As someone who has spent most of her life overweight and a considerable amount of adulthood trying to lose it, I know first hand what it feels like to get tired. Tired of starting over. Tired of not trusting yourself. Tired of being fat.

At my highest weight, I was 390 pounds. One leg hurt from the weight of the other resting on top while I slept. I set out to finally lose the weight for good and I remember weighing 258 pounds and realizing that was my “pre-baby” weight. The only thing is, my son was 13 years old at the time. I celebrated…and I looked GOOD!

I had tried nearly every weight loss clinic you could think of even ones provided by multiple physicians, dietitians and psychologists. Slowly but surely, life happened and I stopped going to the gym. I stopped tracking my food intake, and I kept celebrating making it to 258 pounds. Only thing is, one day I stepped on the scale and it read 331.

That’s when I realized I had spent years learning how to lose weight but never learned how to live at a lower weight. I knew how to follow a plan. I knew how to get myself motivated. I knew how to lose over 100 pounds.

What I didn’t know was how to build a lifestyle that could survive real life events. Looking back, I was not building health. I was renting results. Every time life got busy, money was funny, I was stressed from (insert school/work/grieving, etc.), those results expired because they were not built on habits I could sustain for life. I also just wanted the weight off no matter how healthy I was as a result.

Strategic Wellness was born from the realization that the lifestyle that got you here is not the lifestyle that takes you forward. At first, the goal was to lose fat. Now it was just a byproduct of loving myself at every stage and creating the health I knew I deserved. You are allowed to become someone new. The goal is to build a life that supports the health you want long after the excitment, motivation, and challenges are over. We are no longer renting results. We are building habits, routines, and systems that support the life we want to live.