I NEVER PLANNED TO BECOME A WEIGHT LOSS COACH

Growing up, I had one goal: to become a world champion. I had no idea that a lifetime of competing, studying the human body, and learning what it takes to perform at the highest level would eventually lead me to helping other people transform their bodies—and their lives.

IT STARTED WITH SPORTS

I started competing in sports at a very young age. A big part of being a competitive athlete is nutrition. We eat to perform. I learned to think of the body like a high-performance race car. If you want it to perform at its best, you have to give it the right fuel. So from a young age, I studied nutrition and exercise. But I wasn’t just learning from books. I experimented on myself. I learned what worked, what didn’t, and how different approaches affected my performance in real life.

1986 — MY FIRST WEIGHT LOSS CLIENT

I have an older sister who was always more interested in the arts than sports. She took after our father. Over time, her lifestyle led to her gaining some extra weight. One day, she decided she wanted to make a change and asked me for advice. That was back in 1986—and without realizing it at the time, I had just become a weight loss coach. After my sister reached her weight loss goal, her friends started asking me for help. Then friends of my parents started coming to me too.

The more people I worked with, the more I realized that everybody is different. People respond differently to exercise, nutrition, and different approaches to losing weight. But what excited me most wasn’t only seeing people’s bodies change. I watched their confidence change too. Helping someone overcome something they had struggled with and watching them succeed felt a lot like what I had always loved about competition: Taking on a challenge and winning.

THEN IT BECAME PERSONAL

My father passed away in my hands at only 47 years old, shortly after I returned home from military service. Our neighbor, who was a nurse, and I performed CPR, but there was nothing we could do. He had suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm.

He was a great father. He worked hard and loved his wife and his children. But his own health was never high on his list of priorities. He worked long hours sitting at a table, drawing designs and working on projects. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. He didn’t exercise and paid very little attention to what he ate.

A year before his death, he was refused a heart transplant. His doctors told him that because of his overall physical condition, he wasn’t strong enough to make it through the surgery. So he went home knowing there was nothing more they could do.

Losing him changed the way I looked at health forever. I couldn’t stop thinking that if he had started taking care of himself years earlier, things could have been different. That’s when what I was doing became much more personal. Even today, I think of my father whenever a client tells me their doctor is happy with the improvements they’ve made to their health. Getting in shape isn’t only about how you look. Sometimes the reasons go much deeper.

I NEVER EXPECTED THIS TO BECOME MY LIFE’S WORK

Growing up, I had only one dream—to become a world champion. I never imagined that one day, some of my greatest victories would come from helping other people win their own battles. I never planned to become a weight loss and health coach. But today, I can’t imagine doing anything else.