Beth Finn's Story
Hello, world! My name is Beth Finn. I've never been a skinny girl, but as I approached 30, the pounds kept piling on. I tried every diet and exercise plan in the book. None of them were sustainable for me for more than a short time. I have a very busy life, and eating right and exercising were never a priority for me.
In the fall of 2008, I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. This diagnosis hit me very hard because I knew I had done it to myself. I knew that it was preventable. I also knew I could undo it. The Endocrinologist didn't put me on medicine right away. He gave me three months to get it under control on my own. I did not want to have to add another prescription to my daily routine. He sent me to a Diabetes Management class and something about it clicked in my head. I knew I had to change my priorities.
Change of Priorities
New Year's Eve that year, I moved to Philadelphia. Little did I know how important that would be! I joined the closest gym I could find to my apartment. I also made the decision that I could not make the changes I needed to by myself. I had tried so many times before and I hadn't been successful for more than a short time. I always gained the weight back. I knew I needed to make changes to my lifestyle that I could live with forever.
Even though it was expensive, I decided I needed to hire a personal trainer to help me. I spent several months working with a trainer at the gym.
I started to get a little stronger. I started to lose a little weight. Little by little, I started to change my eating habits. I switched to whole grains. I tried to eat less fat. I tried to manage my portions. I was still eating almost all of my meals out, but I was ordering differently. It was a start and it bought me three more months from the Endocrinologist.
The First Relentless Transformation
In the Spring of 2009, I met Roger Dickerman. He was starting his own private personal training business. Since the trainer I had been working with had left the gym, it worked out perfectly.
Back then, before Relentless Fitness had a permanent studio home, Roger and I used to work out in Washington Square Park or, if the weather was bad, in his home fitness studio. But on this particular day, we were in the park, doing some exercises near the flag poles.
Roger told me he had an idea for an experiment, to try something called a Relentless Transformation, and he wanted to take one male client and one female client through it, videotaping and recording their measurements each week. Figuring he already had someone else in mind, I told him I'd be happy to be a guinea pig for his experiment some time. Some time turned out to be then.
The very first Relentless Transformation was just Roger and me. His male client had gotten injured right before the start of the project, and he couldn't participate. It was 12 weeks long, and I don't know if I really knew what I was signing up for when I said I would do it.
We bumped my workouts with Roger to twice a week, and we talked a lot about food in the week leading up to the start of the Transformation. I think having that week to mentally prepare really gave me a solid foundation to build from. I cleaned out a lot of junk food from my pantry, and I stocked my fridge with healthy snacks. I'd wanted to commit to eating at home 4 nights a week, and Roger pushed me to make it 6. These were big changes for me, and I decided that I wanted to give myself every chance to succeed, maybe because we had both agreed that we would share our results with the world regardless of whether they were good, bad, or ugly.
When internal motivation isn't enough, I can always count on the internet to encourage me!
Through those 12 weeks, some things remained constant: we made videos of the previous week's achievements and lessons, I blogged (most weeks...), and we constantly reflected on what was working and what we needed to change. The Transformation is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing! It takes a lot of focus, concentration, and active involvement to get the most that you can out of it. At the beginning, it seemed like 12 weeks was forever, but by the second half, I felt like it was flying by.
In the end, Roger's experiment was a huge success, for me and for him. I lost 42 pounds during those 12 weeks, and I had never felt better in my life. I was doing things I had never imagined I could do: planking for minutes at a time, doing pushups, even running a little. Even better, my baseline for how I ate had been reset. I had begun to understand how different foods affected me, and my cravings for salty, fatty, sugary foods had been reduced. Even when I would get those cravings, I had developed tools to deal with them in a healthier way.
I didn't entirely recognize this new Beth, but I liked her :)
My Transformation Story continued on through 4 more group Transformations. By then, the program had been refined to be 8 weeks, the community was introduced, and Roger had put together his daily and weekly lessons for the Transformers to focus on. I have continued to evolve and learn more about myself and how to fuel my body through those additional transformations. In total, I've lost over 100 pounds, I've completely changed the way I eat, and I am finally beginning to think of food as fuel. Perhaps best of all, my blood work now reads like that of a non-diabetic, and I don't have to see the Endocrinologist more than once a year.
I'm Beth, and I AM RELENTLESS!
