Check Your Ego at the Door: How to Lose Weight and not Your Mind.
By: D. Scott Maiorca
Tags: Weight Loss, Ego, Goal Setting, Ddpy, Yoga

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“If you checked your ego at the door, this might be the greatest experience of your life. If you didn’t, you might be screwed.” Diamond Dallas Page

January seventh 2019, my best friend and I decided we were tired of being tired, tired of our backs hurting, and tired of being out of shape.

He has been a lifelong professional wrestling fan, and I am a sucker for a good infomercial. If you have ever wondered who buys that stuff the sell on TV, it’s me a lot of the time. We watched a video about a guy named Arthur Borman. He was a disabled vet who had been told he’d never walk again without assistance. He was, in a way, in worse shape than we were. By the end of the video he not only walked, he ran without crutches. He had started doing a program called DDPY, Diamond Dallas Page Yoga.

We knew who Page was — I’d even seen him wrestle in the nineties, when WCW was the top wrestling franchise, and Hulk Hogan was a villain. We decided to try DDPY, honestly not expecting much.

By week two, we felt different. Woke up and getting out of bed felt different, it seemed off. As I got around, I realized what was off. My back didn’t hurt. I texted my friend. “How’d you feel when you got up this morning?”

“It was weird,” he replied. “My back wasn’t f’d up.”

We were hooked from that moment on. We started to actually expect results, not just from the program, but from ourselves.

According to wrestlinginc.com, Page became a pro wrestler when he was thirty five years old. That’s when the majority of pro wrestlers retire. By the age of forty, he had become a wrestling superstar, signing a three year multimillion dollar contract. Then he injured his back, severely, and his wrestling career ended.

According to Page, while he was in physical therapy after surgery, his wife suggested he try yoga for his back. He saw results like my friend and I after a few weeks, and DDPY was born.

In June my friend attended a live DDPY workshop. Page opened the workshop by saying, “If you checked your ego at the door, this might be the greatest experience of your life. If you didn’t, you might be screwed.” Around week four of our program I started to notice Page’s bad grammar during the online workout sessions. As a former speech teacher it drove me nuts. Page would say “bring your hand acrosst,”or “I combineded these moves for you.” After a few more weeks I couldn’t stand to listen to the sessions.

My friend and I kvetched through texts. We did this almost daily. We had spent our whole lives priding ourselves on our intellects while neglecting our bodies. I fell behind in the workouts and almost quit. Within a week my back started feeling tight again and I got back on board.

While my ego screamed about the bad grammar and how educated I was, and knew better, my back didn’t care.

My friend, who was bothered as much as I was, pointed out “he may not know English, but knows more about our bodies than we ever did.” We decided to check our egos at the door, and listen to Page and our bodies.

That decision changed my life. Nine months later, I was down sixty three pounds, I had more energy than my teenage boys, and my back pain was non-existent. I spend a few minutes every day focused on my body. I do DDPY only a few times a week, but do traditional yoga or Qigong every day, and of course, I wear tank tops in public.

If you enjoyed this piece feel free to check out on of my other pieces on weightloss. https://scott-maiorca.medium.com/the-day-i-wore-a-tank-top-in-public-how-to-lose-weight-and-not-your-mind-4893307b79c6?sk=f1483f282b6006a0c910a0dfc4179068