How This Man Lost a Staggering 136 kg and Became a Marathon Runner
César Torruella, the executive director of arts education in Chicago, says his weight gain got out of control during the pandemic. By the summer of 2021, he was 224 kilos, pre-diabetic, and hypertensive. Here, in his own words, the 35-year-old shares how he was able to lose 136 kg and complete the Chicago Marathon just over three years later.
I've always been a bigger guy. It runs in my family. I had attempted to lose weight, especially in college around 2008, but I was held back by a bad relationship with food. I was living a very unhealthy life where I didn’t work out at all. I would try fad diets, but couldn’t stick to them. I was basically yo-yo dieting all the way up until my annual physical in the summer of 2021. That was transformative and eye-opening for me.
At that point, I weighed 224 kg. My glasses prescription had changed four times in the last quarter. My doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes, and I started taking medication to address these issues – but he said I also needed to take action. I understood then that I needed help – I was not in a situation where I could just, like, stop eating too much. All these factors – the vision problems, lab results, all of that – really contributed to me making a decision: this has got to stop. I needed medical intervention.
I'd been playing with the idea of bariatric surgery since I was in college, and my doctor and I made the decision that I should finally pursue that path. The procedure shifted everything for me really quickly. There’s a period after the surgery where your body cannot digest solid food. I was on a liquid diet for two weeks before I was able to start eating very simple pureed foods. I was literally eating baby food.
The process of working my way back up to solid food took a mental toll, but it also forced me to really think about everything I was eating. I couldn’t afford not to, since a slip up could literally cause me to choke and die. By the time I was cleared to eat more normally, I started to get hooked on the TikTok feeds of a bunch of different nutritionists and registered dietitians. I started to learn what a bariatric plate is, how bodies process proteins, and how carbs are important.
It was a learning curve, but I’ve now become very conscious of what I put in my body. I have learned how to read labels to make sure I’m avoiding added sugars and I'm getting enough nutrients in my food. I also started walking a lot. I would take the dog out. At first, it was 30 minutes. Then 45 minutes. Then an hour. Soon, I had enough confidence to start doing strength training. I joined an LA Fitness in Houston, where I was living. These workouts combined with the surgery contributed to me losing a lot of weight. I started to wear compression garments to keep my excess skin in place.
I never imagined myself as a runner until my friend John McCreary invited me to come with him to his run club. The group, the Front Runners, met every Tuesday to do a 5k loop, then go to dinner together. I loved the idea of being able to work out while also making friends and socialising with like-minded people. At first, I was so intimidated. I’m not going to lie, I really didn’t want to go. But John encouraged me. I remember he said, 'I’ll run this one with you.'
There ended up being about 15 to 20 folks in the group that afternoon. They have everyone form a circle at the beginning, do introductions, and answer ice-breaker questions. Everyone then takes the run at their own pace, but John stayed with me the entire time. We went slow and walked a bit, but I finished the 5k. I couldn’t believe it. Just a year earlier, I could barely walk. But that day, during my first-ever run, I did a 5k.
'I wanted to become part of the ONE PER CENT of the world that finished a MARATHON. It felt like a way I could close the loop for myself: a culmination of the EFFORT I had taken to LOSE THE WEIGHT'
I was hooked. I stayed with the club until I moved from Houston to Chicago in August 2023. Luckily, the Front Runners have a chapter there, too. I didn’t know this before moving there, but my apartment was on the marathon course, right by the only real hill the course has. I remember being there on marathon day last year and seeing everyone struggle when they hit it. I saw people almost give up on that hill.
But I also saw strangers cheering for strangers, encouraging them to keep going. I saw runners literally picking each other up off the ground and pushing them to the finish line. It was so inspiring. Something clicked for me. I almost immediately knew that running the marathon was the next thing I needed to do. I wanted to become part of the one percent of the world that finished a marathon. It felt like a way I could close the loop for myself: a culmination of the effort I had taken to lose the weight.
At that point, the longest run I had done was a half marathon. I hadn't trained for it at all. I just put on a pair of shorts and the shirt they had sent me when I registered. I struggled. I was able to finish, but I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve since learned that training for long runs is as much about the mental element as the physical. You can run a marathon – you just don’t think you can. To run a marathon, you have to be able to push your boundaries and build mental toughness. You have to be very committed to the process. I would place a hold in my calendar from 5 to 8pm, every day, so that I could have protected time to actually do the work and build the fitness. If that meant I had to wake up early to start working, I did. I remember my first 18-mile training run, and I ended it feeling like I would never be able to go any further. But somehow, only a few weeks later, I did 22 miles and still felt like I could go further. The marathon no longer felt impossible.
Once I got to race day, I actually wasn’t nervous at all. And the run was an incredible experience. It was amazing to be able to read the signs as I passed through all the different neighbourhoods of the city. I was on pace to finish in four hours and 20 minutes through mile 17 when I pulled my right quad. By that point, I was in pain, but I pushed through knowing that my friends wanted to see me succeed. My partner Nate was waiting for me at mile 20 with my dog and our neighbours. They made signs. It was amazing to see them.
When I finished, I was sobbing. I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but I was so emotional. I was overwhelmed by what I had accomplished. Even when I was a bigger person, I was always a confident person. But the feeling you get when you do something like finish the marathon is different. It’s not that you get cocky, but it gives you a new perspective on what you can do when you’re willing to put in the effort.
From: Men's Health US
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