excellent, five days of binging.
There was no rhyme or reason to any of it.
When the “360” would flash in my head, I would order a salad with no croutons.
When I’d wake up on a Friday morning after too many beers watching Thursday Night Football at my brother’s place, I’d slump my way over to a Mexican joint for two breakfast burritos.
And all the while, I would get the occasional chest pains. When those would happen, I’d straighten out right away and eat well for a good chunk of time. But then a college football Saturday would arrive, and it was time for IPAs and appetizer samplers.
I knew I was losing weight, but I was so big that no one else around me knew it. And because I was getting in the way of my own progress at almost every turn, it wasn’t enough weight for a guy my size to really show.
Plus, I was making good on my most recent vow of never stepping on the bathroom scale again. So I couldn’t even tell you what the numbers were at this point, because I wouldn’t allow myself to know.
What I did know was I hated the chest pains, and I really wanted them to stop. I knew I had to be the one to put myself in a position to make them stop, but I wasn’t willing - at that point - to let saving my own life get in the way of having a good time. It wasn’t who I was.
My day of reckoning was Black Friday 2023.
Four of our best friends in the world were coming over to help eat Thanksgiving leftovers. The day before, we were sent home from my parents’ house with containers of all the Turkey Day appetizers, and we wanted to get them out of our fridge. In addition to the apps, we ordered some pizzas from Twin’s in North Providence, RI (our absolute favorite), and filled in the gaps of our jam-packed fridge with beers.
When one of the couples arrived, they brought in some high-end, high-percentage IPAs from one of the best breweries in New England. I was stoked.
We were eating, laughing, and having an amazing time. The chest pains I’d been feeling intermittently throughout the fall were the furthest thing from my mind. It was all about amazing food and amazing company on day two of a four-day weekend. What could be better?
And then, bang.
I had a pain in my chest that I thought could actually be a heart attack.
Right as I was finishing up an incredibly fat bite - where I covered the front half of a rectangle pepperoni slice with my wife’s famous homemade pickle dip (a decision 100% influenced by the IPAs) - I got hit with something that fully stopped me in my tracks. I don’t even really know how to describe it. It just froze me. I felt it in my temples - like a rush of blood to the head and a brain freeze all at once, but for the entire upper third of my body, and totally unable to muster a single word.
I had never felt anything like it before, and I hope to never feel anything like it again.
‘I think I just had a heart attack,’ I said to myself.
‘No you didn’t, dude. Shut up,’ I immediately replied back in my brain.
This was the closest I have ever felt to death, yet I still refused to share this pain with anyone else in the moment. Everyone was having a good time, and I wasn’t on the ground seizing in pain. Nothing in my subconscious was going to allow for this great hang to be ruined.
To this day, I have no idea what happened. Was it a mini-stroke? Was it some sort of cardiac event? Was it all in my head? Was this the universe’s way of telling me I should never spread pickle dip on a perfect slice of pizza again?
I can’t answer any of those questions.
But one thing I can say, definitively, is that this was the moment where I decided I wasn’t going to drink alcohol anymore.
I knew I had to give up something, and I wasn’t mentally ready to give up my foods. Even after possibly having a heart attack, I couldn’t bear the idea of a near-future without my favorite eats. It just wasn’t possible.
But I knew the beers and booze was an easy fix, and something I could do in that exact moment that would go mostly unnoticed. And as someone who really only ever drank on the weekends, I knew cutting it out would curtail most of my late night fast food binges after the bar. No more booze gave my stop-and-go diet more of a chance to succeed.
I nursed one beer the rest of the night, and ended up pouring most of it out when the party was over (super warm and gross around 1:30 a.m.).
Our friends who had brought the fancy beers ended up staying the night in our guest bedroom. I made sure that when they left the next day, they were taking those fancy beers with them back to their apartment in Manhattan.
‘The diet starts again on Monday,’ I said to myself while eating some cold, leftover pepperoni pizza at 9:45 a.m.
This time, sans pickle dip.
Baby steps.
For almost two full weeks after my Black Friday scare, I was as close to a perfect soldier with my diet as I had ever been.
The alcohol was a thing of the past, and the late night eats had completely come to an end. It was all about limiting carbs, and drinking tons of water. Here and there, I’d still feel a passing pain in my chest, but I knew I was headed in the right direction. Those pains were easy to ignore when I knew I was doing so well compared to the inconsistencies of the summer and fall.
And maybe most importantly, this was when the Chick-fil-A Spicy Southwest Salad was reintroduced to my life.
To rewind a bit, Chick-fil-A is a restaurant that had been a huge part of my wife and I’s relationship well before my weight loss journey.
My amazing wife, Morgan, had previously been an employee at a commercial real estate company, and Chick-fil-A was the account she worked on. With that in mind, we loved frequenting our local CFA franchise, always joking to each other that we’re helping support Morgan’s career by ordering spicy chicken sandwiches with extra pickle, along with perfectly crispy waffle fries and extra sides of mac & cheese (wash that all down with a large Sunjoy, and you’re talking about some of the best eating you can do on this planet).
With us going as often as we did, we tried everything on the menu. Shakes, sides, sandwiches - you name it, we ate it.
And even though Chick-fil-A salads were a rare order for us at that point in our lives, we did occasionally mix one in.
After trying every salad on the menu, I decided the Spicy Southwest Salad was the best of the bunch.
So if I told Morgan I was trying to “be healthy” ahead of a trip to Chick-fil-A on any given day while she was on that account, she knew that meant I was rocking with the Spicy Southwest Salad with creamy salsa dressing, seasoned tortilla strips, and chili lime pepitas. And I kept it traditional with the chicken, always opting for the cold spicy grilled filet.
Fast-forward back to late November 2023, and Morgan is about six months removed from working at her former real estate firm. She had since taken a job at a construction management company outside of Boston, where she was commuting around the state of Massachusetts every day instead of primarily working from home on the Chick-fil-A account.
While commuting home from her main office in Needham on her first day back from the long Thanksgiving weekend, Morgan gave me a call to say she wanted to pick up Chick-fil-A for dinner. We still hadn’t talked about my secret diet, so she had no idea what kind of temptations she was laying in front of me.
Determined to stay true to my ‘diet starts Monday’ mantra from Saturday morning, I told her I wanted to “be healthy,” and to ask the server for extra pepitas.
A little over an hour later, she was home with the salad, and I immediately started digging in.
Right away, it clicked for me how excellent this salad was.
The way the creamy salsa dressing was complimenting the cold filet.
The perfect blend of veggies mixed with the tortilla strips for an incredibly rich crunch.
The seasoning on the pepitas giving the whole thing that extra kick.
It all just danced on the taste buds in a way that nothing else had throughout my journey.
After years of dieting here-and-there, always finding myself “relapsing” out of sheer boredom from the mundane lifestyle of cutting out fun foods, I had found something that checked all the boxes.
Not only was this salad delicious, it felt like a real treat while also being healthy.
I knew right then and there, I needed to make this salad a regular part of my routine. I knew that if I could make eating healthy that enjoyable, I’d be able to stay on track.
From that day on, I vowed to eat the Spicy Southwest Salad from Chick-fil-A at least once a day moving forward.
And for the next 14 days, I did exactly that.
Every other day, I made the four-mile drive to Chick-fil-A in South Attleboro, buying two salads every single time. I would eat one salad for whatever meal I was there for, and I would put the second salad in the fridge for the next day.
Sometimes it was salad for breakfast. Sometimes it was salad for lunch. Sometimes it was salad for dinner.
As long as I was getting a salad in, I was happy.
Thanks to the miracles of refrigeration and Tupperware, the salads were able to be a part of the routine seven days a week - even on Sundays when the chain is closed.
I was happy, and I felt myself losing weight. I still wasn’t stepping on the scale, but I could feel myself slimming down.
Even if my diet wasn’t perfect, I saw that substituting one meal a day for the Chick-fil-A salad was working.
To me, that was enough.
But little did I know, it wasn’t enough just yet.
I was one more health scare away from fully embracing my new healthy lifestyle.
It was the night of December 11th, 2023, and there were two Monday Night Football games on.
Since I had been so good on my diet the last couple weeks, I decided to treat myself to some pizza for the games.
I ordered a large pepperoni & bacon from a national chain (don’t judge, I had a coupon), and slowly devoured the entire pie solo as I flipped between the two games.
On the first few slices, it was pure bliss.
The pizza was hot. The toppings were perfectly greasy. The cup(s) of dipping sauce for the crust made for an ideal capper at the end of every slice.
But as I got deeper into the pie, I started having regrets.
Determined to have this night be a blip on the radar for my diet, I said to myself, ‘You gotta finish this thing tonight. No leftovers. Isolated incident.’
And maybe that was just the inner fat kid in me trying to rationalize something I was already predestined to do.
Whatever it was, it worked.
By the time Will Levis was putting the finishing touches on a comeback win for the Titans over the Dolphins, I was shamefully tossing the large pizza box into the blue recycling bin in our garage.
As I laid back down on our couch to watch postgame coverage, I felt that all-too-familiar pain in my chest again.
‘I deserve this one,’ I said to myself, staring at the pizza crumbs on my coffee table.
But as the night of the 11th turned into the wee hours of the 12th, the pains persisted.
I started doom scrolling, trying to ignore whatever was happening inside of me, sporadically Googling things like “how do you know if you’re having a heart attack” in-between reading tweets about Tommy Cutlets’ game-winning drive for the Giants over the Packers.
Around 1:00 a.m., I decided that going to bed might make whatever was going on go away.
About 30 minutes into that idea, it was clear that wasn’t going to work.
I decided to get out of bed and lay back down on the couch. I don’t even know what my rationale was at this point.
Was it as simple as not wanting to wake up our dog Milo as I winced through bursts of chest pain?
Did I think staying awake would somehow delay “the big one?”
Was I trying to avoid having a heart attack or stroke while lying next to Morgan in bed?
Whatever it was - I kept doom-scrolling, and nothing was getting better.
Finally, I had enough.
Around 2:45 a.m., I woke Morgan up to tell her what was going on.
I told her I was having chest pains, they had been popping up here and there for weeks, and that tonight was the worst they had been. I needed her to drive me to the emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital.
Sure, that was a sugarcoated version of the truth. But I didn’t want to freak her out any more than I already was by explaining that this had been going on since July and that there had been more intense episodes.
Concerned and slightly confused, she started getting dressed and was hastily gathering some essentials for this early morning ER run.
I felt awful putting her in this position, but I was at my wits’ end with these pains. As badly as I felt asking her to be my overnight chauffeur to the hospital, multiply that by a thousand for the hurt I would feel making her a widow at 32 years old.
So as Morgan continued getting things together, I did something I hadn’t done since July:
Stepped on the scale.
A few reasons for this:
I knew I was about to step on a scale as soon as I got to the hospital.
My algorithm realized something was going on with me from all the morbid Googling I was doing, and eventually served me a video on Reels of a male nurse explaining the importance of knowing how much you weigh before heading to an ER, in case any medicine needs to be administered immediately during an emergency (very smart!)
Because I had been so good with my daily Chick-fil-A salads, I knew I had lost weight. I obviously wasn’t sure what the number was, but the daily salad plus no booze meant I certainly wasn’t going to see 360 on the scale again…right?
Right.
298.
…298!
Wow!
That was the first time I had seen a number under 300 pounds since 2016.
Amazing.
I was so happy I could cry. Down 60 pounds since that devastating day in July!
I went from thinking I was about to die, to having an internal celebration for what I had quietly accomplished.
And let me tell you - being that proud of myself while simultaneously being brought to the ER at 3:00 a.m. was one of the weirdest moments of my life.
I still had no idea what was going on, but I knew one thing for sure:
My daily trips to Chick-fil-A for the Spicy Southwest Salad were working, and weren’t going to stop any time soon.
Here were my stats when I checked into the ER at Rhode Island Hospital at 3:22 a.m. on December 12th, 2023:
Weight of 298
Blood pressure of 168/90
Resting heart rate of 120 BPM
My EKG was showing “sinus tachycardia,” which my medical friends tell me is only considered normal for someone who is engaged in a workout - a far cry from the night I just had, lying on my couch while polishing off a large two-topping.
From the triage alone, it was clear that I was a mess.
I proceeded to spend the next six hours in the waiting room, waiting to be seen by a doctor, have blood drawn, do more testing - to be honest, I didn’t know what was next at that point. Morgan and I just sat there with no answers, watching the craziness of a Tuesday morning in the ER waiting room at Rhode Island Hospital play out around us (that’s a different essay for a different day…not a pleasant experience!)
Finally, I was called into the back to see a doctor. She came in, quickly took my blood pressure and heart rate (both were still high, albeit lower than when I arrived), and ordered some blood tests and a scan of my lungs. The whole interaction could not have taken more than four minutes, and that’s being generous. In a way, I felt ripped off having gotten such little face time with the doc after six hours of waiting. But I was too tired and too worried about what was going on to make a big stink about it. And to be completely honest - with the way that ER looked that morning, I’m lucky I got the four minutes I did.
After the blood was drawn and the lungs were scanned, I had an ER nurse come in to talk me through next steps. She told me they didn’t see any signs of imminent danger for me, and that none of the tests they ran showed signs of me having suffered a “cardiac event” in the last 24 hours. She said with the way my blood pressure and resting heart rate looked, I needed to see my primary care doctor as soon as possible to update my blood pressure medication.
…that would be difficult, since I didn’t have a primary care doctor, and hadn’t taken blood pressure medication in years.
Dumb. I know.
By the time I was done with the check-out nurse and back at my house, it was around 11:30 a.m.
Having not slept since Sunday night, I hit the hay knowing that when I woke up, I’d be working the phones looking for a new M.D. - making sure, of course, they were in-network with my insurance and willing to take on new patients around the holidays.
It was as awful as it sounds, but I had no one else to blame but myself.
Three days after returning home from the hospital, I was in the doctor’s office of my new primary care physician.
After weighing in at 296, I talked with the M.D. about everything that had gone on with me since July while he took my blood pressure a few times.
All of his readings were coming in high, even as I felt relaxed while venting about my problems.
Predictably, he wrote me scripts for two different medications and ordered some more blood tests.
I went straight from the appointment to the lab to get blood drawn and got an email later that day with the results.
Hours later, after Morgan went to bed, I mustered up the courage to see what was going on.
As I dug through the numbers on the online portal, I saw bloodwork results from both my ER visit and my labs from earlier that day.
A bunch of stuff on there looked bad.
Really bad.
Hemoglobin A1C - 8.3%
ALT Level - 71
Glucose - 110
Sedimentation Rate - 34
Anion Gap - 14
(don’t worry, I had to look up what a lot of this meant, too)
Long story short - I was seemingly an undiagnosed diabetic with a liver and kidneys that weren’t functioning properly.
Not only was I embarrassed, I was terrified with what this all meant.
Was I going to get a call from my new doctor the next day to put me on diabetes medication? Was I going to have to get additional testing done on my liver? How close was I to dialysis? How much is a glucometer?
I had a million thoughts running through my head all at once, and I could feel my blood boiling.
“How did you let this happen to yourself, man?” I kept saying to myself over and over again.
But then, it dawned on me.
“How much worse were these numbers when you were 360?” I asked myself.
The answer was clearly “way worse,” but I had no way of knowing that. All I knew was where I was at that moment, and that it had to be leaps and bounds better than where I was 64 pounds heavier.
It was in that moment where my anguish shifted to empowerment.
A few weeks prior, I had made a decision to change my life by eating a Chick-fil-A salad every day, and I could tangibly see the results.
The number on the scale was trending in the right direction, my pants were fitting better, and I was absolutely loving my daily Spicy Southwest Salad.
This was the moment where I decided that I would not only eat that same salad for lunch every day, but would also attempt to make my own version of that salad with store-bought ingredients every night for dinner.
It wasn’t going to be identical, but I knew I would make something exciting enough that it would keep me interested on a night-to-night basis.
If it wasn’t already before, the Chick-fil-A Spicy Southwest Salad was officially going to be my lifeline to success.
As I began making my trips to Chick-fil-A every-other-day, I started recognizing the employees.
At certain times of day, I knew which voices I would hear and which faces I would see.
I knew I was becoming a regular at this location, which wasn’t exactly a foreign feeling for me with fast food restaurants.
At various points throughout my 20s, there were multiple burger joints, taco shops and drive-thru coffee places that got to know me better than I’d like to admit.
It was embarrassing to know the lady at the window handing me my sack of sliders with a large coke. I didn’t want to know the dude wrapping up my bacon, egg and cheese on an everything bagel, or the tall guy that used to give me an extra handful of hot sauce packets without me asking. I hated it.
But this time around, it felt different.
As the weeks went on, I almost felt like the Chick-fil-A employees were rooting for me.
Sooner rather than later, the employees started remembering my request for extra chili lime pepitas, and occasionally would toss an extra dressing packet in the bag for me (crucial for my homemade dinner salads).
“Picking up an app order for Thomas C,” I’d say into the intercom, or to the employee standing on-line with a tablet.
Routinely, I’d hear, “Welcome back!” Or, “Two more salads, coming right up!”
“We’ll see you in a couple days!” they’d say as I drove off.
It was a small thing, but it made me feel like they were invested in me getting healthy. I loved it.
As much as I, individually, wanted to keep my healthy eating going, there was also a part of me that didn’t want to let this group of employees down. I know it sounds crazy, but continuing those positive interactions was part of my motivation to keep on going.
In late January of 2024, I decided that I had lost enough weight to where I wouldn’t die at the gym. With my blood pressure stabilized by the medication and my XXL t-shirts fitting better by the day, I signed up for a gym in Providence.
With the way my work schedule was at that time, I would get my workout done early in the morning, then drive over to Chick-fil-A to pick up my salads.
Once I got into this loop, I started to interact with the same Chick-fil-A employee in South Attleboro almost every single day.
Her name is Silvia, and she became my biggest cheerleader outside of friends and family.
“Nice to see you again!” she’d say through the intercom.
“Keep it up!” she’d say with a big smile as she handed me my bag of salads.
Sooner rather than later, I decided to tell her about my weight loss journey, giving her the grand total I had lost every time I decided to step on the scale - which was about once a week, to avoid fluctuation frustrations.
She was genuinely happy for me, always giving me words of encouragement as I drove off. She even made sure to give me a heads up when the location was closing for a stretch for renovations, looking up other location alternatives for me to go to while they were closed.
“I had to make sure you knew,” she said. “We have to make sure you’re still getting your salads!”
How cool is that?
Eventually, I started sharing my story with any familiar face that would bring the food to my car, and I was told by one of the employees that Silvia had excitedly clued her teammates in on my story.
That inclination I had of the local CFA team rooting for me was confirmed.
Not only were my loved ones pulling for me, but this group of workers at the Chick-fil-A in South Attleboro all wanted to see my success as well. It was such an awesome feeling.
I can’t thank Silvia enough for the positivity. It has truly meant the world to me.
There’s never been someone more deserving of being featured in a “Little Things” commercial than Silvia.
Get her on that red couch ASAP, Chick-fil-A!
As fate would have it, my first follow-up appointment with my new primary care doctor nearly fell on the one-year anniversary of that first cardiac event I had at the wedding in Syracuse.
By early July of 2024, I was into my eighth month of eating Chick-fil-A every single day, as well as a regular workout routine and a surprisingly low dose of daily blood pressure medications.
When I stepped on the scale at the doctor’s office this time around, I weighed 234 pounds - down 62 pounds from my first M.D. visit in December.
My blood pressure was 110/70, and my resting heart rate was 64 BPM.
Maybe best of all - here were my updated numbers from the blood work I got done shortly after the appointment:
Hemoglobin A1C - 5.2%
ALT Level - 14
Glucose - 89
Sedimentation Rate - 18
Anion Gap - 7
As I went through the numbers on the MyChart app, I started to cry.
Outside of the scale and at-home blood pressure readings, this was the first time I was seeing tangibly what my Chick-fil-A diet had done for me.
I was in a very bad way in December of 2023 - probably much closer to death than I wanted to admit at the time.
But by July of 2024, I was down 126 pounds from that depressing post-wedding day, where a 360 on the scale forced me to start thinking about doing a 180 with my life.
It took a little bit, but I finally got there.
Seeing those numbers on my iPhone screen is a moment and a feeling I will never forget.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had a long life ahead of me.
Truly a surreal feeling.
As the summer moved along, I hovered in the low 230s, giving myself a new goal of getting into the 220s, and then working on maintaining that range.
At 6’2, that felt like a good plateau spot for me (I never want to be rail thin).
It took until early September to get to 228 pounds, marking 132 pounds lost overall.
At that point, I felt like I was ready to tell my story. Given everything that had led me to that moment, I felt like I could help the next version of me avoid the type of mess I went through to get to where I was at 228 pounds. I knew there were plenty of other guys just like me - big dudes who loved having a good time, where eating and drinking was central to making sure everyone in the crew was enjoying themselves no matter the situation. I knew I wasn’t unique in that regard.
But then I remembered the various weight loss attempts I had in my past, and how quickly I had always put the weight back on (remember vape girl from the beginning of this essay?). I was terrified that the minute I told my story, I would get complacent and start eating like crap again.
I hadn’t gone through everything I went through just to pick up a couple hundred Instagram likes, only to then pack back on 100-plus pounds. The prospect of that happening sent a shiver up my spine. I was feeling secondhand embarrassment for this hypothetical future version of me.
I told myself that if I was still weighing in the 220s by the one-year anniversary of my trip to the emergency room, I’d allow myself to write this essay.
So when I saw “228” on the scale the morning of 12/12/24, it was time for me to remember what my Substack password was.
It’s taken me over a month to write this thing, which I’m sure isn’t a surprise to anyone who has made it this far into the essay. I know this was long - there was a lot to unpack!
This might be a one-and-done for me. It might be the start of a blog where I share more stories about my struggles and triumphs in the world of weight loss. I have no idea what’s next.
What I do know is this:
If this essay helped just one person - whether he was in his early 30s like me, or was a mother of three looking to get healthy - then I did my job here.
I’m not going to lie to you and say something like “I have no regrets, because everything that happened led me to where I am now.” That’s not the case at all. I am filled with regret for not being selfish and choosing myself earlier than I did. I wholeheartedly wish I didn’t have to spend that awful night in the ER to induce that one final wake-up call. I let the fear of being a burden to loved ones get in the way of staying alive. It’s confounding when I think back on it. Truly.
Please let this essay be your wake-up call. Just because you think you’re the life of the party, doesn’t mean the party is going to stop without you. It’s going to rage on, and you’re going to hate not being there for it. And worst of all, the people at that party are going to miss having you in attendance. Give yourself the opportunity to be the life of the party for a very long time.
You won’t regret it. I promise.
Chick-fil-A saved my life, and I can’t wait to be a loyal customer for many years to come. I know this diet works for me, and I can’t wait to keep it rolling as the years unfold.
Whether it’s Silvia in South Attleboro, or the next Silvia in South Attleboro, I hope to continue making my friends at Chick-fil-A proud as I continue to keep the weight off.
And who knows - maybe this essay will inspire others to join me on this daily Spicy Southwest Salad endeavor!
I have one friend who told me recently that he’s been doing the diet for two weeks, and he’s already down 17 pounds. That made me so happy to hear, and I hope this essay helps bring me more stories just like it.
Thank you, Chick-fil-A!
👏👏👏
Been a long time, Tom. Way to go and proud of you for writing this.
I’m so proud of you my sweet bonus nephew! Continue to be the man you are and we are happy that you have achieved the goal that you have reached. You were so handsome and sweet before your wait loss now you are our healthy, sweet handsome young man. God’s blessings to you and continue your healthy lifestyle. Love you, Aunt Barb, St Louis: your bonus Aunt.