For the life of me, I couldn't squeeze into my favorite pair of jeans. This was not happening! These were my goto jeans and I was all excited to wear them since the weather was cooling. But it wasn't going to happen. My thighs and hips were in the way and those jeans were not going to come close to my waist. I think that was my first wakeup call. There were a lot of others, but this is one that I remember pretty vividly. This was a lot for me. I've always been athletic and active. How the heck did I pack on that much weight in a year? Looking back it's obvious. I was sitting down ALL day studying for my biology degree. I didn't exercise one bit. On top of that, I was eating horrible foods and drinking like crazy on the weekends. That's the proven recipe for FAT. I was disgusted with myself. I had stomach rolls you could grab by the handful. My cellulite was out of control. Looking back, my energy levels were drained constantly and my self esteem was in shambles.

I became sick and tired of how I felt and looked. I think it was actually the way I felt that was worse. Feeling fat makes you so self conscious... even when nobody is around you. These days it's especially dangerous for women's confidence. Knowing that I needed to change... I started running. Cardio. That's how you burn fat right? Well kind of. I started to lose weight but within a few weeks every shred of results stopped. I figured I was not running hard enough or long enough... so I decided to run more! I was going to the gym twice a day and running for about an hour on the treadmill each time. What's really crazy? ... I would run to the gym to squeak in some extra exercise.

I wanted to lose weight fast. I thought the more relentless I could be the faster results would came. I knew NOTHING of what I know now and looking back I just shack my head... happy I was able to escape. I decided to cut my calories BIG TIME. I know I was eating too much. So in my head... the less I could eat the faster I would look like a model. (Yeah maybe a model for an anorexia clinic.) I cut my calories to only 500 a day. I was eating your typical anorexic fare... veggies and water. I was not getting the carbs or protein I really needed because my veggie assortment was extremely limited.

I lost over 32 pounds and got to 100 even. Looking back, I don't think I got below 100 pounds... at least I hope I didn't. Things were exponentially getting dire: I felt worse. I was irritable, depressed, angry, and sad all at once. My friends didn't enjoy my company which made things every worse. I looked worse. When I was overweight my butt at least had some shape. Now it was a deflated ballon, wrinkles and all. My stomach rolls now fell over my pants line. A very disgusting feeling. I was blindly obsessed. I thought I was doing things correctly even though clearly I wasn't. It came down to my best friend and Mom giving me a little intervention. And thank God they did.

I slowly started to eat more. I was still exercising like crazy but I did begin to put weight back on. Although with each pound I was terrified. At least I looked thin and tight in clothes. That was my salvation... I wish they had shape wear back then... I would have been customer number one! During this time, I ended up meeting Dan through my ex-boyfriend. He was always healthy growing up having a Mom as a registered dietitian... Wow can she tell you some inside stories of the diet companies like Jenny Craig... she use to work for them. Anyway, Dan, saw how hard I was exercising... aka running... and told me to stop. He basically just gave me a challenge to try resistance training and stop running for one month.

I was highly skeptical, but he was right. Running was not helping. Why I continued to do it as much as I did still baffles me everything I think about it. So I started going to the gym and doing things like pushups, squats, lunges, rows, and exercises which built some strength.

In under 30 days I already started seeing results. Not just weight loss, but a tighter figure. That hadn't happened in over 2 years. I became obsessed with fitness and nutrition, but this time in a good way. I started reading all the fitness books, diet books, and nutrition books. I started to study program design and how women dealt with weight training. It was a whole new world and it set the course for my career and Fit Women's Weekly.

You know those events that happen to us which at the time seem horrible and unfair... But then after some time passes, you look back at them as the greatest blessings in disguise? Well that is what failing my MCATS (three times in a row) was to me. At the time I was devastated because my medical school career was over before it began. However, that event immediately pushed my into personal training. A career move that became my true passion in life. Call it destiny? Maybe.

At first I was just helping one friend here, one friend there. Nothing substantial. I still had a job in a doctor's office at the time. But then I decided to get more serious and create my own group boot camp business for women. I started with just one location near my home. Over the next year I grew that to 7 locations across the entire metro area of Charleston. Hopefully soon my very own studio will be a reality too... but not just yet. During that time I started blogging on the Internet at LiftingRevolution.com. I called it Lifting Revolution because both online and off, women were scared of weights, scared of pushups and resistance. I needed to ignite a revolution in the fitness world for women... that was the goal and still is.

I created a site called TheArtofWeightLifting.com. Horrible name, I know. But it was my online training studio for women. It had some success but I was still working out the kinks of how to make it easy for women to implement in their lives. I knew that I could help because 95% of the options offered online were complete garbage. Ebooks which spewed weight loss theory from trainers that never had a real client in person. No real world experience, just regurgitated facts from science books. This past year Dan and I shut the doors on TheArtofWeightLifting.com rebranded it... and completely recreated it from the ground up. It was now called Fit Women's Weekly! Over the last 5 years I've learned so much about creating a healthy body and lifestyle. I learned it's actually not hard to do at all. It just seems that way because of all the crap the media says... the different options... the pills... and how all of the fads lead to failure. But when you start a simple plan...

It's amazing. Make small changes in your lifestyle and the weight falls off as if it never should have been there in the first place... because in reality... it shouldn't have been there. And that's what Fit Women's Weekly is all about. A simple fitness and lifestyle plan you can effortlessly fit into your life… using the same principals I created for my boot camps. Total body circuit training workouts paired with meal plans that taste amazing. Learn what makes Fit Women's Weekly completely different here. Also take a look at my scrapbook of picture below. If you have any questions about them, let me know. There is a comment section below as well.

Back When I Was Overweight: These are some photos when I was 32 pounds overweight. I am not sure what's going on with my hair style there... :)

Being Empowered Through Health: Once I transformed my body, I was hugely empowered and did all sorts of things. Two of the more "crazy" things I did was a figure compeition. That's me in the blue micro-bikini. It was a blast though and a huge confidence builder. The other pictures was from a strong women's competition I did. There were so many events, but it goes to show you that a woman can be really strong and not be super muscular or large.

Random Life: Here are a few pictures of random life... a wedding picture. I love that wedding picture :) The guy is Dan, my husband. And the big group of women are some of my local boot campers at a 5k which I put on for all of them. It was a really fun event.

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