I started the 60-Day Challenge a few days after moving to New York continuing my career as LifeCafé Manager at the Garden City Life Time. I have always practiced living a healthy way of life by staying active, eating well, and focusing on mental health. My passion for healthy living dove me to start a career with Life Time back in August 2015. In December of 2016 I was involved in a car accident that caused some lower back and nerve complications. Those complications prevented me from lifting any heavy weights and doing any rigorous workouts. I spent most of last year doing physical therapy and just eating well. Before I moved to New York, my doctor lifted the weight restriction and encouraged me to begin working out again. A week after the move it was time to register for another 60-Day Challenge. I began the Challenge really to meet and get to know the many members of Life Time Garden City. This was the 60-Day Challenge I entered where I decided to make some real goals and take them seriously. Shannon DiGirolamo was my 60-Day coach, the first person to ask me if I wanted to sign up. I have to say thank you to Shannon because even though we mostly worked opposite schedules she made sure to find time to meet with me weekly and discuss my progress towards my fitness goals. Without her I may have never started this Challenge and I most definitely would not have had the transformation I did. After the first week seeing my body transform I decided to go all in with workouts, monitoring rest, getting adequate nutrition, and supplementation.

The most fun part of the 60-Day Challenge was meeting all the members of Life Time by doing TEAM training and partaking in a lot of the group fitness classes. Katie Porello leads an amazing TEAM Cut class, as much as I liked breaks she made sure I did not get many of them in her workouts. Jason Giles’ TEAM Alpha was perfect to help me keep my back strong and form perfect. I had the most fun in Jonathan’s C9 and TCX classes lots of sweat and great motivation. Mental alignment came from Root with Christina Vaccacio on Sunday mornings. Some other very influential trainers that motivated me along the way of my 60-Day transformation include; Corey Braunschweiger, Christopher Ferraro, Gary Rock, Marcelo Esperon, John Kelly, Lauren Vaccari, Michael Liebowitz, and PT Manager Kenneth Lippe.

Over the past year I have become pretty familiar with how my metabolism responds. I tried to keep nutrition basic, less than 50g of sugar a day, at least 200g of protein. No dairy, no trans fats, no alcohol, and only good carbs. If you are hungry eat something small or take BCAAS, do not lose muscle mass.

I became a huge supporter of LT brand supplements including; Beef Protein, AM/PM Vitamins, Creatine, L-Glutamine, BCAAs, UCan, Fish Oil, Calcium Magnesium, Vitamin D, Circumin, and Life Greens.

I owe all my success to the support of my personal family, my walking companion – Gizmo, as well as the support of my Life Time family. I have to first thank my Assistant Manager Julie Matzen and my General Manager, Doug Newhook who welcomed me to my new home in Garden City and supported me in my role so I could live a healthy way of life with plenty of time for work outs. Next I would have to thank our Executive Chef, Ryan Dodge for putting together a delicious and nutrient dense menu that helped me achieve my fitness goals. Nutrition is the biggest thing to make real transformations happen. There are two nutritionists that stand out most to me, Jason Barry of Alpharetta and Todd Ortowski from Johns Creek who are a wealth of knowledge on how the body works and how it responds to what you put into it. Jason does a particularity great job of breaking down scientific processes of the body in a way to easily understand. For the lean muscle grown I can thank Jasper Price, my first personal trainer from Alpharetta. He saw something in me, so he decided to motivate and teach me how to get the most out of my workouts. He taught me good form, workout patterns, resting times, and always encouraged clean nutrition. It was truly amazing to be working with a world-class trainer like Jasper during the start of my Life Time career. I would really like to thank both Michael Raymond and Miguel Ortiz, both from the Atlanta Life Time, for all their support physically and mentally while I was going through a year of physical therapy and stress. They are true ambassadors of what Life Time stands for and were always there in my corner helping me feel confident when things were gloom. They went out of their way for me and the Café time and time again. They have the biggest hearts and truly care about all of their Life Time family.

This Challenge has been a lot of fun, I love the fact that during the holiday season I gained 12 lbs but was able to cut my body fat by more than half. I will continue practicing a healthy way of living and enjoy doing it with all the friends I made at the Garden City Life Time. Thank you.