Bob's Astonishing Transformation: How He Lost 170 Pounds of Fat

0:00 Hey guys, it's Dr. Ryan. And today we're going to be talking with one of my patients on my long term patients. Robert, he likes to go by Bob. And he and I have been working together for a little more than two years. And he's going to talk a little bit about his experience with the clinic. So Bob, why don't you start? Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from what you do some of your hobbies and your family? 0:23 Yeah, so I'm from the northeast, Massachusetts, I'm a practicing dentist, I do cosmetic dentistry, reconstructive dentistry, I just recently sold a bunch of practices, I had multiple locations. When I met you, Dr. Ryan, I had five locations, and I had probably a staff of 50 people working for, for me, I manage about six different doctors in those practices over the past year have sold off all that one. And I've decided, you know, the last 10 or 15 years of my career, I'm going to be just focused into where I started. And it's really been great, I've actually been able to go out of network. And it's just a completely different way to practice and really, really enjoying, you know, I'm planning on enjoying the rest of my career, actually, you know, I have a significant other and two kids, one in college, one about to go to college, and I have a bonus kid who came, he's a 14 year old, who's in our life, too. And we're very busy, you know, between school activities, and hockey games, and all the things that you know, normal family would do. So that's what, that's what I do here. 1:34 That's really cool. I'm glad to see that you've been so successful. And I still remember when you started, how incredibly busy you are. And I'm really amazed at how well it turned out. It's really awesome to be able to focus on the aspects of dentistry that you love, and you definitely conveyed that which is, which is cool. Just Switching gears, let's talk a little bit about your experiences before you joined the clinic. So specifically, let's go back, well, a couple years, two or three years ago, before he started working with me, what were some of the problems that you were trying to solve and asking in terms of your business, family dynamics, energy levels, motivation mood, specifically, what are the things that you were looking to fix to improve? Yeah, so 2:19 running a practice, you know, that consisted of multiple locations and all these team members running around full book of patience myself, running around, trying to manage all of that could be quite overwhelming to say the least, I didn't have a lot of support organization around me, I was it, you know, in the people who worked with me. So I was putting in, you know, significant days, like, you know, 16 to 20 hour days, sometimes, you know, is pretty crazy running around like that, and for my entire life, you know, up until my professional career, I was an athlete, you know, road crew in college, I was a lifter powerlifter played around with bodybuilding, but didn't really like to diet too much too much. You know, after 20 years of marriage and a divorce and running these practices and trying to keep my my life together, I let my my physical self go ended up gaining a significant amount of weight. My physician, you know, did normal blood work and I was full on type two diabetic some significant red flags started coming up health wise, I had zero energy level like zero. So my significant others, she's very active, she's an ultra marathoner, she likes to hike and that's where we originally met, you know, and connected with was being able to go and hike especially in the mountains in New England and spend our weekends but I wasn't able to really do that anymore. carrying the weight like nearly 400 pounds actually trying to carry that weight up a mountain was almost impossible. And then trying to run around in a full book of patients all day long. Just I was completely exhausted every single day. 4:04 Looking back to that I am just amazed at how you're able to keep it together you know, you know working those crazy hours your family commitments and spending some time with with your significant other it's just I just it's uncredible to see are able to do that particularly with the persona that you present to me when he first started so I mean kudos to you on that it's pretty amazing because it's there's 4:27 a lot of veneer you know, just just real like grit and determination more than anything, you know, obviously I was suffering like physically suffering and and I went to my physician, longtime physician, he he really had no answers he you know, he put me on some oral medication for the the type to put me on a high blood pressure medication and basically you know, I asked for support with a nutritionist I asked for, you know, to have different hormone levels checked and it was just like dead end after dead end he basically He said, You need to go and have bariatric surgery. And I went and went down that road of going to the seminars that make you do the seminars. And one of the things that was interesting was the bariatric surgeon said, you know, we've done eight or 900 of these, and I don't want to compare the same, you know, bariatric surgery to dentistry. But, you know, if I only did 800 crowns, I'm not an expert yet. You know, so for me, you know, I do well, north of 1000 a year, you know, for 20 years, we're talking about 20,000 Crown procedures, that's an expert to me, you know, but a bariatric surgeon that that's, you know, it's not eight or 900, well, that just didn't seem like the, and then they paraded a bunch of people across the stage who have had it, and none of them had the physiques that I wanted to have not a single one, you know, and they said that it was life changing, and what have you, and I'm sure it was, but that's not the life that I wanted. I wanted to come back to the life that I had pre my first marriage pre owning all these practices, 6:04 were you a D, one athlete, I could see one collegiate athlete when you're running crew, I mean, that's 6:08 yeah, so yeah, yep, for sure. So 6:11 that's a really big deal. So I can, I can see how your expectations would be a lot higher than someone who is, you know, fairly sedentary most of their life, he kind of talked about this a little bit, but I do want to kind of dive down a little more into this, the problems that you're having the low energy levels, just the fatigue, black motivation, how did this negatively impact people around you your inquiry or your business, or just just your environment in general, like, how, what were some things that you noticed that that you wish you could improve, but because of the way that you felt you weren't able to do much about them, 6:46 I'll be a little bit vulnerable here, I do believe that my first wife was attracted to me as a D, one athlete. And over time, you know, I no longer looked or acted as if that I was that person. And that's probably a major contributor to the failure of that match. Right, and doubling down on being, you know, a good provider and all that can only make up for so much, right? When you're no longer able to, you know, do the things that, you know, brought you together and even keep up with my kids running around when they were younger, became really difficult. So I think that was a huge detriment, right. And then, you know, as far as work goes, every day, you know, I was almost crippled with, with back pain from being hunched over, working on people, and trying to, you know, just basically drinking a pot of coffee trying to get trying to get things done. And I didn't ironically, I didn't eat during the day at all, I would eat when I got home, and I would, so it's basically doing intermittent fasting, but I was blowing out my, my calories in the evening before I went to bed, you know, and, and I also multiple times ended up in the ER for severe dehydration while I was doing all this today, because I wouldn't even drink water. Because I was so focused on on running these businesses, that I was not able to even take care of basic needs, like drinking water for crying, you know, and now you haven't, you know, doing it 8:20 again on the water. Yeah. So, I think what's just amazing is that with a lot of my patients, the state that they're in negatively affects their business in a dramatic fashion. The fact that you're able to keep together and still thrive is just amazing to me. But I think that speaks more to the fact that you have just incredible grit and determined self determination, right to to get through obstacles, which you probably developed quite a bit as a as an athlete still, it's that just makes it much just so remarkable. You're able to work through that feeling. 8:51 Whether they say embrace the suck, right, so Exactly, yeah. Really good at impressing the sock. And that that ended up being like my, my, my physical condition really was the sock. 9:02 Okay, well, so you're you weren't in the in the best situation are to join the clinic? What What were some of the things that made you finally seek treatment? I can kind of, it's kind of obvious that you should find a change the situation you're in? Yeah, 9:14 yeah. So I actually was not finding what I wanted through my normal physician and my insurance and all of that what they would cover. Even getting testing done was difficult, to say the least. So I sought out a functional medicine doctor, and she was great. She kind of you know, did a lot of testing and she got me on board with some supplementation, but it just really wasn't enough. And one of the tests she tested my hormones and they're all low and she basically said, you know, they're, they're not terrible, but they're, you know, maybe your your lifestyle and losing some weight will help right so that became a little discouraging because I still didn't see any of the results and I really started just forcing myself to go walk. That's really all I could do. I lost a little bit of weight, but it was just I was it was drudgery, trying to get it done. And I started looking around at, you know, online for solutions, read a bunch of books got educated on the subject, and, you know, the algorithm as it is right ended up sending me your way, right, or you came to me dependent, you know, however, the, the, the matrix did that. And I said, Okay, let me give it a try. And it was amazing for the first time, you know, had that intake interview, and that whole process was seamless, and easy. And I said, You know what, I'm gonna give it a try, right? And in that night, I was sent the requisitions to go get the lab work. And I think I went within a day or two, and then we you and I met and, and it's been history ever since. 10:51 Yeah. And so I remember that first consultation, and remember stature, and I remember being, I still remember being super impressed by what you're able to accomplish. But But yeah, I'm really happy you made the obviously to make the decision to to work with me. So let's go now and move over to the present after jewel in the clinic, what are some of the changes you noticed in your in your body and overall health, and I am going to take this opportunity to brag on you a bit, you have this great picture here that I just want to show that really just demonstrates the changes you've made? It's just phenomenal. I mean, it is just remarkable. The changes you've made here, Bob, you were well above 300 pounds on the picture on the right. 11:32 Yeah, I think that was, you know, 325 330, something like that. 11:37 Yeah, around the time that he started with us. And it's just remarkable, like the changes you can see you've got a tremendous smile musculature, I think on on your last Texas scan. When he looked at the metrics, he'd gained something like, almost lost almost 130 pounds of fat. Was that it? 11:56 170 pounds and pounds of fat. Yeah. And actually went from a size 62 waist in that picture down to now 30 Or I put probably, you know, 30 or 40 pounds of muscle on, you know, I think my body remembers, you know, that's part of it. Right. But yeah, it's a huge difference. You know, it's funny, some of my patients that I haven't seen, you know, I see them, you know, they're still coming back from COVID. Like, there's a lot of people that were out, and some of them will ask my staff afterwards. Hey, did does he have a brother? Is that is that truly, you know, Dr. Bob, or, you know, yeah, so that's been kind of interesting, 12:33 really cool. I also want to share a screen of your hemoglobin valency, which is really dropped like a rock before joining me You told me that your hemoglobin anyone see it climbed as high as as eight, right? 8.2? Yeah. 8.2. And you've gotten it down to just below 6.5 but require a large amount of it. For me, I think you said it was two grams, right? Two grams. Yeah. And now look at it. It's like below 5.4, which is just incredible. It's really, really good. 13:03 Yeah, that, to me, is the most impressive number there, because I think that's the most impactful one, you know, lifespan wise, and like, health wise. 13:11 And that's just something I want to just stop on for a second. A lot of individuals feel that these chronic illnesses, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, high cholesterol, or genetic, and there's nothing you can do about it stuff going on medications. But your experience, along with many other patients in my clinic has demonstrated to myself on them. Of course, that's not you know, just by making dietary changes, supplements, hormonal optimization, and of course, exercise, you can make profound changes in your health. So and you're a testament to that for sure. So we kind of talked a little bit about the changes in your body and your health, biomarkers. What are some of the changes you saw in your career, and you kind of alluded to the fact that you've done extremely well by selling off practices, and now being able to focus on the patients that you enjoy that I really, 14:03 yeah, they really want to help the most. And so I can tell you, so I'm probably the second or third oldest in my practice, right, the rest of them are younger. And for Christmas, I bought them all garments, right. And now we're doing a step challenge. And I just every, every week, I give him a $5 gift card to Dunkin Donuts or whatever. And then the month winner gets a dinner out on me, you know, and then I told them at the end of the year, whoever wins the end of the year, they're going to end up with some tickets to a Bruins or Celtics game in my box. So that's been really fun, but I'm blowing all of them out of the water, all of them. So I'm not even, you know, obviously, I'm not getting the prizes, right. So it's always the number two, but they're chasing me the whole time, which is kind of amazing to me, actually. 14:49 Yeah, it's incredible. It's really, really amazing. It's to 14:53 the point, you know, like I wake up probably about 430 And I actually set up a gym in my basement. I find that if I go right downstairs and I lifted the morning, that works better for me. And then I do my cardio in the evening, but I'm able to do it. Whereas before it was drudgery, and now I'm like, when I'm coming home, like, I gotta go down to do it, like, I gotta go do it to me that, you know, the treatments that you were able to facilitate for me have, that's the reason why I'm able to go do it. Because the energy levels are just through the roof, you know, like, I can just keep going and going and going and going, you know, 15:28 it's really remarkable that you're able to do this at the age of 15. Like, if you turn 50, which is crazy. It's, it's amazing. You're number one looking at you never guessed that, right. But you've been in practice for how many years? Is it? 20 years now? Yeah, you're like, I mean, if you want to, I mean, it sounds like you can, you could go for another 30 though, it seems like you're, 15:50 yeah, like, I'm really enjoying myself, it's become very, like, I don't have the aches and pains anymore, my back is not trashed at the end of the day. You know, the other thing too, is when you're tired, and not, and you don't have a lot of bandwidth. Like, I feel like you might be short with patients before you know. And as a dentist, there's a lot of anxiety that goes along with, you know, treating these patients, and they need you to be there in a certain way to get them through that. And that was a huge detriment to me when I wasn't at my, you know, optimal self right? Now I, I feel like I have what I need to do to give them what they need. And interestingly enough for people who are in, you know, medicine or dentistry, when you go out and network, the amount of patients that come in, is usually lower, because you're not being sent those patients through insurances, but I have higher new patient numbers almost now than I did when I was in insurance, which is pretty telling, you know, and I think it has to do with the energy that I'm able to bring to my team. And I also won't be you know, managing 12 People now it's 50. But I'm able to bring that energy, and it's top down, you know, in doing things like like this little step challenge that we're doing. I mean, that just brings the energy and the the whole office vibe is completely different now. 17:11 Yeah. And I suspect the patients recognize that. So despite the fact that they will have to go out of network, they think the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages of doing. Yeah, for service, you're able to provide the even just the way in which you approach them. It sounds like you're much more upbeat, much more positive. People recognize that, and they and they want that right. And so you know, 17:33 and cool. It's interesting, like, I never had an issue with confidence, because I was pretty confident in my abilities as a dentist. But there's some amount of confidence that came that's that I can't really tell you what that is. It just is. It's just the way I present now. Well, I 17:50 mean, clearly, you look like a completely different person. I mean, your Emmeline your fit, you know, your your high energy, and there's probably I mean, on some level some confidence that comes with with your self image, like when you look in the mirror like this is the person I want it to be this is the the image I had in my head, and it's finally materializing physically, right? 18:10 Yeah, that's actually an interesting thing. Sometimes I'll be work walking, even in the, you know, in a mall or wherever, where I see reflection, and at first, I don't recognize the person. I don't even know that's me. It takes a double take sometimes it's very strange. 18:24 You know, that as unique is that that seems that's that's something a lot of my patients have had mentioned to me. You know, as it got leaner as they developed new physique. It's almost like, you know, they don't they don't realize that they sometimes think of themselves as their as their prior version. But you know, it's kind of funny, because they're surprised when I look in the mirror, or, as you mentioned, walk by reflection when they walk in the street, like a window of a car or something. So, very cool. Very cool. Okay, so we talked about the changes in your career. What about some of the changes in terms of your relationships with your family, friends, your significant other, and I appreciate you opening up about this, your state prior to joining the clinic, probably contributed to in some way to to how your marriage your initial marriage turned out, what are some of the things that you notice now that you've you've optimized your hormones, you've improved your yourself a regimen, you've got a good or entire workout regimen in place? What are some of the things you've changed in that regard? 19:23 Exercise has become like, a focus of my life now. Right? And that has permeated not only my team but my family to my ex is actually really into CrossFit and she's very fit person. And she's always chiding me about doing the same thing for the kids. And because we both raised the kids together, my son now he's he's in college, and he's 19, almost 20 year old college student and he's joined the powerlifting team. He's he's actually pretty lean anyway, but you know, being 19 He's all full of them in there. Her so to speak, right? Yeah. And, and he almost can eat anything he wants and nothing sticks, you know, but I have him doing macros appropriately to my daughter, she is into lifting like she wishes there was like a powerlifting team at her high school. There just isn't one. But yeah, she's, she's loving that too. And actually, we're prepared to go on vacation tomorrow morning, actually, we're going to the Big Island of Hawaii. And we just packed I just packed up my supplements. We got me made sure everybody had their proper gear for the exercise and all of that. And everybody the whole, like, my daughter is wondering what kind of hiking trails are we gonna go on? So it really has changed? Oh, and I also, I answered my first 5k, believe it or not back in November. And I know that's kind of counterintuitive to what we're trying to do with the, you know, fuzzy building, but I went and ran a 5k in under 30 minutes. Turkey trap November. And it was one that ironically, my ex wife used to run all the time, and she was there. And I was within within a minute of her time. So that was pretty cool. Right? It's really amazing. Yeah, and the whole family went and we all ran, and it was just, it was just a really cool way to spend Thanksgiving morning, you know, before Thanksgiving morning, you know, so that was that was a really cool thing. So it really is, and also my significant other and I you know, we're planning trips that I wouldn't have been able to do and you know, it's different to sitting on a plane. Yeah. Sitting on a plane is a whole different experience when you don't have a 62 inch waist completely different. 21:38 Although this this obviously doesn't compare to what you had to deal with before you started with the clinic. But I remember there are some times where I woke up love it seemed much when I was getting ready for a competition. And it was, it was very uncomfortable. Easily. I tried to keep my waistline about 30 to 33. But one time I bulked up, probably a little bit too much my waistline was closer to 3536. It was miserable. 22:05 Right? So your 12 week prep became 22:09 torture. Yeah, became more like a 20 week, which is very, very uncomfortable. Yeah, right. But yeah, I can I can totally understand. And, yeah, just just small things like that make make a big difference. So makes it a huge difference. Yeah. And so clearly, it seems that you've you've been able to deepen your relationship with your children and and your ex and obviously, with your significant other. And in some ways, I think you're acting kind of like as a really healthy paradigm for them. So that they're going to pick up habits are going to benefit them for the long term, 22:40 when you have one person in the family acting a certain way before and they make a big change, that that will cause a paradigm shift in the entire family without a doubt that hap, that's happened in mind. 22:54 Just to sum things up, what would you tell someone who's watching this now is uncertain about joining a clinic. 23:02 So for me, I think I wish I had found you sooner, that's the first thing, you don't have to suffer. Right? It is work. But it's the thing is, when you're treated, and you're having everything firing, and everything's, you know, dialed in, the work actually is rewarding. It actually feels good to do the work, right? And also, whatever investment you're going to make, just think about, I mean, my productivity, and the length of productivity that I can do what I do, has extended by a significant I don't even know, it's not even measurable. You know, I can't say there's a direct relation to what the, you know, the ROI on that would be, but it's, there's a definite indirect relationship in some way. And it's not measurable in any way. But I can tell you that I will be more productive for longer because I'm able to, 24:00 yeah, and I mean, not that not that I imagine you want to go back to that horrendous schedule of working 20 hours a day. Yeah. But if you if you had to, for some reason or another, or if for some reason, you're like, hey, you know what I elected to bro, like another five clinics or maybe 100 or 20, or whatever, right? You could, and you probably would do it in a way where you'd feel a lot healthier and be able to manage your energy levels much, much better. I've actually had several patients. A lot of my patients come to me at different stages in their careers, some some are trying to build their business up or some some of them are in stage of selling, some of them are in the stage of you know, enjoying and my goal really is to help facilitate that stage and help them have the outcome they want. And what's really cool in your case is you could transition between the stages and ya know is you know, if you if some if an opportunity arises you will certainly have Eat the energy to pursue it and do really, really well. Not without a doubt, yeah. 25:05 Yeah, without a doubt, I actually feel literally better than I did at 35. Wow, better than I did, my son was born and I was 30. And I was just finishing up my, you know, my training. And that's when it started like, so after training, I felt lousy, you know, started to feel lousy. I developed sleep apnea at that time. And that was when sleep apnea wasn't even really known about yet. So like, I had to go and find a pulmonologist that would treat it. It was a very long time ago. And I feel better than I did, then I don't want to say I feel like I don't want to see say it felt like I did when I was rowing crew. You know, but I was also 20, you know, yeah, so and I'm 50. But I'm pretty darn close. And as you and I talked about the other day, I was actually able to just wrap out just with that little tweak that you talked about with the hand position on the chin ups, I was able to rip out five chin ups at 50 years old, you know, basically 200 pound guy, you know, so that's pretty cool. 26:12 I can, I'm always I always really enjoy talking to you and all of our patient appointments. And this is this is the same. I'm just very, very impressed with what you've been able to accomplish. And I'm really happy that you took the time to talk a little bit about your experience with the clinic. 26:30 As my pleasure. It's great and thanks for what you do, because really what you do, I feel like you should get your word out as far as you can. Because what you do really does change lives for sure. Without a doubt it facilitates change that couldn't be done otherwise. 26:47 I really appreciate that.