Mike MilliganFounder and CEO, 1.oak Financial · Founder and CEO, 1.oak Financial

Behind Their Success- Healthier and Wealthier

12 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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In this personal reflection, Mike Milligan explains his philosophy that while you can have anything you want, you cannot have everything. He identifies diet as 80% of health and describes his decision to eliminate fast food, fried foods, red meat, and pork for five years, which he credits with shifting his nutritional intake onto a healthier trajectory. He then added regular physical activity, initially increasing his daily steps and joining Orangetheory Fitness for 5‑6 sessions per week, later scaling back to 2‑4 sessions for maintenance. As a result of these combined dietary and exercise changes, he reduced his body weight from 350 lb to 235 lb.

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I have this whole belief that you can have anything you want, but you can't have everything. Yeah. Right. So what I started thinking is, okay, well, 80% of your health is what you eat. And I'm like, okay, well, I need to stop eating fast food. I need to stop eating fried things. I need to stop eating red meat. I need to stop eating pork. And so what I did is I limited— I didn't go to a fast food restaurant for 5 years. And that one change right there put my intake, my food, on a different path. And then I just started working out. I started getting steps, and then I went to Orangetheory Fitness, and I would do that 5 or 6 times a week. Now I'm a little more on a maintenance level where I'm like 2 to 4 times a week. But I went from 350 pounds to 235 pounds.