It all started with a small, nerdy kid from Louisiana who earned the cherished middle school nickname of “Drew Carey.” Not exactly the ideal moniker when puberty hits (hence the crossed arms), and the burning desire to find an escape from a chubby fate quickly pushed him down the path to becoming the visionary mind behind a dream that ultimately became Avatar Nutrition.
When you’re the only person in your family with any inclination to play a sport of any kind, it’s a tough road forward, and every lesson learned is going to come the hard way. Fortunately, the hard lessons learned are the ones that stick, and ultimately leave the greatest impact. This is Mark writing all of this by the way, so I’m just going to keep it in the first person from here on out, okay?
There came a point when enough was enough, and I had to make a change - I had gotten to the point where, in my shame, I would hide inside of the pantry and eat baking chocolate. As a matter of fact, I would hide in the pantry and eat all kinds of things. If nobody saw me eating, it didn’t count?
Well, count it did, and the count on the scale continued to creep up. I would wear thick hoodies and tight undershirts to try to hide my emerging man-boobs, and in general was in a state of perpetual shame of my own body. I had adopted the class clown identity to hide from the fact that I was not the person the girls I had crushes on looked at in the hallway. This feeling sucked, and 12 year olds will do what they can to cope. Like I said though, enough was enough.
One day, hiding in the pantry, I held a chocolate Moon Pie in a nervous and sweaty hand... was I just going to keep going down the same path, or was I going to make a change?
Destiny was calling my name as I stormed out of the pantry, Moon Pie still in hand. I flung the door to the back yard open, and started sprinting towards the fence. Perpetually chaffed thighs spurred me on, and like a voluptuous Olympian from ancient Greece I hurled the Moon Pie over the fence with all my pubescent might. If I remember correctly, as I fell back onto my knees a bolt of lightning split the skies overhead...
Maybe not, but it adds a nice touch to the story!
One of these days, I’m going to make the full story into a book, because there’s just too many twists and turns you simply can’t make up.
I picked myself up and decided to do what I imagined skinny people did. I ate salads and ran, as best as I could. At first, it might have been 3 or 4 driveways down the road, but the next time that 3 or 4 became 5 or 6... so on and so forth, until eventually I was running miles at a time, and weight was coming off.
This kept progressing until I became skinny cross-country runner Mark, and really learned the power of process.
I had an amazing coach, Frank Trammel, who I will always be grateful for having crossed paths with.
Frank taught me the value of hard work, the value of believing you can do better, and the value of consistently putting time and effort into a process in order to see improvement. I went from barely being able to run down the driveway to my parents house to being able to run a 5k in 17:18, and run a mile in 4:58.
These were things that I “wasn’t supposed to do” as a fat kid, but sure enough I was living the impossible every day, and more importantly I knew why and how this was being pulled off. The same concepts carry over to this day in everything that Avatar does.
There’s been a million things that should have, for one, caused us to never get off the ground in the first place - and a million more things that should have broken us as a company that came after, but we’re still plugging away and getting better every day! That’s what’s making the same kind of difference in other people’s lives I saw in my own all those years ago, it’s giving people the right kind of platform to apply life changing process, and all along the way teaching the why behind it.
Eventually, being 5’11 at 128 pounds stopped being cool, and I decided that I wanted to play football - the only catch was I was entering into my freshman year of college. With no experience outside of foggy Drew Carey glasses and severe tendonitis in my knees while getting my bell rung in middle school, on a team that won 1 game between 7th and 8th grade, it was obviously an insane idea to try to walk on to a D1 college team. Whatever, process is the most powerful force in the universe and I had that behind me, along with a free school gym and 3 all-you-can-eat meals each day at the cafeteria!
I had some buddies who wanted to walk-on with me, and they were great workout partners, but all eventually decided not to try out, and it was just me who ended up seeing it through to the end. I went from 128, to 198 pounds by the time summer came around. Somehow, the impossible once again happened and I made the team!
I had also learned to wear contacts, because screw having foggy glasses - this was time for redemption, I wanted to be my best self, and by golly I had been learning so much along the way. I absolutely fell in love with the process of lifting, getting stronger, and getting faster! Even though I had started school studying business, I quickly found my real love - fitness. Seeing the kind of life altering effect it had on myself, I wanted to find a way to share that with others. The gym was basically a magical place to me where if you worked hard, amazing things could happen and “dreams could come true” as it were.
Since I wasn’t a scholarship athlete, and my academics didn’t cover a full ride, I had to earn money as a student worker - I did this by becoming a certified personal trainer and working at the school gym. This was awesome, I was getting to apply the lessons I’d learned to clients, and my first one was another huge part of what shaped the course of my life and ultimately led to the creation of Avatar.
Mr. David came to me well in excess of 400 pounds, and was in serious health trouble. All we could do on our first several times training together was just walk around the indoor track, and carefully go up and down the stairs. It wasn’t much, but slowly and surely the power of process allowed one thing he could do well to sprout into two, and over time he gained more ability to do more in the gym, and the weight kept steadily coming off. Eventually, David had dropped nearly 150 pounds and was running hill sprints!
This was such a cool thing to be a part of, and what really brought it all home was an
emotional moment after one of our last training sessions together before David had to move, and after that session he had thanked me for saving his life. That left me floored, and I knew at that moment why I’m alive and on this earth. I need to give back the gift of freedom over the constraints of an unhealthy body to anyone who will take it. There’s just too many people who are trapped an miserable in their own skin, and they are suffering needlessly. There’s process darned near anyone can access that will break those bond FOREVER. You can be a better you, and you can move freely through the world without feeling constantly oppressed by your own image looking back at you from the mirror.
I did find one point of confusion though, for many clients - the question always came back to diet. What should I be eating? Should I do Paleo? Gluten free? Keto? Atkins? South Beach? Vegan?
The list went on and on, without there ever seeming to be a really good or reliable answer. I was great at coaching form, designing programs, and motivating clients, but nutrition was not something I was well versed in. In truth, it seemed like pretty much nobody was. This is where I saw that something needed to change at a very large scale. Somebody needed to bring together all the minds that had housed up all of this knowledge that could help so many people!
And thus the initial spark that began everything we know today as Avatar Nutrition caught its first flicker. It took nearly a decade from this point to meet this very moment in time as fingers strike keyboard to make the sentence you’re reading now, and in that time a nearly impossible story unfolded that you are a part of today.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of who I am, and why I consider it an honor to be able to help you out if you’re reading this.
All the best,
Mark Springer
