I am a very happily married 48 year old mother of one, step mother of two, and grandmother of four. I am a Registered Medical Assistant in a cardiology practice here in the St. Louis area. Recently I became a Certified Personal Trainer and getting ready to pursue a degree in Nutrition.

I have always been the skinny minnie weighing between 110 – 115pounds most of my life. After I lost my job and I went back to school, I gained25 unwanted pounds. While I was studying I would eat absent mindedly and a whole bag of chips would be gone before I knew it. I was completely miserable with all that extra weight. I was tired all the time and didn't have any energy to do any of the things I loved to do. I hated putting on any clothes other than my scrubs because I just looked horrible. None of my clothes that I use to wear all the time fit anymore so all I wore was my scrubs for school because they hid all the weight that I had gained.

After school I started working in a cardiology office and I saw patients that were overweight, short of breath, and holding a pillow to their chest to cough because they just had their chest ripped open from having major heart surgery due to heart disease. The medications that these patients were taking just boggled my mind. At 48 years of age, I have never been on any medications for any condition except for viral or bacterial and I couldn’t imagine taking that many medications to keep myself alive. Seeing patients like this on a day to day basis just broke my heart and the ones that really got me were the ones that were in their 30’s. There were many days that I went home crying. The one thing that these patients had in common was that they wished they would have done things differently long ago.

I knew that if I didn’t do something soon that I would become one of my patients and I didn’t want that to happen. The last thing I want to do is make a choice between paying my bills, eating, or paying for medications which was (and still is) a story that I heard frequently from my patients. How horrible is that? I work hard for my money and I want to spend it the way I want to and not have it dictated to paying for doctors or prescriptions especially at my age. I am still young and have a lot of things that I want to do and paying for doctors and prescriptions is not one of them.

After being able to eat whatever I wanted to for 45 years and never gaining an ounce I knew that the hardest thing for me was going to be changing my eating habits. I love food especially pizza and chips and portion control is not a part of my vocabulary. I could eat a medium size thin crust pizza all by myself and still can if I let myself. I would eat until I couldn’t put another bite in my mouth and that was all meals not with just pizza. I knew that this had to stop but I didn’t know how. Basically I had to learn how to eat all over again by getting back to the basics and learning portion control.

I started out just walking on the treadmill every morning before work. That eventually turned into jogging on the treadmill and I found anew love. Even though I was only running a few minutes at a time and thought I was going to die, I didn’t give up. I was on a mission to become a healthier person and nothing was going to stand in my way. After losing a few lbs, I starting feeling better but I was getting bored just walking and running on the treadmill and knew that I wanted something more but didn’t know what.

While staying up late one night, I starting thinking about what else I wanted to do to go along with my running. It was then that I saw an infomercial for P90X and remembering how much I liked weight lifting in school,I found myself listening to every word. Can you say “light bulb” moment? I immediately went to the Team Beachbody website to do some research. My heart was broke when I saw the price and knew that there was no way I could afford it at that time. After being unemployed for almost two years, I had too many bills that I had to take care of first. I tried for weeks to figure out how I could get this program and pay bills. I just happened to mention it to a friend of mine and they said that they would give me theirs because they couldn’t do it physically. Oh I was in heaven. Not only was I getting the program that I wanted but I didn’t have to pay for it.

After the first couple of weeks I decided to join Team Beachbody with a free membership to get help and some tips from others that were doing P90X. My coach got it contact with me right away and wanted to know if I would join his challenge group. I immediately said yes because I wanted accountability to myself. I logged into Facebook everyday and posted my workouts and nutrition. I got motivation and support with my struggles ( mostly with food) which I absolutely loved.

I hadn’t even finished my first round when my coach asked me if I wanted to try Shakeology. I was never the one to do protein drinks and honestly I didn’t think it would help but I wanted to keep an open mind so I said yes. He not only sent me all the flavors but he also sent me a sample of the Results and Recovery drink. My coach explained all the benefits from drinking Shakeology but I was hesitant to buy it since at the time I felt it cost more than I could afford. He explained to me that if I didn’t feel that it gave me everything he claimed it would I could get my money back. I thought since I didn’t have anything to lose I would give it a try for30 days. After 30 days of drinking Shakeology, I had more energy and I was sleeping better. I couldn’t believe the difference that it was making in my life and at that point I was realizing that I loved everything about Beachbody and what they had to offer. 6 months later I became a coach to help spread the word about Beachbody and I have never been more proud to be a part of what this company stands for.

I am proud to say that I have lost all the extra weight and have never been more fit in my life and can’t wait to rock my bathing suit this summer.

I have completed 4 rounds of P90X, 1 round of P90X 3, 1round of Les Mills Combat, 1 round of T25, and now working on my first round of the 21 Day Fix. Yep, you guessed it, still have problems with portion control…lol.

Thank you Beachbody for all that you do to help people live a better life and keeping people from walking into my cardiology office before they should be.