Losing Weight; the journey is never over

Twenty years ago I decided enough was enough and thus began the journey that would change my life forever. There have been so many ups and downs that I can’t even recall them all. Yet here I am, almost 18 years after losing the weight, still on this journey.

Over the years, I’ve been very fortunate to have great support, and I’ve worked extremely hard to succeed in my weight loss. But what many people don’t realize is that once the weight is off, you’re not done—you’ve actually only just begun!

I use to love shows like The Biggest Loser because they can really help inspire people who may not otherwise start a journey towards health and fitness. That said however, they also set up a lot of false expectations and false hopes for those people who don’t realize that what they do on these shows isn’t realistic for most of the population. The issue I have with “reality tv” is that it’s not actually reality for 99.9% of the population. They don’t show us what is actually done to have these people lose so much weight, so fast. They are put on very restrictive low calorie diets and have them workout 6-8 hours a day, which isn’t realistic or healthy in my opinion. Also, because they are “crash dieting”, a lot of them don’t keep the weight off, and when they’re back to real life, they see the weight go back on.

We run a beginner health and fitness program at our gym called Life Change, and we really stress and teach the fact that fad diets and magic pills don’t work. We educate people that the way to lose weight, get fit and be and stay healthy, is by hard work, dedication, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. We don’t make promises of losing 20 pounds in 6 weeks, because we can’t make that promise, and if we did make that promise and we tried to follow through on it, we’d be putting people’s health at risk the same way I believe those reality shows do. What we do instead is give our gym members the tools, education, and training to be healthy for the rest of their lives.

There have definitely been people who have lost up to 20 pounds in just 6 short weeks during our program, but that’s because they committed to it and they used the tools and content that we give them which gives them the opportunity to be successful, and they do the work.

I have to say that all of the above may have been the toughest thing for me to learn; it’s not about fad diets, it’s not about losing weight fast, it’s not about false expectations, it’s about education, application, dedication, and patience. Eighteen years later I’m still learning something new every day, and regardless of what it is, my goal is to continue my journey for me personally and for our gym members. This isn’t just my passion, this is my career and my life, and I’m always learning so I can continue to grow personally, and so I can help others.

I’m constantly working on my physical and mental health, and learning every day. It’s about education and application. I love what I do, and I love helping people, and this is a big part of the journey for me.