J.P. Wells Author Profile

We're excited to introduce you to our newest contributing author, J.P. Wells. You'll be reading a lot of fresh content from him in the future. In the meantime, here's what you need to know about our newest addition to the team:

Connect with J.P. Wells

I hope you all enjoy hearing from me as much as I like sharing this part of myself with you.

Connect with me directly on my website J.P. Wells Fitness. I post awesome new content all the time.

If you enjoy keto and want to learn some cool tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way - or want to stay up to date with my book releases and even get some cool freebies - subscribe to my mailing list.

You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

My New Book: Keto Strong

If you are new to keto or just want to learn more about it, check out my brand new book “Keto Strong – A Beginners Guide to High Performance Keto”. 

You’ll find everything you need to get yourself going on the keto diet including:

• A 30-day meal plan for your athletic goals
• Potential benefits of the keto diet for athletes
• How to combine Intermittent Fasting and Keto
• Foods to eat and avoid on the Keto Diet
• Downsides of Keto for athletes and ways to overcome them
• Ketogenic diet advice for complete beginners
• Keto Cookbook- over 60 delicious recipes to keep you motivated and enjoy the process
• So much more… 

If you want to get a jump start on your keto journey, pick up your copy now!

Introduction to J.P. Wells: My story

I always find it awkward figuring out how to introduce myself to a new audience. I’ve been introduced a couple times as a “Keto Expert” in various places I’ve written for - which always makes me feel a little weird because I don’t think of myself as being an “expert”.

A student of fitness and nutrition

If I were to put it into words, I would say I look at myself as forever a student of fitness and nutrition. I’ve just been in class longer than some and want to help my fellow students 'cheat off my test', if you will 😉.

Seeing as I am writing to a completely new set of readers, I suppose I should give you guys a little back story on me and why you guys should even care what I have to say.

A Little Preface

My name is J.P. Wells. I am a published bestselling author and blogger. I’ve been invited to write as a guest blogger for a number of fitness sites, as well as operating my own Fitness and Nutrition website J.P. Wells Fitness.

My focus on fitness as it relates to the ketogenic diet

I tend to focus on the topic of fitness as it relates to the ketogenic diet. After sustaining a life changing injury while serving in the United States Army, I’ve spent my time learning and researching ways to fix my body and get back into the active lifestyle that I grew up loving.

It is my goal to share my story and the knowledge that I’ve gained from years of learning through trial and error. With any luck, I can help pull people through a few personal sticky spots along the road to achieving their personal fitness goals.

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my beautiful wife and two sons. I was never easy on my body while growing up. Being from a place we spend eight out of twelve months with snow on the ground, I naturally gravitated to winter activities.

I began snowboarding around sixth grade. I decided to teach myself because I was smarter and tougher than everyone else, and didn’t need help from no one. I had that “young and bulletproof” syndrome… bad… and it would only get worse as time went on.

I went to that hill day after day, and every day I came home bruised, broken, and sore. Eventually I became a really good snowboarder - and it is in fact a sport I enjoy to this day. I was even able to share it with my oldest son. However, he took a much smarter path and just let me teach him how.

Let's fast forward to my junior year of high school. I was your typical teenager. I hated my parents, school was completely useless, and all I wanted to do was get out of my small-town hell.

I held a deep interest in the military from the time I got my first G.I. Joe. The thought of jumping out of airplanes, shooting machine guns and blowing stuff up like Rambo excited me! I knew that I didn’t want to wear a suit and tie to work every day like my dad, so I decided I was going to join the military. This is where my fitness story really starts to begin.

Where my fitness journey really began

I had never really been interested in fitness, exercise or dieting. I didn’t really care about my health. I was young and at that point I knew I would just live forever. At 17 years old I joined the United States Army and left home for the first time in my life. I spent my summer vacation getting a master’s degree in “embracing the suck”.

I came back for my senior year of high school even more hardheaded and cockier - if that was even possible.

Things were going well for a while. I liked the Army. The structure suited me. I thought I had found my purpose in life. Everything was great... till Christmas-eve four years into my enlistment.

I was in a bad car accident with a city snowplow. That morning changed the trajectory of my life forever.

I woke up in my car facing the wrong direction, sitting in a bush. It took me a minute to realize what had happened or even which way was up. I looked around mentally grasping at cohesion but was truly just grasping at straws.

I was vaguely aware of the plow truck, now in front of me, also pulled over, and the driver jumping out and yelling to me to see if I was okay.

I looked over to the passenger seat and noticed a large chunk of the engine bay was now where the dash and passengers foot space used to be. My illusions of being an invincible super soldier had officially taken their first hit.

Some dark times

The doctors told me that I injured the discs in the lumbar region of my spine. I had gone through pain medication, muscle relaxers, steroid injections and all sorts of different therapies to try and reduce the pain to a more manageable level.

The Army stuck with me for some time, but after a while of me not being able to perform my duties I was given a choice: Gut it out or be honorably discharged.

I was in too much pain to even stand up straight; much less be a soldier so I chose the latter. That was it… My lifelong dream career ended in 4 and a half short years.

I’d say for about two years or so I was a walking pity party. I was the poster child of inaction. I got really depressed and felt like I had zero direction or drive.

I continued to eat like I did when I was in the Army which was pretty much the “see food diet”. I saw food I liked… I ate it.

The problem was that I was no longer running around burning thousands of calories a day to counteract that sort of diet. I could hardly get off the couch and shuffle around. My metabolism slowed due to inactivity and I gained a ton of weight.

This is turn just made the pain worse which made me feel more depressed and helpless - which of course led to more eating.

I just had enough

The doctors began talking to me about the possibility of surgery if my condition did not begin to improve. I was twenty-one years old, sitting in a pain specialist's office and he was telling me it was beginning to look like my only option was to fuse those discs.

I would lose mobility in that part of my back. I would never be able to live the active lifestyle I grew up loving. Like a switch in my head the soldier inside me woke back up.

Right then and there I drew a line in the sand and said no more. I told the doctor I refuse the surgery and if I had to, I’d live in pain till I just couldn’t take it anymore.

The turnaround

I began researching different back exercises for the elderly. I was looking for simple stretches I could do at home. I even started learning about water aerobics.

I learned about anything I could think of to strengthen the muscles around my spine to help support the damaged discs - as well as things that would allow me to begin losing weight.

At my heaviest I was up to around two hundred and seventy pounds from my Army weight of around one hundred and eighty pounds. I was carrying around an extra ninety pounds that my body was not used to.

I began comparing it to all the gear we used to carry around in the military. I was living my everyday life as if I was carrying every piece of battle gear the Army ever gave me. I remembered what it was like to carry that weight on long distances of ten or twenty kilometer marches. I remember that feeling of dropping that gear off your back all at once when we got to our destination.

That pressure release all at once almost felt like weightlessness - and I was just walking around with it.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

I learned as much as I could and I began slowly working the process. My plan was to strengthen the muscles around my injured spine. I began with just simple stretches that the physical therapist gave me.

After a while of that, I added in some water aerobic exercises designed to strengthen those muscles without putting stress on the joints. Swimming became my best friend for a while. It was the best activity I could find that exercised my body without putting undue stress on my back.

As time went on, I could feel my back slowly strengthening. My pain levels seemed to be going down and I found myself needing less and less pain medication throughout the day.

Eventually I began doing deadlifts with almost no weight at first. I started out using two and a half pound dumbbells at home. As I got stronger, I began going to the gym with some friends.

They were all really into bodybuilding and kept talking about guys like Kai Greene and Jay Cutler. I had never heard of these guys. When I thought of bodybuilding only one name came to mind… Arnold.

I kept hanging around these guys and kept hearing about these almost god like monsters of men who seemingly could control their physiques at will. I was undeniably amazed. I wanted the control over myself that they had.

I could barely stand up straight. Now I was doing squats and dead-lifts!

My next chapter

I knew nothing about bodybuilding science or nutrition science but I began to emulate the guys my friends in the gym were talking about. I began watching endless YouTube videos of their workouts, different diet plans and supplement reviews.

I started to figure out the absolute basics. If you wanted to get big you had to eat big. So that’s what I did. I began eating six or seven meals a day. I also began spending four or five hours in the gym lifting weights.

The lifestyle consumed me. I would wake up at four in the morning while everyone else was asleep and begin making my breakfast and packing my meals for the day. I began carrying mountains of Tupperware around with me filled with food measured out to the gram. The back seat of my truck was evolving into a gym locker room filled with dirty gym clothes and empty Tupperware. I loved it!!! For the first time since leaving the Army I felt challenged.

I began seeing real results. I started to become stronger than I had ever been. My dead-lift had gone from lifting two and a half pound dumbbells in my living room to lifting five hundred pounds with no back pain!

My bench press went from twenty-pound dumbbells when I first started going to the gym to sets of ten at three hundred and fifteen pounds. I felt like an immovable force of nature again.

The only problem I found with bodybuilding was that at some point you have to switch from your “bulking routine”, where you eat dirty and lift heavy, to your “cutting routine”, where you use all the added muscle mass you gained to burn the fat off.

I got comfortable in my bulking diet and did not want to restrict myself the way I should for my cutting diet. I started procrastinating and pushing it off.

I adopted the mindset that:
“I feel great just as I am. Why should I change?"
"I don’t plan on doing any shows. I just do this for me.”

So I just kept lifting heavier and eating to continue building strength. My body took on the look of a power lifter. I was extremely thick and solid, but I carried all my excess fat on my stomach.

Turns out I’m not superman

I was rather happy with how things were going. My ego was building about as fast as my muscles. I was among the strongest guys at the gym that I went to and I garnered the respect that came along with that.

People started coming up to me and asking me for advice - or to show them how to do a certain lift. I LOVED helping people. It wasn't to show off or feel superior. It was because I truly enjoyed helping them.

It felt good about being recognized for all the hard work that went into those results. My big gym friends and I would constantly compete on lifts to push our progress.

Eventually my ego would get the better of me and I would sustain my second somewhat life altering injury.

I was never real disciplined at warming myself up or doing stretches. You would think that with my past injury, I would have learned.

I ended up injuring both of my rotator cuffs. My bench press dropped from a routine three hundred and fifteen pounds to a painful one hundred and thirty-five pounds over night. I was pissed!!!

A woman who I was best friends with at the time told me in a not so roundabout way that I was getting fat - and that I needed to do something about it.

She was especially athletic at the time and was running and/or mountain biking every day. I HATED RUNNING WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS!!! I began jogging with her every chance I got. I didn’t hurt matters that she was completely gorgeous and I was totally into her, so I just used the jogging as an excuse to hang out with her more.

She would embarrassingly outrun me every time and would never slow her pace or sacrifice her workout to stay paced with me - but she was always waiting for me at the end, cheering me on. I always admired that. If I wanted to hang with her, I needed to learn to keep up.

Eventually, I did learn to keep up. In fact, I kept up so well that we began dating and eventually got married. Her nutritional background was wildly different than mine. She was big into fasting and portion control.

She told me about this diet that she used to do. It is called the “Ketogenic Diet”. The more I learned about it the more I liked it. I’ve never been good at super restrictive diets.

I truly enjoy food so I had to find a diet that worked well with me. Both of us had struggled with dropping weight past a certain point, simply because of our body types.

We began doing keto together. The benefits I’ve gained from keto are simply amazing. In three weeks of doing a very strict keto friendly diet with smart portion control and consistent exercise in the mornings, I was able to drop thirty pounds. This became the closest I had come yet to my Army weight.

My health philosophy

My personal philosophy probably differs WILDLY from most in the fitness industry - especially in the Keto world. I believe heavily in the IIFYM style of dieting. If you are unfamiliar with that term, IIFYM stands for “If it fits your macros”.

Many people in the Keto industry or online will probably slap the “Dirty Keto” label on my approach. I think that that’s completely okay.

I believe that if it works, helps you to stick to your diet and achieve your goals, then the rest doesn’t actually matter.

Most people who fail to meet their fitness goals have a habit of over complicating the process. They overwhelm themselves by focusing on the goal rather than the journey. I forget who said it, but I heard a quote once that has stuck with me for years. “Success is merely a series of small decisions made well” – unknown.

The key to achieving any and all of your goals in life is to simply narrow your focus and make the small choices that you know are right.

Keto changed my life

Keto has truly changed my life. The purpose of my writings, as well as my books, is to share all of the life changing things that I’ve learned. I continue to work on my weight and my fitness - as we all do.

Fitness is a constant battle. No one will ever truly “make it” in the sense that it is never over. Life has curves and changes that force us to adapt or die. I think most people eventually do adapt - however not always immediately.

Change and adaptation is only ever in your own time, but when you finally do come to that place of change within yourself, you begin to see all the potential that you have locked up inside yourself.

Connect with me

Connect with me directly on my website J.P. Wells Fitness. I post awesome new content all the time.

If you enjoy keto and want to learn some cool tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way - or want to stay up to date with my book releases and even get some cool freebies - subscribe to my mailing list.

You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

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