Woman Loses 214 lbs with X3 Bar In Just 6 Months

Weighing 650 pounds, Julie was admitted to a long-term care rehabilitation center. The facility obtained the X3 system for Julie to start her recuperation.

Julie started eating meat and fasting every night and shed 214 pounds in 6 months by changing her diet and utilizing the X3 and variable resistance training.

Learn more about her remarkable weight reduction journey and how the X3 helped her achieve her objectives.

Full Transcript #

Dr. John Jaquish: Daniel, Julie, thanks for being here. We’re gonna talk about Julie’s progress and just a couple of different things that may help a lot of people from motivation to scientific discoveries. One of the biggest problems people have with making progress with any fitness program, weight loss program, or nutrition, they often bear the mark of the last truck that hit them, meaning they change what they’re doing all the time because they’re always hearing a different way to do things.

And because of their rapid changes, they end up never really fully understanding where they’re getting any results from. And with most of the programming that they choose, they might get no results. So it leaves the individual sort of spinning their wheels for a long period and never getting anywhere. And the only really smashing success stories are when somebody finds something that works and they just stick to it. So, Julie, congratulations.

Julie: Thank you. Okay, so basically I had a life crisis and I ended up in a rehab facility that also has a long-term care site to it. And I was consistently 650 pounds, and the highest I ever got up was 700 pounds. And today I’m 334.

And I had the help of the rehab staff, and by then, I had lost a hundred pounds on my doing exercises and stuff. But I just, I wanna get back to life. So long and short of it is, Hal had contacted Daniel and the three of us have been a team for my success.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just to let people know, Hal is the owner of the home where Julie lives.

Julie: Hal had gotten the X3 system and Daniel had put me on the carnivore diet with intermittent fasting at night, was it four high-carb days, and three low-carb days at first, Daniel?

Daniel: So first we did three high for low and we kept some high-calories in for the low-calorie days and the four low-calorie days, you did no carbohydrates at all, And on the high-calorie days there was no restriction on timing, so you didn’t have to do intermittent fasting, but you could.

Julie: From October 4th till now, I’ve lost, I think I was 174 pounds. And it’s been great. It’s nice to get back to life. Like it’s nice to have like my face and my neck showing and-

Daniel: Just a little correction, you lost 214. On October 4th you came at 558.

Tell me a little bit, Julie, how did X3 help you get from the bed on your feet? How did it help you in moving and strengthening the body and start being a little bit more mobile?

Julie: Oh yeah, so the way it helped me was we had to modify everything for me a little bit because I still use my walker. I’m still in a wheelchair, but I can stand up pretty sturdy. And so with the X3, we kind of did modifications either in my wheelchair or when I had to stand up, I had to make sure that my walker or the post in my bed was in front of me so that I could balance while somebody else had helped bring the bar up so that I could use it.

But gradually, as I got better at it, I’m able to bring the equipment out by myself and set it up in front of me and use my walker still to stand up and balance for a second and then to like to pull the bar up for the waist to shoulder exercise. And it was funny ‘cause that’s a size that I struggle with the most. Daniel knows, there are a few videos of me where I was shaking.

Daniel; Can you break down a little bit more the adjustments that we had to do for your X3 exercises, so other people who could be similar to you could understand what to do with the X3 when they’re your size?

Julie: X3 has different exercises, like one of ’em, or I think about three of ’em where you use the bar and you have the band behind you. And so instead of being able to stand like a normal person, you had me sit in my wheelchair and do those exercises.

Daniel: The chest first?

Julie: Yeah. And then, I’m sorry, I can’t remember the exercise where you pull it back.

Daniel: No problem, I’ll help you with that, go for it.

Julie Where you pull it back, we put a clamp on my bed with the band behind it and the bar so that I could pull back like the rose part.

Daniel: Rose.

Julie: Yeah. And then like I had said for the waist shoulder exercise and the curls, I had to have someone hold my wheelchair for me while I got up. And then I grabbed on my walker, I stepped up on the little plate, the plate’s not very high. So it’s a lot easier to step up on. And then someone would hand me the bar with the band already put underneath it and I would, I would lift as best as I could, but as I got better at it, I was able to lift higher and just advance in bands.

And that’s the thing that I love about it, is that it has different strength bands. So if you’re a beginner, you can begin at the smallest band and work your muscles that way. And you go, I think isn’t the product over 600 pounds resistance?

Dr. John Jaquish: It depends on how tall the individual is. So like, when Daniel does a deadlift, Daniel’s a tall guy, so he uses the orange band on a deadlift, he’s using over 700 pounds.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s maybe 650 for me. But all of it’s relative. Like, I think one of the points that a casual observer who’s watching our video here may not fully understand is that X3 is very accommodating. Like it allows you to exhaust yourself with heavy loads, but you know, a person in your situation, might not be able to even work out with even lightweight loads, like in a gym-type environment.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, it allows you to do a lot of things that just wouldn’t be practical to do. And then you’re triggering the growth of muscle, which then becomes, the muscle itself becomes a metabolic engine that’s using more calories. And as you’re metabolizing your body fat, it becomes a bigger engine to help you do that even faster. You know, it’s one of the challenges with overweight people that can’t necessarily move around much. There’s not a lot they can do. And so, they end up being in a situation where they can’t use a lot of calories during the day because they’re just immobile. And now, we engaged your body, I say us, I wasn’t there, I see myself side the product. So it’s one of those situations where you’re just getting that amplified benefit.

Daniel: Can you break down a little bit? How did you train your lower body? How did you train your legs so people who are in a similar position like you could understand how to incorporate lighter exercises in their routine?

Julie: Okay, so how I trained it was one, one big thing is the squats, like the squat with the bar, you’re supposed to stand up onto the plate with the band and squat. Like I couldn’t do that because of my fitness level. So what we would have people do is hold my chair so it’s sturdy enough. And I would do what they call sit-to-stands. Sit-to-stands are something that they use a lot in physical therapy. It’s just basically where you stand up and you sit down, and you stand up and sit down, and it helps you strengthen your legs in a squat type of way, and the beginnings of it.

But also Daniel had me walking a lot more and so there’s a video of me on my Instagram where I was in the driveway walking back and forth and I had my wheelchair backed up against the house so that I could walk a distance, walk back and sit down and rest until my body was okay enough to get up and walk down there and walk back again. And to just keep doing that, just relax like that. And especially obese people that cannot do a lot of exercise, the most important point is you do what you can ‘cause if you don’t use it, you will lose it.

And so you do what you can and as your body gets better, it will do more. And that’s the miracle of the body, that it strengthens and it becomes stronger. And you know, when Hal had brought the X3, he said to watch a video on it. And so I watched a video on it and I was very impressed by how it exhausts the muscles at certain points. And it gives you that muscle strength workout without, like you said, where you don’t have to weight lift. So there’s somebody like me that’s just beginning to get back into exercising. And in that sense of trying to do resistance bands or weights, I think it’s a lot safer because you’re not gonna, like, if you fall, heaven forbid, you’re not gonna have like this huge bar and weights on the end of it all on top of you.

Daniel: Can you describe Julie, how fast have you noticed any benefits and changes after you started the program? The whole nutrition fast, the next breathing? How quickly would you say you started noticing changes in your body?

Well, I started noticing just basically first the face, I had a double chin. I wish I had a picture to show you guys from last year because I was chunky in the face and had a double chin, and that was even after I lost a hundred pounds. But like your face gets thinner at first, it starts thinning out and then your legs get a little thinner, and then your arms. So that’s the wonderful part about losing weight and using strength training.

Daniel: What do you think the time frame would be when you started noticing those changes and how many weeks have you started feeling like something is changing?

Julie: I’d say like probably three weeks. Three weeks.

• Three weeks.
• Like, I could feel the difference with the carnivore guy and sometimes it’s a blur a little bit because of everything but-
• I mean, like if you look at everything you’ve been through, you went from being stuck in bed
• Yeah,
• …to be freed from that.
• Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: That is, it’s you got your life back. So Daniel and I are so proud of you. He’s been giving me the details as you probably. It’s one of the hardest things to do because food is now designed to be addictive.

Yeah. I make sure that anyone who’s overweight or obese comes to the company or I end up talking to, I never want people to blame themselves, though accountability is very important. You can be accountable for fixing the problem, but when you look at how foods have been engineered, I mean, and I’m talking about packaged foods here, not vegetables or fruits or meat, it’s the stuff that is engineered so that you have one and you don’t wanna stop eating ’em. And they are working and using drug addiction as a benchmark. Like, give that some thought like people hooked on whether it’s opiates or whatever, that’s the benchmark that a lot of food scientists are using, and this is their mandate, this is the job they’re paid to do, design food so that when you start eating it, you have a lot of trouble stopping. And it happened to you and it’s happened to hundreds of thousands of other people where all of a sudden your life completely changes.

And you’re stuck. And most of the cases are not necessarily as dramatic as yours, but you know, I’ve seen people unable to get in and out of certain automobiles and like, it’s embarrassing, then people start to blame themselves and it’s like just all you gotta do is what you did. You take accountability, and you say, okay, I can fix this problem. Once you make that decision, you can do it.

Julie, ** ** can you tell us a little bit more about the thought process behind what John just described how to trigger yourself and make yourself start working towards a change? What goes through your mind? How do you make yourself do the work?

• So basically I think you have to find a big enough reason that works for you. As for me, in all honesty, it was that I wanted my life back because someday I really wanna be a wife and a mother. There’s no way I can be that when I’m being taken care of in bed because I can’t move. You know what I mean? So you, first of all, have to have a big enough reason. Second of all, I think like journeys, when they say it begins with a thousand little steps, that’s the thing. It’s the little things that you do every single day. Like you pick one and you work on it. You know what I mean? You’re not gonna be perfect ever. It’s okay, and it’s okay to say, “I messed up, it’s okay, let me try again.” And I think that the most important part is you have to remember that food and exercise go together. You can’t just have one or the other. They’re a couple. And you have to do things for yourself to try to be healthier and try to make good choices and try to say, okay, I’m gonna try to exercise again today, but yes, definitely a big enough reason, you know?

Daniel: Gotcha, so you have lost now over 214 pounds in six months, Julia. You are the biggest transformation I had the pleasure to be part of. And the quickest, the biggest, and the quickest over 214 right now, because right now you’re even lower than your weight last time. Tell us a little bit more about the challenges that you have faced on this journey. What challenges were you facing?

Julie: So I faced, one thing when I was in the facility, the food was not nutritious at all. So that’s one thing that I faced. I had to use my own pocket money to buy healthy food so that I could try to lose that first hundred pounds. The second thing that I faced was just learning for one thing cardio does not make you lose weight, it’s great for the heart, but building up that muscle is gonna, is what’s gonna like, burn all that fat. And I had to learn that the hard way because-

Dr. John Jaquish: Very true.

Julie: I had a Fitbit and I was doing modified exercises in bed following a YouTube video for a 600-calorie burn. And I have pictures on my Instagram of me showing that I burned a thousand calories, but I’m like, why am I still gaining weight? You know, even though I was trying to do food properly and the exercise part. So that’s a big challenge I face learning that building that muscle is important. And that’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: There are two things you said that are important that you understand, and I wanna make sure that everybody who sees this understands those things. People need to stop viewing eating as their entertainment. You know, when you watch an entertaining movie, when you’re eating, you’re giving your body the nutrients it needs to either survive poorly or thrive and be phenomenal. And when you think of it that way, the choice is really easy. Like carnivore nutrition is now people are like, well how would you rank carnivore nutrition against some of the other diets that we see out there?

It’s sort of like, “Okay, carnivore nutrition is phenomenal and I don’t see any other approaches even worth talking about,” because that’s where our nutrition comes from, it comes from animal protein and the associated vitamins and minerals that are in animal protein and the fact that for 2 million years humans were the apex predator on earth. That’s all we ate. And just keep in mind that you knew you needed the nutrition, which means that you flipped a switch in your head, which says, what I’m eating is not for my entertainment, it is fuel for what my body needs. That is profound. And the other thing, it seems like you gotta get to a point where you’re just sick and tired of the direction you were going.

A lot of people need to have a heart attack before they come to that realization.

• Now they have a damaged cardiac system and then they realize like, I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t wanna miss out on life. I wanna be able to participate in everything. And yeah, you probably just woke up one morning and said, “I am so sick of this and I’m gonna fix it.” And that’s what it takes. That moment becomes a chain reaction and all the other moments. And you’re right, sometimes you do have a day where you’re like, wow, I really kind of miscounted my calories here, or here’s one, I had this discussion with my wife. I had no idea there were so many carbohydrates in a lime. But I have a question, so I want you to think back on when you were 700 pounds, that was your biggest, right?

Julie Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And how you felt versus how you feel today. Is it just the absolute night and day difference?

Julie: Oh my gosh, like it was miserable. It was so miserable because you just, you’re swelled up with water, you’re just, it’s miserable. It’s miserable to be in that state, you know? I can’t even tell you the depth of hell that happens when you get that big.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I mean that’s when people have trouble breathing. In the human body’s form, we have a void in our chest that is not, like when we lift weights, often or do X3, you pull in air and then you hold your breath for a second. It’s called a Valsalva maneuver, but it keeps the middle of your body rigid. So there’s not an air void in here, but people do that, so there’s more structural integrity of the body. But when somebody is that overweight that air void that is your lungs is actually being pushed on by your body weight and you can’t even access your lung capacity, which means you’re not getting the proper amount of oxygenated blood to the brain. And you’re thinking, like, I’m sure that your memories from the time when you were that size will always be sort of hazy because your brain wasn’t even getting enough oxygen. I don’t think people realize just how hard on the body that is. Now you’re an absolute expert to talk about that because like all the memories you’re creating now, you’ll remember them forever.

Julie. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, your brain’s getting enough amount of oxygen.

I have a question for you, Julie. So how did you deal with the cravings after foods that you used to eat because you got up to 700 pounds by eating different kinds of foods that you’re eating right now, and you made a rapid change, the life-changing change? So tell me, what about cravings? How did you deal with cravings? How did you not eat the foods that you used to eat?

Julie: So one of the biggest things that I was a fan of was energy drinks. Those have a lot of calories and they’re bad for your heart.

What was that?

Dr. John Jaquish: And so… They’re bad on your heart. Like energy

Julie: What, energy drinks, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: What used to be your favorite brand?

Julie: Monster. That was mine.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like the worst one. Oh, that is so funny. Yeah. And that’s another thing that’s designed to be highly addictive. Yeah.

Julie: The way I gave up Monsters was like literally I was in the hospital and from cellulitis again, that’s part of the hell that I speak of. You get cellulitis, your blood can go sepsis from having this, it’s a skin infection that like makes your skin hot and red and then oozes out and then dries up, and then you’re done. But you reach like you can reach over like 101 up or above fever and then you’re in the hospital. So I was in the hospital for cellulitis.

They turned me, my heart went out a rhythm. They had to do the procedure to stop and shock my heart. Now the injections slowed it down enough to where my heart went back into rhythm. And then after that, it was, awful because they sent hospice to me like literally for some months I was sent hospice to. And I thought I was gonna die. I was like, “Okay, this is my death sentence, this is how it ends.” But I was like, no more Monsters for me. That is it no more. And some being able to work out in my bed and take that away off the table, I ended up going back to the cardiologist like a year or whatever, like close to a year later, and they said my heart was fine, that I had like helped it back to health.

Daniel: So it took an extreme situation for you to give it up?

Julie: Yeah, that was your moment where you’re like, I’m sick of this.

Well, I think of the Monsters part, but like I had been trying to like constantly do better in food all the time, you know what I mean? So I switched to Powerade and then got rid of Powerade. But it’s just… One thing I would like to mention though is it is very important when you’re doing this, especially for a person that ends up obese or even if you have like a stress-eating problem, you really should get a good therapist. Because I think a lot of the times I was thinking about this morning, my experience was I wasn’t, when I was younger, really allowed to state my needs or state these are my boundaries.

And so I think sometimes I think that we end up gaining weight because we’re not able to stand up for ourselves. After all, we’re not either taught or not allowed to. And I think sometimes when people have weight problems, they might have the same thing that I did where I just, but as I learn to take care of my body, I learn about boundaries. Okay, I’m not gonna let this person treat me this way. I feel better about myself like physically and beauty-wise, you know what I mean? And you feel more pride in yourself. And I think sometimes you need that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Let me share a story with you. I haven’t talked about this in a long time, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention this doctor’s name because I think he ended up selling his clinic and he signed like a non-compete when he sold.

So I’m just not gonna mention his name. But what he told me was that, and he said that somebody who’s carrying an extra 20 pounds of body fat, it’s just ‘cause they’re not really paying attention to what they’re eating and they don’t maybe know enough about nutrition or they’re just sort eating what’s been put in front of him.

But when people are 200, or 300 pounds overweight, he said it is psychology that is the problem. Because what they’re doing is they’re using food to medicate something. And I think you just told me that you had been in situations where you felt like those situations were out of control and eating is satisfying, you could control that.

So you replaced your control mechanism with, I can eat whatever I want so I feel better. And you know, that’s highly damaging, but that wasn’t what was in your head at the time. So that’s why that ends up happening. And then, of course, you end up choosing foods that are addictive because that’s what everybody ends up with. And so those two things end up going hand in hand and that’s when it becomes outta control.

But being aware of the fact that, people can use food to medicate something, and the fact that you can decide to not be pushed around or not be treated a certain way and you don’t need to go eat something, you just need to not be pushed around. Like, it was probably a brutal mental exercise to get to that conclusion, true?

Julie: Yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: I agree, I love that point. Now, Julie, that’s everything in your past. Now tell us a little bit more about your future, your dreams, and what’s out there for you. Look at her, look at her right now, check her smile right now. Check her smile right now, the future is so bright that’s why she’s laughing. So this is the exciting part. I love hearing about your dreams and your future vision because I feel like every person who was, or who is in the shoes where you needed to hear that they need to think about the future and vision and dreams. So tell us about yours.

Julie: Yeah, so I have a boyfriend, I’m not gonna say names right now because it’ll be revealed probably later in my life. You know who it is. But like, he’s the sweetest man on the face of this planet. You know what I mean? Like, he is literally like the person that I’ve always wanted, the person that I was always searching for. And I can’t wait to have a future with him. And I also have so many ideas like, like dreams and aspirations that’ll only become better when I’m able to walk without a walker, and I can be fully independent. And that’s part of my dream. And you know, I, if I start crying, please forgive me, I’m a girl-

Julie: Go ahead cry.

Dr. John JaquishI has a soft spot for the military, my boyfriend’s a military man, and my father was a Vietnam veteran. But one thing that gets me is how we have veterans on the street that don’t have homes they’ve gone through unspeakable things to make sure that I am sleeping at night and safe. That just like steps me in the heart that they’re out there like that. So one thing that I hope to learn is I hope to start learning how to make a lot of money, not just for myself-

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome, awesome.

Julie: …different endeavors so that I can have land to farm vegetables and fruits and have just started feeding veterans on the street. And the more money you make, the more I wanna invest the more make and more so that I can start like hopefully a nationwide thing of making homes for veterans where they can go.

And also making them feel like they’re wanted and they’re needed in this society by giving them jobs to help other veterans that are out there. They’re protectors, they’re natural protectors, you know what I mean? So give them something to protect again, something for them again. But also I wanna help other people that are bariatric or having a hard time with their weight and let them know they can have their dreams.

You can have everything that you want. As I prayed to God, please help me up this mountain of my weight and he helped me, you know what I mean? That message needs to go out to other people that if you turn to God or whoever is your higher source that you believe in that they will help you and have that faith in your heart. But also just like, I’ve always wanted to be a story writer for children’s stories and young adult stories, and just, I wanna live by the ocean somewhere. I want things to just get better. I wanna be able to have children, I wanna be able to serve people. And I think that the biggest thing is you can’t serve people when you have a weight problem when everyone else has to take care of you. But it’s nice to be able to give people hope and it’s nice to be able to help people out. And it doesn’t have to be this major big thing, sometimes it simply is just like helping out your neighbor or observing around you and seeing what is lacking in somebody’s life and helping them get that, you know?

Dr. John Jaquish: Love it. So that’s why I brought it up because I know how full of dreams and visions you are. I love the vision, especially about the veterans. We just gotta work around the vegetable and improve parts. Again, amazing, amazing. I love listening to your story and your dreams, and also to your business desires. It’s incredible because as you said, if you don’t make a lot of money, you don’t have the resources to help all those people. And this vision also fuels your heart so you can keep going and keep moving forward and keep losing weight. So I also like to mention that we have a plan of getting the skin removal surgery at about 180, which we’re hoping we’re gonna remove about 40 pounds of the skin. And we’re gonna get Julie down to about 140.

So yeah, we’re shooting for about 120 body weight. So at about 180, we start doing the procedures and 120 is where Julie should be for the rest of her life. So we got about 200 more pounds to go from here.

But what’s the most beautiful part about this transformation is that you are already 50% and further, you’re not 50% and below you’re 50% and further. ‘Cause now you only got about 200 pounds to lose, you already over two 14 down. So you’re closer to the goal than to your previous body that you had. So I’m very proud of you for doing that. Thank you so much, Julie, for joining us for today’s podcast.

Your story is incredibly encouraging to everybody who suffers from obesity as you suffered. I think you helped a lot of people understand what to do and what to think about and how to change their mindset when they want to start their journey. Because I believe every single person who is in the shoes where you were in is always thinking about it that I can’t live like lift like this. I know I don’t have much time. I know my heart will get up at some point it will.

And these people are thinking about it constantly and state someone like you who steps out of that circle and tells their story and shares their story openly to make them think about their choices and made them think about their journey, and make them make a change.

So I think you can be a superhero for people like that because they’re gonna trust you a lot more than they trust me. You know, I’ve been a bodybuilder, I’ve been a strong muscular guy my whole life and those people might think like, okay, what does he know about obesity, right? But if they look at someone like you, well, she was in our shoes. She understands how we feel, she knows how life is being obese.

So our goal eventually is to get Julie to lose over 300 pounds in a year, write a book, make it public, and get a lot of publicity around Julie so she can start helping people and pursue her goals. Because if you drop over 300 pounds in one year, that’s a national story. That’s insane, if you play the game of marketing and publicity, right? Everybody can know about this and deserves to know about this because-

Julie: That’s right.

Dr. John Jaquish: You watch My 600 Pound Life, they don’t get results like this because those people don’t have a mindset like you do. That’s why I think you’re very special, and the direction that you’re heading is just incredible to be part of. So thank you so much, Julie, for coming today.

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