How Christoph lost 18lbs, cut his bodyfat from 17% to 7%, added nearly 10lbs of muscle and transformed himself from an overweight weakling into Wolverine
Attention: Engineers and software developers of the world. Meet your new hero, Christoph — who transformed himself (with my help) from a desk jockey into a real-life comic book superhero. Just wait till you see the photos at the bottom of this post!
That’s right, move over Hugh Jackman, there is a new Wolverine in town… his name is Christoph, and he is a modern day badass. By day, Christoph works as a senior iOS engineer consulting for many of Silicon Valley’s cutting edge tech startups. By night, he kicks ass in the gym and in the process has transformed both his body and his life into someone I’m inspired by and someone I’m now proud to call my friend.
Typical Desk Jockey
Christoph was one of my first personal training clients when I started training at DIAKADI Body in San Francisco. When I met him he was a typical desk jockey in his late 30s. Tell me if this sounds familiar:
- Working long hours while sitting at a desk most of the day eating “startup food” at the office, and not working out regularly — Christoph began to slowly get bigger and softer with each passing year.
- He lacked energy, was feeling lethargic most of the time, and he lacked the confidence he had in his 20s.
- Like most men in their 30s, Christoph tried to do it on his own utilizing at-home programs like P90X. Although he had some minor success, the results never lasted and frustration began to build.
- At 39, Christoph found himself feeling like he was losing control and this was his last chance to take control of his body, take control of his life, and see what he was really made of.
“This was the last chance I had to get into the best shape I could for the rest of my life.”
While working directly with me Christoph lost 18lbs, cut his bodyfat from 17% down to 7%, added nearly 10lbs of muscle, added a nice set of abs, and now looks like real-life Wolverine. His energy and confidence levels are now better than ever, his career is thriving as a result, and like a fine wine… he’s better now than ever before. And he did all this while only working out for 60-minutes, 3x per week!
Christoph and I finishing up a killer workout session at San Francisco’s #1 personal training facility, DIAKADI Body. It’s amazing just how personal, personal training can be. I’m lucky enough to now call Christoph both my client and a friend.
It’s truly an awesome story and and I’m stoked to share it with you! Christoph has not only inspired me with his transformation but he has also reinvigorated my love for this job. It’s clients like Christoph that are the reason why I quit my 6-figure consulting job to pursue a career in fitness.Let’s finally meet our new modern day superhero, Christoph.
The “Before” Christoph @ 166 lbs & 17% bodyfat
Like I said, when I first met Christoph he was a typical desk jockey. As an iOS engineer consulting to Silicon Valley’s top tech companies he was part of the startup scene which is known for long hours in front of a computer screen, all you can eat food at the office, and semi-frequent partying every time a new version of an app goes live. Living this lifestyle throughout his 30s had taken its toll.
“I had a trainer in my late twenties and was in pretty good shape. But during my 30s I just became soft. I had moderate success with the P90X programs, but I eventually become bored of them. I decided to invest in myself and look for a trainer to maximize my time in the gym, keep me accountable, and help sustain my motivation.”
Not a bad starting point at all. For most people this might even be considered “good enough” but for a high-achiever like Christoph that wants more than just “enough” out of life — this wasn’t going to do. We sat down together, set goals, and I created a customized plan specific to his needs while taking into account his injury history and time constraints.
Although his career was doing well his body was not on the same top-tier level. Being a high-achieving Type-A, like most people that are great at what they do — he wanted both his body and his mind to be doing as awesome as possible.
Heading into his 40s, he knew there was no way he could keep up with the demands of his career and lifestyle unless he started treating his body a lot better. It’s no secret, if you want to be more productive and have more energy you need to workout and eat right. According to Richard Branson, working out is his secret weapon to getting an additional 4-hours of productivity per day. Apparently, great minds think alike. Here’s Christoph:
“My #1 daily concern is my body. Not just the way it looks, but the way it feels, how it reacts to food and how it recovers. Being in control of my body allows me to be successful elsewhere in my life.“
Christoph Meets Action Jackson
When I first met Christoph I knew I had a lot to work with and I knew immediately he would be very successful. He was super successful in his career, which helps because it meant he knew the value of hard work. Additionally, he is smart, hard working, and takes responsibility for his actions. I knew he would stick to the eating plan and I knew he would show up 3x per week no matter what with a positive attitude ready to put in the work. These traits are crucial to success when trying to transform your body.
Note: If you want to adopt this mindset and take full control over your life, try reading Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. This was my favorite book of 2015. You can also listen to a very intense interview with him on the Tim Ferriss Podcast here.
We started slow, but the progress was steady. There were ups and downs but Christoph always showed up with a positive mindset ready to work. That type of hard work and commitment can overcome almost any obstacle in any area of life especially fitness.
I asked Christoph what it was like working with me and how I compared to other trainers he’s worked with in the past:
“Most trainers don’t practice what they preach, Jackson is the exact opposite of that. He is the embodiment of how he trains you. He’s also a guy that’s humble enough to keep experimenting and learning until he figures out what works best for you [the client]. He doesn’t give you the same plan he gave to all his previous clients or some workout routine he read in a book. He takes the principles he’s learned that work and then tailors them to fit your specific needs.”
The value of a custom, personalized program
There is no exact step-by-step formula that works for everyone. It takes time and like any successful startup, you often end up pivoting or course correcting along the way. It’s important not to be married to or emotionally invested in your original plan because it may not work.
For example, Christoph is allergic to whey protein. Uh oh! Nobody ever got jacked without heaps and heaps of whey protein, right?! Instead, we just shifted and tried out alternatives until we found something that worked.
Christoph also has a plate and a couple of screws in his shoulder and had some nagging issues with his lower back. Those were things I had to constantly take into account, work on, and work around when necessary. They were not always easy to deal with and occasionally they slowed or even interrupted our progress. However, each challenge we overcame made Christoph better and stronger, got us closer to the end goal, and made me a better trainer.
Tweaks to the diet were also constantly being made to account for any change in the workouts, vacations, and plateaus as we continued to push his bodyfat down below 10% and into the single digits. It’s a bit unnatural to have a 7% bodyfat so sometimes you have to get creative when fighting against nature. I also made several shifts with the workout routines to account for injuries, plateaus, vacations, and even boredom. Every single person is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to training the human body. That’s why cookie cutter programs often lead to a lack of results, frustration, and/or injury as opposed to lasting results, fulfillment, and a better/stronger you.
This is a graph of Christoph’s body fat percentage. When starting out, progress can be fast and furious. Sticking to the process can be tough, especially when you get a few setbacks. With continuous tweaks we were able to get Christoph’s body fat down to a low of 7% while maintaining a sub-10% body fat from Feb-2015. It’s still below 10% and probably will be that way for the rest of his life 🙂
Blindly following a static plan is a recipe for failure. You have to constantly assess and tweak the plan taking into account the things that are working and eliminating or changing variables for the things that aren’t. It’s one of the primary, if not the #1 reason so many people fail when trying to transform their body.
I asked Christoph, what’s different about the program I [Action Jackson] created compared to static programs like P90X?
“It was custom, based on my body, goals, and routines. Plus, when we learned how I reacted, we could adjust. If you’re just following a plan in a book, good luck finding out what to do if it’s not working. When you think about it, the fitness industry succeeds when we’re failing. We spend more money on potential solutions. But with Jackson, I didn’t feel like a consumer but rather the product that he was building.”
The Vision: Wolverine by Halloween
I’ve talked many times on my blog about the importance of having a vision or a goal of what you want to achieve. A goal or vision in conjunction with a powerful and compelling reason why you want to achieve it is absolutely necessary if you want to create disproportionate results. You found this out in The Simple Secret to Looking Absolutely Awesome.
At the end of the day most people including myself don’t really care about body fat percentages, weight, strength numbers, etc. If we cut through all the bullshit and get real, we care about three things and none of them are numbers:
- How we feel physically
- How we look in the mirror both to ourselves and how others perceive us
- How we feel emotionally about our body (based on #1 and #2)
And if we really want to 80/20 it again, we can narrow it down to how we feel emotionally about our body. That’s it. Are you happy and confident? Do you feel attractive, hot, or sexy? If so, good. If not, create a vision, set some goals, hire an expert, and get to work.
This is a graph of Christoph’s weight throughout his transformation. “What gets measured, gets managed.” – Peter Drucker. If you want to lose weight, track your weight. It’s that simple. A study in the Journal of Obesity showed that participants in a study lost weight when they were required to weigh themselves daily without requiring any other diets or exercise.
The numbers are just a way to track and quantify progress. Without them, it’s difficult if not impossible to reach such a lofty goal, but at the end of the day it’s all about how you look and feel.
“I had a visual goal in mind, Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine, but didn’t really know how the numbers correlated. I didn’t care, I just knew what I wanted to look like.”
I keep an Apple Numbers spreadsheet for each of my clients, which includes a Dashboard page with an overview of our goals, reasons for training (why statement), and an image of what we want to achieve. I review this spreadsheet with my clients weekly to ensure we keep our goals, “why” statement, and vision all top of mind.
Key Takeaway: You can and should create something similar for yourself. My online business coach, the awesome Bryan Harris, made me write my #1 business goal on a 5×5 note card and tape it to the top of my computer monitor. He also made me create a recurring notification on my Google Calendar that reminds me of my goal every single day.
Note: I created a special version of my client goals dashboard just for YOU so you can set, track progress, and hit your health & fitness goals this year. You can download it at the bottom of this post.
“If you aren’t growing, you’re dying. It turns out that happiness that is true and lasting is quite simply this: progress. Progress = Happiness!”
– Anthony Robbins
This process keeps my clients invested in their goals and it holds me accountable because if we aren’t making progress then I need to do something about it or I’m going to get fired! In my opinion, there is nothing worse than just training to train. If you aren’t moving forward and getting better then you’re moving backward and getting worse. Stagnation is death. My clients are successful because they workout with a purpose.
The Importance of Meal Planning
Nutrition is hugely important when trying to meet your health and fitness goals, we all know that — especially when trying to get to single digit body fat. Every single Action Jackson Fitness client gets a customized meal plan with target calories, macros, an approved food list, and a few example days. I outlined a few of my favorite meals and their macros in my post The Lazy Man’s Guide To Eating Healthy.
You must have a plan for your nutrition if you are going to be successful at transforming your own body. You cannot just workout and blindly eat “healthy” or worse — eat crap and expect to feel awesome and make progress toward your goals. If you don’t have a plan for your macros, if you aren’t tracking your food, if you don’t know where your meals are going to come from today or tomorrow you must create a plan or hire someone to do it for you.
This is the hardest part of a client transformation because I cannot be there with my clients to coach them through every single meal like I can when they workout. At a certain point you (the client) need to take responsibility for your own actions and understand that nobody else can do it for you (e.g. Extreme Ownership).
Good thing for me, Christoph was a take charge kind of guy. He used the resources I gave him and even took it a step further:
“While I had gotten an outline of an eating plan, I still needed to do some legwork to learn the macros for different ingredients. Tracking with an app helped that education, but the biggest gains came from making a spreadsheet of appropriate ingredients, then building daily eating templates with those ingredients. I’d often make meals in advance so I wouldn’t have to think about it, just grab one from the fridge and go.”
I can’t emphasize this enough, not having a plan for your daily meals is going to kill your progress. You must plan each day’s meals. You cannot expect someone else to do it for you.
Note: At the bottom of this post you can download the meal prep templates Christoph used for his transformation along with your goals and why statement dashboard.
The “After” Christoph @ 148 lbs and 7% body fat
Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for. The “after” photos where you can see the dramatic transformation Christoph made. Below, you’ll find the final progress photo we took although I feel like it doesn’t quite do him justice because he isn’t flexing his abs. C’mon man! ABF. Always. Be. Flexin’. I guess I’m not going to win any awards as a fitness photographer anytime soon since I didn’t cue him either.
Here are a few key numbers from Christoph’s transformation:
-
Weight
- Starting weight: 166 lbs
- Ending weight: 148 lbs
- Total Weight Lost: 18 lbs
-
Body Fat %
- Starting body fat: 17%
- Ending body fat: 7%
- Total Body Fat Lost: 10%
-
Fat Mass (lbs)
- Starting Fat Mass: 28.2 lbs
- Ending Fat Mass: 10.4 lbs
- Total Fat Lost: 17.8 lbs
-
Waist
- Starting waist: 33in
- Ending waist: 30in
- Total Inches Lost: 3in
This is a graph of Christoph’s fat mass in pounds throughout his transformation. Again, you want to make progress in any area of your life… track it. Progress wasn’t linear but by staying consistent we were able to create a massive change over a period of months.
Enter Wolverine
When I told you Christoph was a modern-day badass I wasn’t just talking out of my ass — I meant it. Since I didn’t think the final progress photo did him justice I decided to try my hand at photography again and catch a few action shots of him in the gym throwing some weight around. Not bad, eh? Move over Hugh Jackman…
What you can learn from Christoph
Want to know how you can learn from Christoph and make the same kind of transformation with your own body? I asked Christoph:
If you could pinpoint 2-3 things (tactics, behaviors, habits, mindset shifts, etc) that were most instrumental in making you successful, what would they be?
“Building strong habits was instrumental because it kept me consistent with my diet and exercise. Consistency was the key. Once it became routine, it was easy to stay consistent. Progress wasn’t linear and I had some ups and downs, but as long as I kept consistent — with Jackson’s help I able to make measurable progress month after month.”
If you were giving someone advice on how to mimic your success, what would you tell them?
“Make your body a priority and invest in it to make it better. It’s the only you’ve got and you’re in control of it so maximize it. It’s part of the human experience.”
What was the toughest challenge you faced along this journey from web developer to Wolverine?
“Food. Figuring out what works best for my body and how to make it extremely convenient so I make good choices has taken some practice and some patience. I’m just glad I had someone helping me along the way.”
What do you do to celebrate a big success in your life?
“Have a whiskey, enjoy it. Then get back to work.”
Final Thoughts
Here are some key bullet points or takeaways so you can mimic Christoph’s success and become your own modern-day badass:
- Exercise can lead to massive increases in productivity. It’s Richard Branson’s secret productivity hack and gives him an additional 4-hours of productivity per day.
- A fit, high-performing body is the perfect compliment to a high-performing mind. And being in control of your health allows you to be successful everywhere else in your life.
- With the right program, you can make a massive transformation to you body in as little as 60-minutes a day 3x per week. Results above speak for themselves.
- Blindly sticking to the same plan or following a one-size-fits-all program is a recipe for failure. You or your coach must constantly evaluate the plan, identify what’s working, and what’s not. Then adjust or pivot to continue making progress and deal with obstacles as they arise.
- Get a vision of what you want, set measurable goals, identify a strong and compelling reason why you want it — and execute. Reviewing your vision, goals, and why statement is imperative to keep them top-of-mind. Otherwise, it’s very easy to fall off course. A coach or accountability partner can help with this.
- What gets measured, gets managed. Start tracking any area of your life or body that you want to improve. Studies show doing this alone can lead to dramatic changes.
- Meal planning is essential. Avoid it at your own risk. Nobody can do it for you. At the end of the day you and only you are responsible for the food you put in your body.
- Strong habits and consistency are the keys to success in anything, especially a health/fitness transformation.
- Prioritize your body, invest in it, and make it better. It’s the only one you have!