Who cares about the number!

This one is dedicated to the ladies. You wonderful women who work hard, sweat, and limit calories to reach this magical number. This number controls your thoughts and actions and is sometimes the only thing you care about. In some extreme cases you determined divas will starve yourself, do excessive cardio and weight training and not realizing that these things are damaging your bodies. The good news is that now the mindset of you wonderful women is on being fit by focusing on body composition, functionality, and overall health and not aesthetics and that all mighty NUMBER.

This has been a challenge for Tiff and now that she is going to be my wife, I hope now I can talk about her fitness journey. In the beginning she was stuck on a certain number that she thought was her ideal body weight. First thing is, we didn’t go see her physician to find out what her ideal weight really should be. In the beginning she picked a “number” and that number has changed more than once in the first six months of her journey. The funny thing is, we have no idea what her ideal weight will be until she gets there. In her younger years she was active and athletic and over time she gained some extra weight due to external and internal factors that she has been continually overcoming on a daily basis.

My fiancé has been through some very difficult lows and challenging situations in the past couple of years. Sometimes I don’t know if she really knows how amazing she is and what she has accomplished and continues to accomplish. Now in her fitness challenges, she has put the same amount of determination into changing her lifestyle for the better, not only for herself but also for her daughter. She has completely changed her lifestyle. Increasing her fruit, vegetable and water intake along with training 4-6 times per week. These changes have not only reduced that number but it also has given her more energy, increased her mood and she is doing things and seeing changes that she never thought possible.

Tiffany is a beautiful woman that I saw from that first day I laid eyes on her. She was living in the wrong body and I don’t just mean physically. Her self-esteem was low and she was hurt bad. She limited herself due to negative influence from external parties and years of being told certain lies that she eventually started to believe. The worst part, like most of us was that she was her hardest critique. She has now gotten herself out of that environment and has truly started a new life and she has told me that she feels like she is getting back to her young, ambitious and confident self. She has been one of my best clients and is now a gym rat like me and loves all the changes that have happened; how she can bench 135lbs, and squat 205lbs, she can do 6-10 full body weight dips and run 10k. Now she can where sleeveless shirts, buy lulu and bench clothing which has lead us to have a new shopping problem on our hands….lol jk. Her best friend showed her an old picture of herself seven years ago and she was 15lbs lighter then but looks WAY better now, proving that a number is just that… a NUMBER.

Everybody that sees her is amazed by the changes she has made and has even inspired people to start to live a healthy life including me. It’s easy to maintain a healthy life if that’s all you know, but to change the way you’ve lived your whole life and maintain that is true success. The best part is nobody cares about the number, they will never say you look any different once you tell them. So why should you care about it? Once you reach your ideal weight that is determined by your doctor or other health professionals, it will fluctuate up and down 5-10lbs, which is normal. Instead of focusing on the number only, I challenge you to focus on everything else that living a healthy and optimal life has to offer you. Trust me, you are better off and will love seeing and noticing all the other amazing changes and positives that will happen in life.

Until next time

God Bless

Photo: Tiffany in 2007 at 170lbs and Tiffany in 2015 at 185lbs