“I’m not sure how much weight I gained. Because my world was crashed.”
Read how this 41-year-old military wife and mother of four lost 75 pounds in 4 months and took her life back from the death of a child, a marriage on the rocks, and failure after failure
By Andrea Dell
Some people struggle with weight all their life. But Cassie Adams’ struggle didn’t start until adulthood. Cassie married her husband, Tim, straight out of high school. The newlyweds lived in a fifth wheel trailer, traveling from place to place for Tim’s helicopter mechanic work.
Tim was eight years older than Cassie, and awash in the “single guy mentality.”
So after work, or on weekends, he’d head to the bar with his buddies. Cassie, who was under 21 and couldn’t join him, stayed alone in the fifth wheel, completely cut off from family and friends.
Isolated and lonely, she soothed her depression with food. And the pounds crept on.
“No jobs. No money. No nothing.”
A break from helicopter life took Cassie and Tim to Cassie’s hometown, where her difficult pregnancy with their first child, Shaylen, ended in an emergency C-section.
Six weeks after filing for bankruptcy following a failed gym business, they learned Cassie was pregnant with their second child.
With no money and no jobs, plus a one-year-old to provide for, they decided Tim should re-enlist in the army.
The army shipped them to Texas, where their second daughter, Kaylie, was born. Once again, Cassie was far, far away from family and friends. Except now she had two small children to care for.
And once again, she turned to food…and packed on more weight.
A parent’s worst nightmare
Next Tim was sent to Korea. It was after he and Cassie returned to her hometown.
Six weeks after he shipped out, Cassie learned she was pregnant with baby number three. It was a boy, whom they named Dalton.
When Tim returned from Korea and the family moved again, he and Cassie decided to have a fourth child, whom they named Andrew. Shortly after Andrew was born, doctors told Cassie and Tim that Andrew had a heart murmur.
There was nothing wrong with his heart. But everything that connected his heart to his lungs was too big for his body.
Since the organs themselves were healthy, a transplant was out of the question.
One early February morning, Cassie and Tim drove Andrew to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane, WA, for a medical procedure. When it was done, medical staff woke Andrew so he could eat. Cassie and Tim watched a nurse disconnect tubes and wires from Andrew right before she woke him up.
When the nurse plugged Andrew’s heart monitor back in, it showed that his heart had stopped.
Doctors and nurses scrambled. Life-saving medicines were within easy reach. But Andrew was gone. Within six months of losing Andrew, Cassie also lost her 12-year-old nephew, and a 20-year-old cousin. Her world was completely shattered.
But she still had three kids to take care of. Since she couldn’t fall apart, she turned to food.
“That must be all you’re going to lose”
Tim got orders to head to New York. “I had never wanted to get outta here so bad,” Cassie said. But as soon as they arrived in New York, Tim was deployed to Afghanistan.
While Tim was overseas, Cassie enrolled in Weight Watchers, and got her weight into the 150s.
But then her weight loss stalled, and no one in Weight Watchers could tell her what she was doing wrong. The little old lady who ran Cassie’s Weight Watchers group told her, “Well, that must be all you’re going to lose.”
When Tim returned, he was incredibly proud of Cassie’s weight loss.
Problem was, she’d enrolled in Weight Watchers because he was gone again, and she’d wanted something positive to do, instead of eat. With her motivation for participating gone, her weight soared back up.
The seeds of Code Red
Cassie happened upon an old high school classmate, Cristy (Terherst) Nickel, on Facebook.
Cristy was working in New York as an award-winning personal trainer. Cassie watched as Cristy moved to Boise, Idaho, and created a nutrition and weight loss program called the Code Red Lifestyle™.
Cristy offered one-on-one nutrition and weight loss coaching out of her Boise office, and she was going by the name Cristy CodeRed.
Cristy’s program appealed to Cassie, but it was out of the question. Cassie still lived in New York, and couldn’t meet with Cristy in her Boise office.
“It was the worst I’d ever felt”
Tim and Cassie moved to Southern California, after Tim got a job there, and stayed there for two years.
It was a rough time. Tim struggled with PTSD from his time in the army. Plus everything was expensive, and money was tight.
“If I wasn’t at my heaviest at that point, I don’t know what would have been. I was wearing size 16, 18, sometimes size 20 pants. I know it was the worst I’ve ever felt,” said Cassie.
She continued watching her classmate, Cristy, who’d expanded her Code Red Lifestyle programs to the Internet, so clients no longer had to visit Cristy’s Boise home office to get a program.
But it didn’t matter. Cassie still couldn’t afford one.
“I needed to fall on my face one more time”
Cassie and Tim moved their family back to Cassie’s hometown. Their marriage – and everything else – was in shambles.
Cassie was in such a dark place, she was ready to throw it all away…in more ways than one.
But then she learned Cristy was offering a weight loss challenge called the 10 Pound Takedown. And it was only $37.
So Cassie signed up. She learned what to eat, and what not to eat, in order to see fast, safe weight loss; plus she learned Cristy’s Top 10 Rules for Consistent Weight Loss. Cassie had everything she needed to FINALLY succeed.
Yet she failed. Miserably.
And she knew it was her own fault. Instead of trusting Cristy, a weight loss expert; and trusting the results she was seeing both with her friends in the challenge and her friends who’d bought a custom program from Cristy, Cassie caved to the little voice in her head, which had sabotaged her all her life.
But this time, failure had a different effect on Cassie. It flipped a switch…and Cassie evicted that little voice.
And even though money was still tight, she scraped together the funds for a custom program.
“Being heavy runs in the family”
The goal weight Cassie put on her custom program was less than she’d weighed at high school graduation. No one but Cristy thought Cassie could get there.
“Being heavy runs in the family,” people told her. “You’ve had four kids; your hips have spread,” people told her.
Cassie didn’t care. When her custom program arrived, she decided she would work it better than anyone ever had.
And she did. And her weight melted off. Her clothing sizes dropped faster than she could shop. Four months went by. And then came the day Cassie had been waiting for.
“I don’t remember EVER being that happy”
Cassie’s pretty sure she woke up her entire house on the autumn morning she stepped on the scale and saw her weight had dropped BELOW her goal weight.
She told everyone she could think of – her parents, her co-workers, her friends…and of course, Cristy…who was super proud.
And Tim?
He was ecstatic.
He’d seen Cassie try and fail at weight loss over and over again throughout their life together, so was skeptical about Code Red when Cassie finally admitted she’d purchased a program.
But as Cassie’s weight kept dropping, and she didn’t quit, the last of his skepticism evaporated.
“I don’t want to count points for the rest of my life”
One thing that sabotaged Cassie’s past weight loss attempts was lack of a simple, realistic maintenance plan.
Weight Watchers was the only program with anything like that…but it wasn’t for Cassie. “I don’t want to count points for the rest of my life,” she said.
Cristy’s program, on the other hand, included an incredibly simple maintenance plan that didn’t require counting or tracking anything.
And it allowed for occasional indulgences. “I can have anything I want,” Cassie said. “As soon as I eat it, I know what the scale is going to do. And when it goes up, I know how to fix it.”
“To me, that proves (Cristy’s) here because she cares,” Cassie added. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t give you that information (to keep the weight off).”
Unexpected benefits
Weight loss was exciting…but for Cassie, it was only the beginning.
She was on daily blood pressure medication when she began her custom program, but three weeks into her program, she stopped needing it.
Her grocery bill dropped to a fraction of what it was…because the food she and her family ate was so filling, they simply ate less (including her 16-year-old son, who could eat her out of house and home).
Camping, trips to Lewiston – everything cost less and came with far less stress, because life stopped revolving around when and where she would next eat.
Even her marriage improved. “I went through counseling to try and save a marriage that was pretty much at the end. And we saved the marriage,” she says.
Cassie knew she would never have agreed to marriage counseling if not for losing weight on her program. Her weight had become a shell, and losing it peeled back layers to reveal emotions she’d been hiding from.
How to tell if you’re ready
A lifestyle change is hard for most people. And Cassie agrees that you have to be ready. “Otherwise you’re gonna come up with a million excuses.”
Cassie knew she was ready, because her current “hards” were finally too much. “Being heavy is hard. Waking up every morning in pain is hard. The embarrassment of seeing ‘that look’ on your kids’ faces when you walk into their school, and their friends recognize that you’re their parent, is hard,” Cassie said.
“There’s nothing in this world that’s worth having if it isn’t hard to get. Whether it’s a career, or a marriage, or kids, or anything. NOTHING comes easy.”
“You need to pick the path that you’re ready for. Some paths are harder than others…but when you’re ready, it’s not going to seem as hard as you originally thought.”
Why Code Red? Why Cristy?
Cassie tried, for 20 years, exercising her weight off. She tried diet after diet. “If I saw some skinny little thing promoting it, I bought it,” she said. “So I know what it feels like to think that, no matter what you do, it’s not going to work.”
Even attending high school with Cristy, Cassie struggled to trust her. And she paid the price, by failing at the 10 Pound Takedown. It taught her an invaluable lesson: “If we all knew best, we wouldn’t be (fat) in the first place. You have to hand the reins over to Cristy, and let her teach you.”
And for those people in search of proof?
“The proof is there, with all the success stories,” Cassie said. “Pictures are awesome…but the STORIES…getting on the (coaching) pages and talking to people who have lost and kept it off…the trials and tribulations they have been through…there is no better proof.”
“Trust all of us who have been there. Have faith that Cristy’s program will work. The only thing you have to lose…is weight.”
A new you is waiting
If there was only one thing Cassie could say to you about choosing Code Red, it’s this: “Put you first. For once in your life.”
For 20 years, Cassie put everyone else first. And by the time she found Code Red, there wasn’t much left of her. “You think that by spending time on yourself, or investing in yourself, you’re taking away from others,” she said. “But you’re not. You’re giving to yourself, and therefore you have so much left to give to everybody else. When you don’t give to yourself, pretty soon you don’t have anything left.”
So choose you. Choose a you that’s moving forward…to someone brimming with energy; to someone who wakes up pain-free in the morning; to someone excited to see yourself in pictures.
It’s what Cassie’s doing. “I had to move forward..and to move forward I had to reinvent myself…with all aspects of my life. My marriage, my kids – everything.”
So, are you ready?
Cassie’s time came…and she hasn’t looked back.
What about you?
Is it finally your time?
Are you ready to commit to the Code Red Lifestyle™, trust Cristy, and get your weight off once and for all?
If you’re a self-starter and do fine without outside accountability; or just want more info on what the Code Red Lifestyle™ is all about, Cristy’s book has what you need. Pick up your copy at www.CodeRedRevolution.com .
If you DO need outside accountability and tons of support from like-minded people, here’s what to do:
1. If you want to dip your toe into the Code Red Lifestyle™ first, and see what you think, sign up for the next 10 Pound Takedown Challenge at www.10PoundTakedownChallenge.com.
2. Or, if you’re ready get your weight off even faster, head to www.CodeRedLifestyle.com/Programs and click on Choose Your Coach to check out Custom Programs.