Like most of us, my journey to healthy living was paved with obstacles — from injury to special events to lack of sleep to chocolate-covered temptations.
For me, it’s a journey that continues to this day…even as a Lifetime member of Weight Watchers and an athlete, I still rely on the tips, tricks and tools that helped me go from this:
(I make upside down look HAWT! hahaha) Of course, you could have learned all that from my About Me page. So why am I taking you down this path?
When I saw that Chris Downie, the founder of SparkPeople.com was also the author of the new book “The Spark,” I asked if I could interview him.
What happened next was a look inside the life of a CEO who is also a really cool guy. Enjoy!
Katy: You sound like you’re having fun!
Chris: I am having fun! I always try to gather and harness the energy from all the SparkPeople members and see if I can share that with the world.
Me: Is that right? Do you really feel like all of your members are with you?
Chris: Yeah, it really is that way. Just last night, I had a member send me an email and tell me you have to go and read this blog because it’s incredible. It really is just a family of thousands and thousands of people who are helping each other, and they all really want SparkPeople to succeed, because they’ve gotten such great results and they want to share it with their friends and spread the spark.
Katy: Chris, I have to say – as CEO, I’m surprised to hear that you’re reading emails, you’re leaving personal messages for people – you’re really reaching out to people. What’s the incentive to continuing that one-on-one interaction with your members?
Chris: That’s part of the magic of SparkPeople – we’re not really like a normal company! I’ve made over 10,000 message board posts to really, truly help people reach their goals, and to really make the site better. So we like staying on the front lines and helping people reach their goals. And our members feel that authenticity, and that’s one of the reasons they spread it around so much.
Katy: Looking back in your history, and I’ve read a little bit about what it was like for you growing up, tell me why healthy living and fitness and diet is so important to you personally.
Chris: As a kid, I had shyness and anxiety and I wanted to figure out a way to overcome that, so I put together this program that combines areas that help your body, like nutrition and fitness, with areas that help your mind like goal setting and stress management and leadership; smashed all of these together and it really help me reach my goals. But I almost by accident helped motivate this woman and she lost 50 pounds and told me I changed her life, and then she had gone on to motivate these other women in a walking group, and all of them said, “Pat, if you can do it, we can do it.” So when I realized all this, I realized that your daily actions and words impact more people that you ever realize, and I also said, “someday this is going to be a company.”
Katy: Knowing personally that one phrase or one action can make a difference, have you had setbacks in that journey?
Chris: Oh, sure. Part of our whole program is setbacks – and we found that the key thing is not having a setback, because everybody’s going to have setbacks, no matter what; they key is what you do when you have that setback. So we talk about the common phrase “two steps forward, one step back,” so the one step back is your setback. But in your mind you have to be mentally ready to take those two steps forward again so that you don’t completely fall off.
Katy: Let’s talk about your book because you call “The Spark” a 28-day breakthrough plan, and it’s for losing weight, getting fit and transforming your life. The 28 days have to be the beginning of a complete lifestyle change, is that right?
Chris: That’s true, the 28-day plan in “The Spark” is all about helping you change from a diet mentality to a healthy lifestyle change so that you’re starting to reach these goals, you’re building momentum, and you’re building hope – and you may feel in control of your destiny for the first time in a long time. And those 28 days are going to put you on the path to losing the 100 pounds or whatever else your big goal is.
Katy: What’s your advice for somebody who’s on that path or hits a boulder, or falls off the path, or hits that chocolate cake obstacle?
Chris: Our advice is if you do have that setback, just immediately set another goal or make another positive choice at your next meal because if you get right back on it, and start reaching those small goals again, you’re going to build your hope back up. And what you’ll find is the more you do this, the more you practice reaching these small goals, the easier it gets to recover from a setback, and you actually start having fun and it starts feeling like a game to add one healthy habit or keep reaching one more goal and it starts to become fun, which is a lot different than most weight loss programs, and that’s what we’ve tried to present in “The Spark” and on SparkPeople.com.
Katy: When I was really struggling, one of the things I used to do was go to people’s personal pages, and look at their weight loss journey through pictures and blogs, and I was really glad to see that that’s in your book as well. Was there something you had to leave on the cutting room floor for this book that you wish could have made the cut.
Chris: Yes, I can tell you that we call this the “power of positive people.” So in the community you’re just surrounded by so many positive people, and the hardest thing for us to get cut out of the book is the stories – we just have thousands and thousands of these stories that we would like to include, but there were just too many stories, so we had to cut some of the stories out, and we’ll be using them in other ways.
Katy: What’s next for “The Spark” – can we expect to see a Chris Downie line of fitness DVDs?
Chris: One thing I always say is it’s not about Chris Downie, it’s about “The Spark” and SparkPeople – I joke that it’s not called “ChrisPeople.com” for a reason! This is about a growing movement of regular people around the world who can reach their goals. But looking forward, we’re really excited looking into magazines and potentially a TV show, so we have a lot of plans to go forward from “The Spark” and the Web site.
Katy: What is a day in the life like for you? What do you eat every day?
Chris: I do eat pretty healthy myself, and this is where my wife and I are a good team. I motivate her to stay consistent with her fitness, and she helps motivate me to stay consistent with my nutrition. So we make up a really good team, and we do a lot of our cooking at home together with our two boys, and we eat just what we talk about on our site. It can be healthy food like quinoa and whole grains, but every now and then well have the chocolate and anything else. SparkPeople tries to be really flexible about what you can eat.
Katy: I’ll let you off the hook with this one…If someone is reading this interview and is motivated to go get your book or go join SparkPeople.com, what is the one message you hope they take away from your program?
Chris: I’d say the one message is that everyone wants to be healthy and happy, and we’ve found that 90% of the people who go through our program report being happier. So if you combine the book “The Spark” with the Web site SparkPeople.com we can help you reach those goals.
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