Bayar Baayarsaikhan, 31, has been overweight most of his life, weighing 500 pounds at his heaviest.
“People often ask: When you were weighing in your 300s, didn’t you want to stop? How did this happen? I just carried on with that lifestyle,” he told TODAY in a segment that aired on May 18. “You know how people say, ‘healthy body, healthy mind?’ Well once my body was unhealthy, my mind became unhealthy too. I stopped thinking about furthering goals because all I kept thinking about was battling my body; how to make pain go away in my back, my leg, my calves, my feet.”
The weight was taking a major toll on both his physical and mental health.
“I often felt so tired that I would have to sit down to do the dishes or tell my kids that I was too exhausted to play with them. At Disney World, I had to rent a wheelchair,” he added. “My wife encouraged me to start walking, but I lost interest in doing anything … I just didn’t want to go outside because my feet would hurt.”
By the time Baayarsaikhan hit 500 pounds, he wasn’t feeling well at all. “I was always tired. I had to take naps every day and naps would last for two hours in the middle of the day,” he said. That’s what prompted him to finally see a doctor.
An eye-opening doctors visit
In January 2021, a doctor’s visit opened his eyes to the reality of the state of his health. “I was diagnosed with severe high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes. And then he told me I was only expected to live until my forties,” he said.
Baayarsaikhan was also diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. “I learned that in a normal, healthy person, sleep apneas can occur maybe about 1-3 occurrences in one hour, but I was having 135 occurrences in one hour. So pretty much it would look like I was sleeping, but my body was never asleep. And that’s why I was…
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