A Man Lost 43 Pounds, Eased His Depression, and No Longer Needed Medication After Living a 'Year of the Opposite'

On October 20, 2023, Business Insider published a feature by health correspondent Rachel Hosie profiling Travis Stoliker's "Year of the Opposite" transformation — one of the most significant pieces of national press coverage in Travis's career. The article ran in the Health section under the headline "A man lost 43 pounds, eased his depression, and no longer needed medication after living a 'year of the opposite.'"

Stoliker, then 43 years old, had lost three close friends within six months — a series of deaths that sent him into a deep depression he struggled to understand. "I knew objectively and logically that my life was amazing... I just kept waking up sad," he is quoted in the article. Inspired by a Seinfeld episode called "The Opposite," he began deliberately doing the reverse of his habitual behaviors: going to bed early instead of staying up late, waking early instead of sleeping in, exercising instead of being sedentary, and improving his diet.

Over the course of one year, Stoliker lost 43 pounds (ultimately reaching 62 pounds of total weight loss), reversed his depression, and eliminated the need for medications he had been taking for blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides. He also started running, eventually completing marathons and running over 1,000 miles in a single year.

Business Insider noted that Stoliker began by setting small, achievable goals, with bed-making serving as his anchor habit: "No matter what you've done for the day, you can come back to your bed and know you accomplished something." The article also noted how his depression had strained his marriage, and how the transformation helped him recognize the burden he had been placing on his wife.

The article generated widespread pickup, appearing the same day on UNILAD and driving major traffic to Stoliker's Year of the Opposite newsletter. It represents some of the highest-reach coverage of Travis's personal transformation story.

In a remarkable full-circle moment, the article went viral on Reddit's r/Seinfeld community — the subreddit dedicated to the same TV show that had inspired Stoliker's experiment in the first place. The post reached #1 on r/Seinfeld (421,141 members) with 1,141 upvotes and 96 comments, as readers recognized the Seinfeld connection and celebrated the story as a real-life "The Opposite" episode playing out in someone's actual life.