A New York man has undergone a stunning transformation after ditching booze and taking up the challenge of 20,000 steps a day.
Keenan Burton didn’t realize there was a problem with his weight for a long time. “When I was really overweight, because I’m tall, I didn’t really notice,” he told Newsweek. “I have friends, but I was always very reclusive. I work in an office but also from home, so not a lot of people see me all the time.”
Burton’s whole outlook changed after a routine visit to the doctor. “I step on the scales and it says 300 pounds. I was shocked that I’d really let myself go that much,” he said.
“Then the doctor sat down and said, ‘You know, you’re prediabetic,’ and gave me the entire runaround that, basically, you know, I was fat. That was what inspired me to get back on a health kick—it scared me.”
Burton’s situation is not unusual in America today. According to 2017-2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 31 percent of U.S. adults are overweight while 42 percent have obesity.
Burton was determined to make changes. “There’s a history of high blood pressure in my family,” he said. “A lot of my family are overweight. A lot of them are diabetic. So I just didn’t want to go down that path.”
The first step was cutting back on his biggest vice: alcohol.
A 2015 study in the journal Current Obesity Reports noted that moderate intake of alcohol does not lead to weight gain. However, Burton’s intake sounds anything but moderate and, even if it wasn’t a direct cause, that level of consumption has been known to lead to poor life choices.
At his worst, Burton said he had a period of about three years where he was getting through one 50 cl bottle of Bulleit Bourbon Whiskey a night, either drinking it neat or with ginger ale. It was a dark time for him personally, as he struggled to reconcile his role in two previous “toxic relationships” he was in back to back.
“When I say ‘toxic,’ I want to clarify that I was the toxic one because of my drinking. I was a toxic one. I was really abusive with my words, and both women basically left me for the same reason, which led me to drink even more than I was drinking in the relationships.”
Burton began to calorie-count everything, switching to only drinking water as a result, and tailoring meals accordingly. Burton had egg whites in the morning and ate things such as spinach and turkey. He still had treats, like peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but every calorie was mapped out and accounted for.
The next step from there was to get the his steps in, taking around an hour-and-a-half in the morning to rack up 10,000 steps before going to work, where he kept the cravings at bay with a protein shake and banana for lunch.
Dinner was almost always chicken salad or chicken and rice, but while familiar dieting favorites such as egg whites and turkey bacon proved useful, Burton is keen to stress he didn’t shy away entirely from having carbs.
His second set of 10,000 steps came as he returned home from work and before dinner, although he admits he didn’t get entirely up to speed for a few weeks at first.
“I couldn’t even do 10,000 steps at first,” he said. “After I did about 5,000, it felt like my Achilles were popping out. It was that bad.” Burton added, for anyone looking to follow his lead, “the first month is going to hurt.”
“You have to just keep pushing through it,” he said. “You know, your bones aren’t breaking. You were just fat. I had to realize that I thought my Achilles was going to pop, but it didn’t. I was just out of shape that bad.”
Now, some 18 months on from when he started, Burton has dropped from the 300 pounds he weighed on his doctor’s scales to a significantly slimmer 199.
“I feel great,” Burton said. “My job is really good. I am not in toxic relationships anymore because of the drinking, and I’m so focused on keeping my mind clear and keeping my body clear. You really are what you eat.”
Burton’s advice for anyone who wants to achieve what he has is simple: “just do it.” He said: “Just get up and start. I don’t care if it’s 5,000 steps a day, 10,000 steps a day; just get out and start walking. If it’s too cold where you are, you know, find somewhere where you can use the treadmill.”
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