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Success Stories

When did you become unhappy with your weight?
I grew up as an overweight kid. I was always tired and had very little energy to do anything. As I got older, I knew I had to make some changes.

What made you want to make that lifestyle change?
I remember waking up in the morning and I would eat 2 of those Hardee’s breakfast sandwiches and a large hash brown with a large pop! And that’s every single day, not to mention eating fast food throughout the day. When I turned 20 I was at my heaviest at 294 pounds. There is one memory that really sticks out in my mind. When I was in Job-Core I remember walking up a hill at age 20 and I actually had to stop and hold onto something. It felt in my chest that I couldn’t breathe. My brother was at Job-Core as well and had been doing some weight training. After I explained my hill situation, he was like, “you know sis, you’re going to die.” I think I had gotten to a point where you just give up, where you’re just like, “Ok, I’m just going to be the fat girl, let me just feed myself to death.

To be honest, It wasn’t just me feeling bad about myself, I ate myself into obesity, I had given up and it was the one thing that gave me comfort, so I was like, “let’s have a lot of it.” When I got to Job-Core, I would see my brother working out and I think it was partially ‘little sister syndrome,’ but it made me want to do something. I started out really, really slow, cause when you’re that heavy, even walking half a mile would be like trudging down a mountain for anyone else. Over 11 months I went from walking half a mile a day, to running 5 miles a day along with weight training.

How did you know where to take that first step?
In the dorms they had an old yanky treadmill set in the corner. Everyone when you’re younger says, “If you want to get skinny, you run.” So I kind of just took it and I was like, ok, you are my nemesis. I remember when I was doing even just half a mile I was holding on for dear life. My legs weren’t used to moving like that, but I started with a half a mile and I was just like, “ok, if I can do half a mile for a week, next week I’m going for a mile.” I would have to slow it down, but I would slowly get to that mile. After a year I had stepped it up to two miles. The thing is that you start looking at your face, you see this face your whole life. I never hated my face, I was just the fat girl with the pretty face. After all those years I started seeing my jaw line come out and when I started seeing my face it was just a striving force and I wanted to meet ‘that girl.’ I had wanted to meet ‘that girl’ since I was 6 years old. I remember praying to God to wake up and be skinny. I wanted it so bad.

I was truly addicted. The main point that I wanted to make was that once you start seeing that girl come out, you do have to commit .
“You can’t just do it two weeks, you need to have that month so you see that improvement, cause that’s what going to drive you. It’s going to come, you want to see it and then it’s like, “Oh it’s working.” After the failed attempt of eating whatever I wanted, it was good nutrition with it. I can say that it was hit and miss about the nutrition.

Do you think that most people have tried to loose weight before and it hasn’t worked so they come in with the attitude that, “this probably isn’t going to work either?”
What I think is that they come in and they’re so for sure in their mind that they’re going to fail, that they are like, “ok, I’m going to hire a trainer and maybe this is the magic answer.” As a trainer you have to try to be the magic answer. When they walk in I already know that they aren’t thinking that they’re going to do very well. I know that when they hire a trainer, they’ve probably exhausted everything that they’ve done by themselves and now they’re hiring a trainer. Sometimes when they walk in they’re like, “Is this going to be that final answer, is this going to be my final way to make it?” As a trainer I try to see that. Leave them on their first day like, “Oh, wow, maybe she knows exactly what I need to do in order to get it done.”

From your worst day to today, what are some of the biggest changes that you’ve noticed in you life?
I would say one thing is I have so much love. I was so angry at God, I was angry at the world....when I was a kid I would say I was a mean girl, but I just did that because I was adapting to my size. I do find that now that I am a leaner person that I am a defender of the weak. That anytime I see people being the person that I used to be, now I am a defender of that. That, is one of the biggest changes I have seen since I was shined on and I feel like God gave me a second chance. I enter life every day happy and I am all around a more positive person. I think a lot of it is that once you go through that struggle and you learn to love, “Me” and I got to know, “Me,” as a person, I think that is the biggest change cause I think when you’re large it’s like you don’t take the time to know yourself, cause all you’re focused on is being fat.