14 DAY TRIAL // LA-based musician Papa Joe Aviance is half the man he was when he first broke on the scene in 2009 with “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” and he credits what he calls the 99-Cent Diet for it.
Having lost 250 pounds (113.3 kg) and turned his life around, the musician is now urging others to do the same by speaking about his own situation in an interview with Yahoo! Health.
The 99-Cent Diet isn’t a diet per se, as Aviance is quick to point out: it just means that all the produce and other food items are bought at the 99-Cent store, which was the only one he could afford at the time he decided it was time he turned his life around.
Back then, he would eat so much junk food and takeaways that the staff at these places knew him from afar. He’d also have a kitchen packed with treats from which he’d eat indiscriminately, regardless of whether he was hungry or not.
When he saw himself in the video for the aforementioned song, he realized he had a serious problem. First thing he did was to rid himself of all those “treats” he had lying around.
“I cleared everything out of my fridge that was going to get in the way of me losing weight—cookies, candy, sodas. I was only going to drink water or unsweetened iced tea, and no more fast food. At that point, I’d been drinking a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew every day, and if I went through any local drive-thru, they knew my name—that’s how often I used to eat that stuff,” he explains.
He came across an obstacle when he had to buy healthy food because he could not afford one of those weight loss programs or, perhaps just as important, a subscription to the gym.
He went to the 99-Cent store to see if he could buy anything from there, and was shocked to see how many options he had.
“Oatmeal, raisins, nuts, bananas, apples, oranges, bell peppers, spinach, salad dressing, tuna fish, eggs… I was shocked. I was blown away. It was a huge savings. I literally spent no more than $50 [€38.2] a week on food,” Aviance say.
As for not being able to afford gym, he simply grabbed his headphones and his favorite music, and went out for a walk around the block.
In time, he’d come to walk for miles and even incorporate other exercises in the routine. Also in time, starting with the first three months, he began noticing the first results.
In 18 months, he’d completely transformed himself.
“I’ve always been a very happy guy who would kid around with anyone, but when I was heavy, I felt like I had to be that way because I thought people were judging me based on my size. But now it’s a happiness that is really shining from the inside out,” he says.
So, the 99-Cent Diet isn’t so much a diet (not in the sense we’ve come to think of “diets”) but rather a healthy lifestyle that rules out over-processed foods in favor of lots of fruit and veggies, and which includes plenty of exercise.