Aaron S.

Colorado Springs, CO

aaron s. holiday 2020

Aaron’s Story

I am very grateful for the opportunity of turning this year around all thanks to the 60day Challenge and our Life Time staying open during most of the Pandemic. It has been a roller-coaster ride on how I got to weighing 267 pounds but these last 60 days have put me back on track both physically and mentally. I feel more energy throughout the day, less pain, and more mental clarity. This year I learned health is a gift, a gift that only I could give myself, no doctor or nurse can make me healthy, and if I want to live without fear in this pandemic, I need to get to work.

In the past, I did not stick through to the end of anything I said I would and this year I broke that habit and stayed on track for 60 days! The e-mail updates and consistent reminders on the training app got me through the holiday season with very little disastrous eating sessions. I also appreciated the care put into the weekly videos that helped impart confidence, information, and value in a concise format so it did not feel overwhelming or like homework.

Overall I do not think I could have kept the mental drive and focus needed to transform so much fat in such a time if it were not for the community of friends at the gym. Also thanks to my trainer Nikki for encouraging me in ways that worked, and being able to show up at 10 PM and put in a solid workout after most gyms would be closed or shut down permanently due to Covid-19. The legal team who kept our Life Time open during the Virus also deserves gratitude because I had little alternative but to go outside for a run in the cold…50 cable channels and NFL football to watch sure beats jogging in the cold.  Despite the challenges stacked against us all this year, I managed to turn around some key health metrics and break the bad habits that got me to where I found myself earlier in the year.

Overall I am most proud of lowering the “Visceral Fat Level” of my “InBody test” from a 13 to a 7. It estimates the amount of fat surrounding internal organs and is tied to heart and cardio health. With a score of 10 and over being unhealthy and under 10 considered “not going to die early due to being fat around my stomach.” Another number I am grateful for changing, because of its ancillary benefits, is the fact that I lost 47 lbs. It is not that I hit a numerical goal or anything like that but the realization that I have more energy in my body and can get up and move around with far less pain than before. Back pain is caused by a lot of things but in my totally uninformed opinion works something like this: I Imagined it as living the entire day with a  45 lb plate around my stomach and having to do everything with all that weight stressing bones and taxing the overall frame of my body. It has to slow everything down and make it more stressful to function. Well, I was able to shed that lifting plate and now have the added mobility that comes from not lugging that giant weight around! Another tangible benefit was that, without that weight getting in the way, my Yoga practice improved in flexibility and breath control, which ties in with improved mental clarity. Finally, my cardio health greatly improved, the ability to run up a single flight of stairs and not feel winded has finally went away.

Please keep in mind this was not a crash diet or insane workouts, torture, or starvation. I went to the gym a mere 5 days a week, ate healthy foods like the videos told me to do, and just cut out late-night binge sessions as well as reduce sugar like Nikki had recommended me to try. Everything worked and contributed to the consistent turnaround. Nothing was magic, through moderate lifestyle changes and consistency I would say this was possible. Not magic, magic is not real, in the past, I had been hoping for magic to be an actual thing and me be the one who found the hidden secrets no one else had… My body is a product of what I do to it.

I did some unhealthy things to my body in the past, thankfully it didn’t break entirely. Now going forward and in the last 60 days, with the help of friends, trainer, and Life Time staying open I was able to shift the rudder on my health and chart a new heading towards mobility and long life.  I feel it is achievable to maintain these gains because I did it through consistent effort. Going to the gym and starting with a long walk on the treadmill is a habit now. Not eating crap food late at night is a habit I have changed. Eating when hungry and stopping eating when not hungry is a habit now. These are the things I feel the 60day is really about, not trying to simply educate us on the facts but help us put into practice and nurture those facts into habits that last…dare I say…a lifetime?! :)

I am extremely thankful for this challenge offered by Life Time and my gym of 9 years as well as proud of myself for finishing what I started!

Thank you for being facilitators and members of a community, no human is an island!

Sincerely,

Aaron