In a recent conversation with powerlifter and fitness entrepreneur Mark Bell, Hadi Doumit shared the story of how his weight loss and fitness journey began, and the role his diet played in dropping a total of 235 pounds.
Doumit explains that he had grown up big, and had been overweight his entire adult life, weighing more than 400 pounds at his heaviest, but that a turning point came on his daughter's sixth birthday. "I was feeling the worse I'd ever felt in my life. I was having to use the bathroom four or five times an hour, I didn't know what was wrong with me."
After finally seeing a doctor, something he had put off for years, Doumit learned that he was borderline diabetic, and needed to make some serious changes. This involved vastly reducing the amount of sugar in his diet. "I had to eliminate a lot of stuff in the pantry," he says. "I grew up big, and I ate like crap... I was made fun of a lot, so I was a closet eater. I had to get rid of those treats, to the point where I thought I was being unfair, because my daughter at the time, I was robbing her, but in reality I wasn't, I was making better decisions for her ahead of time, so she didn't fall into the same traps I did growing up."
Having tried a variety of different diet plans which didn't work for him, Doumit finally tried a combination of the Keto diet and carnivore diet, which he found was the best way to sustain his weight loss as well as supporting the progress he was making in his training as he began to gain muscle. He is now participating in powerlifting competitions, and can deadlift 419 pounds, which is just over what he used to weigh.
"This is something I never thought I would ever do in my life, and now I'm on my third meet," he says. "I had to learn in my head that I'm now gaining weight for a reason. Because once you see those scales moving, it triggers something. I hated being on the scale when I was 400 pounds. I still don't like it even though I'm 200 pounds lighter. So I had to get out of that habit, and learn how to be OK with it."
