Ryan Koslen, UC's associate athletic director/communications, announced this week that he's leaving to take a similar position at Missouri. I first met Ryan in the summer of 2007 when I was working for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Mike Harris, who ran the SID office at the time, had hired him to be the football SID in Brian Kelly's first year. When I asked Koz what Mike had told him about me, he said Mike told him that I could be difficult to work with at times. And he was right. At times, I could be. And at times, I found that Koz could be difficult to work with, too. That's how it's supposed to be. If it wasn't that way, neither of us would have been doing our jobs.
But we respected each other from the start and grew to be friends. After I left the Enquirer at the end of 2014, we became colleagues when athletic director Mike Bohn hired me to write for GoBearcats.com. That lasted for four years. I wrote a ton of stories for the UC website. One of my favorites was the story I wrote about Koz's decision to enter a weight loss program at UC that helped him to lose 196 pounds in 12 months. I had great respect for his ability to do that and I still do.
I'm retired now and don't see Koz as often as I used to, but in a strange way I'm still going to miss him. After 14 years, he became a fixture in the UC athletics department, especially in the UC football program, which has grown by leaps and bounds since he arrived. As a tribute to Koz, and with his permission, I'm reprinting that August 16, 2017 story here while wishing him all the best in his new job.
By Bill Koch
Ryan Koslen has been subjected to unflattering comments about his weight for most of his life. He heard them when he was a kid and from fans on the road when he walked across the field. He tried to act like he didn't hear them, but he did. He heard them all.
Today, after losing 196 pounds in 12 months, Koslen hears mostly compliments from his family, friends, colleagues and reporters who cover the University of Cincinnati athletic program. He appreciates the praise, but he's having a hard time getting used to the acclaim. In fact, when he was approached about being interviewed for this article, he was reluctant at first, but agreed to do it because he understood that his story might motivate someone else to do what he's done.
"You inherently want to stay in the background and not get noticed, so when you do get noticed it's uncomfortable," Koslen said. "But I know that my story almost isn't my own anymore because it could help somebody else. And if one person gets the help they need, then that'll feel good. And I know there's some people that already have. They saw what I was doing and they did it."
Koslen, 39, has struggled with his weight since he was a kid growing up in Mayfield Heights outside Cleveland. He's always known he should do something about it, but never was able to take the first step until a year ago. Finally, after being prodded by UC Director of Athletics Mike Bohn and Executive Senior Associate AD Karen Hatcher, he decided the time had arrived to take action and enrolled in the non-surgical weight loss program at UC Health in West Chester.
It was a huge step for Koslen, a UC associate AD and the primary media contact for football since he arrived from Houston in 2008. You'd think he would have been eager to tell friends and acquaintances about his momentous and difficult decision, but he chose to tell only a few people.
"I was afraid if I told people I was doing it and I failed, that wouldn't have been good for me from a medical standpoint," Koslen said. "I probably would have felt even worse. And then lo and behold, I think I lost seven or eight pounds in about five days. I was all in after that. I was off and running."
In the last year, he's seen his weight drop from 441 pounds to 245. He's lost so much weight that sometimes acquaintances he hasn't seen for awhile don't recognize him at first glance. He's been asked more than once if he's been sick.
"My favorite thing of all time was when somebody a few weeks ago said they were worried that I might have a problem because I was getting too skinny," Koslen said. "File that under something I never thought I'd hear. That was enjoyable."
Bohn and Hatcher gave Koslen the push he needed because, Bohn said, he was worried that he was on "a slippery slope with his health and his career."
"My hat's off to him for his courage and his stick-to-it-ive-ness," Bohn said, "and the personal pride that he exhibited knowing that so many at UC were on his side and willing to do anything we could to assure that he would be successful. He seized the moment to extend his life and his contributions to the athletic department are at an all-time high."
Koslen's journey began with a job evaluation that he says, "wasn't great. I kind of got called out on some things. When I look back on it now, I was kind of mailing it in a little bit. I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn't doing the job I should be doing.
"That might have been the thing that sent me over the edge because it upset me that they thought I couldn't do my job. I had a great session with Karen. Karen and Mike were very supportive throughout the whole thing. To start the program you've got to go through a seminar first. Karen was the one who said, all right, 'We're going. Pick a day and I'll drive you there.' And she did."
But Bohn and Hatcher didn't provide the only motivation.
"You get to a certain point where you just feel like crap all the time and you don't sleep well, you don't move around well, you're always hurting," Koslen said. "Clothes don't fit right. You're not buying clothes in normal stores. It's more of a mental hurdle than anything else. When you have a significant amount of weight to lose, it's almost daunting. It's very hard to get started.
"I was never diagnosed with it, but I would guess I had some sort of depression. It became a drag to go to work every day. And there were a couple people that reached out to me, people in my family, people at work, people in the business, that sent me notes or letters saying they were worried about me and I needed to do something. It all added up. That was the kick in the butt I needed to get started."
The first step was the seminar, which lasted about an hour and a half. Then he had to undergo a medical screening which opened his eyes even further. He discovered that he was diabetic and might have sleep apnea. His blood pressure was on the borderline of being too high. As bad as all that sounds, Koslen said he was surprised it wasn't worse.
He weighed 436 at the time of the screening. That number grew to 441, which Koslen says "is just a crazy number to think about," before he actually started the program.
"I went up five pounds in a week," he said. "I knew I was starting the program and I knew it was gonna be hard. There were things I wanted to binge on one last time. I still remember the last real meal I ate before I started. It was tacos at Chuy's. I haven't been back since, but it was good."
The first few weeks were difficult. Koslen was living on 960 calories a day, more than 1,200 fewer than the recommended amount for a male his age. He drank five protein shakes a day and ate one nutrition bar. He could frequently be seen sitting at his desk at work or in a stadium press box stirring the mix for the shakes into a glass of water.
"When you first start, it's like, holy crap, this is all I'm gonna eat all day," Koslen said. "I'm at the point now where I'm up to 1,400 calories and it feels like I'm eating all the time. It's weird how it changes.
"After the first couple of weeks, it got to be routine. It's almost like your appetite gets suppressed after awhile, so you think, OK, I've got to eat something. You almost have to force yourself to do it because you haven't eaten food, so you're not thinking about it, but you know you have to eat something or drink something."
Because he was so motivated, Koslen fully and eagerly embraced the program from the start.
"The thing that worked for him was that he was very, very compliant and was very mindful and he kept us informed every step of the way if he had any problems," said Dr. Malti Vij, Koslen's primary doctor at UC Health's weight-loss center. "Ryan is one of our exceptional patients because he kept losing and losing. At one point, he slowed down a little bit, but he went back up. We usually do this program for six months, but he did it for one year. He was being monitored and we didn't see any negative side of him continuing with the program."
As the pounds came off, the circle of friends who knew what he was doing grew. The more the word spread, the more encouragement he received.
"I've had a group of probably 15 or 20 people all around the country, and even one in Australia, that I'm very close with from years of living in different places," Koslen said. "I weighed in on Wednesday nights at 5:30. They would look forward to seeing (my text messages) on Wednesday night. If I didn't do it, if I missed a week for whatever reason or if I did it a day later, they would say, 'Are you ok? What happened this week? What's the progress? What's the update?'"
The first phase of the program, called "New Beginnings," lasted 10½ months. Then he started eating solid foods again and increased his calorie intake.
"I started off with three supplements a day with 1,200 calories and then two supplements a day with 1,300 calories," Koslen said. "And now I'm at one supplement a day with 1,400. There's one supplement, which is about 160 calories, and then the rest is all food. It's pretty structured. The food is on your own. 'My Fitness Pal' is a great app. Basically anything you can eat, it's on there. If you go out to restaurants, you can figure it out.
"I monitor it pretty religiously now. I've got a food scale at home and I've got measuring instruments. The transition phase has been interesting because I haven't lost consistently. I've lost maybe two and then gained one. You're having more calories, so you've got to pick your activity up and exercise more. They say you're probably going to lose maybe one or two pounds a week during this phase, which is fine. To be honest, I'm in it for the long term. It's more of a lifestyle change than it is a quick fix."
Koslen said he no longer craves sweets. He used to eat a lot of heavy textured and fried foods. Now he's into fresh vegetables and salads.
"I've discovered vegetables that I had never eaten before," he said. "Like I've never been big on cauliflower, but now I eat it all the time because it's very versatile. It's opened up some new food doors for me, which is exciting. Like I didn't ever have a veggie burger, ever, and now I think I've tried all the veggie burgers and there are some that are really good and there some that are really bad. I give a lot of credit to Valerie Brookbank and Haylee Hannah, two of the dietitians, I've been working with. They've been very patient, answered a ton of questions, given me some great ideas and really helped as I've gone through this process.
"It's about being consistent. You want to make sure you eat something every three hours and keep your metabolism up and make sure you're hitting your marks on your macros and getting your exercise in. That's probably one area where I've been a little bit off. I try to walk as much as I can, but I'm not doing Pilates or yoga or anything yet. That's one thing I've always struggled with from a time standpoint."
The journey has already changed his life, but Koslen understands that it's just beginning.
"This is gonna be a long-term deal," he said. "You always worry that it could crop back up, so you've got to be diligent."
Bohn is thrilled for Koslen. He credits him for being smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities that were available to him at UC. But there was a lot more to it than that.
"In the end, it came from his heart and soul," Bohn said. "He was one tough Bearcat."
Koslen has more energy. His risk of diabetes is gone and his blood pressure has fallen to normal levels. And now he has even more motivation not to let himself fall back to where he was. In June, his twin sister, Marnie Younker, had a baby boy named Simon. Koslen is Simon's godfather and he's determined to watch him grow up.
"You see people all around dying from weight issues," he said. "I didn't want to be a statistic."
But we respected each other from the start and grew to be friends. After I left the Enquirer at the end of 2014, we became colleagues when athletic director Mike Bohn hired me to write for GoBearcats.com. That lasted for four years. I wrote a ton of stories for the UC website. One of my favorites was the story I wrote about Koz's decision to enter a weight loss program at UC that helped him to lose 196 pounds in 12 months. I had great respect for his ability to do that and I still do.
I'm retired now and don't see Koz as often as I used to, but in a strange way I'm still going to miss him. After 14 years, he became a fixture in the UC athletics department, especially in the UC football program, which has grown by leaps and bounds since he arrived. As a tribute to Koz, and with his permission, I'm reprinting that August 16, 2017 story here while wishing him all the best in his new job.
By Bill Koch
Ryan Koslen has been subjected to unflattering comments about his weight for most of his life. He heard them when he was a kid and from fans on the road when he walked across the field. He tried to act like he didn't hear them, but he did. He heard them all.
Today, after losing 196 pounds in 12 months, Koslen hears mostly compliments from his family, friends, colleagues and reporters who cover the University of Cincinnati athletic program. He appreciates the praise, but he's having a hard time getting used to the acclaim. In fact, when he was approached about being interviewed for this article, he was reluctant at first, but agreed to do it because he understood that his story might motivate someone else to do what he's done.
"You inherently want to stay in the background and not get noticed, so when you do get noticed it's uncomfortable," Koslen said. "But I know that my story almost isn't my own anymore because it could help somebody else. And if one person gets the help they need, then that'll feel good. And I know there's some people that already have. They saw what I was doing and they did it."
Koslen, 39, has struggled with his weight since he was a kid growing up in Mayfield Heights outside Cleveland. He's always known he should do something about it, but never was able to take the first step until a year ago. Finally, after being prodded by UC Director of Athletics Mike Bohn and Executive Senior Associate AD Karen Hatcher, he decided the time had arrived to take action and enrolled in the non-surgical weight loss program at UC Health in West Chester.
It was a huge step for Koslen, a UC associate AD and the primary media contact for football since he arrived from Houston in 2008. You'd think he would have been eager to tell friends and acquaintances about his momentous and difficult decision, but he chose to tell only a few people.
"I was afraid if I told people I was doing it and I failed, that wouldn't have been good for me from a medical standpoint," Koslen said. "I probably would have felt even worse. And then lo and behold, I think I lost seven or eight pounds in about five days. I was all in after that. I was off and running."
In the last year, he's seen his weight drop from 441 pounds to 245. He's lost so much weight that sometimes acquaintances he hasn't seen for awhile don't recognize him at first glance. He's been asked more than once if he's been sick.
"My favorite thing of all time was when somebody a few weeks ago said they were worried that I might have a problem because I was getting too skinny," Koslen said. "File that under something I never thought I'd hear. That was enjoyable."
Bohn and Hatcher gave Koslen the push he needed because, Bohn said, he was worried that he was on "a slippery slope with his health and his career."
"My hat's off to him for his courage and his stick-to-it-ive-ness," Bohn said, "and the personal pride that he exhibited knowing that so many at UC were on his side and willing to do anything we could to assure that he would be successful. He seized the moment to extend his life and his contributions to the athletic department are at an all-time high."
Koslen's journey began with a job evaluation that he says, "wasn't great. I kind of got called out on some things. When I look back on it now, I was kind of mailing it in a little bit. I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn't doing the job I should be doing.
"That might have been the thing that sent me over the edge because it upset me that they thought I couldn't do my job. I had a great session with Karen. Karen and Mike were very supportive throughout the whole thing. To start the program you've got to go through a seminar first. Karen was the one who said, all right, 'We're going. Pick a day and I'll drive you there.' And she did."
But Bohn and Hatcher didn't provide the only motivation.
"You get to a certain point where you just feel like crap all the time and you don't sleep well, you don't move around well, you're always hurting," Koslen said. "Clothes don't fit right. You're not buying clothes in normal stores. It's more of a mental hurdle than anything else. When you have a significant amount of weight to lose, it's almost daunting. It's very hard to get started.
"I was never diagnosed with it, but I would guess I had some sort of depression. It became a drag to go to work every day. And there were a couple people that reached out to me, people in my family, people at work, people in the business, that sent me notes or letters saying they were worried about me and I needed to do something. It all added up. That was the kick in the butt I needed to get started."
The first step was the seminar, which lasted about an hour and a half. Then he had to undergo a medical screening which opened his eyes even further. He discovered that he was diabetic and might have sleep apnea. His blood pressure was on the borderline of being too high. As bad as all that sounds, Koslen said he was surprised it wasn't worse.
He weighed 436 at the time of the screening. That number grew to 441, which Koslen says "is just a crazy number to think about," before he actually started the program.
"I went up five pounds in a week," he said. "I knew I was starting the program and I knew it was gonna be hard. There were things I wanted to binge on one last time. I still remember the last real meal I ate before I started. It was tacos at Chuy's. I haven't been back since, but it was good."
The first few weeks were difficult. Koslen was living on 960 calories a day, more than 1,200 fewer than the recommended amount for a male his age. He drank five protein shakes a day and ate one nutrition bar. He could frequently be seen sitting at his desk at work or in a stadium press box stirring the mix for the shakes into a glass of water.
"When you first start, it's like, holy crap, this is all I'm gonna eat all day," Koslen said. "I'm at the point now where I'm up to 1,400 calories and it feels like I'm eating all the time. It's weird how it changes.
"After the first couple of weeks, it got to be routine. It's almost like your appetite gets suppressed after awhile, so you think, OK, I've got to eat something. You almost have to force yourself to do it because you haven't eaten food, so you're not thinking about it, but you know you have to eat something or drink something."
Because he was so motivated, Koslen fully and eagerly embraced the program from the start.
"The thing that worked for him was that he was very, very compliant and was very mindful and he kept us informed every step of the way if he had any problems," said Dr. Malti Vij, Koslen's primary doctor at UC Health's weight-loss center. "Ryan is one of our exceptional patients because he kept losing and losing. At one point, he slowed down a little bit, but he went back up. We usually do this program for six months, but he did it for one year. He was being monitored and we didn't see any negative side of him continuing with the program."
As the pounds came off, the circle of friends who knew what he was doing grew. The more the word spread, the more encouragement he received.
"I've had a group of probably 15 or 20 people all around the country, and even one in Australia, that I'm very close with from years of living in different places," Koslen said. "I weighed in on Wednesday nights at 5:30. They would look forward to seeing (my text messages) on Wednesday night. If I didn't do it, if I missed a week for whatever reason or if I did it a day later, they would say, 'Are you ok? What happened this week? What's the progress? What's the update?'"
The first phase of the program, called "New Beginnings," lasted 10½ months. Then he started eating solid foods again and increased his calorie intake.
"I started off with three supplements a day with 1,200 calories and then two supplements a day with 1,300 calories," Koslen said. "And now I'm at one supplement a day with 1,400. There's one supplement, which is about 160 calories, and then the rest is all food. It's pretty structured. The food is on your own. 'My Fitness Pal' is a great app. Basically anything you can eat, it's on there. If you go out to restaurants, you can figure it out.
"I monitor it pretty religiously now. I've got a food scale at home and I've got measuring instruments. The transition phase has been interesting because I haven't lost consistently. I've lost maybe two and then gained one. You're having more calories, so you've got to pick your activity up and exercise more. They say you're probably going to lose maybe one or two pounds a week during this phase, which is fine. To be honest, I'm in it for the long term. It's more of a lifestyle change than it is a quick fix."
Koslen said he no longer craves sweets. He used to eat a lot of heavy textured and fried foods. Now he's into fresh vegetables and salads.
"I've discovered vegetables that I had never eaten before," he said. "Like I've never been big on cauliflower, but now I eat it all the time because it's very versatile. It's opened up some new food doors for me, which is exciting. Like I didn't ever have a veggie burger, ever, and now I think I've tried all the veggie burgers and there are some that are really good and there some that are really bad. I give a lot of credit to Valerie Brookbank and Haylee Hannah, two of the dietitians, I've been working with. They've been very patient, answered a ton of questions, given me some great ideas and really helped as I've gone through this process.
"It's about being consistent. You want to make sure you eat something every three hours and keep your metabolism up and make sure you're hitting your marks on your macros and getting your exercise in. That's probably one area where I've been a little bit off. I try to walk as much as I can, but I'm not doing Pilates or yoga or anything yet. That's one thing I've always struggled with from a time standpoint."
The journey has already changed his life, but Koslen understands that it's just beginning.
"This is gonna be a long-term deal," he said. "You always worry that it could crop back up, so you've got to be diligent."
Bohn is thrilled for Koslen. He credits him for being smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities that were available to him at UC. But there was a lot more to it than that.
"In the end, it came from his heart and soul," Bohn said. "He was one tough Bearcat."
Koslen has more energy. His risk of diabetes is gone and his blood pressure has fallen to normal levels. And now he has even more motivation not to let himself fall back to where he was. In June, his twin sister, Marnie Younker, had a baby boy named Simon. Koslen is Simon's godfather and he's determined to watch him grow up.
"You see people all around dying from weight issues," he said. "I didn't want to be a statistic."
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