Learn to love yourself.. the rest will fall into place.

On Sunday I had an opportunity to attend the taping of the final reveal show for a couple on Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition. They are a local couple who have worked out with the trainers from my Crossfit box (pretty awesome!), and who committed the past year to transforming their lives for not only their children, but for themselves.

Chris Powell, the host of the show, is one of the most inspiring people (and one of the most good-looking..) to me. He is a personal trainer, but he is also a life coach, whose goal is not only to help people to lose weight, but to completely transform them. 

Chris Powell and me.. 😉

Something Chris said that resonated with me was that transformation cannot happen until you can learn to love yourself. Until you can learn that you are important and until you can learn to value yourself, no amount of diet and exercise is going to make you successful on your health and fitness journey. Yes, anyone can lose weight. And yes, anyone can commit to diet and exercise and many people will be successful at it. But until you really learn to accept yourself, those changes are only temporary. Change happens from within.

I haven’t had a particularly difficult life, and never had any physical or mental limitations, but I have had to overcome some things in my past that had broken me down but made me who I am today. My first serious boyfriend at age 19 was controlling and would forbid me from going out with my friends and when I tried to break up with him, he refused to let it go and pretty much stalked me. From there, I was in another long-term relationship, married in 2005, just two months before my dad passed away, which was probably the toughest time I ever went through. I was divorced in 2009 and left with the house and an uncomfortable mortgage payment that I think I am stuck with forever. Then my last long-term relationship,  just about three years, half of the time I didn’t know if we were still going to be together the next day and despite being best friends, it was just an emotional roller coaster. While these things didn’t affect me physically on the outside, they absolutely affected me on the inside.

But now.. I have found Crossfit. And through the physical and mental torture I put myself through about five times a week, I have found me. And I am doing everything for me. It is not selfish at all, but it is something that everyone needs to do to take complete control of your life. Like the airlines tell you to always put the mask on yourself first, and then help the next person? That’s how your life needs to be-  you first, then everything else will follow. Once you are happy with yourself, you start to consciously eliminate the negative things in your life and welcome the positive. There isn’t always tangible evidence of changing like weight loss or anything like that, but I can’t even describe how much better I feel now than where I was at three months ago.

I can’t disclose any details of the show (until it airs and you all check me out on TV on ABC sometime in the late spring), but both contestants went through amazing transformations on the outside, but also on the inside with the help of Chris (I met him – we’re on a first name basis now ;)).

This is what I want to do with my life. I want to not only show people the right way to diet and exercise, but the right way to change how they feel about themselves.

Last Monday, I passed my personal trainer certification. I am now officially an ISSA-certified personal trainer.

You would think I would be blogging and tweeting and posting this all over the place, but it’s a bit surreal. I have been studying for the past 8 months, and studying even harder for the past 3 months, putting in an hour here or there on the weekdays and multiple hours on the weekend. The fact that I am now a certified fitness trainer is still sinking in, and I am still trying to figure out what to do next.

I want to take on clients. I want to do personal training, but I also want to help people to get them to the point where they learn to value themselves and love themselves enough to make sacrifices and make the changes needed so they can have a total transformation. I want people to feel the way about themselves the way that I feel about me.

And now to plan..