Ed Samane is a trim, compact 43-year-old, with the ropy muscles and physical ease of a lifelong athlete. He looks like the type of metabolically gifted man who has never had to worry about what he puts in his mouth. But that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
At age 11, Samane weighed in at 215 pounds, putting him squarely in the morbidly obese category. “Because I was overweight, I had low self-esteem,” he says. “And I was bullied a lot in school, beaten up or picked on two or three times a week.”
Desperate to change his body and stop the taunting, Samane attended martial arts classes, dedicating himself to a Korean form of karate. Six months later, the bullying was over–not because he unleashed the dragon on his tormentors, but because of his change in attitude. “My self-esteem and confidence had shot up,” says Samane, who dropped 40 pounds and eventually earned his black belt. “I stood up to the people bullying me, and then they left me alone.” Carry on reading…