by Sasha Reddy
Having been an athlete most of his life, Ryan Falgowski has had his fair share of injuries. Painful flare-ups of old strains have made it harder for him to enjoy the things he loves, like snowboarding with his family. “When you go to the doctor,” he vents, “they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re just old. Once you turn twenty, everything falls apart.’” Ryan didn’t expect to feel and move the way he could at twenty years old, but he wasn’t ready to accept that pain was an unavoidable part of aging either. After several months of struggling with an old Achilles injury, Ryan joined the 2025 Lifestyle Challenge. By April, he’d achieved first place, stronger and pain-free.
Ryan’s decision to join the Lifestyle Challenge wasn’t just about pain management—it was about accountability. As someone who works for himself selling items online, his schedule is relatively unstructured, often spiraling into late nights of snacking after putting the kids to bed. The challenge provided some much-needed accountability; the upfront cost and potential prizes at the end gave him something to strive for, and the weekly weigh-ins kept him on track. “It was easy to be like, ‘All right, I’ll commit, and I’ll have an end game to accomplish,’” he says. His goal for the challenge was three-fold: lose weight, manage his pain, and improve his overall quality of life.
From Limping to Lifting
Resting hadn’t served to improve Ryan’s pain in the months leading up to the 12-week challenge. So when the challenge began, he decided to try a different approach. During his sessions with personal trainer Anthony Brown, they practiced stability exercises with the goal of progressively and strategically strengthening the muscles surrounding Ryan’s Achilles tendon. Outside of his training sessions, Ryan also adopted a morning stretching routine to loosen up his leg and gain mobility.
In addition to the one-on-one training sessions, Ryan worked out a lot on his own. “I think I was doing cardio three days [per week], and I was doing lifting three days [per week],” he says. Sometimes his schedule would bring him to the gym twice a day – once in the morning after dropping off his kids at school, and once at night. He found morning workouts to be especially effective and invigorating, but he made time for fitness wherever he could.
As the weeks passed, the improvements in his leg became increasingly apparent. The Lifestyle Challenge, which begins in mid-January and ends in early April, overlaps with much of the winter sports season. Ryan estimates that the Falgowskis made about 18 snowboarding trips to Blue Mountain this season alone, and with each trip, the pain continued to lessen. It became easier and easier for Ryan to slide on his boots, spend more hours on the slopes, and even hit jumps with his son, Finn. “It’s fun to do stuff with your kids,” he adds, “and it’s fun to, like, actually be able to do it. If I didn’t rehab the injury, I’d still probably be limping around.”
The Food Factor
Nutrition was the toughest part of the challenge for Ryan. Having grown up eating to maintain a certain weight class for wrestling, Ryan knows the importance of fueling your body properly and tracking calories in and calories out. Plus, his wife, Megan, is a Registered Dietitian by profession. But sticking to a diet is often easier said than done. “Even when you know the information, it’s hard to be disciplined enough to follow it,” he admits. “When the kids go to bed, I usually stay up. And when you stay up, it’s easy to just eat junk food. You can work out, but if you’re not eating the right way, it doesn’t really get you anywhere.”
Throughout the 12 weeks, Ryan paid close attention to all the moments in his day when he’d normally sneak in extra sugar without even thinking about it – from sweetening his morning coffee to finishing his kids’ half-eaten popsicles. As he became a more mindful eater, he recognized that snacking or drinking a beer late one night made him feel sluggish and uncomfortable the next day, and he’d adjust his diet accordingly. “When you exercise when you wake up in the morning and you eat the right breakfast,” he says, “it makes a huge difference in your day.” Over time, it became easier to resist the urge to indulge and make better meal choices to better fuel his training.
The Final Push
Though the challenge only required participants to attend eight of the 12 weigh-ins, Ryan went to every single one. He would swing by between his son’s karate class and soccer practice, after which Finn always asked about his dad’s progress. “He knew it was a competition,” Ryan says, smiling. “He’s pretty positive, and he’s like, ‘Even if you’re not winning, you’re still doing great.’ I was like, ‘All right, buddy, it’s not over yet.’”
“When you exercise when you wake up in the morning and you eat the right breakfast, it makes a huge difference in your day.”
Still, it wasn’t until around the end of the Lifestyle Challenge that things really clicked for Ryan. When participants attend their weekly weigh-ins, they receive a read-out that compares their most recent data to that of their previous weigh-ins. For most of the challenge, Ryan’s weight was trending slowly downward, but he saw little to no improvement in his body fat percentage. The realization didn’t discourage Ryan; rather, it lit a fire under him. “I’m not going to spend three months doing something and then be like ‘yeah, I quit,’” he explains. In the final two weeks of the challenge, Ryan doubled down, stuck to an even stricter diet, and hit the gym nearly every day. “I tried up until the very last minute basically.”
Ryan’s diligence and consistency during those first ten weeks compounded in the final two. His body fat plummeted, his strength increased, and his pain continued to lessen. The progress was undeniable. By the last weigh-in, he’d accelerated his way into first place, losing a total of 8.8% body fat.
“There was a huge difference between the start and the end of the 12 weeks,” Ryan says. “The more strength training I did, the more I could do everything, and the more weight I lost, the more flexible I could be. I went from snowboarding where I couldn’t even put my boot on to being perfectly fine when the season closed.”
Beyond the Finish Line
Since the end of the Lifestyle Challenge, Ryan has dialed things back. He’s working out a bit less frequently and giving himself more grace with his diet, but he’s landed on a routine that feels sustainable long-term. He doesn’t want to hold himself to such a high standard that hitting the gym means sacrificing valuable family time. Plus, he’s been able to find other ways to stay active while spending time with his loved ones when he’s not deliberately working out. In sum, he’s fitting exercise into his life where it fits.
Ryan’s experience is a testament to the power of persistence and trusting the process, even when the results don’t come immediately. “You just have to get motivated,” he says. “Sometimes, when you put money toward something, the more likely you are to follow through.”
Ryan’s experience has taught him that motion is lotion, and stress in healthy doses can be the best thing to facilitate healing. More and more studies are pointing to the benefits of movement, stretching, and even light strength training to rehabilitate injuries more quickly than ice and rest alone. Everyone’s different, and communicating with your doctor is essential, but Ryan encourages others not to let a fear of overdoing it hold them back. Making the financial investment and weighing in every week proved to be exactly what he needed to overcome old habits and ultimately improve his quality of life, and he hopes others dealing with persistent pain can find the same relief and self-satisfaction.
“The more strength training I did, the more I could do everything, and the more weight I lost, the more flexible I could be. I went from snowboarding where I couldn’t even put my boot on to being perfectly fine when the season closed.”
