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Oct 31, 2026
The Life Under the Number
The Life Under the Number
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Transcript
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Howdy. I'm Garth Ladigam, and this is A Re-Made Man. I spent years rebuilding my life, my health, my l- confidence, and how I show up in the world. This is a show about that rebuild for anyone wanting to start again.
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This episode is where I started. If it's useful, please subscribe to our newsletter, areademademan.com. Thank you. Now, I want to be clear about what this show is and what it isn't. It isn't a diet show.
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It's not gonna give you a meal plan or five simple steps. I've tried a lot of those, and I suppose if they'd worked, I wouldn't be here talking to you.
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What I'll share is what actually is going on underneath the weight and what changed when I finally started to look at it. Each episode, one story from my life, one small thing that you can try. That's it.
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So let's go back to the start. I was 15. I was busy. Badminton, cricket, soccer. I even gave Aussie rules a go. I trained a few nights a week and played indoor cricket. From the outside,
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I was that kind of kid who shouldn't have had a weight problem. But when the scales tipped past a number, I decided I was too big. I de- decided something was wrong.
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Not in a medical sense, in the way a teenager decides something has to be fixed. And the reason wasn't complicated. There was a girl at school, and I was completely taken by her, and she barely saw me.
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She talked about other boys, and I listened, and I smiled. And I quietly built this story in my head that made perfect sense to me at the time. If I lose weight, she'll see me differently. So I went on my first diet,
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and the, and the plan I had was beautifully simplic- simplicity- sim- sim- simple. Only a teenager could come up with lose weight, become desirable, watch the rest of my life politely fall into place.
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It didn't work like that. What happened instead was quieter, and honestly, it shaped the next 30-odd years of my life. I started linking things together that were never meant to carry each other.
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Food got connected to hope. Hope got connected to being chosen. And being chosen got connected to whether I was worth anything. So from then on, every diet wasn't really about my body.
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It was the-- it was carrying all of that. And that's how a diet turns into a pattern. You might know this one.
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It starts with a possibility, a new plan, a new rule, a burst of confidence, and the promise that this time it'll be different. The promise had an extraordinary attendance record even when I didn't.
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I had the gym membership that felt like progress before I'd done much more than financially support the fitness industry. For a while, I held everything tight, and almost without noticing,
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the structure would just loosen. It was really one big dramatic decision. It was small stuff, a disrupted routine, a tired evening, a moment where soothing myself felt more urgent than
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a future I wasn't sure was coming. Just one more can, can sound very reasonable, even deserved. And the next morning, I would avoid the mirror.
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Not always because I hated what I saw, but because I was tired of having the same argument with myself. For years, I took every one of those slips as proof.
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Proof I didn't have enough motivation, not enough discipline, and that explanation hurt. But here's the thing.
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It was also convenient because if the problem was my willpower, I could just keep looking for better, better plans. I never had to look at the conditions every plan had to survi- survive in.
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What eventually shifted wasn't that I got more extreme. It was my perspective. I started to see my weight as evidence, a signal something underneath wasn't working and not just what I ate.
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How I slept, how I rested, how I coped, how I connected with people, how I responded when life got hard. And that changed the question I was asking.
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For decades, the question was, "How do I make my body smaller?" The new question was, "What kind of life makes caring for this body possible?"
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I'll be honest, the second question is less exciting. It doesn't come with a glossy promise or heroic deadline.
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It asks for routine honesty, support, responsibility, and the willingness to keep coming back when ordinary life gets in the way. But it's the question that works.
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Now, some of you will want to know about surgery, so let's be straight about that. In 2022, I had weight loss surgery. Before I went ahead, I spoke to surgeons and one conversation stayed with me.
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The surgeon didn't try and reassure me, he said calmly, that the surgery was a tool, not a solution. And that if I treat it like a reset instead of responsibility, I'll probably end up back where I started.
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There was no judgment here, just clarity. And for the first time, surgery didn't feel like failure. It felt like alignment. My doctor was just as direct about movement. Move every day. No negotiations.
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So I didn't wait for motivation. I just built it in, whether it was training or just walking. Consistency mattered more than intensity. And what I got from that wasn't control. It was rhythm.
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And here's the moment I'll never forget. I walked in the change rooms one day and I picked up a shirt without really thinking. Not from the big men's section, from the regular range, where everyone else shops,
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without a second thought. And it fit. Something in me just stopped. It wasn't about the shirt. It was about everything the shirt connected to. My partner was there
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and they didn't rush me through it. They just stayed with me. So the surgery mattered, but I wanted you to hear this part. Readiness matters too.
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Without the life being rebuilt underneath it, even a powerful tool would have been asked to carry far more than it could hold. Losing weight didn't give me a new life. Building a life made the weight loss possible.
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So where do we begin? People ask me that a lot. Usually after they've tried everything and they expect something detailed, a system they can follow.
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What I tell them is order comes before change. Not motivation, not discipline, not willpower. Order. When your sleep is chaotic, everything is harder.
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And when your day has no structure, everything feels urgent and nothing feels manageable. I didn't lose weight because I found the right diet. I lost it when my life got stable enough that my body
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didn't need to protect me anymore. Here's your experiment for this week. It takes about 15 minutes. One,
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name the visible thing you keep trying to fix. Your weight, your sleep, your energy, whatever it is. Two, notice when it gets easier and when it gets harder and what happens to your life at those times.
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Look at your conditions, not your character. Three, ask yourself, what would you make the next helpful choice easier to repeat? Four, pick one action for the next seven days
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with a time and a place. I'll try harder is an experiment. I'll prepare tomorrow's breakfast after dinner is. I'll book that appointment by Wednesday is. And five, finish this sentence and put it somewhere you'll see it.
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I'm not waiting to become blank before I become blank. At the end of the week, don't ask whether you were perfect. Ask what the week showed you about the support your life needs.
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One last thing. This is my story, not medical advice. If you're dealing with an eating disorder, serious distress or health conditions, please do this along with professional care. The first
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weight I had to put down was the belief that my life would begin later. Maybe that's the one for you too. I'm Garth. This has been a Remade Man.
A Remade Man
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