I worked a lot, 14 hour days were not uncommon and keeping those hours has left me with some really bad personal habits.

The worst was my eating. After my shift ended and I locked up the restaurant around 2am I would grab dinner from the 7-Eleven on the way home.

Most nights a pint of ice cream and a six-pack of beer was my meal. Two pints if I had a particularly bad day.

I wasn’t really surprised that my clothes were getting tighter. I knew that my lifestyle was terrible, but one day I couldn’t button my biggest pair of pants.  That was a surprise.

I had to call in sick to work because I didn’t have anything to wear.

That’s a true story. It would be an embarrassing story to tell you if it didn’t have a happy ending.

Now, here’s where you are very smart and I was very dumb. When you reached your tipping point, you reached out for help. At this very moment you are researching personal trainers. That’s why you’re reading this. That’s the way to be.

I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

I felt ashamed that I had let myself gain so much weight.

I wanted to hide until I could get rid of it and then pretend that it never existed.

So I tried to do it alone. Many, many times.

Monday

I would start my program on Monday and I would start strong. I would wake up at the crack of dawn and work out first thing in the morning. Work out hard.

I would follow that by choking down a protein shake, the first of 3 I would have throughout the day. After a shower it was egg whites and steamed veggies. Lunch would be another protein shake and dinner would be a boneless skinless chicken breast and steamed veggies. Dessert would be…another protein shake.

My stomach clenches hard just remembering those days.

Tuesday

Tuesday would look just like the day before with the exception of the workout. I would be sore so I could only manage half of what I was planning to do before I was exhausted. I would be diligent about my eating however and finish the day strong.

Wednesday

Wednesday was always a little shaky. My body would be extremely sore. Like can’t bend over to pick up my keys sore. I would also be starving. That’s not a great combo.

After work I would find myself pulling into the 7-Eleven parking lot. Ice cream and beer seemed like a reasonable reward for how hard I’d been working.

Thursday

Thursday I would try to stay on plan but more likely than not I would have a burger for lunch to help ease the hangover from the night before.

Once Thursday was down the tubes I figured that I had blown it. I might as well enjoy myself through the weekend and start my fitness program on Monday. Rinse and repeat. Forever.

It took many many attempts and failures before I finally got tired of that rollercoaster and decided to get serious about my fitness. At the time, I didn’t know how serious it would become.

I started by throwing out everything that I thought I knew about fitness. It just wasn’t working.

I needed to start from scratch and build my program from the ground up. First, I needed to shore up my knowledge.

I started reading a lot about fitness. Actually, I tried to read EVERYTHING about fitness. My reading turned into study and eventually, experimentation. I became my own test subject.

There were many setbacks along the way and many times I wanted to quit from frustration. I don’t know what it was that drove me to keep going, but I did and I’m glad that I did.

I found the answer that I was looking for. There IS a formula for burning fat and building muscle and once I discovered it everything changed.

Once I knew how to do it right, the fat just melted off of my body.

When my friends noticed they begged me to train them and I did (for free). Their results were just as good as mine. It didn’t take long for what happened next to happen.

Before I could quite wrap my head around what I was doing, I left that restaurant job in the dust and I started my personal training company.

It’s cliché to say that the rest is history, but it’s true.  Here we are 15+ years later.

Most days you will find me at The Fix Gym and it’s still the best job in the world.

I remember how terrible it was to feel trapped in my own body. Helping people break free from that is my life’s work.