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Well growing up I was a typical kid, I was always referred to as “the big kid” or as “big boned.” I would get a little belly and grow several inches and the stomach would go away, eventually the belly came and well never left. It slowly grew.
When I was 10, my sister was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer and had to learn to deal with stress at a very young age
As a teenager I wasn’t the most popular kid, I tried to play sports but wasn’t very good at it. I had injured my knee during baseball and had major reconstructive surgery done to my knee which required extensive therapy and them actually breaking my leg during surgery. I continued to have knee issues in both of my knees that required additional surgeries.
As life progressed I continued to slowly get bigger. I was constantly eating my mother cooked the best food, loved everything she made always had seconds and thirds of meals and I never missed a dessert.
in 1996 at the age of 16, I began volunteer with the local ems squad love helping people especially during crisis. I went to emt school got certified love helping people.
I graduated high school in 1999 and and about a year later I had a very unpleasant life changing experience which caused me to go into depression and change my entire life. How I have dealt with stress was through my stomach and food.
I continued to work in ems and decided to make it a career. In my career of EMS I unfortunately had people died and deal with very unpleasant things. In any type of emergency service type of jobs there is no guaranteed breaks everything is fast paced and well cheap isn’t healthy. When I started out in ems I was a large shirt and over the years I progressed up to a 4xl and 48″ waist. I was drinking on a regular basis and eating to make myself feel better.
I got hurt in August of 2013 (33yrs old) at the local ems squad building and that injury will essentially end my full time career as a paid street emt. I re-injured my original knee injury and the surgery that was needed required my knee joint to be pinned. The Dr had told me I would fully recover within 3 or 4 weeks well lets just say that was far from the truth at the time. I went through the surgery and it went from a scope type surgery to open knee surgery. I went through one year of physical therapy. I had a bad experience with he initial physical therapy place who never moved my knee and kept me locked in a surgical brace for over 6 weeks. Once i actually got to a good therapy place lets just say they had to manually bend my knee and it wasn’t pleasant for anyone. Never got full motion back during physical therapy.
As I was going through therapy the physical therapist noticed that I was slowly dropping weight and told me when I’m done therapy i better keep up with the weight loss and working on the knee.
2/11/14 Workman’s comp stopped physical therapy, I was given permanent restrictions of no lifting of 200lbs or more, never crouch or squat, and can occasionally knee as per FCE (functional capacity test) this restriction made it to where I couldn’t work in EMS as an EMT because that is all of the duties of an EMT and I was given permanent restrictions of not being able to do that.
I started a membership at retro in Northfield Feb of 2014 , kinda winged it. Tried some of the training which they kept changing trainers and I hate not having someone consistent. Was a member there for over a year and very unhappy. I had spoken to one of my bartenders Christine who had told me she was in process of becoming a trainer, she slowly made little suggestions and tried helping me with my crappy diet. She got me started using the myfitness pal app to track calorie intake.
I had tried many things including not eating, eating once or twice a day, I was using pre-workouts at the recommendation of staff at retro and learned after talking with Christine that they were very unhealthy as well as some of the diet pills and “quick fixes.” Christine had made some recommendations on foods to avoid and what I should be eating. I kept telling her she it wasn’t working. She had told me I need to stop the drinking because it was not helping and all I am doing is drinking empty calories. Lets just say I wasn’t the most receptive person.
December of 2015 after some time had gone by Christine needed her cpr certification for her training certification. At this point I had slowly began to be more receptive and started listening to what she had said. She asked me if I would consider changing gyms and letter her work with me and lets just saybI told her I am done with trainers and i told “they all suck” they just want money to leave, they don’t care. More time went on and I kept thinking about it and she was still willing to give me suggestions at retro.
I kept telling her meridian was too expensive and I can pay 19.95 plus tax why switch. She kept telling me about the classes and that she would work with me. I told her if i switch gyms and she works with me I will give her a year and she better not leave or give up on me because I already had a hate towards trainers and well I liked her as a friend and didn’t want to hate her.
Mid December of 2015 I went to meridian fitness, played phone tag with membership rep’s before hand and decided to just go there. The General Manager Blair assisted me in getting my membership reactivated. I had walked on the treadmill that week when I saw Christine I told her I activated my membership. She wanted to know what day I wanted to work with her. We started January 20th of 2016. She never gave up on me, read the training progress to see how things started and evolved in training progress.