How One Guy’s 75-Pound Weight Loss Sparked a Career in Fitness

When Craig Schnaars was 25-years-old, he tore his ACL. What was supposed to be a routine surgery ended up causing an infection, more surgeries, and more time in recovery. It caused him severe mental and physical strain. He stopped exercising, started eating to curb his anxiety, and gained a lot of weight.
After old photos of himself helped him realize just how much he’d given up, he decided to get back on track the only way he knew how: running. What started as a first half marathon led to an entire career in fitness—and the loss of over 75 pounds. Now, at 37, he reflects on how he did it.

GROWING UP, I was always an athlete, mainly concentrating on soccer throughout high school and college. So, being ‘fit’ was never a concern until after graduation. When I was 25, I tore my ACL, and everything changed. I couldn’t move from the couch, and I began to develop bouts of anxiety and depression. I had to undergo a second surgery when my knee became infected, which pushed back my return to normalcy even longer.

It sparked worry in me—I was always afraid something bad going to happen. When I did work out, I was afraid to work out hard, thinking I would get re-injured, so I eventually stopped altogether. I was working at Yankee Stadium as a bar manager for their club services, and thus, eating the unhealthiest food you could get your hands on at the night’s end. I was going out and drinking my fair share of alcohol to help ease the anxious feelings I would have almost every single day.

My days were filled with long work hours, little to no sleep, and using alcohol to make it all seem bearable. I was unhappy with who I was and who I was becoming. I was losing my purpose in life, and I was not the person I was used to seeing in the mirror—nor did I possess the confidence to attempt to return back to that person.

I was eventually diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression. I ate to make myself feel more at ease, and drank to drown out the shaky feeling I always had in my gut. I was on several medications that caused unexpected weight gain to help tame my anxiety and depressive thoughts.

My turning point came in June 2014. I was looking at old pictures that came up of me and my friend. Looking at it almost brought me to tears. I realized I had lost track along the way of who I was becoming because my mind was so clouded with everything else. In that moment of clarity, I realized I wasn’t myself anymore. This was two years after my ACL surgery.

My first attempt to get myself back into shape started shortly after that. I bit the bullet and signed up for my first half marathon to get myself back into running shape as quickly as I could.

Along with running, I began to see how long I could hold a plank for every single night. It started at just 30 seconds, and every night I held it without dropping, I would add 15 seconds. I got all the way up to holding a plank for 4 minutes, and I ran my first half marathon. While the splits were not to die for, I was able to run the entire 13.1 without stopping, which I viewed as a large first step into getting back to being who I was.

I quickly came to realize I had little to no fitness knowledge outside of being coached growing up and running. I was conditioned to being told what to do and how to do it. I was running for a few years but still found myself comparing myself to who I used to be. Even with just running, my weight had only gone from 256 pounds to about 223 pounds, which was a step–but nowhere near what I wanted. In between races, I would take rests and not do anything if I wasn’t training, and while doing so, the weight would fluctuate and come back.

In 2017, I moved in around the block from Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) in Merrick, New York. I had taken a few classes pre-injury, and remembered enjoying them. So, I went back. I started out going two to three times a week and eventually upgraded to going four, five and six times per week, if not twice per day. I started my OTF Journey at 234 pounds and, within a year, was back at my college athlete weight of 185 for the first time since 2008. My clothes felt better, my mind felt clearer and I loved not only the community but the competitiveness the classes brought back to me and the motivation and relationships I gathered from all the amazing coaches.

Two years after I started my journey with Orangetheory, I took a leap of faith and decided to try my luck at becoming a coach. I thought it would be a way for me to earn some money while I figured out what my purpose in this life was. Turns out this was the purpose of my life. I made a decision to change my life and pay it forward. After training, I became the Head Coach of Orangetheory in Farmingdale, NY, and one year after that, I was promoted to Regional Fitness Manager and nominated for Regional Fitness Manager of the Year Worldwide.

Now, I mix things up in my fitness routine. I will take Orangetheory’s signature Orange 60 class three times per week at one of the studios I oversee. I also shadow box with weighted gloves once a week, take an Orangetheory Tread 50 class as an active recovery day, and functionally weight train once a week. I aim for five to six days a week every week to workout.

I am currently training to participate in my first-ever HYROX race on June 1st at Pier 76 in New York City. This is unlike anything I have ever trained for before, and I am very much looking forward to taking all the functional strength I have gained with Orangetheory, and seeing how it can be applied to a competition like this.

The key to regaining your health is to start. Start because you deserve it. My advice is to endure the tough times because you are enough to do it. My advice is to reach to finish it, because while there is no true finish line, striving for it is something you owe yourself.

Here are 3 tips I lived by that helped me lose over 75 pounds.

3 Tips I Lived By to Help Me Lose Weight

Find Power in Habit

What many people don’t realize is it takes a while to turn an idea into a pattern and a pattern into a habit. Even if I don’t want to at first, I make myself work out because I know I will feel so much better once it is done. You want to build working out into your routine that you feel a certain way about deviating from that routine.

The same goes for nutrition. Before I lost all my weight, I was eating mostly fast food. I remember I would come home from my girlfriend’s house at the time, sometimes two to three nights a week and I would go to the 24-hour McDonalds drive-thru and order $20 worth of food. I would eat the food in my car and throw the “evidence” in a dumpster so my family wouldn’t see what I was doing to myself.

I would also eat directly from the concession stands at Yankee Stadium as I was working there and spent most of my nights there for six months out of the year. I would get the burger with the most trimmings I could find, and steak sandwiches slathered in dipping sauces. There were more appropriate options for me to go with, but I chose the comfort food that made me feel better. I was also taking in a lot of sugar from soda and energy drinks such as Red Bull, Mountain Dew and Pepsi all day every day to keep myself energized.

Once I started subbing out those things and got into a habit of eating cleaner, everything became easier. I started with eating sushi and salads at the stadium instead of burgers and steak. I got into a routine of eating breakfast every day to start my day right, and that sets me up well for the rest of the day. It’s all about continuous repetition—the more used to doing something you are, the easier it is to stick with it.

Aim to workout or eat breakfast every day for a week. Once you do, try again for another week. Small steps added up make long lasting habits.

Listen to Your Body

I realized not every single workout needs to be the hardest workout you have ever done to show results and make you feel better. I once thought the calorie count was the only number that mattered, or how fast your speeds were was the only thing that mattered. In fact, it is listening to your body, and doing what it needs.

Supplement your hard training days with active rest, like walking. This will help your body rest while moving, and if you’re not always sore, you will be more excited to work out.

Find Accountability

Find someone in your life who can talk you into putting in the work even when you don’t want to. We will never always be completely motivated all the time, so make sure you have someone following a plan with you, or someone who simply knows what staying in shape means to you so they can interject and make sure you stay on course. Or, sign up for challenges and races that give you a reason to keep pushing.

I want everyone to know that a journey from start to finish is never linear. You will always have ups and you will always have downs. There will be some points where you feel like you are on top of the world and you have made so much progress, and there are days you will feel like you haven’t even moved the needle.

Some days you will look in the mirror and see every small muscle you’ve worked so hard on and some days you will look in the mirror and your mind will lie to you and tell you nothing looks different. It is important to remember that the negative mind can lie to what your eyes see, and even if a number on a scale is telling you the truth–realize weight can shift for so many reasons. Bodies can change for so many reasons, but no change, good or bad, is permanent.

Orangetheory, and the community inside it, brought me that accountability. It saved my life. I may not have always had the best hour of my life performance-wise when I was in that room, but that hour certainly always did the best it could for me. I had a community that called me back every time.