S2E34: The Fittest Fat Kid You Know
Bruce is a writer, actor, producer and lately podcaster who has produced several award winning short films. His most recent project is the podcast The Fittest Fat Kid You Know, where he uses his weight and fitness struggles as a lens for others to help them focus on the trials and tribulations of their own weight loss journeys.
Social media and contact information:
Instagram 1: fittestfatkid
Instagram 2: bigguysmalldog
twitter: fittestfatkid
tiktok: fittestfatkid
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fittestfatkid
website: www.fittestfatkid.com
Podcast transcript
[00:00:00] Damaged Parents: Welcome back to the Relatively Damaged podcast by Damaged Parents where fit fat funny people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.
Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damaged self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges.
Maybe it's not so much about the damage, maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side, whole.
Those who stare directly into the face of adversity without an unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me, not in spite of my trials, but because of them let's hear from another hero.
Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them.
Today, we're going to talk with Bruce. I have trouble saying his last name and I'm going to try anyway. Bruce Nachsin he has many roles in his life, son, entertainer award-winning short film producer, host of the Fittest Fat Kid, You Know, Podcast and more. We'll talk about how he used to be tall until there was a problem. And then after treatment, he didn't grow taller and got fat. And how still today he identifies as that kid.
Let's hear how he's finding health and healing and Hey, Bruce. You can give me a hard time if I didn't get your name right again. Let's talk
Welcome back to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. Today, we have roofs. I can say Bruce, really? I promise Bruce. Okay guys, I'm trying this. Let's see if I get it right the first time notching. No, it's like Jackson. Nachon right. No, I did it wrong. He's laughing at me now. Okay. Tell us.
[00:02:35] Bruce Nachsin: My name is Lawrence Harrisonburg.
Hi, I'm Bruce Nachsin I've practiced saying my name for years, so I don't really hold it against Angela whom you'll. Might've noticed that I got her name right on the first time, but I don't know her last name. And I don't want to know because I have a perfect record at the moment and getting her last name might ruin that anyway, listeners, people abroad wherever you are.
And I don't know where you are because you're like a camera lens to me. Hello?
[00:03:01] Damaged Parents: Hello. It's so let me tell you a little bit about Bruce. He is a writer, an actor producer, and lately podcasts, or who has produced several award-winning short films. His most recent project is the podcast, The Fittest Fat Kid, You Know, where he uses his weight and fitness struggles as a lens for others to help them focus on the trials and tribulations of their own weight loss journeys, you can find him.
And he said he made this easy for reasons. What is it? Keep it simple, right? We're going to go with that. And, but his really quite literally his social media tags, @fittestfatkid on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok Facebook, the website. If you have trouble finding that though, you can find his other Instagram account, @bigguysmalldog.
And he said, he's got yet another one for one of the dogs. And I'll let him tell you that one,
[00:03:57] Bruce Nachsin: if you want to see the cutest Yorkie mix you've ever seen. And I know everyone thinks theirs is, but well, factually speaking, minus it's @Mikeyagentofkaos, K A O S. And I share my Mikey with the world, any sort of a combination of my dog.
And he was my mother's dog. So effectively, he's like a little brother son thing. So almost like a bit of a Southern thing going on here with me and Mikey.
[00:04:25] Damaged Parents: Yeah, that sounds, definitely entertaining, but if you say he is the cutest, I think we, and we must trust and go check, and then decide.
[00:04:35] Bruce Nachsin: I do think that if there's one thing you do throughout this podcast is just trust and believe everything I say, because I will not lead you astray. I don't lie at all. I am that trustworthy
[00:04:45] Damaged Parents: only though. We're good at telling jokes aren't we,
[00:04:48] Bruce Nachsin: uh, we believe so. We find ourselves humorous if only because it's either laugh or cry.
[00:04:53] Damaged Parents: Yeah. Well, that's true. We did say that I found a quote and I can't remember where it was. If it wasn't funny, it just be true. And that's sad. So yes. You know, so let's get into the funny, sad story of your struggle.
[00:05:09] Bruce Nachsin: Well, my struggles started probably. My big struggle in life is weight, which might be a surprise for somebody who has a show called The Fittest Fat Kid You Know, as a child, I had some medical issues and some of the medications they put me on exploded my weight. So by the time I was 11 years old, I weighed around 280 pounds. And you
[00:05:30] Damaged Parents: were 11. And about what height?
[00:05:32] Bruce Nachsin: Uh, the same height as I am now, five eight. I was supposed to be a really tall person, but my legs decided that they didn't want to grow.
So I pretty much froze around age 11 at this height. So I went from being really tall, to kind of tall, to not tall, to kind of at the low end of normal, which is from a dating standpoint at the time was a little bit of a challenge. , but 11 years old, 280 pounds of, I was a pacifistic kid. I mean, I had health issues and I had asthma.
So I was picked on a lot and then I had the weight and that just made things very difficult. And of course, when you are 11 years old, when you are 280 pounds, and when you have very, very cruel, it's not just the kids in the neighborhood who were cruel. We were a bit of a different family. we were a Jewish family and living in a very, very predominantly Catholic neighborhood.
So I was not only the target of. The kids in the neighborhood, I was also the target of their parents. ,
[00:06:31] Damaged Parents: so even in the timeframe that time line that you grew up in there was still very much a Jew. Is it, is it called antisemitism or something like that? Right. Do I get that? I got the word, right?
[00:06:44] Bruce Nachsin: Yes. Oh yeah.
I mean, in some forms, it's a lot more upfront now. And with, how interconnected we are, it's a lot more visible, but there were times as a child, I'm not quite sure where we lived when I was born. But as a young child, we lived in a condominium that eventually, uh, flooded and there was mold and we had to move out when we were looking for apartments and I was like five or six.
There were places that were very open with like no Jews, no blacks On signs, like very clear, you are not welcome in these apartment complexes.
[00:07:19] Damaged Parents: And you're not
that old,
[00:07:20] Bruce Nachsin: not that old, but that still was, you know, late seventies, early eighties, that was going on.
[00:07:26] Damaged Parents: Wow. And so you're this, Jewish kid that's tall at 11
[00:07:33] Bruce Nachsin: and as all hell
[00:07:34] Damaged Parents: yeah.
[00:07:35] Bruce Nachsin: picked on pacifistic. I actually, the way I eventually ended direct bullying to myself around 12 or 13 years old. And I don't say that this was a great idea for someone to do, but I did it anyway. Um, there was a neighbor who would pick on me a lot. We'll just call him S cause his name was Sam, but, um, S.
Pick on me with his friends, he would pick on me and then we'd play together. Cause we were, you know, kids and teenagers actually. this is probably closer to 12, one day he was over and we were playing monopoly and he didn't like how it went. And so he started a fight with me and now he was trying to pick on me in my own house and I lost it and I beat the hell out of him.
And then I opened up the door and I literally threw him headfirst into the door across the way.
[00:08:23] Damaged Parents: Oh wow.
[00:08:24] Bruce Nachsin: That was the last time he ever tried to pick on me. And I sat with that for a while because now he was avoiding me, which was a much better solution.
[00:08:32] Damaged Parents: But he was also someone that you played with.
[00:08:34] Bruce Nachsin: he was not often though.
And it was just because this was the makeup of the neighborhood. I basically, then at one point decided I was going to fight every bully. Any person, any kid in the neighborhood who had ever. Bullying me or tried anything with me. I was going to fight them, win or lose because no matter what I felt that that would make them leave me alone.
And again, I didn't know how to fight. I had no, martial arts training never took any boxing. , I was asthmatic, I was scared, but I went through the neighborhood and fought everybody within like a four year range of me, whoever did anything to me.
[00:09:10] Damaged Parents: Wait
[00:09:10] Bruce Nachsin: And that was,
[00:09:10] Damaged Parents: so you literally made like a conscious decision after the fight with S that you were going to fight everyone.
[00:09:18] Bruce Nachsin: I was going to, yes, I was going to confront every single bully. Everybody who even hinted towards that, doing that to me too, so that they got the idea at the least that it was going to not be acceptable anymore. And I lost several fights. I won a lot more than I thought I was going to, which was shocking to me.
And to be honest with you, aside from recently when I've taken up boxing, but again, that's a different thing entirely. That's, playing around with your friends where there are some, you know, punching involved, but there's also safety equipment. That was the last time I had fights because I'm not a fighter.
I am fundamentally, I believe a coward possibly, but as a child, it was do that or accept that I was going to be walked all over forever.
[00:10:05] Damaged Parents: So almost the only thing you could do in your mind as an 11 year old, you had to do this.
[00:10:11] Bruce Nachsin: Yeah, it was thought out and it worked. I was left alone from that point forward.
And then, when I began losing weight, cause, around.
I was so ostracized and so isolated because of my weight, because of being picked on also, that I left school after grade six, because I was being severely bullied. I couldn't apply that there because there were, groups of kids doing it and I was getting Sige heil'd in the hallways of, Austin Mann middle school in Philadelphia.
One of the things I remember about that distinctively is I've learned it was a lesson in not trusting that it was a lesson in learning that people who were supposedly authority figures, or supposedly there to help you aren't necessarily going to be good or capable with their jobs. Where when I was getting.
Attacked every day and I was getting bullied and I was having these issues, I went to the school disciplinarian and I complained about it. And the school disciplinary and told me that what I should do is I should smile at them and not react. And they would eventually get bored showing that this man who is an authority figure over children had no idea how children behaved or acted.
And eventually according to my mother and I have no recollection of this, one day I went to school and the guy who was the main, source of my problems at the school, I ran into him in a stairwell, just me and him for once. And she said that I fought him. Beat him up left school and I never went back and the school district never tried to get me back because of, I don't really know why, but after that I was effectively homeschooled.
[00:11:54] Damaged Parents: So at the, and so at 11, you've been homeschooled for a little while already.
[00:11:59] Bruce Nachsin: Right? And by homeschooled, I meant I read books because my mom didn't homeschool me. She was working three jobs. My dad had passed away when I was eight and she was doing everything she could to keep me and my brother alive. So, um,
[00:12:12] Damaged Parents: sounds lonely.
[00:12:13] Bruce Nachsin: It was, and I was very isolated and I've not really talked too much about this at some point, but we're talking about mental health at around age 13, 14. I began doing little bits, never really anything serious, more of just like little cries for helping attention of self-harm, but I was more talking about it than really doing it.
It was kind of a little bit more theatrical. And eventually I was put into a child's psychiatric hospital for a couple of months. , but it was there that I just, that I ran into a couple of things that would help me as time went on and also give me an entry into a social scene that I didn't previously had access to.
I ran into music there and it's not like I didn't know if music beforehand, we had radios, but one day I was on a children's ward and I had gotten really, really upset because I'd begun losing weight. And I did it on my own. And then one day I was in a lunch line and I got myself a hamburger and some fries, And one of the social workers made such a big deal of it humiliated me in front of all of the kids.
And it just sent me into a spiral and I was so distraught over it that they felt I was a disruption to the ward and sent me to another ward. But on that ward, I met a dude named John who became a close friend of mine for several years. And he was into music, specifically iron maiden, and it introduced me to iron maiden.
And, uh, I had been a wrestling fan to then introduce me to like the song iron man, which then further into plaque, Sabbath and, where he was. There were these records. So we were listening to them and I came out into music and I also continued losing weight. So at that point I was dropping weight. I was walking a lot.
The house was a little bit in disrepair. And so one summer I fixed it up and my reward for that as my mom bought me what I wanted, which was a cheap base. And I began the base came with a promise. The promise was, if you stick with this, if you show that you are dedicated, if you want to do this for your, and this is my 15th birthday free or 16th birthday, I will buy you a real one.
And I played that thing at least two hours every day. And so when my 16th birthday rolled around at this point, I had a social circle of friends that were, um, the musician alternative metal head type guys. And they were, kind of a little misfits themselves, but we were popular misfits.
So that worked out well. And my mom took me to a place called zaps music. It's not there anymore, but we went to zap some music and I had a budget of $500. Like
[00:14:45] Damaged Parents: that's a lot back in the day.
[00:14:47] Bruce Nachsin: It's a lot. It's not that it's pretty, it's a pretty good size budget now to walk into guitar center or Sam Ash and go like well son
I want you to pick yourself a guitar. Most starter guitars that are halfway decent are like two, $300. she was going to spend $500 and that was going through every single fender bass, because again, iron maiden, Steve Harris, and the salesman came up to her and he was like, I see your son's kind of serious.
he was like ask her budget. And she told her, it was like, well, he's like we got these other bases in that I would like to show your son. It's about a hundred dollars more. And she's like, show it to him. And it was called a Fender Jazz Special and there were three of them. For this part of the story, I want to reemphasize metal alternative industrial music.
So first they brought out three of these bases. The first was a black base. The second was a white base and the third was an godly blend of pink and purple called Razzberry R A Z, Z Berry. And I play the black one and it's okay. I play the white one. It's not nearly as okay. And I play the Razzberry one and it plays like a dream.
And it sounds incredible. I mean, they gave him the same plan. It's the same style of it's only differences the pink, but that wasn't the case. It was a vastly superior instrument. And I realized I'm going to be going to rehearsal in my new band. That's a metal band. With the Razzberry base. And that's what I did.
[00:16:13] Damaged Parents: That's awesome. Did they give you crap about it?
[00:16:16] Bruce Nachsin: They did, but I'm a hard person to give a crap too, because I just started throwing into their face how good it sounded and how crappy their instruments sounded. So you can only be embarrassed if something embarrassing as you you're sort of like this thing is incredible.
And I didn't mind being, even though at that time I was so because of my, I was cripplingly shy. I wouldn't be shy about the fact that my instruments sounded really, really good. So,
[00:16:41] Damaged Parents: yeah. And that was more important than what it looked like.
[00:16:44] Bruce Nachsin: Oh yeah.
[00:16:45] Damaged Parents: Isn't that interesting what a metaphor
[00:16:47] Bruce Nachsin: and also, even though I'm not real, like in my heart, I'm a musician, but I'm not in practicality, really a good one, any in any way, shape or form, because I didn't really stick with it.
That base is sitting about 10 feet away from me in my living room. It is my prized possession. I have two prized possessions. I've got that base and I've got this bottle. That was my father's. That was like this big Pepsi bottle. It's like, yay. Big. You can't even see it. It's so big that
[00:17:15] Damaged Parents: about a foot
[00:17:16] Bruce Nachsin: no, no. Cause this is what's the scale.
It's about three feet tall glass. I don't know how old it is, but it was his, , it's been my change bottle, all of my life, all of it. So it's my piece of him. That base is my connection to my mom and just, I want to be buried with it. Or killed by it. I really don't care how it happens. Just it should be involved somehow at the end. That's just what it is.
[00:17:43] Damaged Parents: So did playing the bass help you? I mean, you were losing weight and doing all, this was playing the bass part of that healing for you.
[00:17:50] Bruce Nachsin: It was, it gave me, I don't want to say it gave me an identity. I didn't really have an identity until I turned about 15-16. And then what you see is my personality, I'm not going to say fully formed, but what I am as a person, is essentially that I, around that time I met my two closest friends.
One was a guy named John and John's been on The Fittest Fat Kid. the episodes, Mirages in the Food Desert and The Horrors of the Holidays are Upon Us. He is been my closest friend since then and my other close friend. his name is Paul and Paul has been one of my closest friends. We, my mom effectively, my mom's spiritually adopted Paul.
She thought Paul was like one of the nicest kid in the neighborhoods. And he was, Paul was an absolute wonderful guy. at one point I had a breakup and I ended up needing to live somewhere. I lived between his house and my mom's house. And we're talking about it in late twenties. And at the time he had a two year old son named Jake and you can see in Jake's brain, my thumbprint a little bit, but like, I'm very close to him.
And then he made me the godfather to his other kid. Tyler, John would say that I gave him the impression from the time he met me, that I could look up at the sky and see a big finger pointed down going you are here because I always had this sense of who I am of the one thing that I didn't have was how to break out of the shyness.
And that took me. A long time to deal with. but they pulled me into social situations. I now had to go and hang out. I couldn't, do what I wanted to do, which is no matter what I weighed when you're that heavy, that young and that ostracized over that young, it never leaves you. So part of the reason I'm the fittest fat kid, you know, is because behind these eyes, there will always be a 280 pound, 11 year old kid driving the machinery. That is me. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Damaged Parents: Almost like your identity. You still see yourself as that kid.
[00:19:47] Bruce Nachsin: Yes. And it doesn't help that right now. I'm like in my fluctuations, , the past year and a half have not been great, which is part of the reason why I started the podcast and my weight's been on the increase right now. So, I'm trying to get control of that again.
But no matter what, even like two years ago, when I was down to 180 pounds, I was working out six days a week, three hours a day. And it's not that that's like a manic thing. And as much as it sounds like it, it was just kind of like what my body liked to do. I like being physically active.
right now, past Saturday at this accelerated, wait, I still spent three hours doing boxing and weightlifting and just there with my buddies and smack talking. Not that I'm a great smack talker. And actually this past Saturday marks the first time that in my boxing that I actually had the people I was sparring with swinging back, because they're all much more experienced.
I'm the junior woodchuck member. So they're, you know, sort of like, come on and try to hit me, try to hit me and you'd think I was letting you hit. No, no. He's like any hit I get is very, very well earned and comes at a lot of effort. But now if my fist is going down, I'm like, now I'm being informed when I'm doing something wrong.
And it was a nice lesson in as much as I was sure that if somebody did that to me, I would have been like,
[00:21:11] Damaged Parents: And you just kind of put up your hands and guarded yourself, just cause we're not a video.
[00:21:14] Bruce Nachsin: Yeah, I know. And he punched that went through. All I did is I sort of, looked past the punch. So a couple of times I got pops directly in the face and I had literally no reaction to it.
it was a momentary distraction to me, trying to get my fist into my buddy's face. my buddy Scott he's episode 10 of The Fittest Fat Kid Episode. How Do I Tell You? I Can't Do Pushups Anymore in case we don't get a chance to plug later, I will just continue to plug these episodes as they fit into the story.
[00:21:42] Damaged Parents: That's fine. I love it.
[00:21:44] Bruce Nachsin: But yeah, I I'm having these friends. We would go out, We'd hang around, stupid, weird stuff. And because I was not, you know, we're living in Philadelphia and there's kids fight on the weekend all the time. Certainly back then, in as much as they were a socializing influence on me, I was, a stabilizing, calming influence on them.
Cause I didn't want to get into fights. I wasn't interested in drama. I didn't do those things. And maybe part of it was because I was too shy to do them. So we had a tendency to, we would play music. We'd walk around. We'd philosophize. We'd hang out. we'd be, I guess I was funny. I wasn't trying to be like, I learned how to be funny when I decided I was really, really afraid.
I would always be alone if I didn't learn how to talk to people because you know, as much as
[00:22:32] Damaged Parents: and these two friends helped it sounds like
[00:22:34] Bruce Nachsin: they helped by bringing me out there. They weren't particularly, Paul was social. But Paul wouldn't have been able to tell me how to be social. He did later on, after I was around 25, 26, run down a list of the hundred people, a hundred girls whom liked me, that I liked that I could have talked to and maybe had a girlfriend that I was far too much of a frightened coward to actually talk to them in that way.
And I could only talk to them if there were like other friends around and then I could maybe talk to them a little bit. And that was kind of like one of the impetus to be like, oh, I got to fix this because otherwise I'm never going to, I'm not going to have a girlfriend. I'm not going to, I'm not going to make more friends.
Even now I tend to have. Good friends. People I vaguely know, but I don't have like a big circle of acquaintances where like there's eight of them going out to some bar and I'd go, I also don't drink. So not because I can't drink, but because I found any alcohol tasted like rubbing alcohol to me. So I never developed the taste for drinking, but that does limit your social options when let's go to the bar, what am I going to do there?
[00:23:46] Damaged Parents: Well, it is kind of entertaining.
I had to throw a little joke in there somewhere. So you made these friends 15, 16, but , down the road, like going into your twenties, , what was that like?
[00:24:03] Bruce Nachsin: well, what happened is, in this group of friends, and this was a bit of a, this was a downside to that. Aside from Paul, who was separate, there were like a group of them and they all considered themselves kind of homely people.
So I considered myself homely these are my friends. These are the people I'm hanging out with. They're kind of ugly. I'm probably ugly. So I felt that about myself, which didn't help with the fact that in the back of my head, that 11 year old still pulling the gears, but I was getting into shape. I was working out, I was like 18, 19, and I was really focused on it.
And I also had the experience of one of my buddies was a dude named Steve and Steve was popular. Steve. Now Steve was six foot two. He had like 4% body fat. He was legitimately a very attractive individual. But that wasn't the lesson that Steve was attractive. And so he gained attention. Steve was also funny, but Steve would have off days where he would feel bad about himself.
And when he felt bad about himself, he was a dark cloud. It was sort of like walking around with Pig Pen, just like there was this miasma of crap around Steve, you could feel. And Steve repelled people at that point. And so I would watch Steve attract people in certain circumstances and repel people. And that was a lesson.
It was like, okay, when Steve does this, the good things happen when Steve does that bad things happen, what happens if I do what Steve does, not the bad stuff. I can do that on my own. I don't need to experiment with that. But, you know, and I tried to act a bit like Steve did, and I began getting attention.
I began like racing via social. Wheel's a little bit. And that's when I got my first girlfriend, but of course, you know, one I'm young, like I'm not even 21 yet. And I get my first girlfriend and I hold onto her for dear life. Even though it's a toxic situation,
[00:25:48] Damaged Parents: isn't that the way toxic, toxic, we can both struggle with that one. Right? Isn't that one of those words though?
[00:25:55] Bruce Nachsin: Yes, of course it is. you know, it's a relationship that should've lasted six months. It goes on seven years. And on the one hand, it's a learning experience. You learned a lot. I can't say that. I regret it even though from being honest with myself, there's a lot about it.
I would really, really want to regret, but what made that possible was my dealings with Steve was the fact that other people were showing attention to me. And then after. I had not gotten over my shyness. It was during that period of time, even though I had this girlfriend and we were involved where I was like, I need to conquer this because even just in a social setting, if there was one person there, I could talk just fine.
If there were two people there, I could talk. Okay. Once we got to three people, I began wall flowering. You get past that and I'm shut down. And that's, if it's guys and girls, if it's just girls, then I can barely handle the one. If there were two, I'm already shutting down at three, I'm not looking up past my shoes. I am not.
[00:26:53] Damaged Parents: So, is this in any situation that you
[00:26:55] Bruce Nachsin: any situation,
[00:26:56] Damaged Parents: so it didn't matter where you were.
[00:26:59] Bruce Nachsin: If didn't matter where I was, what I was doing, it didn't matter whether I found somebody particularly attractive or not. It didn't, none of that mattered. It just, I couldn't talk to girls. I was frightened of girls because they would find me hideous.
How could they not? I'm an I'm 11 years old. I'm 280 pounds. That's the scar. That's how deep the scar goes. That's how I fell into acting. Or specifically music came to its end. My band broke up. I couldn't find I was doing something avant garde, really weird, and a place where everybody wanted to do standard things.
I couldn't find a replacement for my buddy, John, who was my guitar player at the time. Cause he had gone into engineering school and he was working and he was burned out and it just, you know, it was. being a band that nobody knows about and playing music that people don't understand, it's not an easy thing to do.
[00:27:51] Damaged Parents: Right.
[00:27:51] Bruce Nachsin: And so I couldn't replace them. And music ended for me. I didn't know what to do. So a suggested why don't you find something to do with community college? So, and I had gotten my GED when I was 18, so I went off to community college for fine woodworking, turns out I'm really allergic to some woods and that's not the career path for me. And so I needed
[00:28:11] Damaged Parents: that's a good way to find that out.
[00:28:12] Bruce Nachsin: Oh yeah, definitely. Um, I think Mr. Smith giving you the kiss of life is the way to go. But, um,
[00:28:18] Damaged Parents: oh shoot.
[00:28:19] Bruce Nachsin: I exaggerated. It was far worse than that. So I needed to switch something. So I switched into the communication track, began taking acting classes and God, I was terrible at it, but now I'm in a class with 30 people.
I've got to keep presenting myself. That's chipping away at it. I get into my first play and it was a called Zeus story, which is this Edward Alby play about this guy who just wants to sit on a park bench and have his lunch. And this other guy happens upon him. And just, he, this guy happens to him where he's just pouring out all of this horror of his life and his attempt to connect to another human being that gets so bad that the guy on the park bench eventually has to defend himself and kill this guy
[00:29:02] Damaged Parents: Oh dear.
[00:29:02] Bruce Nachsin: Now in the play, which can go on for about an hour, hour and 10 minutes.
90% of it comes out of the one guy's mouth. That's who I got cast as. And I did this in front of 700 people for two weekends. You know, Saturday, Sunday, twice on Sunday.
[00:29:18] Damaged Parents: Well, you were practicing, I've got to ask, like you said, it's like the sky that the character wanted all this attention or they, you know, he's, really baring his soul. It sounded it's kind of what I'm gathering. And so in taking that role, do you think that helped a little bit in with your own stuff?
[00:29:37] Bruce Nachsin: Well, the rule itself didn't decide because it was my first role and what it really was, was more the back end of dealing with the role. I didn't find the role itself cathartic because I didn't relate to the role at all.
I mean, I like there are bits of feeling isolated that I could, connect to, but there was a lot about the role that just wasn't me, which was fine. But on top of that, it was my first role. And it was a massive amount of memorization. It was a massive amount of getting ready of the person I was partnered with was as unexperienced as I was just without a memory.
So he couldn't memorize. So I was learning his bits too, which thankfully weren't that bad. We had a limited rehearsal schedule. I was involved in a couple other things going on plus working, full time as a, uh, not as a computer technician yet, but as somebody building computers for this defense contractor company.
So there was a lot, the thing was, is I got out on stage and I said, all of this like horrific stuff. I mean, it's horrific. Does it? Somebody would go through what this guy talked about. And I was delivering it to an audience full of people, and I was trying to be as truthful with it as humanly possible.
So I was being vulnerable in a way that experience is what removed my, got me able to package away shyness. I still you'll. If you were to ask my girlfriend, if I were ever shy, she'd be like, have you spoken to him? It's like my mom would tell her stories about my shyness and my girlfriend was sort of like, I'm convinced you put her up to that.
I don't think in any way, shape or form that's you because I come off very gregarious. I can make anybody laugh. I am who I present myself to be. And. You wouldn't know it that behind all of this is an engine that constantly is, yeah, you can't be in the corner anymore. You can't be in the corner anymore.
You have to, I'm doing this pushing motion that doesn't reading on camera.
[00:31:39] Damaged Parents: So you're still doing that to this day a little bit. Or are you still speaking about back then? Okay.
[00:31:46] Bruce Nachsin: To this day, to this day, especially with my weight, because one of the other fun things about when you're that heavy, at least for me, I can't speak for everybody, but I can kind of, I surmise that a lot of people who are very heavy when they're young do this, despite whatever positive qualities you might feel that you have, despite any achievements you maintain or are able to build all, if not, most, if not, all of your self-esteem is tied into your weight.
for me, it's about 95 to 99% of my self-esteem is tied into my weight. So even now, as I'm talking on this camera, as I've been recording my new podcast and I've got like 15 episodes that I've got to edit, and that just makes me want to cry, but that's beside the point and I've done, you know, I've recorded several episodes of The Fittest Fat Kid.
I'm on camera more now than I've ever been. And at no point in my adult life, have I wanted to not be seen more than this moment. And the thing is that in as much as I feel that way, there's a bigger part of me that has developed the survival skills not to do that. There's a bigger part of me that knows how that is the absolute worst thing that I could do.
And it's very bad for me to do it. And I don't want to do it. That doesn't mean that the instinct isn't there, that somewhere in the back of my head, this 11 year old is in screaming because God knows how many people will see this, but they will see this and they will see me and they will see me with my face rounder than it should be.
And I can modestly say, I've got a really nice facial structure. This jaw is wonderful, around 180 pounds. I'm very lucky that genetically speaking for all of the weird little things my family gave to me, they also gave me this jaw. I'm very happy about that, but right now, kind of rounded not. And every time I see it, that's all that I see.
And I know that that's me and that's my body dysmorphia. I don't look as bad as I think people see, but I can not see it as anything other than what the 11 year old behind my eyes is looking at. All I can do is counterbalance. The instincts to run away and hide with the reality of no, there's a lot more like you, you need to be out there.
You need to talk, you need to be social. you need to go to the gym. you need to talk to new people. You need to specifically, you need to show that there's no reason to barricade yourself away because it doesn't get you anything
[00:34:11] Damaged Parents: well, and you know, a friend of mine, I was in their house and I saw this note in there.
They're very much. Have body dysmorphia, , on a very round face and have always struggled with that. Self-esteem and I saw this list of reasons why not to eat lots of Mac and cheese and some other things. I think it was very well thought out, a very beautiful list. And I, my heart broke because it was all very worldly things. And the one thing I did not see on there was because I love myself.
[00:34:43] Bruce Nachsin: Yeah.
[00:34:44] Damaged Parents: It was all about because I want to wear these clothes and I want to do this and, or, um, and my heart broke. And so it's really interesting getting to hear your perspective and saying how you're you were stuck and you're still kind of stuck in that it's about the outside and not the inside.
[00:35:04] Bruce Nachsin: No, it's actually, I will push back a little on that. I, for the most part. my philosophy in life, and this will make sense in a moment is I don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist. I try to see things as they are, and then hope for the best, but I don't want in my worldview to be colored too much in any given direction.
The thing about me is even though my self-esteem is tied directly to my weight, I fundamentally like who I am as a, person there are. and I will admit, I do feel to some degree, I do have a little bit of narcissism and you can ask my girlfriend and she will go a little bit, I cherish my ability to problem solve.
I do things that other people either don't do. Won't do don't think they're capable of doing and not just because I am so extraordinary, I can do these things, but oftentimes it doesn't occur to me that I couldn't. And I love that about myself. I am funny. I am warm. I genuinely care about people, even when I don't care about people, I care about people.
There is a lot of upside to me. and it sounds arrogant as I'm laying it out, I've realized all of these things about me. I would not change who I am as a person, because like, part of the reason I am totally unwilling to do any kind of drugs, any kind of alcohol, besides the fact, I don't like the taste of alcohol and I don't care that you can get the mixed drink and it's going to taste like a Hawaiian punch that's alcoholic.
I can buy Hawaiian punch for $2 50 cents. I don't need the $12 Hawaiian punch. I don't need to be drunk. I don't want to get high. I don't want to take the edge off. I don't want to expand my mind with mushrooms. I don't want to do anything that would fundamentally change what goes on behind these eyes, because how I think makes me capable of doing lots of things and it doesn't even occur to me that I can't do something I can crash and burn and learn that I can't do something, but I will take those steps.
I like that about myself. I am the best friend most people could have in any given circumstance. And not only that, again, this sounds kind of arrogant and narcissistic, but so be it. I don't even want friggin credit. I have friends who are trying to do things and I will help them facilitate it. I will do it.
And then like, what should I credit you as I don't care, but I didn't do it to get the credit. I helped you with your music video, but I don't care about getting the credit for it because I'm not looking to be a music video director, give the credit to somebody. Who's looking to get that thing because that'll help them.
I don't need that help. I just want you to be moving forward.
[00:37:35] Damaged Parents: Right. so let me understand. Cause I, love that you pushed back on this because I think it's, making my world much more colorful. Is that the self-esteem around the body is one thing and yes, you have it. And. It's not a, but it's, and you're that you saw it. You've also got all these other great, fantastic qualities. And why you struggle with this over here, you are all of this.
[00:38:02] Bruce Nachsin: Yes. it makes me feel really bad about myself. Like, and I do feel really bad about myself, but it doesn't diminish or change the fact that beyond the physical, beyond all of those things, I still have all of these positive qualities.
Now also let me just say, because I just listed out exactly how great and wonderful I am. And if you were to meet me, you would be so lucky to do so. Got a ton of flaws as well. Absolutely. I am absolutely to some degree narcissistic. I am a know-it-all. I will put my foot in my mouth. I will stick my head up my ass.
I will assume that I can do things I can't do. And I will trip and fall on my face probably more than most people, you know, and that's just the stuff I've allowed myself to be aware of. It's about all the bullshit that I want to admit to myself, because we all hide things of flaws from ourselves that we don't want to confront about ourselves.
I try not to do that, but I'm sure one of my flaws is that I'm not particularly good at doing that. Who is so who knows again, it's the attempt to try to find the reality of who you are. I do have a good upside. I do, but I'm sure that's balanced by a downside. Some of which I could see probably more than most people can see about their downside.
Again, I'm good at these things. See, you can never find the balance. It's always going to do this.
[00:39:23] Damaged Parents: Well, I'm wondering if isn't that just life,
[00:39:27] Bruce Nachsin: of course, life is a learning process. You never get to the end of, until you're at the end of yours and that's it, but there's never an answer. There's never a completion.
You never ended the journey. You just continue traveling down and it's your choice, how you take those paths and what you do with it. The end result is no matter who you are. There's always going to be crap in your life. That is never going to be fixed. You're never going to deal with correctly and you're never going to fully grasp the magnitude of what it meant to you.
And sometimes like one of the things I've been asked is, well, have you gone to therapy? Yes. Are you able to like. Can you dig the 11 year old out of your head? No, no, I can't. And also it is a waste of time to try because I can spend an incredible amount of energy time and effort trying to dig out this perception that has been so built.
It is a seismic divot in my personality, and it will always be there no matter what I do, what I can do though, is understand that about myself. I can understand the ways that affects me so I can never get over the shyness. I can just mitigate that shyness with an engine to push me forward. And so most people don't even know that I have it.
[00:40:36] Damaged Parents: I would not have guessed it. Had you not told me they also know where on a computer or not,
[00:40:43] Bruce Nachsin: but if we were, yeah, it's just, just you and me. We're not talking to anybody
[00:40:48] Damaged Parents: except the listeners. They're not here though.
[00:40:51] Bruce Nachsin: They're not real. You're not real imaginary. But if we were in person, I would be talking to you the exact same way.
I would be relating to you in the exact same way. I would be endeavoring to make you laugh. I would be endeavoring to get my words out in a coherent manner that apparently I will fail miserably at while still trying to emotionally connect with you while presenting the reality of my pain, but doing it in a non morose way.
If I have one. Super power it's that I can present a negative situation in a way that isn't fully negative while being true to the fact that, that situation isn't good. I can talk about the dark and morose without making it dark and morose. And I think that's important. And I think everybody should be trying to do that.
It's okay for you to have had pain and it's okay for you to have had problems in your life. And it's okay for you not to be over them. There are things you will never get over, not fully, but if you can't get over it, you have to build a bridge. You have to build a pathway around it. You have to accept the things that have happened to you and somehow not make them barriers to the rest of your life.
There's like, I don't know if you know this or not, but because we've arranged, like you've got a very long dance card. I've been waiting in the wings going well, at some point, she'll notice me for what's it three, four months now,
[00:42:13] Damaged Parents: Yeah three months probably,
[00:42:14] Bruce Nachsin: it's been a long time. And by the time you edit this, it'll be 2025 and no, and I will have moved on into my dotage, but, um, where was I going with that?
And you don't need to, the point being is I'm doing another podcast called Fails Falls and F Ups. And what it's about is amazing successful people about the times when they weren't successful. And it's all about falling on your face and making mistakes and the bad things that happen, but how you grow from that.
Yeah, cause that's the important part is not that the bad happened is that you can grow from it. And it's a lot easier when bad things happen to you when you're older than in your formative years, things that as a child that create permanent fissures in your personality, that damage you to such a high degree, that you can never fully get over them.
It was just a bad day at work and you can brush off because you can compartmentalize what happened? You can, instead of taking it so personally you can go like, well, that prick, that did this thing to me, the problem isn't that this is me. The problem is that is a jerk, right? And it's his problem. And I don't care what he thinks, but at 11 years old, I don't, you know, you didn't have the capacity to go.
Well, these adults around me, they are the status group of misanthropes. I will ever have the. Ms. Fortune of being around and all of them are living the punishment of the lives that they've built for themselves. And they deserve every single part of it. Couldn't do that at 11 year olds. I was like, I have to be the worst person in the world where now, when somebody that terrible, like has a moment with me and sort of like you think you matter
[00:43:54] Damaged Parents: well, and it's like, it's kids, I think too for we don't I growing up and, and I know we're way over on our time, but growing up it's it's not like we think about these adults are still growing up.
[00:44:06] Bruce Nachsin: No,
[00:44:07] Damaged Parents: I never, I mean, I just don't, I don't think I ever would have thought that, oh, they're just growing up and they're just as fallible as I am not as a kid.
[00:44:16] Bruce Nachsin: No, it's, it's hard to understand that the adults in your life, there are no adults in your life. Nobody's an adult hell. The past five years in this country have proven that it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on.
There are no adults in the room. nobody's in charge. It's all chaos. I mean, that sounds really, really negative or whatever. But what I mean by that is as a child, you look at your parents and these are the people that guide and have the answers and they arrange and the world is rolling on.
And it's just this thing that's happening and it's happening so high above you. And then at some point you realize, no, they didn't have the answers. They were drowning in the same sea that everybody drowns in. And then we're just trying to hold their head above water. They didn't know any more than I ever did.
as an adult, it creates cognitive dissonance to some degree because you want to look at your parents as a fount of wisdom, but then you realize that. I'm probably older than my parents were when they had me. And they probably didn't know as much as I know now. Oh my God, how did I survive?
[00:45:21] Damaged Parents: Right.
[00:45:22] Bruce Nachsin: How did they keep me alive? How did they keep themselves alive? How did the house not go up in flames? Because I know if I was charged with another human being, which thankfully I'm not, I will have probably lost them at the mall. I don't know what would have happened, but oh my God. Oh my God. How can it be me?
[00:45:37] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:45:38] Bruce Nachsin: It's, you know, it's just that thing. And as a child, you don't realize that every single person around me, every last one of them, no matter what they appear on the outside, they don't really fully know what they're doing. They may never know. I may never know.
[00:45:53] Damaged Parents: What a great way to end.
[00:45:54] Bruce Nachsin: Yeah, there we go.
Let's do this on a positive note.
[00:45:58] Damaged Parents: We may never know
[00:46:00] Bruce Nachsin: what you're doing,
[00:46:01] Damaged Parents: but maybe, maybe that's maybe that's great. If I can acknowledge that and I can look around and say, they may not either. Maybe that opens some doors
[00:46:12] Bruce Nachsin: possibly. If I think a lot of people get disappointed when they realize. The world is kind of just moving on its own inertia. And even though there are some, things attempting to guide that inertia, it just rolls on and it will continue to roll on and there'll be ups and there'll be downs and it will just continue to roll on.
And for your brief period of time, that you're part of this rolling on. You're just rolling along with it. And that makes it sound like you don't have control over everything and that's not true. You have a lot of control over the things that affect you. You have a lot of control over the various things that affected the people around you.
You can help try to build the life you want. That doesn't mean you have total control and it doesn't mean you ever will, but you have as much control as just about everybody else does certainly over your own behaviors and very much over your own perception of things. And that's probably a better note to end on.
[00:46:58] Damaged Parents: I think .
[00:46:59] Bruce Nachsin: You have the option of changing the frame of how you see situations and you also have the option of deciding which situations you want to be in and what situations do you want to accept? So there's that.
Yeah.
And that's even better to end on that. We have options and we have choices.
[00:47:18] Damaged Parents: So let's see if I can get your name, right. This is Bruce Nachsin
[00:47:23] Bruce Nachsin: that you've gotten.
[00:47:24] Damaged Parents: You can find him on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the website, https://fittestfatkid.com @fittestfatkid everywhere else, and @bigguysmalldog on Instagram and Bruce there. Your other, the other Instagram is I know it has chaos with a K
[00:47:46] Bruce Nachsin: @Mikeyagentofkaos. And I'm also, now that we've had talked to this heavy subject, I'm going to throw in one or two other plugs on my behalf, but not because for me, they're not for me, not in any way, shape or form, not for me at all, but for you, the listener, I have a couple of short films that will make you laugh.
So look out, look out, look out for, go find on YouTube. These two things. The first one is my dark specter too, which is my super-villain comedy about a super villain having to deal with his ailing mother. And the other thing is called lunchtime is over, which is just a chaotic fight scene that I filmed with a bunch of my stunt friends.
Just for the fun of it. Both are hilarious, both are fun. And if I do say so myself, I equate myself very well, but let me give you a line.
[00:48:36] Damaged Parents: Of course, we, you know, I think laughter is healing and I definitely agree. Everyone should go check those out because of course I am going to check them out so they must check them out, you know?
Anyhow. So thank you for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. I've really enjoyed chatting with you.
Thank you so much. You were a delight.
Okay, thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We really enjoy talking to Bruce about how he escaped. Oh, wait, he didn't escape. About how he's learning to cope with being The Fittest Fat Kid, You Know, We especially liked when he joked with us over many things, especially when I could not say his name correctly.
To unite with other damaged people, connect with us on YouTube. Look for damaged parents we'll be here next week still relatively damaged see you then
