A 23-year-old man recently shared his success story of how he overcame his binge-eating disorder and emerged from it in healthier, fitter, and with a refreshed outlook in life.
Beau Jacobson: Young Man Shares Story of How He Overcame Binge-Eating Disorder
Beau Jacobson from Colleyville, Texas, once shed 65 pounds quickly in high school out of his embarrassment at his excessive weight, only to develop a binge-eating disorder later on. He finally overcame his issues with food and gained the confidence to sing in public and enter fitness competitions at the very healthy weight of 200 pounds.
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Beau stands at 6’3″, and when he was in high school, he weighed an extreme 285 pounds. One day in junior year, he saw a video of himself performing at a jazz show and was astounded to realize what he looked like. He vowed to himself that he would lose weight, and he achieved that quickly when he lost around 65 pounds before his graduation.
In college, however, the former football player dreaded gaining all the weight back, so he developed an extremely unhealthy habit where he would starve himself during the week, only to binge on junk food the whole weekend long.
In an interview with Yahoo Health, Beau said, “People told me all the time, ‘You look thin,’ and they didn’t mean it in a good way. They were concerned.”
He hadn’t always been overweight, but he began to develop an unhealthy, emotional attachment to food at 11 years old when his mom and dad divorced and got married to other people. It was also around the same time when he transferred to another school.
The pressures of dealing with unfamiliar environments both at home and in school led to him becoming emotionally attached to food. He began turning to food for comfort and not just for sustenance. At every meal, he would gorge on Little Debbie cakes, Lunchables meals, Oreos, Lean Pockets, and McDonald’s.
Beau carried those unhealthy habits of gorging on junk food to high school, where he sang in the choir and played football. Being a football player also further encouraged his overeating.
He said of his football life, “I loved football. I loved playing offensive line, and to play on the line, you have to be big. So weighing 280 pounds was viewed as acceptable because I was just ‘football big.'”
It was only in eleventh grade when he finally realized that his excessive weight was an issue when he saw a video of himself performing at a show. It was then that he swore to himself that he would do everything to lose weight right after the end of football season.
Beau started exercising; he did weight training and started playing pickup basketball for cardio. But the biggest change he did was his diet, and because of it, he lost 45 pounds in just three months. In the weeks leading up to his high school graduation, he lost another 20 pounds.
Beau then started college at Texas Tech University, where he joined Sigma Phi Epsilon, achieved high grades, and continued working out. But one day, he looked at a picture of himself online and suddenly thought to himself that he looked terrible. The dread of gaining back all the weight that he had lost began to hound him.