Transformation: Keagan Richards Cuts 80 Pounds!

December 2013 to February 2016  |  26 months  |  @Optimalfitness15

Keagan blew out his knee as an 18-year-old high school senior. Sitting still for the first time in years gave him room to think, and he decided he did not want to stay this heavy.

Keagan also reported going from 33% to 16% body fat. Those are his own figures rather than clinical measurements, and consumer readings vary widely, so the weight and the time frame are the numbers to trust.

Where he started

Keagan spent his days playing football and video games, and did not exercise beyond what the sport required of him. He was 285 pounds at eighteen.

The turning point

He blew out his knee in his senior year of high school. The injury took football away and, with it, the only structure his training had. What it gave him instead was time to sit and think, and what he concluded was that he no longer wanted to carry this weight.

What he changed

Training settled into a six-day split with cardio folded into three of the days:

• Monday: back, biceps, 20 minutes of cardio
• Tuesday: chest and triceps
• Wednesday: legs, 20 minutes on the bike
• Thursday: shoulders
• Friday: cardio and abs
• Saturday: arms

Food was where he did the most deliberate work. He ate six meals a day on a structure rather than a set of rules: protein kept high and steady across every day, fat held constant, and carbohydrates cycled down on rest days and pushed up around training. Most of the carbohydrate landed either side of his workout, with oats, sweet potato, rice and fruit doing that job, and the rest of the day built on eggs, lean poultry, lean beef, vegetables and a fat source like avocado, nut butter or olive oil.

He is not doing anything exotic here, and that is rather the point. It is six repeatable meals in a fixed shape, held for over two years.

The hardest part

Learning to eat smaller meals, eat well, and give up soda. He does not dress it up beyond that.

His three mistakes are honest and familiar: slacking on the diet, not working hard every day, and the feeling that he was not getting anywhere. That third one is not really a mistake so much as the thing that makes people quit, and he named it anyway.

Where he is now

Getting under 230 is the milestone he picks out, which is worth noting because it is not the finish line, it is a checkpoint on the way to 205.

Three lessons: hard work pays off, your mind quits before your body does, and you can do more than you think.

Your mind will quit before your body. Keagan Richards

His advice if you are starting today

However hard it is, and however slowly the results seem to come, remember you are better than you were yesterday and it keeps getting better. Just never quit.

Results vary. This customer's results are not typical and depend on individual effort, training, nutrition and consistency. Statements on this page describe one customer's personal experience and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. No product mentioned is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.