Less than two months after turning 30 years old and just 6 days into 2010, I found myself laid off from the best job I’d ever had… and you know what? I’m turning this into my biggest advantage ever! This is my Fitness Quest…
The truth is, I’ve been skinny my whole life. I’m one of those people everyone hates, the one that can eat anything and not gain weight. What most people don’t realize, however, is that I hate it more than they do. At the age of 16, I stood at 5’11” and was just under 130lbs—and pretty much stayed there until I was 24, when I started working out with my first trainer, Jonathan. Not only did he kill me but he put me on the “eat every damn thing you see” diet. Of course there were a few guidelines but not many! I was eating every two hours, shoving full meals down my throat. It was effective though: in one month I gained 21 pounds of solid muscle to top out at 150lbs. But no matter how excited I was about it, I just couldn’t continue that eating schedule. It got to the point where I was simply so sick of eating and literally hated food.
I spent the next two years working out with Jonathan, but without the food intake I never saw any more real weight gain. What did happen however was that I became absolutely fascinated by health, nutrition, and exercise science. While I never gained anymore weight, I was getting stronger by the day and my muscles more defined. After two years, I decided it was time to shake things up a bit—and that meant quitting my job, selling all my worldly goods, renting a car and with nothing but the money in my pocket (no job or place to stay), move to NYC. After a few weeks of couch surfing on strangers’ couches and just narrowly missing the streets, I found a place to live in Hell’s Kitchen. I was ecstatic to finally be in my long dreamt-of home.
By this point, I hadn’t worked out in over two months and was seeing the body I’d worked so hard for shrink to nothing due to my voracious metabolism. This was a huge disappointment for me as I loved my body, I loved exercise, and I loved the feeling I got every time I walked in the gym. So when it was time to look for a job, I bypassed my original passion of music with one now even dearer to me: health and fitness. I decided my best move was to go work for a gym to get my foot in the door of the fitness industry. There was an opening in my local gym as a ‘membership rep,’ selling gym memberships. I made pretty good money in the beginning because I was so excited about the opportunity to introduce people to the world of fitness! I loved calling people to see how their first experience was. I started to see a pattern though, in that more and more people were telling me that they hadn’t been back since they joined. After a while I got disenchanted and spent a lot more time on the floor talking to trainers than I did selling memberships. I had the ear of over 30 personal trainers that each specialized in their own areas of fitness. I couldn’t get enough information; I would ask hundreds of questions if they let me. I’d even ask different trainers the same questions to see how their answers differed. It was an amazing learning experience for me that I truly valued.
While I did have the benefits of learning fitness information and a free gym membership, I was still paying moving expenses and couldn’t afford the particular nutrition my body needed to reach my goals. I knew I had shape, but I also wanted size. I wanted it so badly I could taste it, but it just didn’t seem possible at that point in time. Eventually I was spending so much time on the floor with the trainers that my sales really started to suffer, and I got bumped down to man the front desk until a different position opened up. This position didn’t pay very well and I sunk even further into debt. It was infuriating: I knew what I had to do, I was brimming with knowledge, but I didn’t have the right tools to do it even though I worked at a gym! I was considering becoming a trainer myself (I already had the knowledge base) when one of our members came in and offered me a position at her company I just couldn’t refuse. Just like that, I was out of the fitness world and no bigger (although stronger and more knowledgeable) than when I went in. I worked for the new company for two years, earning a nice promotion after one year and paying off all my debt. I started buying better food, but I was working such long shifts that I couldn’t ever seem to find time to get in the gym. Once again, everything I’d worked for was disappearing before my eyes.
In November 2009 I turned 30. While I’m not one to say that 30 is old, I did find that when you leave your twenties, it’s a good time to take a long hard look at your life and priorities. The great thing was that I was happy. Twenty-nine was the best year of my life: I’d traveled to Europe, gone skydiving, hang gliding, joined the Polar Bear Club in 13 degree F waters and so much more. I was in a strong position at work and had great friends. To top it all off, I was out of debt, making great money, and lived in the heart of what I consider the greatest city on Earth. There was one problem though, a problem that was aching in the bottom of my soul. A problem that I just couldn’t put to rest because my want for it was so strong. I realized that through all this time, I had never accomplished my fitness goals. I wasn’t even close to the physical goals I had set for myself six years earlier and to make matters worse, I was in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of never even setting foot in the gym. I needed a renewal, some time to put my priorities in order, but just didn’t have it. I loved my job and was doing well financially, but it was in the way of everything I wanted. To make matters worse, who in their right mind would leave the best job they’ve ever had in an economy like ours? It was a sad realization that I simply didn’t have the time and didn’t know what to do to reach my goals.
Then, less than two months after turning 30, it happened. Upon arriving to work, I was told that due to economic conditions my position, effective immediately, was terminated. I didn’t know what to think. How could this be happening to me? What was I going to do?
Then like a switch being flipped, while receiving the worst news I could imagine, I began to smile. While my boss probably thought I’d lost it, I realized that while this isn’t ever “good” news, in a way for me this was exactly what I needed. This was my out. This was what my soul wanted to do but my mind was too scared to do. Not only was I free to do what I wanted, but the timing couldn’t be better: it’s a new decade and I just turned 30! I vowed silently to myself before I even left that office that this was a chance from the heavens and it would not go to waste. This is a chance to live MY dreams. This is a chance to accomplish ALL the things I’d had burning inside me for so long. I wanted to try my best to turn this hardship into an advantage.
So why am I telling you this? Because I want to share this experience; to have accountability and maybe even inspire someone else to go after the goals they’ve been chasing for so many years. There hasn’t ever been a better time for me to live up to my potential. I plan to use this platform to be transparent in my transformation in fitness and in life, and I hope it will inspire some of you to join me.
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