Quick answer: On The Joe Rogan Experience #1080, David Goggins said he weighed nearly 300 pounds and worked nights spraying cockroaches for an exterminator when he decided to become a Navy SEAL. He lost more than 100 pounds in under three months to make the Navy's weight limit, went through BUD/S Hell Week three times in about a year, and graduated in 2001.
Source: The Joe Rogan Experience #1080 with David Goggins, clipped as a YouTube Short.
The night job
Goggins went on Rogan's show in February 2018. His memoir, Can't Hurt Me, came out later that year. In the clip he goes back to the late 1990s. He had left the Air Force and was working nights as an exterminator, going into restaurants to spray for cockroaches. By his own account he was making about $1,000 a month.
He describes a night in a restaurant when he was done with that life. He came home, turned on the TV, and saw a Discovery Channel program about Navy SEAL training. He says he decided that night that it was what he would do.
The 106-pound problem
The problem was his size. Goggins says he was close to 300 pounds. Interviews and Navy profiles put him at about 297 pounds at 6-foot-1. The Navy's limit for someone his height was 191. He called recruiter after recruiter, he says, and most hung up or weren't interested. One recruiter, Steven Schaljo, agreed to work with him if he could make the weight.
He did it in under three months. CNBC and a Navy profile both report that he dropped 106 pounds through extreme running, swimming, cycling and a near-starvation diet. He has also said he had to retake the ASVAB, the military entrance test, to get a qualifying score.
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Three Hell Weeks
Hell Week is the five-and-a-half-day stretch of BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) where students get only a few hours of sleep in total. Many students quit during it, ringing the bell that signals they're out.
Goggins went through it three times. In his first class, double pneumonia ended his week and he was rolled back to start again. In the second, he says he pushed through Hell Week on a fractured kneecap, but the injury forced another rollback. On the third try he finished. He graduated with BUD/S Class 235 in 2001 and went on to serve with SEAL Team 5.
In the clip he puts it simply: the first one he didn't make it through, and the next two he did. He adds that, to his knowledge, he's the only person to go through three Hell Weeks in one year. That's his claim, and the Navy hasn't published an official record of it, but the rollbacks themselves are well documented.
What came after
After the SEALs, Goggins went to Army Ranger School and became an endurance athlete. He ran Badwater 135 through Death Valley and once set a Guinness record for pull-ups in 24 hours. He raised money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation and later became one of the best-known motivational speakers in the country.
On Rogan's show he doesn't tell the story as a miracle. He tells it as a guy who was miserable and finally did something about it.
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FAQ
How much did David Goggins weigh before the Navy? About 297 pounds, according to Goggins and Navy profiles. He had to get down to 191.
How fast did David Goggins lose the weight? He lost 106 pounds in under three months.
How many times did David Goggins do Hell Week? Three times. Pneumonia ended his first try, a broken kneecap led to a rollback after the second, and he graduated with Class 235 in 2001.
What job did David Goggins have before the SEALs? He worked nights as an exterminator, spraying restaurants for cockroaches. He says it paid about $1,000 a month.