by Sasha Reddy
When Andres Avalos signed up for the 2025 Lifestyle Challenge, he wasn’t aiming to win, per se. With no real experience in the gym and little enthusiasm for traditional workouts, Andres saw the challenge as a chance to push past his comfort zone and redefine what fitness could look like for him with help from experts in the field. The experience has not only earned him a surprising third-place finish but also reshaped his approach to health, food, and family.
“Fitness-wise, I’ve never really worked out a lot,” Andres admits. During his limited time in the gym, he has only ever done things by feel without a clear direction or plan. “I would never put any particular program together, or do any particular style.”
In addition to lacking experience, Andres was lacking motivation. He’s always found weightlifting to be monotonous – a tedious cycle of counting reps, then resting, reps, then rest, again and again. “For me, it doesn’t really draw my attention.” The Lifestyle Challenge presented Andres with the perfect opportunity to develop a gym routine that he’d enjoy doing on his own. “If I have someone there, we can get a baseline, and then I can take off from there.”
Learning the Basics
He hit it off quickly with Anthony Brown, his trainer for the duration of the challenge. From their first session together, Anthony was honest about his doubt that Andres would actually win the Lifestyle Challenge – not for any lack of commitment, but because Andres was already at a relatively healthy body weight and didn’t have much fat to lose. Andres was appreciative of the feedback and didn’t let it discourage him. “I was like ‘All right, well, we’ll just give them hell. Let’s just go for it.’” The competition was secondary, anyway.
Their workouts together were dynamic, varied, and invigorating. Rather than focusing on a specific part of the body, Anthony planned a different total body circuit every session – some days they’d do push-ups and squats, other days step-ups and curls, and everything in between. It was a refreshing shift from the stale workouts that had discouraged Andres from weightlifting in the first place. “That started guiding me and got me into the rhythm of how to work out.”
“In the beginning, I would just kind of repeat [Anthony’s] workouts,” Andres continues, “and then little by little, it was like ‘All right, I did this with him on this particular day, now I’ll do something similar but different.” As he repeated the workouts and gradually added variations, Andres began to understand how to build a routine. He found that Saturdays made for great leg days because he could go all-in and still have Sunday to recover before spending all of Monday on his feet. And, by exercising in the mornings, he could start his days on a high note while avoiding the stress of talking himself into a workout after a long work day.
By the six-week mark, Andres was in a groove. He was feeling better, the workouts were feeling easier, and he’d learned to designate time for working out – arguably the hardest part.
Perfecting the Plate
Equally transformative was Andres’s work with Registered Dietitian Jeannie Versagli. “That was interesting to have someone kind of pick [my diet] apart and help get things on track,” he says. He’d begun logging his meals in the MyFitnessPal app ahead of meeting Jeannie so that he’d have plenty of insights to share during their conversation.
“For the most part, things look good, but she found some holes in it, some nutritional holes,” Andres says. “Once I found my groove, it wasn’t super difficult, the what I was eating. What was kind of difficult was the amount I was eating.” With all the extra workouts he was doing, Andres ended up needing to eat more food than he typically would to maintain his energy levels and facilitate muscle-building. “It was neat how you learn what has carbs, what has protein, what are your fats,” he says, “and then you learn how to kind of carve the diet to your specific liking.”
Meal prepping became a critical part of Andres’s routine. “Before, I wasn’t really worried about packing lunches and packing breakfast or making breakfast,” he says. “And now, probably four days a week, it’s guaranteed that I have it set aside and I have it planned out.”
Andres was not only eating better, but also pacing his meals to complement his workout schedule. On days when he was up and out of the house early, he might start to feel hungry by early in the afternoon. Still, if he had an evening workout planned, he’d stick out the discomfort for an extra hour or two and wait until closer to his workout time to eat, ensuring that he’d have enough fuel in the tank.
“It wasn’t super difficult, the what I was eating. What was kind of difficult was the amount I was eating.”
Sticking it Out
The challenge wasn’t all smooth sailing. During an already stressful period following the passing of his aunt, Andres found himself covering extra clients due to staffing issues at work. Despite the physical and emotional drain, Andres didn’t let his routine slip during those difficult weeks. “You don’t always want to do it,” he insists, “but when you have a goal at the end, you just have to do it.” Motivation or no, Andres never lost sight of the finish line.
Data-Driven
Keeping tabs on his progress throughout the challenge was pivotal to Andres’s success. In addition to weighing in weekly and diligently tracking his calories and macros in MyFitnessPal, he wore a Myzone Belt during almost every workout to monitor his heart rate in real time. Myzone’s metrics provided Andres with excellent cues for when to move and when to rest while exercising. “Maybe you feel like you don’t have it in you,” he explains, “but the Myzone is telling you that you’re recovered. So when you feel like you want to drag and recover longer, it’s telling you ‘No, you’re ready now. You’re good.’”
And with such good data to go by, the impact of letting his diet slip or skipping out on tracking his food became obvious. “When you weigh in every week, you see it,” he says. “So, here’s your proof that either it’s working or you deviated.”
Third’s the Word
Despite being told early on that he was starting from a healthy baseline and might not place, Andres gave the challenge everything he had. Ultimately, he attributes his third-place win to diligence in his workouts, diet, and overall frame of mind. At the start of the challenge, he felt aimless with his fitness goals, but he suspects that his inexperience actually worked to his advantage. Being so new to exercise, any effort he could put in was progress.
The rest of the Avalos family also became active participants in the new lifestyle Andres was creating. They’ve started growing many of the ingredients frequently used in Andres’s meal prep, like tomatoes, cilantro, and onions, in their home garden beds. “Romaine lettuce is something that was big during this whole process,” Andres says, “so we started planting that, and we’re having meals with it more often.”
You don’t always want to do it, but when you have a goal at the end, you just have to do it.
At six years old, his son has become curious about nutrition and exercise, too. “He’d pick up stuff and say, ‘This has this many calories, Papi. I can eat this.’”
Since the end of the challenge, Andres has eased off the gas a little bit, but he’s still packing lunches, tracking macros, and working out regularly. He’s determined to stick to the habits he’s created and make sure his effort doesn’t go to waste.
“I’ve lost weight before, but definitely not the way I did during this,” Andres concludes. “Throughout the whole thing, it was awesome.”
