[Ron] At my worst, was pretty bad.
I was 255 pounds.
Very lethargic, very depressed.
When you feel terrible everyday, that's all you can really think about.
You just want to try to escape it.
[Sarah] He was very unhappy.
He just wasn't happy with himself. He seemed very depressed and he— like he was stuck.
Just stuck.
[Jeremy] Wasn't happy with work... You know, didn't come home happy all the time.
He'd work late and just wasn't— wasn't good and wasn't healthy.
You could tell he wasn't healthy.
A lot of medication he had to take.
[Ron] You know, I was either taking meds that the doctor gave me to feel better,
or I was self-medicating with alcohol.
Just whatever to try to get my mind off of it.
Which you know, made my home life suffer.
My relationships with my wife and the kids and— it was just— it was tough.
[Jeremy] He could have been so much better than what he was.
But it was just his decisions and his health that were bringing him down.
Making him the way he was.
[Ron] We didn't really grow up in a house that talked about nutrition, or exercise, or anything like that.
So I just didn't really know what to do to fix it.
Any father wants to be there for his kids and any husband wants to be there for his wife,
and I just felt like I wasn't there.
I was always a scrawny kid growing up.
I never really had a problem with my weight. I went into the Navy at 18,
I was 170 pounds at 6' 1".
I got on the police department at 29, and I was just under 200 pounds.
From age 30 to 35 I put on 50 pounds.
I put on 10 pounds again.
And that's when everything kind of started coming all at the same time.
The heartburn got worse, and then I started getting some skin issues, and then my allergies were really bad.
I couldn't breathe, you know if I'd lay down in bed I felt like I was choking.
I had sleep apnea and then the weight came on and it wasn't coming off.
I definitely felt let down by the health service.
There was no investigation as to, what's causing these problems?
It was just, "Here take the pill, fix the symptom..."
There was nothing curing my heartburn.
There was nothing curing my allergies.
I was only in my 30s and to be going to the doctor so many times
and I was just— I thought, "I'm too young for this."
You know, what's going on?
My father, he died of congestive heart failure at 58.
And I know that he didn't really know any better.
It was almost the same thing, he was on a bunch of meds and just—
he was over 350 pounds most of his life and it just eventually killed him.
And I just— I've always felt that he just went too soon.
You know? It's just way too young, 58.
I want to be around for my kids to help them get— make decisions, and get through life and you know,
walk my daughters down the aisle and I just don't— I don't wanna—
I just don't want that to happen to me.
So that's when I came home and decided, "I got to figure this out."
I started doing some research on my own.
That specifically led me to the Paleo diet, and you can't search the Paleo diet without finding CrossFit.
They like, are hand in hand.
So, I told my wife, I said, "You know, it's pretty easy to change our diet,
get rid of some stuff that might be hurting us."
The awesome person that she is was like, "Yeah, let's do it, I'm on board."
[Sarah] I wanted him to make a lifestyle change. I didn't know what that lifestyle change was gonna be,
I just knew he needed to make one.
I was very focused on Ron and what was going on with him and what he needed.
[Ron] It didn't take very long to start feeling better once I got rid of all that garbage.
And then I— you know, I said, "Maybe I'll try this CrossFit thing."
[John] The core values across my Beverly are a place of like-minded people who want to
be healthy and well and ultimately have fun.
We want this to be their favorite, most fun hour of the day.
We laugh, we joke, we have become friends.
Something that I hold everyday before I walk in the door here is what Coach Glassman said,
"I am intimately involved in these people's lives."
Unfortunately, it seems that doctors are afraid of CrossFit
and most of our members tell us that, "The doctor says I can't do this anymore"
I actually had a man come into the gym and cry,
because he had to quit because the doctor told him he had to stop coming.
And, basically he wanted him to sit on the couch and get old and sloppy.
And, it kills me that doctors are ill-informed, when they're some of the smartest people on the earth.
[Ron] So I walked in there on a Wednesday night and they do a baseline workout
which is a 500 meter row, 40 air squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 push-ups and 10 pull-ups.
I got through the push-ups and I had to run out the back door and vomit.
[Sarah] Who goes into the gym and works out so hard they get sick and then want to go back?
Especially in the state he was, it was just very— I'm like, "This is not right— I don't want— no."
But he loved it.
He did. He absolutely loved it and went back.
[Ron] I had a good time. I did, I had fun.
And it— yeah, I walked out of there I was like, "I gotta make this happen. I gotta get in here."
[John] The beauty of what we do here is that he fits into the community.
He is— he's engaging and he's friendly with everybody, he's— there's nobody here
that doesn't like Ron. He gets a hearty welcome, and this is no joke every time
he walks in the building.
And people like to see him.
[Ron] You can't go in there and not want to be better.
If I could spend more time there everyday I would.
You know, it's something I look forward to on a daily basis.
I was there for a year before Sarah and Jeremy got involved.
It took me a year to talk her into it.
[Sarah] It's very cool to be able to go to the gym together.
We all can do it.
My son started at CrossFit Kids, and he kind of grew a little bit and then started doing the classes with us.
And it's been amazing.
[Jeremy] Yeah we can all come home and talk about you know, our workout.
Or, even if we don't go at the same time we'll tell—
earlier in the day we'll say, "Hey, I got this score, see if you can beat me."
[Ron] How many people actually get to spend an hour with their 19-year-old son everyday?
You know?
I mean, it's huge.
It's just— it's a lot of fun to have a common interest.
It's pretty rare these days. Especially parents and kids.
[Sarah] I love it. I absolutely love going to the gym with them.
We get nervous together about what we're gonna do.
We give each other tips. It's nice too because we can you know, help each other out while we're working out, too.
If we weren't doing that before, we weren't doing anything like that together.
We have become closer because we're excited about the way we're eating.
It sounds silly, but it's exciting.
It's fun. It's like we're you know, we're making ourselves healthy.
We're making our children healthy.
We talk to our family about it.
[Shawn] When we put their scores up on the whiteboard we write "Mr. Reed" and "Mrs. Reed".
And, it's just— it's one of those things that you know,
it kind of comes from that legitimate and genuine community.
And, if you don't put "Mrs. Reed" and "Mr. Reed" on the board— it's not "Ron" and "Sarah",
coaches get corrected you have to put it up.
[Sarah] They're you know, they're a group of people— all like-minded.
We all want the same thing. We all go there looking for the same stuff and we thrive on each other.
[Ron] I've lost 60 pounds. I was over 35 percent body fat I'm sub 15 percent body fat now.
I have energy like I've never had. I sleep well. I'm a different person.
I haven't had to take any of my medication in over two years.
I'm completely off all my prescriptions.
I don't need the sleep apnea machine anymore. I don't have sleep apnea.
It's like I've been able to start over. A whole new life.
[Ed] He's like one of the dudes that, really you could see the transformation.
If you had a picture from day one 'til now, you could hardly recognize the dude.
So when I see them getting on fire with this, with the results and everything I get—
actually kind of motivated to improve myself.
[Sarah] I've always seen him, the way he is now. Always.
It's just that he's seeing it now.
It's pretty cool to see. It's yeah, it's pretty amazing to see him happy.
[Ron] The way I feel now is like, if I can do bar muscle-ups and handstand walks at 42,
what am I gonna be able to do at 45?
Like, I almost can't wait to see what I can do in a few years.
[Jeremy] He's come so far and it's living proof for me everyday
that diet and and working out can transform you the way he did.
So it's just everyday I get to wake up and see that.
Come to the gym with him, you know see what he's doing and
try to mimic that so I can eventually get to where he is.
[Ron] In my personal opinion, I think that that getting involved in CrossFit and
getting to the gym and being around people that are trying to improve their own lives,
that's what helped me maintain the consistency, which is what I think
ultimately led to the results.
[Sarah] The medication it never— you know, what did it do for him? Nothing.
He started to eat better. He started going to the gym regularly. His whole life changed immediately.
[Ron] My wife asked me yesterday she said, "Where do you think we would have been
ten years from now how we've not you know found CrossFit and started eating better?"
And I said, "Well, I'm not sure exactly but I think that you know, I wouldn't be too far from where my dad ended up.
You know, dead by 60 probably.