About Scott

I lost 110 pounds, and then I got fit. Now I’m trying to be a fit dad.

As the Co-Owner Stanley Boxing & Fitness Gym I’m an MMA, Boxing, Kickboxing, and Jiu Jitsu Strength and Conditioning Coach, Personal Trainer, Olympic Lifting Coach, Sports Coach, I compete in kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but most importantly, I’m a Dad.

My bio below is my back story, a story of a a former athlete, turned fat man, turned health enthusiast, and now turned dad! It’s the same bio I’ve used since I started this blog in 2009, back when it was called “Your Inner Skinny”.  I haven’t written much over the last 7 years, basically since I’ve become a dad, but I’m hoping to change that and hoping to share some parenting tips and experiences, as well as share my health and fitness knowledge I’ve accumulated over the last 13 years in the industry.

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I grew up in a very small community on a small island on the East Coast of Canada, Prince Edward Island. I was an active kid. I played hockey, baseball, golf, and rugby all at the competitive level, and then I played pretty much any other sport recreationally. As athletic as I was, I was never a gym guy. I was a small and lean and I only weighed about 155 pounds when I graduated high school.

When I was 18 years old I had the opportunity to play Junior A Hockey but unfortunately I tore my MCL, LCL, and my meniscus, and required surgery. Instead of chasing the false dream that I was going to the NHL, I decided to focus on my education and went to college for Interactive Multimedia; studying a three year diploma program full time and graduating in 10 months.

When I went to college I stopped playing sports all together and started drinking a lot of beer, almost at a competitive level. I started smoking cigarettes and got up to a pack and a half a day. This just set me up for a lifestyle that I would come to regret.

With my first desk job at 20 years old, and my new terrible lifestyle, there was a point in my life when I weighed somewhere between 265 and 275 lbs. I was sedentary, I smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day, I drank 8-12 beer every night, I didn’t cook and I ate nothing but the worst kind of take-out food in mass quantities. I was the epitome of someone who was on the fast track to a short life.

I lived this way for five or six years, not knowing or even noticing that I was obese and that I had put on 110 lbs to 120 lbs. It’s funny to say that I didn’t notice putting on that much weight, especially after looking at my pictures from back then, but I didn’t see it at all, and never understood why my friends and family mocked me about my weight, which they did regularly!

After hearing “man, you’re fat” and “dude, what happened to you” for about five years, I remember finally thinking, “enough is enough” and decided I needed to do something to change my life for the better. At this point in my life I still hadn’t realized the how or why I put on 100 lbs, unfortunately that wouldn’t happen for another 10 or more years, but at least I was finally about to do something about my unhealthy lifestyle.

When I first started my weight loss journey, talking openly about it, especially as a male, wasn’t a thing. There were a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of failed efforts emotionally and physically. I yo-yoed with my weight and I failed more times than I can count.  After attempting to do this on my own and failing, I decided I needed to get some professional advice and that’s when I hired my first personal trainer. I was still scared shitless of the gym but he showed me what to do, how to do it, how often to do it and then told me not to worry about what anyone else in the gym thought. As we trained together, he shared his own personal weight loss story and it inspired me.

Once I started to lose weight and feel good, unfortunately I ended up at the opposite end of the spectrum; I went from an unhealthy 265+ lbs to an unhealthy 155 lbs. I was cutting calories way below what should have been my daily intake, not eating properly or not eating at all sometimes, and working out far too hard and too frequently. I popped diet pills, caffeine pills, took all kinds of diet supplements, and I tried pretty much anything anyone would give me to lose weight. I went from the “fat guy” to the “skinny guy” and not in a healthy way. I was skinny, but I still wasn’t healthy.

That’s when I realized I needed to get educated and get healthy and be smart about it.

It’s been 16 years since I finally reached my goal weight and fitness level and I’m now the co-owner of a gym, Olympic Lifting coach, I’m a personal trainer, a weight resistance trainer and a sports coach and conditioning coach of all kinds of athletes. I’ve had LOTS of ups and downs along the way, including a severe motorcycle accident in which I still suffer from pain daily, and even though my nutrition isn’t still a daily struggle for me anymore, my journey is far from over!

After dealing with the ups and downs of weight loss for several years, and having no one to talk to about it (guys don’t share their feelings ya know), I decided to start up this site as a personal blog to vent about what was going on in my weight loss life. My site has evolved and changed a lot over the past 13 years; It’s gone from a simple blog that my family and friends read when they were bored at work, to a hub where you can look for workouts, recipes, fitness tips and of course still read my rantings in my blog. Mental health is now one of my biggest focuses, and I’ll be writing about this a lot on here. I’ve come to realize that a lot of, if not all of, my issues with food, alcohol, and other substances came/comes from my anxiety. These were my coping mechanisms. The only time in my life I can remember not feeling anxious all the time is when I numbing it with with food, booze, and women. I plan on tackling this more on here in some posts, and I hope to help others along the way.