When I first met Amanda almost 4 years ago, I had made up my mind- NO MORE DIETS!!

When I first met Amanda almost 4 years ago, I had made up my mind- NO MORE DIETS!! I had tried (and I mean REALLY tried) just about everything. I was 50 y.o, 5’2” on a good hair day, and I was about 165 lbs.- the heaviest I had been except when I was pregnant. I had been on and off diets since the 6th grade. I was never horribly obese, just very aware that I was usually the heavier one of my friends. I had had only rare moments when I actually liked my body, how I looked in pictures, or how my clothes fit, and those moments never lasted very long. I had been to Weight Watchers off and on since 1994. I had tried Atkins, the Zone Diet, Slim Fast, the Virgin Diet, the Healthy Heart diet (the one where one day all you eat is bananas!), Beyond Diet, and an all juice diet after watching “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.” I even attended weekly, private, small group sessions with an RDH and calorie counted for close to 2 years.  I would see results, but plateau and never get to that “magic” number. And worse yet, I was always hungry! The RDH had me on 1100 calories a day. I could barely function. But 4 years ago, I needed to do something. I was one year away from our son’s bar mitzvah, and I wanted to look my best! After a lot of research, I decided step one was to knock out sugar. I have always loved being physically active, but had trouble sticking to a program. So, I decided to hire a personal trainer- enter Amanda! I shared my goal of losing 35 lbs before my son’s party. We decided 2 sessions of PT per week, plus she would give me a program to do on my own. Then she said- OK, what are you doing about nutrition? You cannot out exercise a bad diet I shared my plan of using My Fitness Pal and keeping to 1200 calories/ day. She said if you want I can help you, and you can eat more than 1200 calories/day. I was skeptical, but I hate being hungry and I love food, so I said let’s do it! And we did. She was right there the whole time, tweaking my numbers when needed, telling me to be patient and hang in there, making me eat more food than I ever have allowed myself. Over time, Amanda has had me make little changes that have made a huge difference. The best thing for me is I know that these changes are lifelong. I will not go back to bad habits, because these good habits have become second nature. Not only do I look better, but I feel terrific, and I know how to nourish my body. And I have come to appreciate my body and how it looks and what it can do. Never once have I looked back and felt I had missed out because of a restrictive diet.  We have made this work through vacations, traveling, attending parties and events because life happens and you do not want to miss it!