This Guy

Formerly morbidly-obese library cop turned freelance travel writer and jungle vagabond.  Currently riding my tiny scooter around Asia, and writing from the rainy beaches of the Cambodian coast.

Travelogues, training, and cautionary tales for those feeling sidelined by circumstance and hoping to change their lives through travel.

A beard doesn’t make one a philosopher.

– Roman expression

My name is Nick O’Brien, and as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a Pirate (Space-Pirate being a possible fallback).

Born on St.Thomas, in the United States Virgin Islands, an active childhood was cut short at 12 by a permanent move to the U.S.

School, followed by sedentary office work at my alma mater, Florida State University, began to catch up with me in a big way.

I ballooned up.

An unhealthy lifestyle, and ridiculously cartoonish eating habits, gave way to a sharp decline culminating in being pronounced ‘Morbidly Obese‘.

A clinical term that means they take out a side of your house and bury you in a piano box.

If anyone has ever been overweight they know, it does many things to you (few of them good) but the main symptom is a terrible narrowing. A narrowing of options. Some things become hard, some become damn near impossible. The things that I wanted to do and see seemed so much further away if I was unable to simply climb the stairs to see them.

If sitting in a small chair is both risky for the chair and uncomfortable to me, then what chance did I have of traveling the world packed into planes, trains, and tuk tuks? None. Not in my present state of unimaginable corpulence.

Watching my life cut short by my own gluttony forced a change in attitude. I needed a change, and more importantly I now wanted to change. There was a goal, a light at the end of a long tunnel that I had been in since my early teens. Lose the weight. Break free. Go somewhere exotic. Become a different person.

1. Break the unhealthy habits brought on by overwork. Eg, change jobs.
2. Break the dependence on junkfood, even if it means going where there is none. Taco Bell isolation.
3. Sell EVERYTHING. The things I owned were very much starting to own me.
4. Go and do something ridiculous. Something outlandish and dangerous. Something ‘Fat Nick’ wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have done. 

The goal became seeing the world before whatever damage I had already done caught up to me. So I set to work, and boy did I need work.

Warning! Hyper-sexy NSFW pics below! Warning!

The only New Years Resolution I’ve ever tried to keep. Jan 1st 2012 I endeavored to halve my substantial weight (333lbs – 151kg – 24st). A lifetime of sloth and canned Cheez had left me a sorry sight, but the lure of the exotic, and an office monkey’s lust for adventure kept me motivated.

With a mindset of complete commitment and focus to the two pronged goal of ‘lose weight-go traveling’ I set to work like a monk. Tossing my junk food for apples and spinach, I converted my living room into a simple ‘prison style’ gym, utilizing a single 35lb kettle-bell.

Six months of fish, brown rice, yolk less eggs, and jogging, and I never again had to buy my clothes from Omar the tentmaker. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done for myself, but results build results and soon the weight was falling off. Never before had I had cause to use the leather punch on my Swiss Army knife, but it became a common fixture on my bedside table to take in my leather belt, originally bought at 60inches from the Big&Tall shop.

When you no longer recognize yourself in the mirror there is an interesting break with ones psyche. If a different person is staring back at you then are you a different person? Your body feels different, but you don’t feel different. Same strengths, same unyielding weaknesses, but now there’s a shift – the world sees you differently. Women bat their eyes at you. People become friendlier. Your colleagues see you as more capable and hardworking, despite no real proof.

They don’t assume the old weaknesses, you have to show them yourself.

With the absurd goal of halving my weight nearly in sight, I stuck to my promise to myself and nervously bought a one way ticket to Hanoi, Vietnam.

All toll, 140lbs (63.5k, 10st) came off. Oddly the same weight in refined sugar the average American eats in a year.

It was difficult mentally, reversing a lifetime of learned response to seeing those Golden Arches. Like Pavlov’s damn dog, they had me frothing at the bit for the next McMonstrosity. And like a junkie I’d probably go back to it, despite the harm it’s caused, because it’s a sickness. I’m just thankful I found the cure. 

I was lucky, my self imposed execution had been stayed. Like a second chance had been given to that least deserving. I had always taken my health for granted. Eaten as I pleased, drank to excess – wallowed happily in my own monumental corpulence. Yet the universe had seen fit to allow me another path, another roll of the dice – and I owed. A debt I try to pay back here.

The purpose of this website is not to make money, or brag digitally on my exploits, no. At it’s heart it’s about me covering my debts. Paying forward advice and motivation that someone paid me back when this idea was just a gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach (Go.Go.Go.)

Traveling saved my life. I don’t see it any other way. And living vicariously online, through other’s adventures, was as far as I figured a morbidly obese librarian could go from a cubicle in Tallahassee, Florida. Well written travelogues from far away exotic places. Advice and examples, cautionary tales – all the building blocks needed to spark the imagination and begin the process of breaking free.

It all began with the simple statement to myself, ‘I can do this’.