Women's Weight Loss Plan

My name is Grace and I am like you—I want to feel good about my appearance and be fit. There were two distinct periods in my life when I did not feel this way. Each had a significant impact on the way I felt about myself and interacted with the people around me.

The first time was a few years into my relationship with my husband Nathan. During those first few years, I gained weight, going from 130 pounds to around 170—note that this was before I began working out, let alone training other people. The image to the right shows how much I weighed (and shows my beautiful stepdaughter Mia when she was younger!).

I am smiling in the picture and that was a happy moment, but looking at pictures like that, or looking in the mirror, made me unhappy. I will not bore you with all of the details, but I was down on myself and wanted to make a change but did not want to admit that. It got bad enough that it affected my relationship with Nathan, as I did not want him to see me naked.

It was Nathan who helped push me in the right direction. He saw I was unhappy, encouraged me to do something about, and offered to help me. To a point, I was mad at him since somewhere in my mind he was calling me fat even though he was not, and it took me a while to come around, but I finally did.

I started by going to the gym one day per week, eating better, and overall just being mindful of what I needed to do to reach my goals. It was not easy, but I kept pushing forward. Nathan helped as well, though sometimes I still got mad at him when he would push me to do more, even though I know he was just trying to help. It was something mental that I had to get over.

The mental side is a big part of the process for me, for you, for anyone. It took me quite a bit of time to do something to change, took me even more time to become comfortable with the exercise and eating right, and took me just as much time to understand the things that held me back in the beginning and that still affected me, but that I needed to change. Eventually, I worked to the body you see in the images at the top of this page by using the approaches included in the women's weight loss plan.

Beyond what I look like in the image—and I think I look hot—I gained so much fitness. I was able to do things in the gym that I never knew I could do, and that transferred into me being able to do more outside of the gym. In the physical task, there were many guys I could outdo, which was awesome!