My story is not unlike anyone else’s I would imagine.  When covid hit and the gyms closed I used that as my excuse to stop going and cancel my membership. As time passed, I became more content with becoming more out of shape as laziness overtook any motivation to go back. I started on the Life Time 60day Challenge after getting back into the gym after nearly 3 years since covid. I had been increasingly lazy and more apathetic to my body becoming overweight and not caring at all during the following years. I finally got myself back into the gym this past December after breaking my foot and needing to rehab it with weight lifting. I also knew I needed help with motivation to finally start getting back on track with my weight and my eating habits. When I saw the sign in the gym for the 60day Challenge I signed up right away as a way to keep myself accountable for my own weight loss and overall body transformation.

Going into the challenge I was looking to lose weight and body fat percentage, rehab my foot and regain muscle mass where I could. My goal, a very loose term, was to lose 20 pounds. I knew this was only achievable by changing my eating habits, which I needed help and motivation with. My numbers at the start were:

• Weight: 231 lbs
• Skeletal Muscle Mass: 104
• Body Fat Percentage: 23

I am happy to say I was able to lose 17 pounds, gained 4 pounds of muscle mass and lost 7 percent body fat! At the end, I weighed in at 214 pounds, my highest muscle mass was 108, and body fat was down to 16 percent.

At the start of this journey, I met with my trainer, Bob H, to go over my intake assessment and put together a meal plan and workout plan I could follow. Bob also got me on a variety of Life Time supplements to help with my goals including Life Time Protein Powder, AM/PM Performance Multivitamins, and Life Greens. The Meal Plan and motivation of training sessions with Bob at 5 and 6 am kept me on track throughout this experience, without which I don’t think I would have done on my own. The accountability of being able to link my food diary app and fitness tracker app to the Life Time Training App was also a tremendous help with motivation and staying on track.

With all the isolation during covid, my eating habits had become so bad I was in the worst shape of my life, all the clothes in my closet were becoming increasingly tight and almost unwearable. I knew I needed to eat healthier and exercise, but had no motivation to do so and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stop the sugar-eating habit. During covid I entered rehab for alcohol and became sober in May of 2020, what I didn’t know however was that by quitting alcohol I was depriving my body of a lot of sugar it used to get from alcohol. I now understand that sugar craving was me replacing alcohol with cookies, candy and ice cream on a daily and nightly basis. I understand now why my body was craving this sugar as a replacement for alcohol and getting on a daily meal plan was essential to staying on track. The meal plans in this challenge were an excellent tool I used every day to stay on track. I especially liked how if I didn’t like a certain meal I was free to replace it with another I had previously made to continue eating healthy and kick my sugar craving habits!

Thanks to Life Time, the 60day Meal Plans, and especially my trainer/coach/nutritionist Bob I was able to get my health back on track.  I now have the tools essential to maintain this healthy lifestyle and most importantly the nutrition knowledge to stay on this path!

Did I achieve my goals? Yes

Do I have more work to do? Yes

Do I know I can do this going forward and keep on track? YES!

This was not a 60 days and done for me, this is the start of a better lifestyle for myself and keeping off the sugar weight!