My Name is Melissa and I am a 42-year-old wife and mother of three (twin 20 year old daughters and a 16 year old son).  I am a retired schoolteacher and currently coaching students in voice and acting.

I have always been careful with my diet and have kept my weight “in check” at around 140 pounds (I’m over 5’7”).  I always stayed fit by running, spending time on the elliptical machine and doing anything cardio.  Unfortunately, my life as I knew it imploded in 2013, when I was diagnosed with a very aggressive type of breast cancer at the age of 39.  Most people believe that when a person goes through chemotherapy, that they lose tons of weight.  This is NOT true.  On my particular “chemo cocktail” I gained over 30 pounds!!!  So I wasn’t only bald, but fat too!   I must admit, that during this time I would eat anything that I could keep down.  This would often times include sweets and carbs.  The Chemo and Radiation made me extremely weak, so much so that I didn’t have the strength to walk around the block or even to open a water bottle.

After a year of these life saving, horrendous treatments, I began to exercise again and try to get my pre-cancer body back. Have you ever tried to lose weight, and yet, you see no results?  You eat “right,” you exercise, you abstain from all desserts…but zilch….not one pound comes off.  This was exactly what happened to me.  I charted my weight loss on a calendar that I had taped to the bathroom wall above my scale.  For 6 weeks, I weighed myself daily and recorded the number.  I worked out hard, I ate clean and yet, my weight stayed exactly where it was when I started 6 weeks prior.  It would only go up or down by a pound or two.  I was devastated and hit yet another low in my bout with cancer. I honestly thought that I was never going to lose weight again. That this was just going to be my life…a life that I was grateful to even have.  I didn’t know what to do.  I thought about getting a trainer but that seemed too intimidating, PLUS what were they going to tell me that I didn’t already know or already do??  But since I was at an all time low as far as my body went, I had nothing to lose and started scouting out trainers at the gym.  One stood out and I summoned the courage to approach her.  I am so grateful that I did.  When I contacted Claudia and told her my problems, issues and concerns, she just flashed her knowing smile and assured me that she could help me, and believe me, she has.

Claudia gave me a diet and started training me five days a week.  I absolutely LOVE working out with Claudia.  I had no idea how hard I could actually push myself and how focused I could be. Claudia is a perfect combination of tough and sweet. She knows exactly how to motivate you, so that you will see results, all the while making you laugh.   She took the time to get to know me, my body make up, my weaknesses, my fears and has created a training and diet program to help me conquer them all.  She has been a great cheerleader for me on this hard but rewarding journey.  In six months I have lost more than 30 pounds and I feel the strongest and healthiest I have EVER felt.

I can’t believe the diet works, because it is the most food I have ever consumed in one day! Apparently, I wasn’t eating ENOUGH food to lose weight!  I’m eating every 2-3 hours…and I’m ALWAYS full.  I very rarely cheat because I don’t crave “bad” food while on this diet.

At the beginning of this journey, my goal was to lose twenty pounds.  Well, what is wonderful and amazing is that as I reach my goals, I find that I have developed new and improved goals. I have now started competing in Triathlons and I am actually going to run in my first marathon in October.  I am seeing more and more results in my muscle tone, a huge increase in lean muscle mass and more importantly; I have much more energy and feel so much stronger.  Claudia has shown me how all of this was possible and helped me achieve these results.  Claudia is amazing.  She is not only my trainer, she is my friend.