How Steve Kosier Went from Morbidly Obese to An Expert on Long-Term Weight Loss Maintenance.

Hi, my name is Steve Kosier and I’d like to share my story of how I broke the code for keeping my weight off forever. What I discovered empowered me to lose 115 pounds over 13 years ago without regaining a single pound since.

My struggles with my weight started when I was young. I was a chubby child, but I leaned out nicely in my teens. But unfortunately, that slender physique faded away by my early 20s and that’s when my struggles and repeated dieting began.

It was a lot easier in my 20s to lose a few pounds and drop a pant size than when I got into my 30s and 40s. What used to be a “one pant size problem” turned into a several “pant size problem” before I would take action. It was a losing battle for me because every time I went on a diet, I would lose most of my weight, but not all my weight. And, by the time I was in my late 40s, I was over 300 pounds.

In the above picture that’s my wife and me on my friend’s boat and I was 50 years old when it was taken. I weighed in at a hefty 320 pounds!

My health really wasn’t very good either as you might expect. Besides being medically defined as a “class II obese individual” (also known as “morbidly obese”), I also had several medical conditions because of my weight. I had high blood pressure, through-the-roof cholesterol and triglycerides, severe sleep apnea, and chronic fatigue.

But that was my normal!I would just live my life day to day until I would have some epiphany that something needed to change. And not too long after that picture was taken on my friend’s boat, I decided that I needed to go on a diet.

My Search for a Diet Leads to a Huge Discovery!

So, I did what I usually did when it was diet time and I got on the internet and started looking for a diet that would allow me to get my weight off as quickly as possible.

I ran across the Atkins diet during my research, which is a very low carbohydrate and very high fat and protein diet, which caught my eye. I knew it would be a weird way of eating for me, but they claimed it would accelerate my weight loss potential.

When I told my wife about the Atkins diet, she asked me something I wasn’t expecting. She asked me if I was successful with the diet, would I continue with the Atkins eating style long term?

I told her that I had no intention of eating that way long term and that I just wanted to blow off the weight and get back to normal. She replied by making a very snide comment.

She said, “I don’t get why you want to eat some weird way to lose weight just so you can go back to eating the way that made you fat in the first place. I don’t get it! That doesn’t sound very smart or very logical to me!”

I told her that I could lose weight faster if I eat that way and she said, “I’d see what the scientists have to say on the subject because I think it is BullS***!”

So, I did what any man would do… I went to my computer and started looking for the information I needed to prove her wrong!

And it didn’t take very long for me to get to the real truth about the Atkins Diet. In fact, I got the scoop on all the popular diets, because I found numerous clinical studies that compared them all in head-to-head clinical trials. I got really engrossed in reading study after study and to my surprise, all of them arrived at the same conclusion.

Turns out that scientists have long ago concluded that no individual diet or eating style has an edge over another. In every study all the participants lost weight, however, the difference in how fast people lost weight between the different diets was indistinguishable!

So, that settled the issue of the Atkins diet and losing weight faster! And it turns out my wife was right, and I was wrong, but the fallout from that is a whole other story…

But I need to tell you about something that I stumbled across while I was reading clinical studies that deeply disturbed and depressed me…

My Big Breakthrough Begins…

In one of the studies that compared diet programs they also made mention about the long-term success rate of dieters to keep the weight off. In that study, they remarked that over 90% of people regained 80% or more of their lost weight within two years.

I thought to myself, there is no possible way this statistic could be true and if it is true, I wanted to know why. So, I started searching for statistics about long-term weight maintenance after weight loss and I had no trouble finding a lot of scientific studies. I found myself horrified as I read study after study with every one of them citing a 90% or higher failure rate.

I’ve got to tell you that this really bothered me deeply because a >90% failure rate sounded really bad to me, but it also was me! I had never kept my weight off for more than two years since I started dieting in my early 20s, so I fit the statistical models perfectly!

I kept thinking in my head, “Where was the memo on this” and, “Why should I even try to lose weight!” I found myself feeling stunned and confused and dumbfounded that less than 10% of people trying to lose weight will ever maintain their weight loss long term…

So, this new revelation had me stopped dead in my tracks, and no matter how much I Googled all I found were opinions about what someone needed to do to be successful at long-term weight loss maintenance. None of what I read was written by somebody who had actually lost a lot of weight. Instead, all I found was the supposition of so-called “experts” or the musings of some diet/fitness guru or a psychologist.

What scared me even more was reading their advice and thinking to myself, “I’ve already tried most of this stuff you’re saying is the answer and it sure as heck didn’t fix my problem!” I thought to myself that nobody really had the right answers to this “keep the weight off” problem because if they did over 90% of people wouldn’t be failing.

I went to bed that night not wondering about losing weight because I knew I could do that. I went to bed wondering how come most people weren’t able to control regaining their weight. I was stumped and I wasn’t sure whose advice would make a difference.

My Business Brain Kicks into High Gear!

The next morning I’m in the shower and it pops into my head about what to do if I wanted to get my weight off and never go on a diet ever again. I theorized that 10% of all the people in the USA that go on a diet are still a lot of people. All I need to do is find these successful long-term weight maintainers and ask them what they did differently that allowed them to be successful where others failed.

Here is how I came up with this brainy and very unusual tactic. I’ve worked in the information technology sector since I was 20 years old. Whenever we had a large project, we left nothing to chance because the financial stakes were just too high if you made a mistake. What we would do is seek out experts or companies that had previously developed similar software applications and interview or hire them.

The reason we enlisted the help of these “subject matter experts,” which we called SMEs for short, is because they had already accomplished what we wanted to do. Where SMEs really pay off is in their ability to tell you exactly where the hidden and costly problems are in the project, so you don’t fall victim to the same mistakes. They also tell you how they would have done things differently if they were starting from scratch again with a clean slate, which also saves a lot of time and money.

So, what I decided, is that I needed to find myself some SMEs so I could unlock the mystery of long-term weight maintenance. The first thing I did was to establish a requirement for my research project. I decided that whomever I interviewed must have lost a lot of weight and then kept it off for 5 years or more. I theorized that if a person had kept the weight off for 5 years or more they could definitely offer me sound and credible advice.

So, here is how I found my SMEs… I literally became a connoisseur of weight loss success stories and what I did was search the internet looking for old write-ups of people that had lost a lot of weight. If a story was at least 5 years old, I would reach out to them and ask if I could interview them about how they accomplished their amazing weight loss success.

I would get very excited when I received a reply because I knew I was going to be talking with someone that had been successful at keeping their weight off for a long time. I would schedule a phone call with them and when we spoke, I would ask them about their weight loss journey and the strategies they used to usher in long-term weight maintenance.

So, in the end, I took what I learned from my SMEs and cracked the code on long-term weight maintenance. From there, the rest is history. I went on to lose 115 pounds and for the last 13 years, I haven’t regained a single pound of it.

How I got Started Teaching Others.

When you lose 115 pounds, people notice! I had a lot of people ask me how I lost weight, and I wasn’t shy about telling them about my research project and my SMEs. Most were surprised and curious when they heard the details of my project. And the funny thing that happened was people started calling me and asking my advice about losing weight.

What would initially start as a single “I need advice” phone call would turn into repeated coaching and teaching calls. And as time went on, I started getting calls from people I didn’t even know, saying they got my number from friends who had flourished under my tutelage. They told me I was the go-to guy for weight loss and keeping it off long-term.

And before long, I was spending more and more time in the evenings and weekends coaching people. It was my best friend who encouraged me to quit my job and coach people full-time since it had basically become a second full-time job at that point. But I couldn’t help it! I became addicted to seeing people getting massive results and gaining total control over something that had caused them to suffer for so long.

Founding ARTofSlim.com

So, about ten years ago, I made a bold move and officially started my career as a Lifestyle Transformation Coach. Since then, I have been teaching and coaching people who are sick and tired of losing weight just to regain it again, like I did for most of my life. I help them remake themselves into slim people who eat the foods they enjoy, live life on their terms, and never fear regaining weight ever again.

In my mind, the most awesome gift I could bestow on someone is teaching them how to maintain their weight loss indefinitely. And helping someone achieve a slim healthy body without them fearing they will ever regain their weight is almost priceless to me… in fact, I think I have the best job in the world!

So, that’s my story of how a morbidly obese computer programmer and project manager found his way to becoming an expert on long-term weight maintenance.

What About You?

The biggest thing I learned by reaching out to long-term weight maintainers back in the day (my SME’s) was I came away with a solid game plan I knew for certain worked. If my wife hadn’t intervened to disrupt my short-term thinking, I would have just gone on another weight loss diet to have the same weight regain happen to me all over again.

So, if you’re ready to usher in lasting change into your life and ditch the diet scene for good, we should talk. I would like to invite you to book a FREE strategy call to see if we can help get what you want in your life.

This strategy call is FREE, and during the call, we’ll talk about your situation, explain our programs, and answer any questions you might have. Just click the button below to book your FREE strategy call now. I look forward to meeting you…