49: How Weight Loss Has Brought A Cascade Of Benefits For Todd And His Family

Advantages of Weight Loss

What Is This Episode About…

Tipping the scales at 315, Todd became painfully aware that his weight was impairing his draft horse’s performance. He had no idea that being on the Code Red Lifestyle would not only help him drop 100 lbs but get off medications, give him loads of energy and improve his mood! You won’t believe his story.

Around 300 pounds, his doctor was telling him: “Hey, you really shouldn’t gain any weight.”

And indeed, he was having problems. His knees hurt, he went for a hip replacement surgery, and his left foot was majorly injured in the aftermath of two accidents, and more weight was being put on it. 

He’s felt crappy for so long. He didn’t know what feeling good felt like. So he joined the 10-pound takedown challenge, he switched his diet to meat, vegetables, nuts, eggs, seeds, seafood and fat, and he got off the crap that was causing him to have high blood sugar, high blood pressure or high cholesterol – all of this stuff that we want to avoid, and he started feeling better. And as of today, he weighs 226 pounds.

He moves faster now. He climbs on to haystacks, in and out of tractors and forklifts, and feels so much younger, nimble, doing all of that. His knees and joints feel better.

And so, the healing is taking place, the energy and productivity have increased, and the mood enhanced.

Stay tuned to know more.

Key Points of Discussion

  • A couple of accidents were hard on Todd’s left leg (3:38)
  • “You’ve got to keep the weight off because everything’s going to be hard as you put weight on, on joints, on the knees, hips…” (5:45)
  • He thought: here he was putting these horses through this kind of a regimen and all he was eating was cheeseburgers while they were waiting there and getting bigger and bigger (6:44)
  • Todd’s wife took the 10-pound takedown challenge and they saw immediate success as regards dropping some weight fast (9:24)
  • As of now, he weighs 226 pounds, way down from 315 pounds (14:09)
  • The weight is way down on the list compared to all the pain he is free from now… (15:23)
  • Todd and his wife are both on a pretty good schedule where they both eat together and it’s just worked out really well, the food and everything… (16:51)
  • His sister-in-law joined the August challenge and she’s done well too. It’s just had a little bit of a ripple effect in the family (17:59)
  • Todd was earlier on a sugar candy addict like crazy (19:05)
  • So much of good and success right from day one didn’t leave either of them – Todd or his wife – with much of a trust issue (20:11)
  • Once they got rid of that sugar and everything came alive, healthy foods were so much more palatable (22:10)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Get the Code Red On-The-Go Guide here.

Join the next 10-Pound Takedown Challenge here.

When Was It Released…

This episode was released February 26, 2020

Episode Transcript…

The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Cristy (00:00):

Welcome back to Rebel Weight Loss and Lifestyle. I’m your host, Cristy Code Red Nickel, author, entrepreneur, Papa, Papa, retired professional boxer. Hello. I tell ya this next interview, I want to just introduce him. His name is Todd and I’d like to describe him as a Manz. Manz, Manz, Manz, man. Like this. There’s no manlier man out there on the face of this planet. This is Todd. Todd was raised on a dairy farm. I mean his hobby is racing draft horses. His hobby is you know, working with draft horses. Come on. But the crazy thing, and you’ll hear Todd’s story, but guys, I mean he was tipping the scales at 315 pounds and it was impeding the ability of his draft horses to perform optimally. And he took incredible care of his draft horses, but he was taking crappy care of himself and you know, he just didn’t know what he didn’t know because doctors kept telling him, Hey, you better watch your weight, but watch your weight?

 

Cristy (00:58):

What does that mean? Like, quit eaten, like switching to low-fat snack Wells instead of full. You know like what the people don’t know what they don’t know and Todd didn’t know, Todd didn’t know. So I think you’re going to be pretty shocked when you hear his story of being down almost a hundred pounds now so far on Code Red and it affecting every area of his life. So I’m so glad. Join me right now for my interview with Todd on Rebel Weight Loss and Lifestyle. Let me just remind you that this is in the show notes, but Todd started his life transformational process through a 10-pound takedown challenge. That’s what did it, you guys, he started with the $47 challenge and you know he never went on to get a custom program. He might still, but so far all he has invested, he’s lost a hundred pounds for a $47 challenge. I say that’s a pretty good return on investment. Hello, 10poundtakedown.com is where you can go to get started after this interview. Listen to this interview with Todd. He’s a really, really nice man and I think you are going to be moved when you hear what has happened to him. Wow, and I’ll see you soon. Thank you, everybody.

 

Cristy (02:10):

I’m Cristy Code Red and you’re listening to Rebel Weight Loss and Lifestyle, where we believe food holds the power to heal or poison and we believe our society has been misled regarding proper nutrition and weight loss. You’re in the right place if you’re looking for some straight-up truth because I’m here to shed light on the lies and brainwashing that has taken place over the past five decades. Thanks so much for listening.

 

Cristy (02:36):

Welcome, welcome. Hello everybody. Hello. You guys. Listen to me. I am so excited because I have got a special interview here. I don’t get a lot of dudes. I mean I’m trying to get more dudes, but what happened? I’ve got Todd on the line with me. I’m so thankful that he stopped. We had some problems getting together on my end because I had some glitches and so he was so gracious and so I’m very thankful that he has carved out time to talk to all of us about what’s going on. Todd, thank you so much for being with me right now and talking to all of us right now.

 

Todd (03:09):

You’re more than welcome. I’m looking forward to it.

 

Cristy (03:12):

Well, I guess let me just tell you guys that I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a post from Todd and it absolutely blew me away and I said, the world has got to hear this message. We’ve got to, what the heck you know? So Todd, take us back before Code Red, explain to us what your life was like and what happened and how you transitioned and now what’s going on. But take us back before Code Red and kind of explain to all of us what was going on.

 

Todd (03:38):

Okay, well let me go back quite away, I think. Yeah, I have four daughters and one son, and I think my daughters would describe me as being vanilla, pretty boring, pretty plain. I, I’m 60 years old. I’ve lived in the same house 60 years that I grew up in. . I never, I would have considered myself never overweight. I played basketball until I was 30 years old, who was raised on a dairy farm, worked on a farm, continue until that time when we sold the dairy. I was involved in a tractor accident at that time, crushing my left foot and ankle. And so the doctors at that time warned me, you know, this is a weight-bearing injury and so you won’t be as mobile and as active as you have been. And it took quite a while but recovered from it pretty well with, they were right.

 

Todd (04:41):

It’s like the, but I was ready. I should never play sports much after that, but didn’t really start to gain weight slowly, you know, for the next 30 years. Kind of until let’s see, that was any way in 1990, believe it or not, as involved in another farming accident in a bale wagon colliding with a cop car. And among other things really injured that left the same left leg again. And the doctors at that time thought that I would be wearing a  shoe with a built-in brace and would probably limp severely the rest of my life. And that took even longer, I’d say a couple of years to recover from completely 100%, but still work hard on the farm, always worked off the farm to a rough cut sawmill well that requires you to be very active. And so but again, they warned me this is a weight-bearing injury.

 

Todd (05:45):

You’ve got to keep the weight off cause everything’s going to be hard, you know, as you put weight on, on joints, on the knees, hips, because I not straight completely. And so it wore out my left here over the next 10 years. But that’s when the weight started coming on gradually. And, and I, I continued to think, well, I’m okay. I’m okay. But pretty soon I realized I’m not okay. You know, another 10 pounds, another tan and a, I was well over 300 pounds when it finally last June. And, and my wife, I had never dieted. I never, never exercise much after 30 years old. Just a, you know, though I was active and that was all I needed. That’s all I did, you know. But anyway, after two jobs, believe it or not, pull draft horses competitively for a hobby.

 

Todd (06:44):

I should golf or something. But so we make these, we work these draft horses like athletes, we feed them and take care of them better than we do ourselves and train them. We make sure they get the proper feed, the grain, the minerals, vitamins that they need. We train them almost five, six days a week and they’re in tip-top shape or we travel around, have a lot of fun doing it. But I thought, you know, here I am putting these horses through this kind of a regimen and all I am is eating cheeseburgers while we’re waiting there and getting bigger and bigger and it’s an in the rules that you have to ride Poland sled or the boat and so your weight is not counted. And I’m weighing twice as much as a lot of the other polars and most, but we had some extra time at one of the poles and we got to messing around.

 

Todd (07:40):

And so, granted we were stepping on this Gail’s, you know, laughing friends and my brother and son and, and you know, I was by far the heaviest one and well over 300 pounds. And it was, you know, I was stiff and sore and then I’d ride home a couple of hours and I could barely get out of the truck. And that was kind of a wake-up call that last June at about that same time we heard my wife did was the one that started it. Panera, she’s a postmaster at postal service and she has some friends where she’s at. And you saw I actually, all right, what corner of Southeast Idaho. And that had said, and on the way home from that poem match when I said, I can’t believe I’ve got to do something, what am I going to do? You know? And she goes, well, I have a friend that has told me about Code Red.

 

Todd (08:33):

And she goes, it’s called Code Red. And I remember that was on the 22nd of June that we was riding home. We’ll we discussed. So that next week, just like this, I watched all it, your YouTube videos started watching it and as did my wife her, and I thought, this is, this is not a diet. This is because I always said, I’m not going to start. I’m not gonna. I got to eat. And I say, I think this is something I can do. And she thought, well, there’s nothing that you know, she, she didn’t think I could do a tie. And she’s a professional dieter. She calls herself all, all of her life, every diet imaginable known. She knows that she’s tried it. Literally thousands of dollars. Sheikh says spent on it and has had a lot of success, but it always comes right back, you know, up, down, up, down.

 

Todd (09:24):

Anyway, we started looking into this. I thought, this is something we can do and we, that I can do with you. And so we begin slowly that last week of June transitioning into it. And so we say we officially started the 1st of July and then she joined the 10 pounds takedown challenge maybe in the middle of the month. And by then we knew this was definitely on to something because we have seen immediate success as far as dropping some weight fast. So she joined that and we’ve just slowly learned that she is a very good cook, excellent at cinnamon rolls and cookies and cakes and all of that stuff on the, not food lists as well as others. And she has since then become really, really good at all Code Red makes wonderful sheet. The group of ladies that work in surrounding area in garden city, Utah, they, there’s probably seven or eight of them now. They get together about once a month and they all bring something they’ve made new or something they really like and then they bring it home to me and I get to try each one. But yeah, they’ve all become very good cooking from the Code Red code and the recipes in there.

 

Cristy (10:39):

This is just remarkable. Todd. So when you were tipping the scale, said right around 300 pounds, your doctor, your practitioner was saying to you, Hey, you really shouldn’t gain any weight, but were you having any medical problems because of this weight

 

Todd (10:51):

I was, I didn’t think I would. My, my leg and injuries came around very slowly, but that was in the second one was in 2008. So in that following 10 years, I wore out my, because I would don’t walk exactly straight, my hip begins to wear out. And I ended up having a hip or a total hip replacement a couple of years ago. And that was, do you know when they say, well, I went in and began to go through that process and they, they say we can’t though. My blood pressure was terrible. The very fact, I even went one time, okay for another issue and they wouldn’t let me leave the hospital to come down. It was that close. Well, I’m with your blood pressure basically. You know, that was the biggest problem that I, I knew of. And so they put me on three different kinds of blood pressure medication to get it down so I could have that surgery.

 

Todd (11:50):

And after that hip replacement didn’t get much better with the weight, just kept coming on and you know, a 280, 285, it seemed like I’d be there and didn’t weigh very regularly at all. And I’m sitting there, where did the 290s go? I didn’t even hit, I jumped right over them. I’m in the 302 pounds now. And the day we got messed around on the scales at the pool mat too, three 16. Now granted we were dressed, you know, we had shoes on, so I think was five or six pounds under that maybe. But at that time I was on Ellen, that blood pressure medication and you know, and the doctors that kind of, we told you, you know, I think in 2008, I was about two 50, somewhere around there. And you know, that’s when they really warned me that on this, this kind of an injury, you know, you’re going to be sitting around eat who now does active and they were right.

 

Todd (12:51):

But my, you know, my knees hurt, my hips would kill me just my feet and here I am, you know, the injured foot and just getting, putting on weight more and more weight on it. And at the same time, filling my horses, we get down in those matches at a thousand pounds, at a time in, around until then when we can go to five or 300 pounds. And so 300 pounds makes the difference between, you know, 20 feet and 27 feet sometimes. Here I am, I’m 150 pounds more than most of the other drivers, a lot of them and. But I can control these horses, their diet, their workout, their shape and everything they eat. But yeah, I’m completely out of control.

 

Cristy (13:38):

Dean, you weren’t connecting the dots, but you didn’t, you did start connecting the dots and you started saying, Hey, something’s got to give here. I can’t keep doing this and I don’t feel real good. But you’ve felt crappy for so long. You didn’t know what feeling good felt like. So you joined the challenge, you switched your diet to meat, vegetables, nuts, eggs, seeds, seafood and fat, and you got off the crap that was causing you to have high blood sugar, high blood pressure or high cholesterol. All of this stuff that we want to avoid and you start feeling better. And as of today, how much are you down?

 

Todd (14:09):

I weighed in for my thing at two 26 for my exam. I had a 10-year life insurance policy that that expired. And so we had to redo that. And so we had to go through that again before the lady says, I don’t think they’ll accept you over two 55. I swell. I’m 280 pounds. And I, I don’t know why they did, but they did because everything else was pretty good. But any, when I she came with, she took blood and weighed me. I was two 26 two weeks about two to three weeks after the first last July, my wife had started the challenge, her sister was watching us pretty closely and she goes, but do you really notice? Do you know anything? I Susan, two weeks, my knees felt better, my joints, I can’t believe this. And she struggles with the same hips and knees as well. She goes, really in two weeks. I says, yeah, I’ve a little bit of what you know, some weight, but the main thing is I can already tell my knees and, and that part of it just continued to get better. That’s my biggest, well I guess in that

 

Cristy (15:23):

It has V yeah, non-scale victory. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure that with the weight is way down on the list compared to all the pain you are free from now.

 

Todd (15:32):

Yeah, that’s exactly right. My knees, my butt, everything. Even my hands, you know, they were full of inflammation everywhere. That, it’s funny, I’ve moved faster. I evolve faster. I mean, like I said, I’d climb on haystacks in and out of tractors and forklifts and I’m just, I feel so much younger, you know, nimble doing all of that. But yeah, I know time. That was a big difference.

 

Cristy (16:01):

Or was it a pretty big shocker to you that we’re eating eggs and bacon and steak and asparagus and butter and salt. Was that a pretty big shocker to you? That we were like, I’m losing weight, eating all this good food,

 

Todd (16:12):

But that’s the part that I didn’t believe when we started cause I says, yeah, this is stuff I like. Anyway, that’s my problem. I like well food. And I thought, but this is not like coming home and eating, you know, a little piece of a chicken breast and starvation diet. I would call it as what my wife would do and I says, this is, I can do this. We were also amazed within that two or three weeks’ time, you know, I’m thinking there’s no way I can go to two meals a day. And when we read in the proper fats and  how easy that was for for me, you know, and cause I didn’t think that was something, you know I could never do that. But now we’re on a pretty good a schedule where we both eat together and it’s just worked out really well, the food and everything.

 

Todd (16:59):

And the other thing is she has made cinnamon rolls and things like that that we don’t eat any more cookies to take somewhere to give to someone. And that was the other thing I thought I would be, you know, this is going to be hard. This is going to be my heart. As you say. It’s all heart. And yet we have found it all easy. I mean, I sat right there by a big old tray. Cinnamon rolls and night really wasn’t even that attempted, let alone w just thought I was going to break and go. You know, I’ve never, never felt that. We just both love it and excited so much. We, we’ve even talked about the custom program, you know, I wanted her to get one in November. I think you should do this. And, and we thought, you know,  60 years old, we’re not going to do anything different for the next one, you know, or we were going to do this. Right. And so we’re more the turtle, the race I guess now as far as the weight come up cause it has stalled and slowed down. But man, the first three, four months was just unbelievable. And within a month’s time, as I said, my sister-in-law Cristy also, she could see the difference. And a man she was, I think she joined this August challenge or something and she’s done really well too. And it’s just had a little bit of a ripple effect in our family. It’s just amazing of happened. But mostly how we feel.

 

Cristy (18:20):

It’s definitely on Code Red. We measure, we have a lot of ways to measure success. And in your case, the, like I said earlier, the scale weight is just one of many things that have changed. So if the scale is slowing down, definitely there are still other things that are taking place in your body. The healing that is taking place, you know, your increased energy, your increased productivity, your mood. I’m sure your marriage has improved just because you guys are not crabby with each other. Like we all feel when we’re on the sugar. Oh this is remarkable. Did you have a hard time trusting me at first when you first kind of, I mean I know you had to do your research, you had to watch the videos. That’s why I have so much of that out there so people can, but once you were convinced, you were like, I know Cristy knows what she’s talking about. Did you have a hard time trusting me?

 

Todd (19:05):

I thought I was going to, when we did that initial research and we always thought we’re going to do this, you know, or, but I, it was easy, you know, and, and let me tell you, I was a sugar candy addict like crazy. Just so happened we had a bunch of small bales of hay to haul at about the time we started right at the 4th of July. And I thought, I’m planning this when my son’s coming home and I’m going to have some help. And he come home for about a half a day and then they went champ and you know, can’t believe on the 4th of July and we’re getting to work. You know, I started feeling that detox and we did. That was one thing that we didn’t really believe or look into or pay much attention to. Well, fortunately I have that. I was working trying to haul that hay and because I thought I had the flu. Wow. I was terrible for weeks, so I never connected that two. Well I did as far as the lifestyle, but I didn’t know it was a detox cause I thought it was a, I thought I had the flu on the 4th of July, you know, and yeah, I thought I was going to die that week, but

 

Cristy (20:10):

It’s nasty, isn’t it?

 

Todd (20:11):

Yeah. Overall, I, you know, I didn’t have, Oh we just think so much good and success right from day one that we didn’t have too much of a trust issue either one of us every day that went by. Now we just was more and more on board with it to where it was really quite easy I would say. You know, and now I say that knowing that without my wife, she said in the post he began eating what I ate and that’s 100% true. You know, I haven’t joined any challenges. I call myself a freeloader. I’m just doing what she does and it works

 

Cristy (20:50):

Well. Iron sharpens iron. And in this case, this is a really great, it is so much easier to do this when your spouse is on board. And when you guys are a team and everybody’s pulling for the same reason. Same cause. I’m really hoping that there’ll be, I mean Todd, you are a man’s man. I mean it just doesn’t get any more manly than you. And so for the man’s man watching this right now, which I’m hoping we get a lot. What would you say? People who are like, oh, I don’t know, you know, you are in denial for so long and finally it just hit you in the, in the face and you’re like, I can’t turn this down. And I know there are going to be some men watching this right now that just don’t believe it or don’t think they can. Or Oh, that’s just the you know, that crazy lady with the blue head. What would you say to the people, to the men watching right now who were in your spot? Or maybe they’re doubting the process or,

 

Todd (21:40):

Well, well, you know, I have had that. I’ve got two brothers. I’ve got a real close friend. I’m an old dairyman from years ago. I have a brother now that is a dairy man. He goes, you can’t drink milk. There’s no way Brandon melt. That’s what I live. And I said that’s what I thought too. I said it, you can do it. It’s so easy. I tried to convince them, you know, that with what we do get to eat, it is so good. And that’s another we weren’t expecting was our taste buds. Once we got rid of that sugar and everything came alive,  foods were so much more palatable than, you know, I like tomatoes, but I thought, I don’t, not really, but now we just love them, you know, vegetables, all kinds of things just really tastes different, come alive. And I just know that any man, anybody with what there is to eat, we tell people we eat good.

 

Todd (22:35):

We go out to restaurants with my brothers and you know, and they see what I eat and it’s pretty much the same thing except no baked potato, you know, and, right. I tell them, you know, other men and guys that I’ve shared it with several, you know, I don’t know. And they’re really interested. One that was a diabetic and he really checked into it with me. I’m not sure how he’s done, but I tried to tell them, we eat and we eat good. We do not starve. And, and that’s what most men I think are afraid of that. Oh, you know, I would come home and eat at noon just because it was lunchtime. And, and I think a lot of men do that thinking, you know, we still got another half a shift to go here. And you know, and I think we’re afraid of being hungry,

 

Cristy (23:25):

But they don’t know what they don’t know. Certainly, you know, we’ve all been brainwashed into believing a lie about things. And you know, you were taught this in school and so was I. And this is just what we were all just brainwashed into believing. And so for you to come on here and share your story, I know will inspire people all over the world that they can do too. Because you just said, I’m a self-proclaimed sugar addict. I mean, come on. If you had a wife, a spouse that was making cinnamon rolls the size of my baby’s head, I mean, come on. You know, those were so good and you gave them up for the sake of your health. And that doesn’t mean you have to give them up the rest of your life. It just means while we’re taking it your health in order, we choose foods that heal. And that’s certainly what you did Todd.

 

Todd (24:09):

Yeah. And another thing that’s made us as happy as well as one of the first people after my sister and I come on was my youngest daughter. She lives in Boston at the time now in Maine has ms. She’s had one pregnancy and they just wanted one more and she was overweight. She started and she only had so many chances before she has to go back on her medications from medication, become pregnant and they hadn’t been able to do it for several times. And then now I have to be on it for so long and then off to try again. And, and she lost about 35 pounds before becoming pregnant on her very last shot. And we had tribute that totally to the Code Red lifestyle and her husband started doing it with her. And we have seen a lady from back there or the amazing story, I can’t even remember her name, but anyway, she was a coworker is she did sit on there, he’s reached his goal and they’ve just really done well. There’s happy as well with her pregnancy and I just don’t think that would’ve happened without it. You know, her losing that 35 pounds first.

 

Cristy (25:25):

Well, don’t underestimate your ripple effect, Todd. I mean you and your wife have spread this message and people are watching you and they’re being healed because of you. So this is wonderful news and I just can’t thank you enough for coming on here and sharing your story with all of us and inspiring so many people to take the chance and do this too. And thank you so much for being on here.

 

Todd (25:47):

No, I thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

 

Speaker 1 (25:50):

Todd started with a 10-pound takedown. You can go to 10poundtakedown.com and join our next challenge. Todd, thank you and you guys, we’ll see you soon.

 

Cristy (26:00):

Thanks so much for listening to Rebel Weight Loss and Lifestyle. If you’re a Code Red rebel and you haven’t already downloaded your free Code Red lifestyle on-the-go guide, now is your time to get a copy. This guide will teach you how to stay Code Red-approved even with your crazy life schedule. To get a copy right now, all you need to do is open your podcast app, go to this episode show notes, and click the link to get your Code Red-approved on-the-go guide. So I will see you on the next episode of Rebel Weight Loss and Lifestyle.