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foreword

Gregg came into my life in a most unexpected way, through an email snafu of all things. Looking back, this was rather appropriate given his penchant for originality and razor-sharp wit. Gregg is someone you can’t meet without coming away smiling—if not laughing out loud. Thus, I’m grateful for the unexpected.

In my many years of meeting Joy Fit Club members who lost 100 or more pounds simply by relying on diet and exercise, I remember being awestruck by Gregg’s back story. Here was someone who took off over 250 pounds and kept it off for over a decade, despite living through so many years of sadness and abuse. I found it hard to connect the man with such a sad past I was reading about with the one I was emailing—the fun, happy, and joke-filled person who clearly has a real appetite for life.

Upon meeting Gregg in person at his first Today show appearance, my crush was in full swing. Not only was he game for wrapping hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb in his sixty-inch belt—something the ladies didn’t know about until we were on the air—but he asked if he could enter the studio as if he were on a Paris catwalk and then complain that he thought he was there for a segment on modeling. Needless to say, his on-air spot was a smashing success and the entire studio was laughing on volume ten.

This is the kind of spirit and—well, joy—that gets me excited as well as inspired. I know Gregg has been motivating others for years with his blog and the projects he writes for film and television. Even if he’s creating a new horror-themed project for Hollywood, you can find moments of whimsy and relief in his work. I think it’s these kinds of moments that have the potential to touch all of our lives in positive ways.

When Gregg told me about this book, I actually beat him to the punch and asked if I might be able to write the Foreword. (He said he was going to ask me, but who knows if that’s true?)

I’m glad I’m the one doing it, because I find Gregg’s story so compelling and uplifting. On the one hand, because of the honesty with which he looks back at the horrific experiences in his past that shaped the reasons he over-ate to the point of weighing over 450 pounds. On the other hand because, at the same time, he finds his own responsibility to himself and to his mental and physical health in a truly refreshing way.

Gregg has always been a writer (and, perhaps, a ham) at heart, which means he’s kept track of things in a way that many others who’ve won the battle of the bulge have not. He is able to detail the family and social adversities he faced, as well as many of the actual binges he partook in to prevent himself from being all that he had the potential to be. And, oh, what a potential that is.

That same potential is available to all of us, no matter how many times we’ve tried to succeed in the past. This time can be different. It was for Gregg. It can be for you. Personally, I can’t help but be motivated every time I re-familiarize myself with Gregg’s story.

The honest kind of perspective offered in this book is what makes Gregg who he is today, and I’ve seen the impact people are left with—no matter if they’re trying to lose weight or face another life-changing challenge—when they hear his personal story.

I’m excited Gregg finally committed this story to publication so that it can be shared with the many others who also have the power to overcome anything they’re facing or, as Gregg puts it, who have the power to become weightless.

—Joy Bauer, MS, RD, CDN

Nutrition and Health Expert for NBC’s Today Show

New York Times best-selling author of Joy Bauer’s Food Cures and Your Inner Skinny

Contributing Editor/Monthly Columnist to Woman’s Day