DAVID MCCLAIN: HOW TO BECOME YOUR OWN HERO.

Losing weight seems like a pretty easy concept, when you think about it. You eat less, exercise more and the weight is supposed to come off. If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably lost weight many, many times…so many times, you’re an old pro at it. You may even have your ‘go-to’ diet or exercise program, powering up your old Weight Watcher’s account or starting back to the gym whenever the weight starts to creep up. But what happens when you go off that diet or stop that workout program? You gain it right back, sometimes with a few extra pounds thrown in. So what you really want to know isn’t how to lose weight, but how to lose it and then make it stay lost…forever. There’s no real secret to losing weight. The real challenge is making it permanent. Here is our interview with David McClain, a guy that one day, decided to become his own hero.

So David You won 1000$ from Beachbody.

Correct. I was the August Ultimate Health Transformation. And I was fortunate enough to also coach the January Ultimate Health Transformation Winner, Duane Higley.

You are now a Beachbody Coach. What is a beachbody coach and what do you do to help people?

I became a Beachbody coach in June. My job as a coach is to provide motivation and inspiration to people who are looking to change their lives, and use a Beachbody program to do it. I help people with their programs and provide accountability and motivation. I am their virtual fitness coach.

How was your life before INSANITY?

I was an athlete my entire life. I was an All-American Football player and received over a dozen Division 1 scholarship offers. I played division 1 football for Rutgers University and earned my degree. Unfortunately too many concussions ended football for me, and I could not risk playing again. That put me in a depressed state and had me wondering what my purpose was now. I became addicted to fast food and for 3 years ate it almost every day. From graduation to January 1st, 2013 i had gained 150 lbs and now weighed well over 450 lbs. Before the Insanity workout I ignored my health. I focussed too much on going out, and working. I worked out, but it didn’t matter. The food I was eating was killing me, and no amount of exercise could make up for the trash I was eating. I was killing myself with food.

What was you weight before you really started your journey?

i weight 462 lbs

What was your first step of your new lifestyle, What finally decided you that it was time to change your habits?

I get this question a lot and its hard to answer with a definitive moment. In reality, one day I just decided to change, and got to work. There was no defining moment. I can say that after December, and Christmas I was looking at pictures of myself, shocked at how big I had gotten. I thin that was the first time I really noticed how bad it had gotten… And it wasn’t long after that when I began to take the steps to set myself up for this amazing journey. What was your first step of your new lifestyle. I had done insanity before. I just jumped into it and made it around 30 days before i quit. the second time I tried it I quit after 3 weeks. I didn’t want to quit this time. In fact, I told myself I would quit my job before I quit the Insanity workout. I needed to make this time different. I had some results the first 2 times I did the Insanity workout but nowhere near what I wanted. After doing some soul searching I finally realized that food was killing me, not workouts. So for 3 weeks I spent all of my free time researching food. I quit fast food in December of 2012 and it has been over 430 since I last ate it. Remember i was eating it every day for 3 years, so this was a really really really tough transition. So before I even jumped into Insanity in March, I had to change my diet, through research and will power.

With all the success you had up to now, it would be easy for some to think that you didn’t have to deal with failures. Did you have any failure?

The most valuable part of my journey was the fact that it wasn’t perfect. I have a video on my Youtube channel (Youtube.com/elonfootball73) that talks about the value of failure. To me failure is the most essential part of any change. Ease is our generations curse. We want everything to be easy. Because of this we lose resiliency. This is why I love following people’s fitness journeys, because odds are it is the hardest thing they have ever done, and there is no way to Cheat, or take a short cut. If you want the results you have to earn them. There were a million failures in my journey. Days when I ate too much, skipped workouts, lost motivation and even GAINED WEIGHT. But what I never lost was resiliency and accountability. Those 2 traits helped me overcome those difficulties. I had a lot of failures, and I am so happy I did, because I wouldn’t be where I am today without those lessons. It’s not easy to stay motivated every day.

What do you do to keep your motivation?

Motivation does not last. You should never expect a motivator to last longer than 1 workout. If you have something that motivates you, and it lasts longer than a workout, then that is a bonus. Fact is our mind is a lot stronger than we think, and it is really hard to reprogram. We can trick it for a couple days, but eventually it wants to go back to the routine you have always had. Our mind does not like being uncomfortable, and to someone who was living a life of fast food and very little activity, doing something like Insanity was VERY uncomfortable. The trick is to find a new motivator EVERYDAY. Don’t count on that original motivator to last. The whole “when you don’t feel like working out, remember why you started” ideology is complete crap. Odds are if you have lost motivation, then that thing that made you start, doesn’t have any effect on you anymore. So rather than remembering why you started, create a new reason to start again.

It’s not always easy to conciliate familly, work, leisure and working out. How do you manage your time?

I am at a point in my life where I can be pretty selfish. My family schedule and work schedule allows me to balance everything out pretty well. Fact is, sometimes you have to be selfish. I am a social worker, and I help people all day every day. It put me in a mindset of “help others. ignore yourself.” That is incredibly unhealthy. A lot of people put work, and family and friends before health, and fact is, you just can’t do that. You have to put your health first..EVEN BEFORE FAMILY, because your family is NOTHING without your health. I never believed that until I started this journey. Now obviously that doesn’t mean ignore your kids and spouse, but make sure you are scheduling time to take care of yourself before you schedule anything else. This journey requires a sickening amount of dedication for a short period of time. Once you lay the foundation then you can go back to a normal lifestyle, but you have to get realllllly abnormal for a while in order to develop those good habits.

What is a typical day for David McClain?

Wake up around 10:00 AM. 12 PM: Drink my Bullet Proof Coffee (organic Coffee, Grassfed Butter, organic Coconut Oil) and Shakeology . Work from 12-8 PM Ususally have almonds and a banana during the day. Stretch from 8-9 PM Eat Dinner at 10 PM (Grilled Chicken, Baked Sweet Potato, Broccoli 5 nights a week). Workout #1 at 11 PM (Ususally Kettle bells or a custom upper body circuit). Wife gets home from work around 12 AM and we workout together (T25) then go to bed at around 2AM. Hours are odd but we both work evenings so its no different than people who work 9-5s.

Let’s talk about your new eating habits.

Through research I have adopted the Intermittent Fasting technique of eating. Eating within an 8-9 hour window, and fasting for 15-16 hours. I choose to eat 3 meals a day because thats what works for me. Everything you have heard about 6-8 meals a day is bad science. It honestly does not matter how many times you eat. Your metabolism will not be effected. So if you are forcing yourself to eat 6 times a day, STOP doing it, it’s a myth. I also do meal prepping and standardized dinners for 2 reasons. the first reason is simple, ease. Prepping your meals on Sunday makes eating good food incredibly easy and cooking up 12 chicken breasts, a bunch of broccoli and sweet potatoes is cheap, and simple. The 2nd reason is more complete. I have very little will power with food. I am an emotional eater, so if I had a bad day, i would eat bad food. I still have trouble with it, so rather than trusting myself to choose a meal, I keep it the same and treat it like an extension of my workout. Comforts me to know that dinner is one thing I don’t have to think about… Just pop it in the microwave and eat. While doing something like Insanity it is important to eat for PERFORMANCE not for Pleasure. If you don’t eat well, you will not perform well, and odds are you will either quit, or get very little results. Either way you are wasting your time and money, if you aren’t keeping an impeccable eating schedule.

Do you cont your daily calories intake?

I do not, have not and will never count calories. Mostly because it’s such an inexact science. It works for some people, and gives them a lot of confidence, which is awesome. And if you’re reading this and you are one of those people, by all means keep doing it. It’s just not for me. I make sure almost all of the calories I eat come from REAL food and I get along just fine.

What is your biggest motivation?

My biggest motivator is motivating others. The amount of people who have used my story to start their own is incredible, and that keeps me going every single day.

We all have bad days. What keep pushing you on bad days?

You answered your own question. Just acknowledging that everyone has bad days is the best way to get over it. The funny thing is, people go to work when they are having a bad day, but they think its OK to skip a workout when they are having a bad day… I don’t understand that logic. When you make your workout mandatory, that mindset does not exist.

How many pounds you lost in your first Insanity workout round and how many pounds in total you lost up to now?

In 63 days I lost 53 lbs. Since january 1st 2013 I have lost 143 lbs.

You use to say that success is not a number, could you explain it ?

I hate scales. Always have. They ALWAYS lie. The amount you weigh literally means nothing, unless you have to “Make weight” for one reason or another. But most people do not have to make weight, so why are they so obsessed with what a scale says. Fact is, there is so much that goes into the amount you weigh, that to think lowering that number is ALWAYS a good thing is a bad way of thinking. If you want to feel real success, throw your damn scale in the trash and start focusing on what you look like and HOW YOU FEEL. The ONLY reason I weigh myself is for Beachbody. Other than that I would never weigh myself. Because it’s just to important, and unless you have a $10,000 BodPod that can accurately measure your Body Composition, you have no idea what you are sling and gaining. Weight is not a barometer of health. I still weigh 320 lbs and I am healthier than a lot of my “skinny” friends. If a Doctor put me on a scale he would tell me the opposite, but if he took my BP and ran my blood tests, he would be proven wrong.

Could you tell us what will change in our life by doing some workouts like INSANITY or any other exercise on a daily basis?

It doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure there is a schedule, a diet plan, and make sure it’s really freaking hard. If it’s not hard, it won’t change you. Forcing yourself to complete something hard really teaches you a lot about yourself. Every journey is different, but one thing remains consistent, when you finish something that only .00001% of the world has finished, you see yourself in a different light. You gain an incredibly amount of confidence from completely these workouts.

I read that you participated to a Spartan Race? Could you tell us how it was?

The Spartan Race was interesting HAHA. I signed up 8 months before the race, then forgot about it… For some reason I was convinced the race was at the end of November… When actually it was at the end of September. If you don’t know what a Spartan Race is, it is a 5K with 22 obstacles, and this particular race took place inside a baseball stadium so it was almost all Stairs in between obstacles. So back to the funny part…

I am sitting at my desk at work, in September, on a Friday, pumped for the upcoming weekend and my CHEAT MEAL, when one of my colleagues comes up to me and asks me ” What heat are you in tomorrow?” I had no idea what she was talking about so I asked her ” What the heck are you talking about?” She said, “You know, the Spartan race is tomorrow. What heat are you?” and thats when it set in … The race wasn’t in November… It was tomorrow. I hadn’t trained at all for the race, it was my first race, I had already paid for it… I was screwed. I spent the entire night trying to think up an excuse, but finally just say… “Do it.” So I woke up, stretched, drank a ton of water and drove to Philadelphia. I finished in the top 10% of my age group, at 350 lbs. It was an amazing experience and proof that we are a lot stronger than we think. My only training for this race was the Insanity workouts that I had been doing up until that date and spastic jogs around my neighborhood.

Do you have tips or tricks you would like to tell to help people having a healthier life?

Do research! Always Be Learning. Things change all the time and its your responsibility to stay on top of them. The health industry asunder a microscope right now, which is great because we are now learning what ACTUALLY works. So keep learning, and get into the mindset of health. The more you put into your brain the more informed your decisions will be when it comes to food and fitness.

Questions from our members:


Raquel PÈrez GuillÈn:
I would like to know how is he managing to keep his new shape, I mean, what kind of workout is he doing to just keep the changes and what kind of diet is he having actually. I mean, I don’t know if eating normally and doing exercise as T25 is enough…

Staying motivated to change is key. Finishing Insanity was good but it was no where near the end. I spend almost every day learning about health and implementing new techniques into my life. From upgrading my coffee to eating organic, to challenging myself by cutting out beer for lent, or preparing for 5Ks 10Ks and the Tough Mudder in April. I guess my advice would be to Just always have SOMETHING coming up or going on, that tests you. Don’t let the journey get monotonous. I’m sure at some point I will be able to relax with my crazy workouts and diet, but I haven’t earned that yet, so i consistently challenge myself to ensure that what i am doing always has a purpose.

Christopher Roderick:

My question would be after 63 days of Insanity workout whats next re do Insanity or switch to one of Shawn T other programs T25 Alysum ect.
Honestly, jumping right back into insanity might be a bit monotonous. I know a lot of people who do it, but i couldn’t do that. I would say try something new. Stick with Shaun T though!

This interview was originally published on Worldwide Fitness Nation.
Worldwide Fitness Nation was created to help, advise and motivate people wishing to take control of their health. It all started with videos on YouTube, followed by the creation of a Facebook group and finally a website where articles are found, challenges and most of the advice posted on Facebook.

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