PODCAST - i gained 15 pounds and i’m not happy about it
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
Over the past year, I've gained 15 pounds and I've been very, very hard on myself about it. Sound familiar? Well, the crazy thing is there is a logical explanation for my weight gain. Even [00:01:00] so today on the show, I wanna unpack with you why this is messed with my head, and it all starts with. Number one, facts don't hurt the story attached.
To them does. I mean, the whole reason why I created my three pillars of Healthy Living guide, which you can grab in the show notes or in the description below. If you're watching this on YouTube and ultimately integrating these three pillars into my life. I lost a total of 45 pounds. Maybe for you, you've lost.
Less, or maybe you've lost more weight, maybe you've put less weight on than 15 pounds. Maybe you've put more weight than 15 pounds, no matter what it is. I do believe that it is important to state the facts. So as I go through the facts for my situation, I want you to start thinking about what are the facts for you in your [00:02:00] life?
What are you going through right now? For me, the facts start. In December, 2022, in December, 2022, that was 12 20 22, I weighed. 200 pounds. I had just finished running the Honolulu marathon and it, I had no idea that I had ballooned to 200 pounds, which at 5 8, 5 9, this is definitely overweight, and I was slow.
I ran a five and a half hour marathon, which for me, after running a four and a half hour marathon a year prior, in a harder race that was a mile above sea level versus at sea level, I was baffled and I was disgusted with myself. I. Wasn't a really bad place. So that was December, 2022. [00:03:00] Then you fast forward to September, 2023.
I implemented the three pillars of healthy living movement, tracking and accountability, and I got all the way down to 165 pounds. Now I actually got. To 165 pounds about three months later, so January, February, March, 2023. But I remember this specifically, and I call out September, 2023 specifically because this is when I ran my 50 mile race and I ran it in 13 hours.
I weighed 165 pounds and I finished my first 50 mile race in. 13 hours. I was ecstatic. I didn't set any records. I didn't even compete, but I finished a 50 mile race, and more importantly, I had lost 35 pounds. Now we can look at just one year later, September, 2024. I had maintained my wake and. Still [00:04:00] weighed 165 pounds.
And guess what? This is when I won my a hundred K race. So back in December, 2022, I ran 26.2 miles, and I did it in about 5.5 hours. Then we fast forward to September, 2023. I ran 50 miles and I did it in about 13 hours. Then we fast forward to September, 2024. I'm at the same weight and I ran a hundred kilometers, which is 62.2 miles and.
I ran this in 12 hours. I share this because the facts are extremely important. I want you to unpack this in your head as well. I weigh 165 pounds in twenty twenty three, a hundred sixty five pounds in 2024. Now let's look at 2025. So in July, 2025, I weighed [00:05:00] 155 pounds. And guess what? I dropped outta my race.
I only ran 20 miles instead of, or out of 62.2 miles. I weighed less though. See, the reason why I'm doing this because as I'm doing this on the board, I'm unpacking this in my head. And the facts are so important for you and I to look at, especially after losing a ton of weight and you start gaining weight back on.
It can be extremely emotional and it can really mess with us. This is why we have to look at the facts, 'cause now we fast forward to present days. So as of recording this, it is early. 2026 or specifically? It is February, so oh 2 20 26. This video's probably not gonna come out in February, but in February, 2026, [00:06:00] I weigh 170 pounds.
Now you're probably looking at this and you're laughing at me. You're like, Johnny, yeah, you've gained 15 pounds over the past year or so, or little less than a year, but you won your race and 165 pounds. And you're still 30 pounds less than the 200 pounds you were when you started your journey. Hey, I get it, but this is what's going on in my head and maybe this is what's going on in your head.
So we wanna write down the facts. So I invite you to write down the facts. So this is my weight history, but there's much more to it. There's more to the story. And I bet for you there's more to your story. Let's look at training. Here's the training shift that's occurred [00:07:00] over the past year or since this jump from 155 pounds to 170 pounds.
Well, I went from running a hundred miles a week, and that's all I did. I did a hundred miles a week and that's it. I wasn't lifting. I was very one dimensional. I was running a hundred miles a week, and now I'm running 20 miles a week, so I'm decreased by 80 miles. That is a huge cardio difference, but that's not it.
I have also started to add heavy lifting, and I'm doing this one to two times per week. And I'm lifting heavier than I have in decades. The only time that I've lifted heavier, and [00:08:00] it's specifically with one lift, my bench press was in high school, could do 200 plus pounds in high school. Now I'm doing my body weight or a little bit more, but I'm not even focused on bench press.
I'm focused on squats, dead lifts, and all these other lifts in between when I'm lifting heavy and I'm lifting heavier. Than I ever have. I have added hit back, thank God, because I missed hit. And I'm also pretty sure that one of the reasons why I dropped out of this race when I weighed. 155 pounds is because I was no longer doing hit.
Hit is so good for so many things when it comes to running. It helps when times are hard. When it gets mentally harder, it keeps things more fun 'cause you get faster. So this is how my training looks different. This is very [00:09:00] different than where I was here. And of course I lost a bunch of weight 'cause I lost a bunch of muscle.
Now what is your story? I want you to write the facts of your story down right now. It's going to help you. Just talking through this with you right now has helped me. And I don't want you to just keep it in here. I want you to write it down, write it down on a piece of paper, write it down in your journal, but get the facts.
Down, then we can start taking the emotion out of the fact that you've gained a little bit of weight. Number two, this was never about weight. It was about identity. This is crazy now that I'm realizing this so much is changing internally for me about my weight gain. Because here's what's happening to me right now is weight loss.
Equals [00:10:00] success control. It makes you feel like you have control over your life. It makes you feel like a successful person. When I first went from 200 to 195 to a hundred ninety, a hundred eighty five, even like one pound at a time. This felt amazing. I felt successful. I felt like I had control. So here's what happens.
Weight gain
equals, or at least this is how it feels after you've lost weight and you've. Put your identity, you've gotten your identity kinda stuck in this frame of I am a person who takes care of myself, who's healthy, and who loses weight. What happens is weight gain feels like I [00:11:00] failure, loss of control.
Especially if you're eating similarly, it can feel like the control that you had is gone. You feel like a failure. You feel like your identity is changing, and you start worrying that you're gonna go back to the person you were when you gained all that weight. Scares the heck outta me. And identity goes well beyond the number itself.
This is why it's so important to get your facts right and get your facts with yourself, right? Because for me, before I got my facts right, I was thinking, well, I am an elite. Ultra athlete at a specific weight. Even though when I look at the facts at 155 pounds, I dropped outta my race at 165 pounds, which is just five pounds less than where I am currently.
I won my race, and if you look at it the first time I race at 165 pounds, I did a lot worse [00:12:00] than the second time. So when you start looking at the facts, you start realizing that your identity, who you are as a person, has very little to do. With your weight now by having a healthier weight in your life, having a healthier body weight promotes so many good things for you and I, and it's okay.
What I'm telling you and what I'm telling myself is it is okay if you gain a little bit of weight and you have these seasonal changes. Of weight. Now, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a healthcare professional, so if you are working with a doctor who's telling you that you should not gain any weight and you need to keep your weight down, that's completely different.
What I'm saying is that you may be gaining weight for other reasons. For me, it's probably because I'm doing less cardio. So I am storing a little more fat, but I'm also creating more muscle, less muscle breaking down. 'cause I'm not doing this ridiculous a hundred mile week cardio that needs to be fueled by something.
And if it can't be fueled by carbs [00:13:00] and fat, then it's gonna go and get fueled on muscle. And that's why muscle breaks down. That's why I probably weigh 155 pounds. But here's what happens. I, I just found myself, and I'm still, and this is what I'm working through, is I am afraid and I'm afraid of a few things.
Maybe you're afraid of these things. I'm afraid of going backwards. I'm like, wow. So I went from 200 pounds all the way down. To 155 pounds, and now I'm starting to go back up. Well, even in the app, right? So I weigh myself every week, which I highly recommend that you do, no matter if you're trying to gain weight, lose weight, or maintain weight.
I recommend you weigh yourself on a weekly basis to give yourself some data. Have a whole episode about that, that you can check out of the podcast when I log my weight in my fitness pill. It gives me a graph [00:14:00] and it shows highs and lows, shows how. Right now it's been steadily going up. I was at 1 55 and now I'm at one 70, and what scares me is I'm like, is it gonna stop there or am I gonna balloon all the way up here or even more?
That's what gets scary. Am I going backwards? Am I just slipping one pound at a time? Am I losing my edge? This is a big one for me. Until I looked at the facts as I thought that, oh, well, now that I weigh 15 pounds more, maybe I'm a worse athlete, a worse endurance athlete. But when I look at the facts, I was the best athlete that I ever have been in my life at 165 pounds.
1 65 pounds isn't very far from 170, and I'm rounding up too. This morning I was 1 69 0.9. Last week I was 1 [00:15:00] 69 0.7, so I'm. Not even, I haven't even hit 170 pounds yet, but in my head, I'm starting to create this story. Instead of focusing on the facts, I'm creating a story because I have my identity wrapped around a certain weight and performing at a specific level.
But when I start unraveling all this, I realize that hey. It's okay to be afraid. It makes sense why I'm afraid, but I don't have to be afraid because gaining 15 pounds doesn't mean I'm gonna gain 45 pounds. Doesn't mean that I'm even gonna stay here for that long. I could easily, once summer hits and we're outside, we're walking, we're hiking, we're running more, I'm gonna lose the weight and get back to 155 pounds.
And then I might have a story there about how I weigh too little. This is why you and I need to be very careful with how we look at our weight and [00:16:00] how we get our identity wrapped up in a number. And that brings me to number three. Progress isn't linear, it's seasonal. Different seasons of life, you're gonna weigh a different amount.
Maybe it's plus minus 10 pounds. If that's what it is for me, then my ideal weight is 1 65, so plus 10. We're looking at 1 75 minus 10. We're looking at 1 55. Maybe it's different goals. I went from thinking that I needed to weigh less and less and less to be a better ultra runner. And then I proved to myself July of last year that 1 55 was not better than 1 65.
I feel better [00:17:00] at 1 65. Maybe it's because when I looked at myself in a picture a couple weeks ago, I thought I looked fat. Have you ever had that happen? Your weight? The scale doesn't even show that you're fat, but when you look at yourself, you think that you look fat. That's the worst. But when I really look at it, I worked so incredibly hard to lose 45 pounds to go from 200 pounds all the way down to 155 pounds, and then I realized 155 pounds.
I don't even like it, but I worked so hard. And that was the season in life I was in, losing 45 pounds. And I know that you've worked hard losing the weight that you've lost. So what really happens is it's not about gaining weight, it's about what gaining weight represents. For me, gaining weight feels [00:18:00] like losing progress.
Because if progress is linear, then if I went from 200 pounds to 155 pounds, then going back to 170 pounds is 15 pounds worse. Than 155 pounds. Progress is not linear. My weight doesn't define me, and your weight doesn't define you. I would love to hear about your journey. You can leave me a comment below if you're watching this on YouTube.
If you are listening to this as a podcast, then I invite you to email me [email protected], J-O-N-N-Y, at athlete with asthma.com, and if you want. By integrating the three pillars of healthy Living movement, tracking and accountability into your life, and grab your free copy link in the show notes and in the YouTube description below, or go to [00:19:00] www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
