For years, I struggled with my weight and, at different points in my life, with making my health a real priority.
I'm 6'3", and at my heaviest I weighed a little over 300 pounds.
I've always been relatively active. I played sports, took hikes, rode bikes, walked to the park with my kids, and generally enjoyed being outdoors. But life comes at you fast. Work, family, responsibilities, stress, and everyday life can quickly push health further down the priority list than it should be.
There were also periods when I took my health very seriously. During COVID, for example, I went completely vegan for more than a year. I lost weight, had great energy, felt motivated, and remember thinking more clearly.
But looking back, I wasn't building much muscle, and eventually I stopped maintaining the habits that had gotten me there. The weight came back.
That cycle continued for years.
Then, over the past few years, I went through several major changes in my life that caused me to look at everything differently.
I started asking myself some uncomfortable questions.
How do I want to live the next chapter of my life? What is my quality of life going to look like as I get older? And most importantly: how long do I want to be healthy and active for my children?
At that point, there were things about my lifestyle I simply couldn't ignore anymore. I was smoking roughly a pack of cigarettes a day. I was drinking alcohol almost daily. I wasn't happy with what I saw when I looked in the mirror, and I knew I was capable of doing better.
So I decided to change. I quit smoking cigarettes. I dramatically reduced my alcohol consumption. I became much more intentional about what I ate. And I got serious about the gym.
I Locked In
For the next two years, the gym became part of my life. Four or five days a week was normal. Sometimes I trained twice in the same day.
I would drop my kids off at school and head straight to the gym. That became my routine. If I was bored in the evening, had extra energy, or simply felt like being active, there were plenty of nights when I went back for another session.
Slowly, things started changing. The number on the scale started moving. My clothes fit differently. I became stronger. I had more energy. And, maybe most importantly, I started liking what I saw happening to myself.
Over roughly two years, I lost about 55 pounds, eventually getting down to around 250 pounds. Going from more than 300 pounds to 250 was a major accomplishment for me.
But then something happened that anybody who has spent a long time trying to lose weight can probably relate to.
I Hit a Wall
I kept doing what had been working. I trained consistently. I stayed active. I watched what I ate. But for roughly two months, the scale simply would not move.
250 pounds. That was where my body seemed determined to stay. I had hit a plateau.
That was around the time I first seriously started learning about peptides. One compound in particular kept appearing in my research: retatrutide.
My first reaction wasn't excitement. It was skepticism. I didn't think I needed something like that, and I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with it.
So instead of immediately jumping in, I started reading. And reading. And researching. I wanted to understand what it was, why people were talking about it, what researchers were studying, what people were reporting, and what the potential downsides were.
The deeper I went, the more interested I became. Eventually, based on my own research and decisions about my health, I decided to try it.
What happened next became one of the reasons I eventually wanted to create Element Health Labs.
Breaking Through My Plateau
I continued doing the things I had already been doing. I stayed active. I kept training. I kept paying attention to my nutrition. The peptide wasn't replacing the work.
But my experience felt different. One of the biggest changes I noticed was my appetite. I wasn't constantly thinking about food. Cravings that had previously been difficult for me to ignore became much less noticeable.
Over roughly the next month and a half, while maintaining my training and lifestyle, I lost another 10 pounds. I was down to approximately 240 pounds. That was the lightest I had been in so long that I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had seen that number.
And I could see it. The change in my face was one of the first things I noticed. I looked leaner. My clothes continued fitting differently. My body composition appeared to be changing.
But what surprised me was that I wasn't simply focused on becoming smaller. I was still training hard. I felt strong. I was continuing to challenge myself in the gym.
Originally, 240 pounds had been my goal. Then I got there and thought: why not 230?
Adding Tesamorelin to My Own Journey
Over the following months, I continued adjusting my approach and later incorporated tesamorelin into my personal routine. Tesamorelin was particularly interesting to me because of its studied effects involving visceral abdominal fat in its approved medical context.
Again, I continued researching. I wasn't interested in blindly taking something because somebody on social media said it worked. I wanted to understand what the compound was, what had actually been studied, and what people were experiencing.
During this period, I continued training consistently and eventually reached approximately 230 pounds, with a personal goal of around 225 pounds.
When I compare myself with where I started, the difference is difficult for me to ignore. I went from wearing approximately a 3XL/2XL Tall shirt to an XL. My pants went from around a 42-inch waist to a 36. I feel stronger. I look different. I move differently. And, most importantly, I feel healthier and more capable.
The Data Became Interesting Too
As my body changed, I became increasingly interested in measuring what was happening instead of relying entirely on the mirror or the scale. I use tools like my Hume Body Pod and WHOOP to follow trends in my body composition and overall health.
According to my Hume measurements, my visceral fat index decreased from approximately 11 to 7, which the platform categorizes in a lower range. My Hume Health Score has reached approximately 577, categorized as above average on the platform. My WHOOP has estimated my metabolic age at around 35. I'm 46 years old.
But recently, I got something even more important to me than the numbers from a smart scale or wearable: updated bloodwork.
Over the years, I had dealt with several elevated health markers, including triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, uric acid, blood pressure, and others. My recent testing showed improvement in the markers that had previously concerned me. That was huge for me.
Seeing a lower number on the scale is exciting. Looking better in the mirror feels great. Going from a size 42 waist to a 36 is something I'm extremely proud of. But this journey was never supposed to be only about looking better. I wanted to become healthier. Seeing improvement in my bloodwork and other health markers gave me another indication that the changes I had made in my life were affecting more than my appearance.
At the same time, I think it's important to be careful about assigning credit for those improvements to any one thing. Over the course of this journey, I quit smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I dramatically reduced my alcohol consumption. I lost more than 70 pounds. I changed how I ate. I consistently trained four or five days a week. I became more active. I paid greater attention to sleep and recovery. And, later in the journey, I incorporated peptides.
A lot changed. So I'm not going to look at an improved lab result and tell someone "retatrutide did this," or "tesamorelin did that." I don't know that.
What I do know is that when I look at the entire picture — my weight, waist size, body composition, strength, fitness, bloodwork, other health markers, and most importantly how I actually feel — the overall direction has been incredibly encouraging for me. I don't view any single blood test, wearable, smart scale, or algorithm as perfect. But when I combine those trends with my weight, waist size, strength, how my clothes fit, how I feel, and the changes I've seen in my health data, the overall picture means a lot to me. Everything I'm doing appears to be working together.
And that experience changed something else about the way I think about health. I don't want to only know what I weigh. I want to understand what's happening inside my body too. That's why I've become increasingly interested in bloodwork, body composition, recovery data, sleep, metabolic health, and other objective measurements.
The mirror can tell you something. The scale can tell you something. Your bloodwork can tell you something. Your wearable can tell you something. How you perform can tell you something. And how you feel can tell you something. No single number tells the whole story. For me, learning to look at the bigger picture has become just as important as the number on the scale.
But It Wasn't All Perfect
This is one of the most important parts of my story. I don't want Element Health Labs to become a place that talks only about impressive outcomes while pretending downsides don't exist. I experienced some.
With retatrutide, there were times when my appetite became so suppressed that I had to consciously remind myself to eat. At first, that was unsettling. I remember wondering whether the effect was too strong for me. My bowel habits also changed significantly. I experienced constipation and went from being very regular to sometimes only having bowel movements a few times per week. That was uncomfortable.
With tesamorelin, I noticed considerable daytime tiredness when I used it in the morning. There were times I became unusually sleepy during the day, including falling asleep on the couch when that wasn't something I normally did. I later changed the timing in my own routine and found that my experience was different.
And, of course, there was another hurdle: I didn't particularly enjoy the idea of injections. At first, that part bothered me. Eventually, however, it became routine enough that it stopped being a major issue for me.
These experiences are mine. Someone else's experience may be completely different.
What I Believe Really Changed My Life
I want to be very clear about something. I don't look at my transformation and say "a peptide did this." That would ignore years of work.
I quit smoking. I dramatically reduced alcohol. I changed how I ate. I trained four or five days a week for years. I became stronger. I became more disciplined. I paid attention to sleep and recovery. I became more interested in understanding my own health. Those things mattered enormously.
But I also won't pretend that my experience with peptides wasn't meaningful to me. For me, they became another tool in a much larger transformation. They helped me push through a point where I had felt stuck, and some of the effects I experienced were consistent with many of the things I had spent so much time researching.
That made me even more curious. And that curiosity ultimately led to Element Health Labs.
Why Element Health Labs Exists
When I first began seriously researching peptides, I discovered two very different worlds. On one side was hype — people making extraordinary claims, influencers talking as though certain compounds could solve almost anything. On the other side was information that sometimes seemed to stop at "it's investigational," "it's not FDA approved," "there isn't enough evidence."
Those facts matter. But I wanted more than that. I wanted to understand: why are people so interested in this peptide? What is it supposed to do? What does the research actually show? What have people experienced? Are human trials underway? What do credible physicians and researchers think? What are the risks? What don't we know yet?
And then I wanted to make up my own mind.
That's the philosophy behind Element Health Labs. We aren't here to tell you what to take. We aren't here to sell you peptides. And we aren't here to scare you away from them. We're here to help you understand the conversation.
We'll explore the potential. We'll look at the science. We'll talk about real experiences. We'll follow the clinical trials. We'll discuss risks and uncertainties. We'll connect you with credible researchers, physicians, creators, studies, and resources so you can continue investigating for yourself.
Because peptides are moving quickly. There is a tremendous amount we already know. There is a tremendous amount we're still learning. And I believe people deserve a place where they can explore both sides of that story.
That's why I built Element Health Labs. Science. Simplified.