"There was a time in my life when I remember standing in between two college dorms and thinking to myself, 'Well, I guess this is it. I was just cursed with bad genetics.' Over the years that followed I continued the yo-yo dieting cycle, only each time I dieted it got harder and harder to lose the weight again, and I eventually couldn’t sustain a lifestyle that I hated and ended up getting in the worst shape of my life.

Until one day, my brother decided he wanted to get 'jacked' so that he could impress a girl in his class. He couldn’t drive of course, and so he asked me to be his ride to the gym. 'Sure,' I thought to myself, 'what’s it going to hurt? Maybe we’ll have some fun at least.' And so we went out and joined a small privately owned gym, and it was there that I met Rick. Rick was a super nice guy who could tell that I was totally new to the lifting scene, and so he took me and my brother under his wing and taught us how to train for our goals - for REAL this time! And I soon realized that almost everything I had tried up to that point (restricting calories, meal plans, Beachbody workouts, MLM supplements, and more…) was the opposite of what I actually needed to be doing.

I learned I didn’t have to avoid carbs. I began eating more food and shedding more fat than I thought possible. Strength and health became the most important metrics for measuring progress instead of living and dying by the scale. And I could finally stop running miles a day as I learned that not only was excessive cardio not helping, but it was actually doing more harm than good.

I started feeling better. And all of those things were awesome, but what really surprised me was one day passing by the mirror and being proud of what I saw. I cannot tell you how relieved I was because (as I mentioned before) there was a time when I never thought that would be possible for me.

I was finally free from all of the diet culture nonsense, lost over 20 lbs. of fat, was proud of what I saw in the mirror, and had the confidence that I would never ride the physical and emotional roller coaster of gaining and losing weight ever again. After that experience, I decided to pursue my first personal training certification and become a student of fitness and nutrition so that I could help others escape the diet culture nonsense, just like I did.

Since then, I have had the privilege of helping countless others achieve the same level of success, and I couldn’t be more proud of the impact it has had on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Now, I don’t know where you are in that process, but I do want you to know that you do not have to walk that path alone."