ABOUT ME

I DIDN’T GET OFF THE ROAD TO CHANGE MY LIFE. I DID IT AT 70 MPH.

My name is David Palmisano.

I'm an over-the-road truck driver, which means I spend an unreasonable percentage of my life sitting in a moving chair while trying not to become shaped exactly like the chair.

That wasn't going particularly well.

I reached 322 pounds.

So I decided something had to change.

Since then, I've lost 40 pounds.

And somehow I've managed to do it without quitting my job, moving into a wellness retreat, hiring a personal chef, purchasing $900 worth of matching workout clothes, or waking up at 4:30 every morning to scream motivational quotes into an ice bath.

I just kept driving.

And driving.

And driving.

there's a lot of driving.

40 POUNDS DOWN. FREIGHT STILL MOVING.

Here's the part I'm actually proud of:

I lost those 40 pounds while continuing to run high-performance OTR.

For 27 consecutive months, I've been recognized as a top driver in my company newsletter.

Twenty-seven.

Straight.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if somebody forgot how to remove my name from the template.

But I'll take it.

The important part is that I didn't put my career on cruise control while I worked on my weight.

Loads still had appointments.

Clocks still ran out.

Traffic still appeared for absolutely no identifiable reason.

Weather still happened.

Truck stops still somehow managed to put the healthiest food approximately six ZIP codes away from the cash register.

And dispatch continued practicing the ancient art of sending messages at exactly the moment you don't want another message.

Through all of it—

40 pounds came off.

THE ENVIRONMENT DIDN’T CHANGE

That's probably the biggest thing I've learned.

I didn't magically escape the environment where I gained the weight.

I'm still sitting behind a steering wheel.

Still sleeping in a truck.

Still surrounded by truck-stop food.

Still living a lifestyle where walking 300 feet across a parking lot occasionally feels like you've accidentally entered a CrossFit competition.

Nothing became perfect.

I just got better at operating inside the imperfection.

That's a lot less sexy than:

“I DISCOVERED ONE WEIRD TRICK THAT MELTS BELLY FAT!”

Nobody wants the headline:

“LOCAL MAN FINALLY STARTS PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT THE HELL HE'S DOING.”

But that's closer to the truth.

I’M DEFINITELY NOT A FITNESS INFLUENCER

Let's establish this immediately.

Nobody is asking me to take my shirt off for the cover of Men's Health.

And if they do—

circulation must be collapsing.

I'm not standing in front of a Lamborghini explaining that success begins at 4:00 a.m.

I'm probably standing next to a Freightliner wondering why the reefer just made a noise I've never heard before.

I don't have a home gym.

Most of my exercise equipment consists of the ground.

Very affordable.

Available nationwide.

Zero membership fees.

Terrible customer service.

And yet somehow, this has been working.

OTR WILL TEACH YOU THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF

Spend enough time alone in a truck and eventually you run out of people to blame.

That's inconvenient.

Nobody is standing behind the curtain forcing you to eat something.

Nobody is preventing you from moving.

Nobody is sneaking calories into your mouth while you're checking your mirrors.

Eventually you have to confront the disturbing possibility that—

you might be involved in your own problems.

I know.

I was disappointed too.

But there's something useful about that realization.

Because if you're involved in creating the problem, maybe you can also be involved in fixing it.

27 MONTHS STRAIGHT

Being recognized as a top driver for 27 consecutive months doesn't mean 27 months of perfect days.

If you've ever driven OTR, you're already laughing at the phrase “perfect day.”

There's always something.

Traffic.

Weather.

A dock.

A breakdown.

A schedule change.

A parking lot apparently designed by someone who hates trucks.

A shipper who has known you were coming since Tuesday but reacts to your arrival like you just landed a helicopter in the lobby.

You adapt.

That's the job.

And I've realized that's also a pretty good philosophy for everything else.

You screw up?

Correct it.

Bad day?

Start again tomorrow.

Miss an exit?

Reroute.

You don't park the truck, throw the keys into a drainage ditch and announce:

“WELL, I GUESS I'M MOVING TO WYOMING NOW.”

You correct course and keep going.

322 WASN’T THE END OF THE STORY

I started at 322 pounds.

I'm 40 pounds down.

And I'm still doing the job.

Still running OTR.

Still performing at a high level.

Still learning.

Still making mistakes.

Still correcting them.

Still getting better.

And still sitting in this damn chair.

I'm not presenting myself as some finished transformation.

I'm very much under construction.

There are probably orange barrels.

But I know one thing now that I didn't fully understand when I started:

You don't have to pull your life over to change direction.

Sometimes you change direction while you're still moving.

In my case—

at 70 MPH.

So that's me.

Forty pounds down.

Twenty-seven months straight.

Still rolling.

And unless someone has finally invented a truck stop where the parking spaces are plentiful, the bathrooms are spotless, and the coffee doesn't taste like it was filtered through an alternator—

I've still got problems to solve.