Adam has been a CrossFit Central athlete since 2014. In 2015 Adam and his wife Vickie were featured as a success story. At the time Adam had seen great strength gains and improvement in his endurance. Three years later we are celebrating Adam’s success again! Earlier this year he decided to commit. To really commit without excuses. He has lost over 20 lbs since May. Scroll down to check out Adam’s 2018 success story!
The biggest change for me since 2015 has been my diet. I finally learned the lesson that Zach has been telling me for years—you can’t out-train a bad diet (although Zach uses more colorful word than “bad”). So true. I have been a regular at CCB for almost 5 years and I did a fine job of attending workouts at least 3 days a week and pushing myself, but I simply refused to address the elephant in the room—that I had a poor diet and indulged far too often in sugary, rich foods paired with alcohol.
I signed up for various add-on nutrition challenges offered by the gym, like “I am CrossFit” and “Lean Turkey.” For each challenge, I would sit in the kick-off meetings and listen to Carey talk about nutrition and I would genuinely think that I was going to make a change and commit to a new lifestyle. The problem was that, as Carey talked, I would think, “well, I can’t just totally give up alcohol; we have a party to go to on Saturday night, so I will drink at the party, and, oh, my wife’s birthday” or “I will have a few tortilla chips when I have guacamole, but that’s it” or “my protein shake is so much better with a frozen banana.” I would start the new challenge basically expecting to cheat. As you might expect, I would have the results that a person that cheats would have: I would lose a few pounds of fat, add a few pounds of muscle, and be satisfied with my pedestrian results. And, since I didn’t look much different to the outside world, I wasn’t motivated to continue and I wouldn’t continue. The few pounds I lost would come back. So I hovered around 225 pounds and I just figured that I was simply built to carry that amount of weight.
Then, in May 2018, Carey offered a different challenge—a 21-day reset “elimination” diet where every food that could even possibly be inflammatory was eliminated (no sugar, carbs, dairy, nuts, alcohol, etc.). Carey basically told us what we could eat (as opposed to most challenges where you are told what to avoid), and it all fit on the front side of a single sheet of paper so there wasn’t a whole lot of variety and it was very clear what foods were acceptable and what foods were not. This challenge appealed to me because I’m a rule follower, and with this challenge the rules were simple: stick to the diet and no cheating. Heck, it was only 21 days, and I can suck it up for 21 days.
Lost 25 lbs
So I decided to go all-in on this one. I was going to take it one meal at a time and there would be no drinking, no unauthorized snacking, and I would food log religiously. I immediately saw results. I lost five pounds within a few days, and was down 10 pounds by the end of 14 days. By the end of the 21 days, I was down 15 pounds, and was starting to look noticeably different and felt great too. When the challenge ended, I was so motivated based on my results that I just kept going with it. After about 5 weeks and I had lost about 20 pounds, Carey and I talked about an exit strategy because the elimination diet is too restrictive to be sustainable. She recommended that I transition to a Ketogenic diet, which I did, and that has helped me to keep it off. Now it has been six months since I did the “elimination diet challenge” and I’m down 25 pounds (30 pounds on a good day). I have received some very nice compliments from folks around the gym, and that keeps me motivated to stick with the Keto diet and continue to push myself in class. My energy levels are way up, especially in the afternoon. My energy level used to crash an hour or two after lunch but that doesn’t happen anymore. Also, this is kind of strange, but I have a desk job and before the weight loss if I had been sitting for a long stretch and then stood up and started walking, I would often get vertigo. It felt like I would fall over as I was walking. Now, I haven’t had that happen in months. It’s totally gone.
My goal is to lose another five pounds and to improve my conditioning. But, the most important thing I’ve learned is what I’ve been told since the beginning: you can’t out-train a bad diet. You can come to gym all you want, but if you’re going to go home and eat a cheeseburger and fries with a few beers, you won’t see the results you want. There’s always a reason to indulge, whether it’s a party, the holidays, or you just had a bad day and want nothing more than a glass of wine. Right now I’m able to resist temptation, but if you run a “Failures of 2019” profile I might be the lead story. The good news is that if the weight starts to come back, I will sign up for Carey’s next challenge and I will know exactly what I need to do to fight for my goals: fully commit to the program without exceptions.
Check out Adam’s DXA Scan, showing the changes in his body from 2017 to 2017.