What do you do when you’re depressed, overweight and your grandma asks if you’re happy with your life? If you’re Ben Davis, you do something about it. At age 24 and a recent graduate of the University of Central Arkansas journalism program, Ben weighed 365 pounds, and he wasn’t happy about it. He says he was “just going through the motions of life” and even at that doing a “crappy” job. Then his grandmother asked him if he was happy, and he replied that he was in a defensive move. He recalls thinking about it later that night and realized he wasn’t, and when he woke the next day he started to fix it.
He called his brother, who also had weight to lose, and they changed the way they ate and started running. Just seventeen days after their first conversation they ran a 5K together. “The beauty wasn’t that it was a life long dream, the thought never entered my mind to do something like that.”
Since 2024, Ben has lost 130 pounds and feels as fantastic as he looks. He’s since run a 10K, the Denver Marathon, and completed an Ironman. Ben has also been inducted to the Joy Fit Club, a weight loss success segment on the Today Show with Joy Bauer. And, he’s become a spokesperson for Active.com.
We spoke with Ben about this inspiring journey. Watch now to hear how he celebrated losing ten pounds with the most popular girl on his college campus, what it was like to “overhaul everything,” and what’s next for him.
You’ll next see Ben competing this summer in the Vineman Ironman in Napa and the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.
While he admits he’d love to see another 15 or 20 pounds go, he says the focus now is “more about keeping the lifestyle,” which is an important realization for anyone in a weight loss journey.
His advice to those who are in the beginning stages of their own journey is that you can’t make the goal about losing weight. Ben recommends choosing something fun, like a 5K or another event, and working toward that. Everything else will come along with it!
Watch this inspiring video Ben produced chronicling his journey. At the end he offers some wise words that anyone could draw from, “If you want to do it, all you have to do is do it.” True words that have taken Ben very far in a journey he shares at BenDoesLife.com!