Christopher Skiba Loses 50 Pounds and Gets Diced!

• Name: Christopher Skiba
• Age: 27
• Starting Weight: 238
• Ending Weight: 187
• Transformation Starting Date: 11/2018
• Transformation Ending Date: 8/2019
• Instagram: @Chris86109

Before Christopher's Transformation

Growing up, I was an athlete and always played football. Fitness was a way of life for me. I always lifted, ate well, and had a good idea of my nutrition.

I became a personal trainer out of college so I became an expert when it came to weight loss, building muscle, and putting together effective workout routines. Somewhere along the line though, I lost that drive.

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I lost my motivation and forgot my “why.” I became complacent with my workouts and just went through the motions, I stopped tracking my food consistently and I was having free meals which turned into free days way too often.

I kept using the excuse of, “well, I'm bulking anyway.” This led to a downward spiral of a bad relationship with food and laziness.

The Moment Christopher's Life Changed

I was beginning to realize that I didn’t like who I had become, and who was looking back at me in the mirror. I was living life as a hypocrite, preaching health and fitness and yet I had a very high body fat percentage and my workouts were lackluster at best.

This was not because of a medical condition or life circumstance, but because I was being lazy and not true to myself. I still remember I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, and I told myself, not anymore, this isn’t you. The rest is history.

Christopher's Diet and Workout Approach

I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. I’m either all in or I’m not in at all.

For me to succeed and right the ship I had to take extreme measure and eliminate my enemy, carbs, and sugar. I had a very bad addiction to sweet things and I knew the only way id succeed is by temporarily eliminating it.

I went to a strict carnivore approach and combined it with intermittent fasting. I did that for the first six months, then transitioned to a keto approach with intermittent fasting.

During my keto phase, I allowed myself one reefed meal per week that contained carbs. This helped, as my training began to wear me down. I began to notice the free meal was actually speeding up the weight loss process and the meal was giving me energy for the week ahead workouts.

I began to really enjoy keto so I will be sticking with it during my dieting phases, but for me personally, I will always keep a refeed day once per week as my body responds favorably to it.

Christopher's Struggles

The struggles I faced are struggles I think we all face. There were times I didn’t feel like sticking to my meal plan; I wanted to go out and eat sweet things, or pizza, or pasta.

I struggled with no carbs at first as it was a transition for my body, but now that I've done it, I have a better relationship with carbs and sugar and control what I eat. The food doesn’t control me.

I struggled with not seeing progress at first. The first month I saw such little progress because I was adjusting and trying to learn what my body needed in terms of caloric intake.

Most Important Thing You Learned?

I learned as a population, we generally think we need more calories than we actually do. This leads to excess consumption and the obesity epidemic we are currently facing.

I learned motivation comes and goes. There are days you are going to be fired up and want to stick to your meal plan, do your lifting and your cardio. There will also be days where you dread it and that’s where being disciplined comes in. If you aren’t disciplined you will fail over and over again because motivation is a feeling, and our feelings are constantly changing hour to hour, minute to minute.

I learned nothing great happens overnight. I wanted to see progress so badly and would get frustrated when it wasn’t happening fast enough for me.

Fast forward almost a year later. I can finally see the progress; I see the fruits of my labor. It takes time, but you need to trust the process.

I learned to listen to my body. Your body will tell you if/when its time to scale back, or add in a diet break, or even push harder. We are all individuals and no one diet fits all, biofeedback is extremely important in the process.

Biggest Mistake?

Biggest mistakes I made were not giving myself enough time. I thought I was going to diet for 8-12 weeks and I'd be a completely new person. While my mind frame may have evolved in 8-12 weeks, my body was just beginning.

In the future, I think it’s important to note that you always need more time than you think you do. If you think you need 12 weeks, you probably need 16-20 weeks. This is not because you aren’t doing things right, but your body fights you when you try to lose body fat and some funky things start to happen that you may not have expected.

A Typical Day of Eating

I followed intermittent fasting so I ate daily from 12pm-8pm For the majority of my transformation, I ate the same thing every day. Not because I had to, but because for me, routine works best.

Two meals per day.

My first meal of the day at 12 pm. It typically consisted of 8-10 ounces of 93/7 ground beef, a protein bar or MTS Nutrition Whey shake with peanut butter, canned tuna with mayo. I would typically aim for about 800-1000 calories at this point.

My second meal of the day would be around 7 pm post-workout. The remainder of my calories (around 800-1000) came from steaks, rotisserie chicken, eggs, lean hamburger patties, or a combo of one of these plus protein shake.

Words of Encouragement

Train your mind to be mentally tough. There is a lot of temptation when you begin to try and change your life. Not everyone will approve of it or understand why you are doing it.

This is where being disciplined comes in and not being motivated, remember I said motivation is a feeling. There is going to be times you feel like going off track because of pressure or anything else. Know what your goal is and don’t let anything distract you from it.

Don’t look at the big picture; take your goal and break it down into micro-goals. You tell yourself you want to lose 50 pounds, that may take a year to get there and in time you will lose the motivation and drive because it begins to feel unattainable.

Start by breaking it down into micro-goals, five pounds this month, one pound this week. Sometimes make it not about a weight goal, make a goal that will lead to the end result indirectly. Things like running a faster mile, doing the extra five minutes of cardio; these things add up and contribute to your ultimate goal without you even focusing on it.

Finally, remember this. This is your life, this is your goal, this is your health. If you don’t take control of it and own up to it, nobody is going to come and save you and do it for you.

Nobody is going to come and give you a long healthy life with your children or your wife/husband. Respect yourself enough to make the change.

Find your why, and remember your why every time you want to quit, every time you get tired or every time you want to deviate from the plan, your why will give you the strength you didn’t know you had.