Jeff Liotard was just tired of being fat.

He’ll jokingly talk about how, in order to keep his physique, he would start every morning off with a trip to McDonald’s, and would likely hit the drive-thru twice during the day just to satisfy those little hunger pangs.

As the owner of Mountain Mike’s Pizza, he isn’t afraid to say that he would love it when an order got messed up so he could literally sweep all of the toppings off and eat them without the rest of the pizza – just the cheese and the meat and the little reservoirs of grease that congregate in the chain’s trademark pepperoni.

The only thing is that he isn’t joking.

And when his daughter Mahylnn gave him a video that outlined the benefits of eating and being healthy, he still wasn’t quite ready to make the radical life changes that were needed to shed any of the 345 pounds he was carrying around at the time.

But change wasn’t too far away.

He had some dates already picked out in his mind as to when he wanted to change things up – something exacerbated by a rather bland prime rib he was hoping to enjoy on Christmas Day at the house of his in-laws.

So when the Manteca Rotary Super Bowl Omelet breakfast crept up, he promised himself that once it wrapped up – after he got the chance to get down on some of his favorite early-morning eats and drinks – that he’d take that next step.

And he did. For the next four days he existed solely on a juice diet and took the first steps towards shedding 100-pounds in only six months.

“After four days I had to eat so I started eating celery, and I don’t use the word hate – it’s not in my vocabulary, but I hate bananas,” he said. “And for whatever reason my body was craving bananas. That was my first sign to eat what my body was telling me to eat, and that’s something that I continue to do until this day.”

It wasn’t, however, his first foray into losing weight.

While on a family vacation he saw an advertisement in the middle of the night – right in the middle of enjoying a nice, big fat slice of cheesecake – for the popular P90x workout tapes and convinced his wife to order those.

He stuck to it for months and lost 70 pounds before blowing out his knee. After surgery he gained all of it back.

Juicing, he says, is easier and has produced much better results.

Thanks to his Breville he’s able to liquefy just about anything in a matter of seconds for a quick, nutritious snack – usually enjoyed with a banana or two. At work he’ll usually have a salad, and he’ll follow that up at home with another salad for dinner.

The 10 miles that he walks with Manteca Optometrist Fred Stellhorn every morning – a trip they take to socialize and exercise their dogs – doesn’t hurt the mission either.  Liotard, though,  says he stays away from traditional gym-related activities and instead focuses on nutrition and what he needs to put into his body.

“A lot of people say they’re going to get in shape and they go to the gym and start eating right and they end up losing weight and it’s the eating right that’s the main factor in that,” he said. “I’ve tried every diet under the sun – Atkins, the South Beach diet, Weight Watchers – and none of them were able to keep the weight off.

“So far this has worked for me, and I’m happy with it. That’s what you need to find.”



— JASON CAMPBELL
209 staff reporter