Headphones on, he turns his hat around, crosses his chest and transforms into Atlas, undefeated food-challenge champion.
A “food challenge” is when a restaurant advertises that if you can finish a certain item — something huge, spicy or especially caloric — in a set amount of time, you win. Most of the time, these challenges come with a cash prize and other goodies.
Santel has won challenges around the globe and been featured on TV shows such as “Man v. Food.” As far as he knows, there is only one other person in the U.S. who has won as many challenges as him.
Santel runs his own company, Atlas & Zeus Promotions, which markets restaurants, food challenges and fitness.
A new path
This wasn’t his original career plan. After graduating, Santel moved to Kansas City to start a construction job. In 2010, he found out about a Men’s Health magazine contest called the Spartacus Transformation Challenge, tied to the TV show “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.”
Entrants were judged on how much they transformed their body in 12 weeks. Santel won the prize of a trip to Auckland, New Zealand, where he was filmed in a fight scene for “Spartacus.”
Santel kept up with diet and exercise, working out with college friend Dan Graham. After sticking to their regimen, a reward was in order — one that kicked off his food-challenge career. Graham and Santel found a Kansas City challenge that required them to finish a 28-inch pizza. Afterwards? Santel went for ice cream, then joined his family for dinner a few hours later.
“I had just eaten six pounds of pizza and continued to load up. I figured I might be good at this food-challenge thing,” Santel said.
“So I tried another challenge, an 18-inch deep-dish pizza. I won $450 for beating that challenge. Those two wins sparked my 169 wins that I hold in seven different countries.”
Bodybuilding and food competitions may seem like an odd pairing, but Santel has his madness down to a science. He is able to stay relatively lean, despite consuming thousands of calories on some weekends, due to a strict diet and exercise regime.
He said his MSU studies, which taught him to make a business plan, played a role in his ability to have his own company. It’s like construction, he said: “You have a foundation and build up from there. I got my foundation from MSU, and I’m happy about that.”
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