A Simple Cardio Routine Helped This Guy Drop 150 Pounds in 2 Years
“I can never remember a time in my life where my weight wasn’t an issue,” says Dalton Blanchard, a 29-year-old IT manager from Houma, Louisiana. As a sedentary kid, he didn’t try out for sports he feared he was too out of shape to play; growing up, diets made his weight yo-yo, but he never kept it off. Things got worse in college, as the stress of school led him to binge eat, sometimes hitting 6,000 calories a day. “I didn’t have exercise or other healthy outlets to relieve stress, so stress eating was a big part of my life and I oftentimes would eat just to ‘feel okay,’” he says.
By his second year of grad school, he was 330 pounds. “I felt like absolute garbage,” he says. He dressed in baggy clothes to hide his body. “I didn’t look at mirrors, I didn’t worry about clothes, and there was absolutely no respect for myself.”
Online dating turned him around—specifically, his now-wife, Francesca. She brought out a lot of things inside of me that I didn’t know were parts of my personality,” he says, “and I found out that I did like being social and that I did like meeting new people.” Blanchard admits feeling ashamed as she introduced him to new people. “I felt like she deserved more than who I was,” he says, “and that’s really what sparked my change.”
He started small. One day after a stressful day at work, he went to the gym and tried jogging. He’d tried for years to get into a workout routine, but it always felt like a chore. This time, though, he loved it. He soon developed a cardio routine, 45 minutes of jogging every weekday. “I remember one gym session where I jogged three miles without stopping and I felt like I was on the top of the world,” he says.
Cardio quickly helped him slim down, but he also worked to get his diet under control. He used the MyFitnessPal app to count his calories, eating no more than 1500 a day. Lean Cuisine prepackaged meals and salads helped him establish a routine. He aimed to burn 1000 active calories a day, while allowing himself the flexibility of weekend cheat meals to keep from going crazy.
With two years of primarily cardio work, Blanchard went from 330 pounds down to 168, hitting that mark on his wedding day. Since then he’s worked to build muscle, and he’s now at 180 pounds. “Physically, I feel incredible,” he says. “I don’t have as many back pains, leg pains, and moving around is just so much easier.” He’s more confident and likes buying clothes again. He’s able to look in the mirror with pride.
Consistency, he says, was the key. He established his weekday routine and stuck to it, using weekends to blow off any stress he felt about it. MyFitnessPal and Apple Watch let him quantify his progress and focus on simply running a calorie deficit—burning more than he took in. And he found he really loved running. “Find an activity that drives you,” he says, “and then the rest will become easy.”
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