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Email: Cale.Dansbee@TOPSTONE.com
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Email: Cale.Dansbee@TOPSTONE.com
Join me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/caledansbee
Join me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/topstonefitness
Join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/caledansbee
Join me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/topstonefitness
Check out my blog: http://topstone.com/blog

Visit my coach site at: http://beachbodycoach.com/topstone
Visit my Shakeology site at: http://myshakeology.com/topstone


Until recently, I wasn't much fun on the basketball court or football field, or even the snow covered mountains for that reason. I was just too fat to be of any use in those capacities. I made a heck of a basement dwelling WOW player though! And I had the body to show for it!

Someday, I'll write a book and title it "how I mastered breaking bad habits", because that is what I've spent my adult life figuring out how to do.

That project will have to wait a bit for two reasons:

1. I'm close to figuring it out, but don't have all the answers yet on how to teach someone else to break bad habits.

2. I still have some fitness/nutrition/health goals I'd like to hit before my 44th birthday in May.

You see, somewhere around 1992, when I was stationed at the Keflavik Naval Air Station, in Keflavik Iceland (yep, I lived there and absolutely loved it for two amazing years), I started to put on weight. Slowly at first -- so slowly in fact, that I didn't really notice that I had already put on enough weight that part of my welcome package to Iceland, was a 'Welcome to the Fat-Boy Program' letter from the Air Force.

I look back at pictures of me from 1992 and think "what I wouldn't give to look like that guy again", even though that guy was fat by Air Force standards!

I tried to lose some weight while in Iceland, but upon arriving at my new duty station in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was again welcomed by the gloomy letter :( The Air Force keeps really good records and that isn't always a good thing :)

I'd like to say my life was hard, that I worked long hours, and bla bla bla, and didn't have the time to eat right and exercise, but that would be crap and we all know that.

Instead, I'll just be straight up and say I worked the night shift and discovered that when you left the flight line at 11:00PM, you could still find beer and hot wings in Vegas!

Yep, you guessed it, the weight just kept creeping on. When I left Iceland in 1994, I was 10 pounds overweight according to standards. By the time I got home from Iraq, and after being injured in the terrorist bombing of the military base called Khobar Towers in June 1996, I felt I'd had enough and I left Las Vegas and the Air Force in 1997. I was 20 pounds overweight according to standards when I left.

Let's fast forward through the next handful of years when I moved to southern California, transitioned out of the military, found a job, went through a pretty rough divorce, got laid off, found another job, worked full time while getting a bachelor's degree in technology, tried to be the best dad I could even though my boys were moved out of state, and so the sad story moves on.

This isn't a sad tale however; it's quite the opposite in fact!

Sometime in mid-2009, and at a whopping 240 pounds (I'm only 5'5" tall with an ideal body weight of 140-150), I decided it was time to change. I had applied for a life insurance policy to provide for my family should something happen to me, and I'm pretty sure the lab tech got 'iced caramel macchiato' when he drew my blood. The only numbers higher than my blood sugar, lipids, and cholesterol, were the rates for the insurance. Something had to change.

I make a pretty good living and live in a pretty nice house with plenty of room. One of those rooms was my billiard room. When I knew something had to change, I decided to lose the pool table and turn the room into a gym. It's not great, but exactly what I needed. While I waited for pieces of gym equipment to arrive, I ordered P90X -- Go with the big dogs or stay on the porch I always say, and stay on the porch is exactly where this basset hound of a dog stayed. My wife has a picture of me pathetically lying on the floor in the middle of my gym, my body in the shape of an X...I wonder if that is why they called it that? :)

I was down, but not out. I wasn't injured, at least on the outside. My pride took a beating and I knew that even the weight loss method of P90X was going to be harder than I ever imagined. I had to start smaller and work my way up. I knew that reaching my goals was going to be far harder than I had ever imagined. If you are reading my profile bio, this is an important message that I want you to get. If you are like me (the old me) and morbidly obese, it won't be easy. I carry around at least 100 pounds of respect for guys like Tony Horton and others in the BeachBody community. I had experienced just a little of what it would take to be like them and I failed! Those guys and girls deserve every single ounce of respect I can carry around for what they have achieved.

I had to find a way to turn all of that disappointment and those depressing feelings into something else or it would be the end of me. I spent hours watching the P90X videos while I sat on my couch. It's funny, the music is great, and the workouts they do are absolutely amazing. As I watched, I noticed that their excitement was crawling out of my TV and into me. I could feel it and I liked it.

A 1000 mile journey begins with a single step and for me, watching those videos were that first step. I visited my doctor, got a thorough checkup, including a full lab work-up, and I met with a nutritionist, where I began to study and learn about changing my eating habits.

This is where the 'breaking bad h

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