In seven years, Paul Callahan has gone from “the fat kid in school” to a successful bodybuilder and model.
His dedication is such that even a heart attack couldn’t stop him.
Callahan, 24, is a graduate of Pickerington High School North. He recently moved to Denver after spending his entire life in Pickerington.
He grew up active – playing baseball from age 4 through high school – but not active enough to be in good shape.
“Up until I was about 17 years old, I was the fat kid,” Callahan says. “I got made fun of for it.”
Looking to make a change, he started working out at the Power Shack Fitness Center off Blacklick-Eastern Road Northwest and lost a great deal of weight between his junior and senior years of high school. His trainer was a bodybuilder, and Callahan gradually began to move in that direction himself.
It wasn’t until he graduated high school and began managing the GNC store at Easton Town Center that he started to truly dedicate himself to bodybuilding. A couple of representatives for VPX Sports Supplements came into the store a lot, and soon they asked Callahan to appear at their expo booths.
“I was 19 and at these bodybuilding booths, standing next to these guys who were twice my size and twice my age,” Callahan says.
That’s when he ramped up the training to compete with the looks of those experienced bodybuilders. Over the next few years, he worked tirelessly to meet the standard of physical fitness they set.
That came to a sudden stop on Aug. 25, 2011, when Callahan suffered a massive heart attack and had to undergo quadruple bypass surgery. He had just turned 23.
“It’s still kind of baffling (to) the cardiologist,” he says.
Heart attacks are extremely rare for people of Callahan’s age. But there were some factors pointing to the possibility. He has a long history of heart disease and hypertension on both sides of his family, both of his grandfathers have had quadruple bypass surgeries of their own, and his father suffered a stroke at age 44.
In addition, when the heart attack struck, Callahan was just a few days out from a major photo shoot. In the home stretch of preparing for it, he had been drinking a lot of caffeine stimulants and energy drinks – something he now realizes he should not have been doing.
Bouncing back from the heart attack has been the toughest part of Callahan’s fitness quest so far.
“I was told to take six months off lifting, which just wasn’t going to happen for me,” he says.
Callahan lost 20 pounds during his stay in the hospital and another 10 to 15 in the three months before he started lifting again, leaving him far away from his goal with just a few months to go before a scheduled appearance at the Arnold Fitness Expo in March 2012.
“Instead of a four- to five-month process, which is what most people do, I had a two-month process,” he says.
Callahan’s fitness regimen currently includes 90 minutes of lifting six days a week, as well as 30 to 45 minutes of cardio two or three days a week. The most important part, though, is his diet: more complex carbohydrates and healthful fats, less sugar.
“I try to eat six or seven times a day,” he says. “I try to eat every couple of hours, even at night if I wake up.”
With increased focus on his diet and some double training days, Callahan made steady progress and was able to make his Arnold appearance at a booth for Dublin-based Vince’s Muscle Shop.
While there, he was spotted by well-known fitness photographer Mike Byerly, who took note of the visible surgery scar on Callahan’s chest.
That led to a photo shoot with Byerly in Tennessee over the summer, which has helped Callahan attract even more attention to his bodybuilding and demo modeling work.
He’ll be appearing in a booth at the Arnold again this year, he says.
Garth Bishop is editor of Pickerington Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
