Before joining CrossFit Central I worked. Literally, that’s all I did other than go home get up and go back to work. In general, I put in 6 days a week 12 hours a day (13 days straight was not uncommon). My job was sedentary with lots of meetings, they would occasionally feed us pizza to reward our hard work. No exercise and an extremely bad diet put a huge amount of weight on me. I lived off of fast food and I was solidly in the 300lb club (I am not talking about bench press!). I knew I was capable of losing the weight but I was using the job as an excuse; I was too busy, couldn’t get off work in time for the class, I will do it next month when I wasn’t so busy, I don’t have time to cook food at home.

In 2008 I went on a trip to Colorado to ride (motorcycle) dirt bikes (trail riding); I could barely stay on the bike. We took a picture on top of Flag Mountain (12,700 feet) and I was appalled with how I looked. I put the picture out of site and didn’t change anything until the end of 2009 when I committed myself to change. In 2010 I had lost some weight about 40lbs but plateaued and I couldn’t even run 400 meters, overall my conditioning was miserable and I was still close to 300 lbs.

After reading tons of information about CrossFit in general I felt like if I had a class, a coach, and a team to show up for I would step up to the obligation. It worked and I have made a lot of progress over the past 3 years but it is a work in-progress as I still have a long way to go.[/vc_column_text][mk_image src=”http://crossfitcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SteveN_CentralAthlete.jpg” image_width=”600″ image_height=”350″ crop=”false” lightbox=”false” frame_style=”simple” target=”_self” caption_location=”inside-image” align=”center” margin_bottom=”10″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″]

Lost 80 lbs and 41.75 inches

Consistent progress over the 3 years I have been at Central, I have had some challenges but I had a great 2013. It took me a while to change my habits, the fast food was hard to let go of. Carey Kepler did an article recently talking about someone reaching out to her for nutrition advice, but when she spelled out what to do he decided it wasn’t what he wanted because it required change, I wasn’t the focus of the article but I am that guy! It took me at least a year to get on the paleo bandwagon and then another year to try Zone. Why wouldn’t I try zone? It was too hard, I didn’t want to weigh my food, how do I eat and 5 blocks of carbs? I can’t eat that much Spinach! The result is I have learned to recognize the excuses, doesn’t mean I will adjust quickly but now I have leverage to shut them down. Now I just say try it, put in the effort, look at the examples around you (coaches and elite athletes at CrossFit Central) if it worked for them then you’re just making excuses.

Above: The left photo is from Steve’s 2008 trip to Colorodo at the top of Flag Mountain. The right photo is Steve at the top of Flag Mountain in 2013.