Building an exercise habit is often about finding your “why.” Why do you want to work out? Do you want to change your bodily appearance? Do you want a new hobby? Do you want to improve your mental health? Maybe none of that suits you, and that’s okay. Your “why” can be anything. It can even be something entirely unrelated to exercising — like working out every day until Taco Bell brings back the Grilled Stuft Nacho, as one guy on TikTok is going viral for doing. And if he’s any proof, such an outlandish “why” might actually work.
For the uninitiated, the Grilled Stuft Nacho was a Taco Bell menu item between 2013 and 2015, described as a “flour tortilla, shaped like a nacho, stuffed with beef, cheesy jalapeño sauce, sour cream and crunchy red strips,” per the Taco Bell Fandom Wiki.
Apparently, it was a creation that some have been unable to forget, and they’re desperate to have returned to the menu once more. On January 4, 2021, TikTok comedian @stuftnacho shared a video of himself out of breath, saying that it was “Day 1 of exercising everyday until Taco Bell brings back the Grilled Stuft Nacho.” The next day, he posted a follow-up video of him continuing his promise. The comments he received were a mix of hopeful faith and pessimism. “Was expecting him to add ‘not sure how much longer I can do this,’” one person wrote on his Day 2 video. “I’m not giving up until they bring back the Grilled Stuft Nacho,” he replied.
Four-hundred-and-fifty-seven days later, he hasn’t lost sight of his vision. He has, however, lost 80 pounds. Looking back at the first week of his videos compared to his more recent entries, he’s undergone a rather dramatic visual transformation, spawning viral posts on fitness Instagram meme accounts like @doyouevenlift. It’s unclear exactly what his starting weight was, but in March, he shared that he’d just recently weighed in at under 200 pounds for the first time in a decade.
Though his appearance has changed, some things have remained relatively consistent. In almost every single video, he wears a black snapback Nike hat. In most, he’s also red in the face and drenched in sweat from cardio, weightlifting and ab exercises, suggesting that nearly a year and a half later, he continues to push himself in the name of Taco Bell.
Taco Bell has yet to officially respond to @stuftnacho’s campaign, though he did post a video of himself enjoying an off-menu version made by an obliging Taco Bell location in February. Still, he hasn’t stopped working out until it makes an official return. It’s proof that when you find your reason to make a lifestyle change, you can make anything happen. That reason might be because you want to be healthier, or it might be because you want to eat a specific combination of beef and cheese wrapped in a particular shape of tortilla.
As long as it means enough to you, it can work.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
