Christopher: A Customer-Hero’s Journey to Healthier

Christopher, a 46-year-old financial officer, had been an athlete in high school and still thought of himself that way. But like so many others, he found himself in a desk job after college. Weekends were spent with the kids, and the pounds piled on. His doctor had mentioned that he should get some sort of fitness routine going, and he had tried running—he even joined a gym a couple of years back. He was still paying the gym dues but only made it there maybe once or twice a month, in a fit of inspiration. He told himself he’d go back after he closed this big deal. But there always seemed to be another big deal on its tail.

Then four small, but extraordinary, things happened in a single week. On Friday, the doctor’s office rang to say that Christopher’s blood work showed that he was prediabetic. Christopher immediately turned to Google and started reading about how many people believed that different diets could reverse prediabetes. This gave him some level of hope. He ate a salad that night but gave into the temptation of dessert.

On Saturday, he pulled on some old running gear and realized he was completely out of breath less than two blocks from home. Ugh.

On Sunday at church, he caught a glimpse of himself in the window as he walked up and was actually startled at the not-at-all-distorted image of himself. He couldn’t really believe that overweight, middle-age man had replaced the youthful athlete he still saw in his mental mirror. Restrictive diets don’t work, he told himself as he helped himself to a second helping of scalloped potatoes at Sunday brunch.

On Monday, he got a Facebook message from an old work friend who was back in town, asking to meet up for a drink after work. Excited to see his old friend, Christopher went to meet him at the pub and was shocked and stunned to see his friend looking so trim and full of energy. He looked younger than he had five years ago. His friend mentioned having done an AIDS Lifecycle (ALC) bike ride from Chicago to Minneapolis a few years back, after losing a friend to AIDS. That had kick-started a new way of life.

Heading back to the office, Christopher was pensive, opting to take the stairs, which he knew was the healthy choice, despite having rarely chosen it. As he huffed and puffed his way up the stairs, wondering when they added all those extra flights between the ground and his office, he knew one thing for sure: if his friend could do that bike ride, he could do it, too.

Christopher was a competitive guy. Seeing his friend in such fine mettle had reignited that spark. He decided it was about time he harnessed that energy into something that was good for himself, not just for making money (though he liked making money plenty). It was also so much more energizing to think about setting a goal of doing this ride than thinking about managing blood-sugar levels or hitting a goal weight. So the same night as he saw his friend, he mentioned it to his wife and then, before he went to sleep, Googled “AIDS Lifecycle” on his iPad.

Christopher went to the orientation for the bike ride and realized that the time commitment was not insignificant: every Saturday, most of the day, for what boiled down to the first month of the year. He’d also have to raise several thousand dollars for charity. The nearest ride to his home was from San Francisco to Los Angeles. After talking with his family, who were excited at his enthusiasm and the prospect of him taking better care of himself, he made a decision to throw himself into this for six months and signed up.

The next step was to gear up. The ALC trainers gave him a list of gear he’d need, and he spent a Saturday with his kids at the local sports superstore getting everything. He downloaded Strava, the cycling app, and MyFitnessPal and synced the two. He got a huge rush from watching the cumulative annual miles ridden on Strava rack up.

Almost immediately, once he started training and tracking, his craving for soda disappeared, and he also cut his alcohol consumption once he logged a beer and realized it had the same number of calories as he’d just burned on a two-hour bike ride he’d just completed. He got really into prepping meals on the weekend for work, and his wife joined him. They also made some simple household food rules, like this: that they could have a drink or eat dessert anytime they wanted when they were out but would not stock ice cream or alcohol in the house.

This health thing had officially become a family affair.

Christopher’s energy levels came up, and while he was very occupied with training on the weekends, he felt like he was having more fun with his kids the rest of the time. He felt mentally quicker and just lighter. In fact, he was, having lost 30 pounds in the first 90 days of training. He hadn’t weighed himself, so he didn’t even realize he’d lost that much weight. His doctor pointed it out when he came in to revisit the prediabetes, which had also resolved. That realization was a big morale and momentum boost, as were the comments made by his friends on MyFitnessPal and Facebook, as he shared the link to his fund-raising page for the ride.

He began to look forward to his weekend training sessions and to seeing the other people in his training cohort. When his knee began to bother him, a few other guys suggested he cross-train and invited him to come to Crossfit with them. He went and ultimately got his wife to become a Crossfitter, too. They both started experimenting with the Paleo diet and even started reading up on “ancestral health” online.

Christopher and his wife decided that they would set up a whole-family reward for making it through the intense training schedule when the ride was done and spent a few weeks emailing each other links from Jetsetter, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb. They ultimately decided they wanted to expose their kids to new cultures and to service, so they signed on to their church’s mission trip to Peru, which they would follow with a summer vacation through the rain forest and to Machu Picchu.

From January to June, Christopher worked up to be ready for the sevenday, 600-mile ride. He felt very supported and almost no anxiety about the ride itself, given the incredible logistics machine that the folks running the ride had put together and the organization they had already demonstrated throughout the months of training.

On ride day, just before Christopher left home, he dropped a Facebook message to his old work buddy sharing about some other things he’d dropped, thanks, in part, to his friend’s example: 50 pounds, prediabetes, and a sedentary family lifestyle. After the ride and the trip, both of which were life changing, Christopher found himself excited to see his friends at Crossfit, and he and his wife were home less than a week before they were plugged right back into those workouts.