Many of the friends who train beside Eddie Adegeye, 31, today have no idea who he used to be. They see him crush HYBRID XT workouts, lead the energy in Warrior Sculpt, and stack class on top of class at Life Time Target Center in Minneapolis, Minn. What they don’t see is the man who once weighed more than 400 pounds.
Adegeye’s health transformation began with a single yoga class — though it took a while before something truly clicked.
“In 2017, a friend of mine invited me to a yoga class at Life Time in St. Louis Park,” Adegeye, now 31, recalls. “I’ll be honest, I actually hated it. It was just too hot. Trying to breathe, and at the same time move my body and listen to what the instructor was saying was a lot. When I went back the second day, I still didn’t like it, so I just quit and gave it up.”
But with more encouragement from that same friend, Adegeye returned to the yoga studio about eight months later. “He was like, ‘Dude, you just gotta come back and try. It only gets better,’” Adegeye says. “I’m the type of person who’s resilient — I’ll just keep trying to be better, so I gave it another shot, and from there it all started making sense. It was a new instructor who I really connected with, and I started hitting a groove. Something in my mind just clicked, and I zoned out of the real world and zoned into my mat. After, I was drenched with sweat, and I finally understood why everyone was doing this. It cleanses your mind and your body. I started going five or six times a week.”
The Beginning of a Transformation
For most of his life, Adegeye’s main focus was helping his Nigerian family navigate life in the United States, and his own physical health was put on the backburner. In his junior year of college, he began investing in himself, determined to improve his health due to a family history with diabetes.
Along with yoga, Adegeye started going for walks and visiting Life Time to exercise more regularly. He added heavy weightlifting to his routine and over the next few years, he lost a total of 80 pounds.
“My granddad died from complications of diabetes,” he says. “I knew if I didn’t change my lifestyle, I’d put myself in danger.”
After a setback during the COVID-19 pandemic, he got back into a routine toward the end of 2021. Once his exercise regimen was in place, Adegeye started focusing on his nutrition habits, too, working to maintain a caloric deficit.
“I eventually lost 205 pounds,” he says. “That’s more than half my original body weight. Now a lot of the people who I’ve met in the last few years have no idea I used to be 400 pounds. They say, ‘I never would have guessed that was your life.’”
Yoga as the Foundation
Adegeye now sees yoga as the foundation for his healthy-living journey — and everything he does in life.
“Yoga teaches you to take it day by day,” he says. “You don’t instantly start out doing headstands, you know? You ease into it. You do smaller poses, and by the end of class, you’re warmed up enough to try something bigger. I was stacking my potential bricks every single day to build this house that I now live in, and if I didn’t start there, I don’t think I’d be where I am now.”
As he continued to attend yoga classes at Life Time, Adegeye met friends who kept inviting and encouraging him to build onto his foundation by trying new classes and activities, including taking on the LT Games, Life Time’s hybrid fitness competition, in the fall of 2025.
“I was doing multiple classes by this time,” he says. “Warrior Sculpt is my bread and butter along with GTX.”
Wes Robertson, senior classes operations manager for Life Time, noticed Adegeye taking various classes and invited him to join HYBRID XT, Life Time’s strength and conditioning class for hybrid athletes, with the goal of competing in the LT Games. The focus on hybrid fitness eventually switched his mindset from losing weight to challenging his limits as an athlete.
“I was already doing hybrid workouts, but I thought I might as well have someone pushing me,” he says. “Wes was the one who helped switch my mindset to one of becoming an athlete and pushing my body to the best of its abilities. That resonated with me.”
Where Fitness Meets Friendship
Accomplishing goals is even more special with a community that has your back. Adegeye credits Life Time classes for inspiring much of his success and the instructors and other members for cheering him on along the way.
“The support systems at Life Time help you get to the next level you want to be at, regardless of where you started or where you plan on going,” he says. “That has really been a big part of it all. At Life Time, you’re actually connecting with the people you’re in class with to the point where you start feeding off each other’s energy. I’ve met so many friends that have turned to family. I never got that from anywhere else.”
Taking On the Next Challenge
As Adegeye formulates his next big goal, he continues to train for everyday life and enjoy the results of all his hard work.
“I’m really just training for the next time I decide to jump into LT Games or HYROX,” he says. “That’s what I’m on right now, along with just staying healthy and pushing my body to the next level.”
He also hopes to share his story more broadly to help others get started on their own healthy-living transformation.
“I started a health and wellness consulting program that helps people who don’t know where to start or are afraid to start,” he says. “They see my transformation, and they’re like, ‘How did you do it?’ And I tell them the baby steps you need to get going. If you don’t know anyone with a story like mine, you might not know what the steps are to get you to a healthier place.”
Adegeye’s Advice for Getting Started
For those looking to take on a new challenge or refocus their health efforts, Adegeye shares these words of wisdom.
1. Just start. “It’s very cliche, but I like to say, ‘just start,’” he says. “You don’t have to do classes if that doesn’t resonate with you. You can just start by going on walks, for example. If you haven’t been walking and you start doing that, you’ll begin to feel a difference. That feeling of being better is kind of addictive and soon you might wonder, ‘How much better I could feel if I walked on an incline?’ And then you go from there, and maybe you’ll start jogging, and then you’ll start running. That’s what I did. And now I’m doing 5Ks. I never would have expected that.”
2. Find someone to join you. “It could be a friend, a work buddy, a family member, or anyone you know,” he says. “You can go on the journey together and be accountable to one another. Start with somebody you’re comfortable with so you can feel good about going to work out and learning new things together. Going to a class with a friend takes all the nerves away of walking in by yourself. And after you go two or three times, you’ll meet another person. And that’s going to help you keep coming back.”
