So far I have lost around 50 lbs… I don’t care about numbers anymore. Now the most important part is that I am healthy, stronger and I finally accept that I am an amazing, sexy woman who deserves the best.

We all have different challenges and different results but at the end our goals are the same:  be healthy, feel healthy, look good, and feel good.  In the past year I haved learned so much about myself, accomplished so much, and now I want to share my story with you…

My name is Nel — I am 39 years old. A few years ago, I promised myself that by 40 I would be in the best shape of my life. Well… I am there now!!  I am so proud of my results, I feel sexy, beautiful and super confident!!  However, it wasn’t always like that. I had big issues with my weight and the way I saw my body.

When I was four years old I was sexually molested by a member of my family. From that I learned to not trust people and I lost all self-respect. When I was a teen, my life style was really questionable — I put myself in some situations that impacted the rest of my life: I was date raped when I was 15 and again at 17. My way to cope with my feelings was through food. After all, if I don’t look good, nobody would like me therefore, nobody will hurt me…. Except me!  I hated myself — I hated my body.

For the longest time I didn’t like to see myself in the mirror to the point that I was covering every mirror in my house and avoiding to see my reflection in windows. I was in a self-destructive pathway that lasted way too long.

Finally, after a long journey, I learned to forgive and love myself for who I am and for all I accomplished in my life. The last part of my journey was to learn to love my body so I decided to lose weight and get fit. I lost 20lbs counting calories. I used an app to log my food intake… and hey, it worked!!! However, I was getting really sick. I felt weak, hungry and tired all the time, but I was on a “diet” and that’s the way you “should” feel when you are on a diet, right?!!

Then I was blessed to meet Jamie. She helped me to understand that I don’t need to suffer in order to get in shape, and that it is a fun and rewarding process.  Jamie created a meal and fitness plan that helped me to reach my goals. The first thing I learned was that in order to lose fat I needed to eat more and I don’t need to do crazy hours of cardio – because if I lift weights, my muscles will burn fat as they grow.  And that made a huge difference in my progress.

My journey has been fun; I had few tears and lots of laughs. Small and big accomplishments.  Jamie had been an important key to my progress; she is always there to support me, to push me and especially to remind me how strong I am.

So far I have lost around 50 lbs, and to be honest, I don’t care about numbers anymore. Now the most important part is that I am healthy, stronger and I finally accept that I am an amazing, sexy woman who deserves the best.