You don't know Jack!

(because he's half the man he used to be)

For overweight, overwrought over-the-road truck driver Jack Kelsh, the turning point came about a decade ago when he went to the airport to pick up “Jorge,” a foreign exchange student from Cyprus. Jorge, who would spend the next year as a guest of Kelsh’s parents, had never been to the United States … and he had never seen anyone as big as Jack Kelsh. At the time, Kelsh’s weight stood somewhere north of 365 pounds. Jack didn’t know his exact weight because the last time he had stood on a scale, he broke it.
     “When Jorge got off the plane, he absolutely could not believe how fat Americans were, me in particular,” Kelsh recalls. “He just stared at me. I thought he was afraid of me. And then he became pretty vocal about my size. I said there have to be some people in your country as big as me, and he goes, ‘No, I don’t think there’s anyone in Cyprus as fat as you.’ That kind of hurt my feelings.”
     Despite their uneasy first impressions, Jack and Jorge went on to become good friends, and Jack credits Jorge with starting him on what would become a lifelong path to better health through proper eating habits and exercise. Today, at the age of 46, the 6-foot-1-inch Kelsh weighs a well-chiseled 190 pounds. As Jack likes to say, “I’m half the man I used to be.”
     Kelsh’s success story in the battle of the bulge - along with his well-researched information on food, eating habits, diets, exercise and the psychology of losing weight - is told in his book, “Nineteen Wheels: The professional driver’s amateur guide to healthy living on the road” (safetythruwellness.com). Kelsh also writes a regular column for Driver HEALTH called, what else, “Healthy Trucking.”
     According to Kelsh, the book was inspired by a visit to the doctor five years ago for his DOT physical. Jack was one of about a dozen drivers getting physicals at the time, and all of them except Jack were overweight or obese. The doctor took one look at a buff Jack and asked him why he wanted to be a truck driver. Jack told him he already was a truck driver, and had been one for more than 10 years. “You sure don’t look like a truck driver,” the doctor said.
     Kelsh then told the doctor his story about losing 180 pounds, and the doctor encouraged Jack to write about it. So Jack did. “I wanted to share my story with other drivers and to help motivate them to do the same,” Jack says. “A book seemed the logical way for me to do it.”
     Jack Kelsh grew up on a farm in southeastern North Dakota and found himself around trucks his whole life. His father drove over-the-road and took Jack along at times, so there was no doubt what Jack was going to do when he grew up. “I was going to be a big truck driver,” he says, “and I got really big myself.”
     Weight had always been an issue for Jack, but being athletic and playing sports such as basketball kept his weight under control through high school. Like many adults, he began to add a few more pounds as each year went by. By 1992, when he launched his driving career on a full-time basis, Jack weighed around 240 pounds. Maybe not ideal, but reasonable for a 6-foot-1-inch man. And then he hit the road … and started packing on the pounds at an alarming rate. Before he knew it, Jack weighed 365 pounds. That’s when he stopped stepping on scales.
     “It was a vicious cycle,” Jack says. “You get to the point where you’re carrying this extra weight around, you’re sitting driving all day, it makes you tire more easily and it’s harder to stay awake, so you eat something to keep your mind and hands occupied so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”
     Kelsh tried the usual weight-loss diets and magic pills, but nothing worked. He joined a weight-loss organization, but that only produced more embarrassment. “The first time I went there, I weighed in and broke the scale,” he says. “I think it only went up to 350 pounds. We had to go to a warehouse and use a freight scale. That’s when I learned I weighed 365 pounds.” It was about then, at his low point, that Jack drove to the airport and met Jorge.
     Once he got over the shock of seeing such a large man, Jorge told Jack he could help him if Jack would listen. Jack agreed to listen, and Jorge introduced Jack to the “Mediterranean” way of eating that involves not only the kinds of food consumed and the portions, but also the manner in which food is prepared and how and when it is consumed. “I started learning to make things taste good with herbs instead of using fat and salt,” Jack says.
     Over two to three years, Kelsh lost 180 pounds. Jack had avoided mirrors for years, but he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of himself in a wall of mirrors one day while walking in the mall. He had already lost so much weight, he didn’t recognize himself.
     Everyone intuitively knows how to lose weight: eat sensibly and exercise. Yet almost everyone has a problem losing weight and keeping it off. What’s going on?
     “It has to do with the widespread availability of unhealthy food,” Kelsh says. “Labels fool people into thinking they are getting something healthy. It says ‘all natural,’ but it’s really not. If it’s processed food, it still metabolizes like sugar, it tastes good and it’s everywhere.”
     Seven or eight years after losing 180 pounds, Kelsh - who lives in Denver and is a divorced father of three grown boys -- remains fit and trim. He has no trouble staying on a diet because he maintains he never went on a diet. Instead, he began a new way of eating and a healthier way of preparing meals, and he backs it up with short but intense periods of exercise. In fact, as he points out in one of his columns, eating right and exercising becomes as addictive as the vicious cycle that led to his obesity.
     All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so what does Kelsh do for fun when he’s not on the road? “I enjoy gardening, riding my bike, catching a movie once in a while,” he says. “I have a couple of dogs that demand my attention, so I take them running alongside the bike when I ride.”
     Oh, yeah, Jack also says he enjoys cooking. Lots of good herbs. Hold the bad fat.