A Year in Isolation to Rewrite a Life and Win Back Health
Skip Boyce, 49, of St George, Utah, is taking what may be the most drastic step of his life. Approaching fifty, struggling with his mental health and wildly overweight, Skip Boyce knew he had to take drastic action for the sake of his health and sanity. But while most middle aged men would join a gym or ask their GP about the possibility of taking a GLP-1 medication or entering therapy, Skip has decided that the best solution for him is to lock himself in a room for an entire year. And amazingly, his wife and their four grown-up children not only agree, but are fully supportive of his plan— which is useful because they will all remain living under the same roof. Skip, 49, of St George, Utah, has commandeered the marital bedroom and transformed it into a self-contained living space where he plans to spend the next twelve months focusing solely on self-improvement in all its forms. He told the Daily Mail: 'If I walk out of this room with a healthy lifestyle and good habits I'll be a very happy guy.' 'When I was thinking about this journey, I realised that there are so many things that I haven't done in my life that I want to do.' 'I don't want just a physical transformation, because, from what I've seen, often you transform back again and that's not what this is about.' Skip currently weighs 315 lbs (143 kg) and hopes that his year locked in a room will get him to his goal weight of 205 lbs (93 kg).
In This Article:
- The Isolation Room at Home Where He Will Sleep, Eat, Exercise and Livestream for a Year
- The Household Logistics: Deliveries, Meals and a Daily Schedule
- Why He Is Doing This and What He Hopes to Achieve
- A Family Unit Under One Roof and a Shared Journey
- Health Check, Motivation and a New Generation
- Experts Warn About the Toll of Isolation
The Isolation Room at Home Where He Will Sleep, Eat, Exercise and Livestream for a Year
Skip Boyce has repurposed the marital bedroom to become his 'isolation room' where he will sleep, eat, work out and livestream for the next year. He has turned this space into a self-contained world with an en suite bathroom (away from the livestream), a bed, a desk, a designated workout area with a walking pad, free weights and resistance bands, and a basic food preparation zone. His wife has been busy turning a spare room into her new bedroom beside his, and the couple has set some ground rules, agreeing that should either of them begin to struggle with the challenge it will be terminated, 'no questions asked'. 'I've foregone some personal comforts, but I'm going to make sure that it's documented really well - I have a $100 bed, but I got $1,500 worth of cameras,' he said. 'My wife believes people will be interested and that my challenge could resonate in a lot of ways.' 'I'm working, but not to my full potential, and she can see that I'm not my usual self,' he said. 'Usually I am active and focused, but she could see that I'm just dragging my feet and I've been moping.'
The Household Logistics: Deliveries, Meals and a Daily Schedule
Skip's isolation room will be stocked by his wife with groceries ordered online, left near his door before she steps away. He described the planned meals: 'I texted her what I wanted to do when she was at work, and originally she laughed it off and said "No way". But after I explained it to her in person, she was like, "I could see how this would work for you".' 'I'm going to be eating a lot of rice and a lot of lean meat. I have an electric griddle, toaster oven and a rice cooker, and I'll cook everything myself in here.' For structure and to make sure that he does leave the room in better physical shape than he entered, Skip has engaged a local personal trainer who has written him a diet and exercise plan. He also ensured a GP check to confirm a clean bill of health before he starts. 'Skip made sure to get a clean bill of health from his GP, who checked his heart, lungs, cholesterol and blood pressure 'to make sure that I have a clean bill of health before I go in.''
Why He Is Doing This and What He Hopes to Achieve
The experiment isn’t only about shedding pounds. He hopes to tick off some other dreams during his year of self-confinement, including learning a language and mastering pull-ups, and acknowledges that either could be done without isolation, but freeing himself from modern life pressures may give him more opportunities. 'People say, "hey, you could do a pull up in just a few months", and they're correct,' he said. 'When they say, "you can learn a language without isolating, you can improve your memory without isolating", and they are correct. 'But I am doing ten things at once, not one. I never have the time to focus on bettering myself.' 'That's why I'm trying to cram so much into this year, to push myself as hard as I possibly can.' 'Then, when I walk out of this room a year from now, I will have accomplished something.' He was inspired to take on the challenge after finding himself in a 'funk' following the end of his 13-year oil field career. 'For the last couple of years, I've been struggling a little bit with my mental health,' he said. 'I stopped my job out on the oil field, which I loved, to come and live full-time at home, and that was a hard move for me. 'I was respected out there, I loved the job, I loved what I did, and then I've just been in this funk for the last couple years.'
A Family Unit Under One Roof and a Shared Journey
Despite the distance of many miles between them for years, Skip and his wife have learned to navigate long separations, and his wife’s support for his new plan is unwavering. 'I'm working, but not to my full potential, and she can see that I'm not my usual self,' he said. 'Usually I am active and focused, but she could see that I'm just dragging my feet and I've been moping.' Skip’s isolation room is part of a broader attempt to create a life that prioritizes health and resilience, with the couple planning to document the journey for audiences on YouTube and Instagram. 'I've foregone some personal comforts, but I'm going to make sure that it's documented really well' and 'My wife believes people will be interested and that my challenge could resonate in a lot of ways.'
Health Check, Motivation and a New Generation
Skip’s current weight is 143 kg, and he hopes that his 12‑month room lockdown will help him reach around 92 kg. He's aiming for a generational shift in his family’s health as he turns 50 in May and reflects on his parents' health as they age. 'He's my biggest motivation because the way that I look at this, I'm trying to make a generational change with my family,' he explained. 'I turn 50 in May, and I look at my parents and my side of the family, and they're just getting older, they're not staying healthy, they're just sitting there. They're getting more and more out of shape - and I'm going down the same path. I can feel myself getting weaker, especially my arms. I've always had muscular arms, but now they're covered in fat. I got scared that I'm going to do the same thing as my parents, and my kids are going to do the same thing as me. And there's a lot of life to live after the age of 50.'
Experts Warn About the Toll of Isolation
However, one expert warned the Daily Mail that taking such extreme measures could be detrimental to Skip's mental health or simply hard to maintain once he returns to real life. Sally Baker, Senior therapist and author of The Getting of Resilience from the Inside Out, said: 'Some of his ideas for promoting better mental health and losing weight can be effective. Given his experience working on oil rigs for months at a time, I don't think his self-imposed isolation will be unnecessarily burdensome. However, one of the key elements of mental well-being is social connection. It's been proven that loneliness can shorten one's life, so living with little human contact is a definite challenge that could impact one's mental health. People have frequently tried extreme methods to lose weight, from replacing real food with only consuming nutritious meal-replacement drinks to having their jaw wired together for months at a time. These methods do work to a degree. The challenge is maintaining these changes with reintegration into a fuller life. Resilience isn't built in a locked isolation room; it's built in the midst of real life, when we're able to create healthy boundaries and learn to honour them even when the world creates distractions and obstacles. Then anything becomes possible.'
