A 58-year-old resident of New Jersey named Gregory Cole ended up getting sick and witnessing his skin changing colour after he traded fast food for diet and exercising, apparently because of how his body processes sugar.
According to The Mirror, Cole, who admitted that he loved McDonald’s burgers and used to indulge in that type of fast food before, decided to change his lifestyle after he suffered a herniated disk and was told by doctors that he would have to lose weight.
However, when he started dieting and exercising, he began feeling fatigued, leading him to suspect that perhaps he was "working out too much and was burning the candle at both ends".
"I had a good diet, but my energy level got worse and one day, I could barely drag myself out of bed", he recalled. "My skin turned grey, I had body aches, my rosacea worsened and I was catching colds on a frequent basis – my immunity was compromised. I went to my doctor, who told me my blood work was fine, but my vitamin D level was low".
After a neighbour of his told him of "about the progress she made with her nutritionist", Cole decided to turn to the latter for help, and it was then that he learned that he had a so-called auto-brewery syndrome, when a person’s body converts sugar into alcohol.
Upon learning of his predicament, Cole decided to remove all sugar from his diet, opting to eat only "green vegetables, fish, lamb and nuts".
"[After] a year, I returned to optimal health and the majority of my ailments disappeared", he said. "My energy returned, the brain fog, achiness and bloating went away and my rosacea was cured. For the first time since my teenage years, I felt ecstatic – almost reborn".
Cole, who weighed around 120 kilograms at his heaviest point, then set his sights on working out and losing weight to maintain his health, and, having developed an interest in bodybuilding, won his first competition in October 2018, the media outlet notes.
"I knew that any goal I set for myself was achievable and that was the day I crowned myself the ‘reinvention king’", he said. "I want to inspire other people like me and show that being obese is not a life-long sentence, it is possible to lose weight and keep it off. I hope to educate people, not only about diet and exercise, but about how to achieve optimal health".