When Drew Manning stepped out from behind the cardboard cutout of his former fat self on Monday, the audience of “Good Morning America” was appropriately shocked.

The fitness trainer’s journey had come to an end after successfully losing more than 70 pounds — six months after he purposely gained the same amount. “Like it never happened,” host George Stephanopoulos said.

“Kind of,” Manning said. Both Manning and his wife, Lynn, can attest that a lot actually has changed in the past year. While Manning’s body may have returned to its six-pack heydays, his mind, in many ways, has not.

Always a fitness junkie, staying in shape comes naturally for Manning. He’s that guy at the gym the rest of us love to hate, the one who likes to use his biceps for pumping iron instead of changing channels, and who prefers sucking down a spinach shake to indulging in a brownie sundae.

Because of that, Manning was a “judgmental” trainer, his wife says. “He would look at someone who was overweight and say, ‘They must really be lazy.’

“I was convinced people used genetics or similar excuses as a crutch,” Manning writes in his new book, “Fit2Fat2Fit.” “You either wanted to be healthy or you didn’t.”

That point of view wasn’t helping Manning help his clients. When he failed yet again to push someone over to the light side, he knew something was wrong. In order to better understand the struggles his clients were facing, he had to face them himself.

He gave up the gym and started consuming junk food, fast food and soda. In just six months, he went from 193 pounds with a 34-inch waist to 265 pounds with a 48-inch waist.

Lynn saw the difference in her husband in less time than that. He became lethargic, stopped helping around the house and was less than eager to play with their 2-year-old daughter.

“He was so insecure — saying ‘I’m so fat. I look so horrible,’ constantly complaining about how he looks,” she said.

Manning says he didn’t realize the effects of his weight gain would be more than physical. It altered his relationships and his self-confidence. Returning to the gym after the Fit2Fat portion of his journey made him nervous. The fact that he had to do push-ups on his knees was almost humiliating.

“The biggest thing [I learned] is that it’s not just about the physical. It’s not just about the meal plan and the workouts and those things. The key is the mental and the emotional issues. I realized those issues are real.”

Read more: www.abcactionnews.com

By: Jacque Wilson, CNN