Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots...with a shrinking pacer (Chris Curtis)

• Adam Leishman • Season 1 • Episode 31

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In this episode, I sit down with Chris, who has remarkably lost over 100 kilograms. We dive into the details of his weight loss journey, exploring the motivation, diet changes, and lifestyle shifts that helped him achieve this feat. Join us as Chris shares valuable insights and inspiration for anyone on a similar path.

Hashtags: #InspiringStories #HealthTransformation #BuzzsproutPodcasts

Speaker 2:

Week 31. Week 31 since I started this little passion project since I turned 49, I want to connect with people and ask them about them. And this week I get to chat to somebody that's done something like I did, but more, I don't get to chat to many people that have lost more weight than me. Cause, well, there's not many of us, but this guy did and via diet more weight than me. So I just, I really wanted to find out more about that story. So, let's go meet a guy that is, well, a lot less than what he used to be.

Speaker 5:

This is Chris. How are ya?

Speaker 6:

Good. How you going Adam?

Speaker 5:

Yeah. Good. Thanks for the chat. Thanks for meeting me down here. We're in your neck of the woods. You live nearby and I believe that So, with chatting to you, you're a recent homeowner now.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, so that was, that's one of my most recent achievements, pretty exciting. Just, yeah. Bought a place in Casadine behind, behind us here in the new village precinct. And,

Speaker 5:

it's all new here. This looks like the parkland's are new, new private hospital, or is that aged care, is it?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, so that's just a sort of an aged retirement building. And that was the first. Place to go up.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

Before they started building the the housing stages.

Speaker 5:

They look pretty fancy these days.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, it's a nice building actually, and it looks really nice lit up at night, and there's a cafe underneath, and they seem to have a lot like on site care as well, so just for the elderly people that live there. So I guess it gives them a bit of independence as well and sort of not that, that nursing home feel I suppose about it.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, well it certainly doesn't look like one. No, not

Speaker 6:

at all.

Speaker 5:

So tell me, let's start with, what do you do? Tell me what you do.

Speaker 6:

Well, I've been working for A mining company, Sandvik, for almost 20 years now. So that's been a big part of my life because, well, I'm only, I'm turning 40 in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 5:

I don't look old enough to have worked for somewhere for two decades.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I had a definitely, if I don't have a baby face now, I definitely had a baby face back then. I probably looked about 15, but I was going on 20.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

So I started with Sandvik back in 2005. I was actually living up in Townsville at the time. And yeah, just in warehousing started off sort of at the bottom, just got my way in and I've been with them ever since. I've really looked after me and given me a lot of training and stuff like that. And just, I've had some, some good managers over the years. Just moved around, done a few different things. Yeah, I love it. I've I couldn't imagine myself anywhere else. It's pretty you know, it's not too often that you can say that You know, you find that your job's always rewarding so I'm really happy there. And where are you, is that, got you down here, based down here now? Yeah, so, after working in Townsville for about six years I moved back down to Brisbane, because I actually did grow up, grow up here. Okay. I was over in the sort of western suburbs around Indooroopilly and Chelmer. Went to primary school at Graceville State School in Indooroopilly. Before we made the move up to Townsville. And I did the rest of high school up there. And just, yeah, started with Sandvik obviously. Yeah, decided to move back. I found that there wasn't too much going for me up there. I wanted to sort of move back to the big city, see if there was some more career opportunities. Yep. Go to a few Broncos games. Pretty passionate about the Broncos and something I look forward to doing each year is going to a few Broncos games at Suncorp.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 6:

Enjoying that sort of stuff, so.

Speaker 5:

And so what do you do for the company now?

Speaker 6:

So currently I'm in sales and product support. I've been doing that for about 2 or 3 years. I was in a Bronco. I wasn't a management position, but I took a step back from that. You know, I did that for about five years. I managed a small team and you know, it was, it was rewarding at times, but it was also you know, quite stressful. I tried to take a step back and focus on myself a bit more. And I think that comes with the weight loss thing sometimes it's a bit difficult and took, it took its toll stressfully. So I decided to step back and just sort of, do a bit more of a hands on role again.

Speaker 5:

And yeah,

Speaker 6:

and

Speaker 5:

enjoying that,

Speaker 6:

really enjoying that.

Speaker 5:

Yeah. Awesome. We, we met for, I think the first time we met, I was running at North Lakes and park run at North Lakes. And I just. Came across you and you were the 22 and a half minute. Pacer. Yes. And we chatted for a while and then and then a week later, I think, or one or two weeks later, you were at Sandgate Parkrun. Yep. 22 and a half minute pacer again. And it's one of those boring pacing roles out of all of them. I think it's not, I shouldn't say boring, it's fun. It gets lonely there at that time. I think everyone's either starts off with the 22 and a half minute pacer and hangs on and doesn't quite make it or are able to push ahead. And you, I find when I've placed that role, you're often the only person crossing the line at that time. And I, and, and so I stuck with you both those times. So I'm like, Oh, I know what this is like. And it was just us two running those two pretty much. Yeah. It's one of those I find that, you know, runners are either, A 23 minute or a 22 minute park runner. And that 22 and a half one's just left for the pacers to wear the yellow jersey. So that's how we met. But we got chatting and we have some similar background and, and, and the similarity doesn't go far off. I don't often talk about in numbers, my weight loss, but I w I lost 63 kilograms during my running journey and weight loss. That's incredible. And your story. is almost one of those hold my beer stories. Yeah. So there's not often that I get to meet somebody that's lost way more than me and yours is way more. What'd you top out at?

Speaker 6:

So I topped out at 214. 8 kilos. That was my heaviest that I got to before I decided to, that I really needed to start doing something about it. And when you got to the lowest, what was your total loss? So my total loss, I got, I got down to at my lightest, 105. 8. So it was.

Speaker 5:

So over a hundred kilograms. It was over a hundred kilos. Yeah, so I

Speaker 6:

lost over half my body weight. Yeah,

Speaker 5:

that's that's Amazing.

Speaker 6:

Yeah, it's pretty one of one of one of my big achievements But all at the same time not proud that I let it get to that But yeah, I did something about it trying to turn my life around

Speaker 5:

and if it's a bit like you for me You you've actually got a it's not being Happy with it, not being proud about it. You actually, that's got to, you know, be part of the factor. Otherwise you don't get the motivation to do it. Exactly. Yeah. Tell me why, why, why the weight loss? What, what got you going?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, I think it wasn't, it wasn't really a health scare or anything like that. I did, I did feel unhealthy and I did, you know, feel short of breath and I, you know, couldn't walk too far or even up a small hill without sort of being, being gassed. But I just, it just sort of compiled, I think. Over the years, I've, I have been, there have been stages of my life where I've been overweight and then I've, I've lost, I've lost weight, not so much as much as what I did that, that time, but, and then I put, put it back on again. Yeah, I just, it just was draining my confidence a lot. I wasn't wanting to socialise and things like that and, and go out, didn't feel comfortable with myself. It's all the common things that you'd probably experience when you're heavily overweight and yeah, just kind of A switch flipped, basically. I decided that I needed to do something about it, and Mum had also had a chat to me about it. She was a bit concerned about my health. And that sort of gave me a bit of a kick as well. And then she'd actually suggested Jenny Craig. So that's who I lost all the weight through. Like, in particular, like focusing on my diet. And I just walked in there and I met my consultant Susie and she was great from the start. Really supported me along the way. I was seeing her weekly. And luckily it worked because I didn't know where to start. Like, do I try and do this on my own or do I, am I going to have to have someone to help support me through it? And that was the best. the best way because people were suggesting, you know, maybe try weight loss shakes and stuff like that. I wanted to try and keep a normal diet and try and enjoy some of the foods that I like, but just trying to control the portions a bit.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Speaker 6:

And then increased the fitness over time.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, awesome. How old

Speaker 6:

were you when you, when you flipped the switch? Okay, so that was 2018 that I started losing the weight in August. So, just over six years ago I would have been 34. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, wow. And how long did it last? Take you to, like, was there a rapid loss at the first or did it take you a long time or?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, I was actually really surprised with how, how quickly the weight was falling off, considering that, you know, I didn't, I didn't go down like, weight loss surgery path or anything like that. I just, I tried to be very disciplined with the, with the diet when it was first given to me by Susie at Jenny Craig. She just said, yeah, try and stick to it as best you can. You're probably going to have to break a lot of bad habits. And sometimes that takes a few weeks before you start breaking those bad habits and adopting new ones. And yeah, the first, I remember it pretty well. The first four weeks, I I lost 4. 1 kilos in the first week.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

And I wasn't doing a lot of physical activity then yet, because I wasn't at that stage where I could do a lot of physical activity. The second week, about 2. 3, and then third week, 1. 8, and then I had a 3 kilo loss in week 4. That was the first week. four weeks of the program.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

And I thought this is really working. And I'm just really disciplined now. Even after a month, I was really disciplined, like sticking to it and making like making sure I didn't fall back into my old ways. Yeah. And once I started to lose a bit of weight, started to get more energy and I increased the fitness and now I didn't start running straight away. I was just doing some walking. And then I signed up for a fitness center, Club Coops, which is just at the other end of Beams Road. Yep. And, cause I needed to find something that I enjoyed doing to help keep me motivated along the way. And I thought, I really like playing tennis, so I'll sign up to Club Coops cause they've basically got 12 tennis courts there. And they do tennis classes. So you can turn up there and you don't, I didn't even have to know anyone, like take a mate with me or anything. I could just go there and do the classes and meet new people. There was cardio tennis and social tennis and all that. I became hooked on tennis again, playing six days a week. And that just increased the weight loss even more because I was eating right and And over time, as I was losing the weight, I was increasing the amount of tennis I was playing to a point where I was playing six days a week. I wasn't really having a break from it. And yeah, the running sort of kicked on from there, but yeah.

Speaker 5:

It must, I mean I was never that size, so, but I was certainly at a size where I couldn't imagine myself ever a runner. 34, 200 odd kilograms. Could you imagine that in your future, in your near future, you're going to be putting on a Pacer jersey, a park run and running 20 to an a half minutes? I mean, that's just, how did, how did you running?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, so I think I got down to probably about 140 kilos. So I'd lost what would that be? Over 70 kilos. And kind of out of nowhere I just discovered Parkrun. I think my sister had mentioned it to me about Northlakes. She'd, she'd heard about it. Sometimes, it's amazing to me now how much Parkrun is. People only just discover parkrun considering how big it is in Australia like and how many of them there are now, but back in 2019 I think it was October She was telling me about parkrun and she'd just seen that there was one at North Lakes and North Lakes had actually been going For probably seven years. It was the ninth parkrun to start in Australia, I think. Yeah, it is

Speaker 5:

one of the early ones, yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 6:

they've done over 500 events. And she she said, Oh, we should go try it out one day. And we did our inaugural park run together and I, I just got hooked on it straight away, so. We both are now, but yeah, I've, I've got a bit of an obsession with parkrun now, like trying to get there every week, and I like the stats side of everything, like, but yeah, that's where it all kicked on from, it just started with parkrun for probably a few months, that's all I was, all I was doing running was, and then I just increased the running during the week and Started to set some new goals to work towards. Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 5:

And have you done any more distance with running or?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, yeah. So, that was the thing. I thought I'll, you know, I'm really starting to love running now. Still playing a lot of tennis and stuff, but I thought it'd be good to just try some different things aside from parkrun. Set myself some personal goals. I tried to do like a 10k. I think the first 10K I ever did was Jetty to Jetty back in two, probably about 2021, I think it might have been. So I'd already done a few parkruns, but we, we'd went through COVID during that period as well. So there was a lot of lockdown and people couldn't, couldn't do much unless they're on their own or. living around their area. So, Jetty to Jetty 10k I did in 2021 and I got through that. I think I did it, did it in about 52 minutes. So that was my first first 10k. And I thought, well, I've done that now. Why not? Set myself towards a half marathon the following year for Jetty to Jetty. So I worked towards that and I wasn't too, even though I was really disciplined with the weight loss and I'd by then I'd probably lost, lost all the weight. My training for the, for the half marathon was very undisciplined and I sort of just went into it. I did a 15k run the week before and then just rocked up at Jetty to Jetty and ran my first one in one hour, 57 minutes. Oh, wow. Awesome. Nice to get under two hours for your first half.

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

And then, yeah, just trying to look, look for other ways to, to keep motivated and on my running journey and set those goals. And I did, did my first marathon last year at the Gold Coast and that was one of my biggest running achievements. And that didn't quite go to plan. But I, I trained, I did do a lot of training for it. But just on the day I hit a bit of a wall as some people do around the 30km mark. But I'm proud that I finished it. I'm just proud that I got through it and it just sort of puts it in perspective how far I'd come over the most recent years with the weight loss and just the fitness.

Speaker 5:

I'm certainly one of those ones that once I'm into that, I'm like, past 30k mark I hit a wall.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. It's like you, you try to train for it, but when you're doing a marathon plan, you, you're not even really training up to the full distance. You might, you might do up to 35k. Will you try it again? Yeah, I definitely will try it again. Originally I said I've done it now, but I don't think I want to do it again, but I think I just want to go back and better. Better, have a better experience for it, and which, whether I go back to the Gold Coast again, or whether I do another one, I'd spoken about going to Melbourne. Yep. Because I've never actually been to Melbourne before, and it's after seeing a lot of the the Instagram stuff about the Melbourne Marathon this year, I thought it would be a really nice one to do, and it would just be, I could use it as like a holiday. And to do another marathon at the same time. Yep. I've heard really good things about it, so.

Speaker 5:

So, what do you do these days? What's a day in the life of Chris look like now to keep Chris, you know, around 100 kilograms and not 200 kilograms?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, just I think it's been a big lifestyle change for me. I've gone from someone that was heavily overweight, just wanting to sit and laze around, watch TV, play computer games all day. Yeah. Not socialised to someone that just wants to get out have fun, just be active and eat right and look after myself. So that's that's really rewarding as well. One of the things that's helped me with apart from the tennis and being at Coops and meeting new people was the Brighton Early community that every Sunday. I'd sort of been going there for a couple of years now even before it was like Emma and Taz started the Brighton Early Run Club. Previously was the Megaron, but they were really welcoming and I've met them. So many great people through that. I try to get there as many Sundays as I can.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Speaker 6:

But it helps you with this your social aspect as well. Just being able to sort of talk to people and

Speaker 5:

Yep.

Speaker 6:

Not feel isolated. You meet some great people.

Speaker 5:

They are a great bunch of people and I can't wait to get back and do some runs with them again on a Sunday. You are not short either. How tall are you?

Speaker 6:

I'm six foot six,

Speaker 5:

so, yeah. Right. So you are, I mean, I, and I think that's what I remember when I first met you was you are a, you know, tall unit and you, you stood out with the, the bright yellow pacer jersey on Yeah. And you were moving at 22 and a half minute pace. Just no problems at all. So what have you got your 5k time down to?

Speaker 6:

So my PB was 20 minutes 46, which I did at North Lakes. That was a couple of years ago and I haven't been able to get to that again. I got down to low 21s a few times, but nothing, nothing close to that. I had a really good run that day. It was actually my 100th park run and Steve Steve Sparling ran that with he helped push me through, we've done a few park runs together and I met him quite early after I started park running. That was one of my greatest runs I've had I think, doing that 20 46. That's moving. Yeah, it is. I'd love to get under 20 minutes one day if I can focus on doing some more speed work. During the week, I think it's definitely possible. I might have to shed a few more kilos again, but because I'm keeping, I'm sort of keeping in a good weight range, but I have put on a little bit more weight, but that's over a long, long period of time, but I've been hovering around that same weight for a while now.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, and do you still use prepared meals, or do you cook a bit? What, what's a meal look like for you these days?

Speaker 6:

Yeah, I do, I do a bit of a mixture. I do go for convenience often. I don't like get takeaway but when you're sort of living by yourself, you go for convenience. It's a little bit more difficult to sort of cook for one person unless you do like meal prep and stuff like that. But yeah, I do a bit of, bit of cooking, but often it's sort of more convenient. There's a lot of range of those out there now. And there's plenty of options.

Speaker 5:

So you've lost a lot of weight. You're a whole different person. You've got a career that's quite stable. You've got a running journey that's well underway. You're a homeowner. What's next for Chris? World's your oyster.

Speaker 6:

The world is my oyster. I think I need to get out there and do a bit more, bit more exploring. Obviously it'd be good to. Find, find a good relationship and you know, settle down in that aspect. That's definitely something to work towards. But, at the moment I'm enjoying my job I'm enjoying my lifestyle got some great friends. I, I just like to keep active and just, it's a routine for me, I think. Like from what we've already talking about, just getting to Parkrun every Saturday hanging with friends that I've met through Parkrun afterwards, Sunday getting down to Brighton early where I can hanging with all that crew, grabbing some coffee afterwards and then keeping, keeping the house in check, making sure all the chores are done and keeping it clean. That keeps them pretty busy and then, yeah, obviously having a Monday to Friday, 9 to 4, oh, 8. 30 to 5 job yeah. You're busy with that too, so.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks Chris, thanks very much for talking to me today.

Speaker 6:

Thanks

Speaker 5:

for having me, much appreciated mate.

Speaker 3:

And Broncos fan? Massive Broncos fan, yep. Yeah? Yep. Love the Broncos. Grew up, obviously, when I was, before I moved to Townsville, we sort of were brought up following the Broncos. Yep. Used to go to games when they used to play over at QE2.

Speaker:

And in the intro where I said let's go meet a guy that's a lot less than he used to be, I meant physically, he's a lot more now, he's like a lot less physically, double the man, you know what I mean.

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Adam Leishman

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