- I have never made Ma Pao Tofu before
and after we filmed it I thought,
you know, it's probably a strange dish for us to start with
and maybe we should shelve it for something more familiar,
but then I thought I've never done any of this before.
So then it seemed kinda like the perfect recipe
to start telling this story with.
(water flowing)
(relaxing music)
- My first incarnation was born in 23 BC.
No, how we got here.
So me and Brad, we have worked together for seven years.
And recently, he was talking about starting
this nutrition channel and he was getting really serious
and he was starting to test pilot stuff
but he was having difficulty coming up with concepts.
I was like, "Well, you know, I had just had this
you know, big hospital heart condition thing that came up.
So why don't we try to tie in my weight loss
and we can document that
and we can go through that journey together,
like we can watch me lose weight."
- And just like that,
Chris handed me an idea better than anything
I had come up with during years
of thinking about health concepts.
And while it is sad to think about how many bad ideas I had,
I was incredibly excited at the chance
to help Chris get healthier.
- A couple years ago, I hit my max.
Like I hit about 555, 565 as like the biggest
I've ever been.
With that came health issues.
I have non-glucose dependent diabetes.
I had some issues with my kidneys
that I kind of kept to myself,
then that kind of developed into a heart condition,
and this year my heart went into what's known
as atrial fibrillation, which is where one chamber
beats at a different rate than another.
And that put me in the hospital for a week.
I tried doing what they call cardio inversion,
essentially defibrillating you
while your heart's still working to get me back in sync.
And that didn't work.
So I had to start getting really serious about my diet.
- So I called Chris in the hospital.
I couldn't visit because of the COVID restrictions.
And he gave me the news about his heart.
I had already been worried about Chris because of COVID
and the fact that he was high risk.
And with this news, it had me really thinking
about the possibility of losing a friend.
And so, I thought about it for several days
and when Chris got out of the hospital
I decided to call him and I just offered my help.
I told him, "Whatever you need, whatever I can do,
I'm here for you."
Oh, pissed.
This is supposed to be relaxing.
The ASMR is ruined, Chris.
- Lower your hand down a little
Brad has told me on a thousand different occasions,
like he support me, he'll come with me
to do a lot of things.
And you know, I've turned that down on many occasions
just 'cause I don't wanna burden anybody else with my issue
which has been, you know, trouble throughout my entire life.
You know, never asking for help,
always trying to do everything myself.
And sometimes when you do everything yourself,
you fail hard.
- And Chris having turned me down in the past
is part of why I was so excited when he accepted my offer.
And suddenly, it was time to get to work.
Now you might be asking yourself
what makes me qualified to help someone like Chris.
And to that, I would say I'm a soy boy.
I've been eating a plant-based diet at home since 2013.
And it has helped me maintain my weight,
have healthy blood work, and feel good.
So if I was going to recommend
a healthy way for Chris to eat, that would be it.
So I came to his house, we ordered groceries.
I gave him a list of recipes, and we were off to the races.
(sizzling sound) (relaxing music)
- Where do I start?
We've been at this eight months, eight months.
We've been going to the gym most mornings,
and that's helped me lose about 70 pounds
along with the plant-based eating.
I also started doing therapy
to help cope with the emotional issues
that were probably some of the stemming,
some of the binge eating that I was doing.
That helped me focus on things I needed to change
in my life, which led me to a great opportunity
for a new job, which I'm moving for in a week now,
which I realized the other day will be a year
since my heart incident and my stay in the hospital.
So that's really interesting how much progress I've made
in the last year.
You know, we've been on this really interesting
emotional journey together and it's helped him,
it's helped me.
We're still trying to figure everything out
how to film this and how to tell this story correctly
in the best way possible.
- And it wasn't until I found out that Chris was moving away
that this one struck me.
So Chris and I making recipes together
in our separate kitchens to build a repertoire
of healthy dishes, to eat, and share with you.
So each time we cook,
we are getting to eat something healthy
and each episode we get to share a bit of this journey
and how it's going.
So I'm really excited about it.
I hope it turns out like this Ma Pao Tofu.
Chris' was better than mine.
Yeah, it was.
- Don't be a bitch about it, Brad.
- I'm a soy boy, I can't help it.
(relaxing music)