CrossFit South Bend

In this video I discuss the numerous ways in which I’m imperfect.

Why did I think it was important to make this video? Put simply a lot of marketing by health and nutrition coaches on the Internet gives the impression that they’ve never had to struggle and that everything comes so easily to them.

In my case, the exact opposite is true. I’m passionate about what I do and I’m better able to what I do precisely because I’ve had many health and weight struggles along the way.

One of my favorite sayings from a mentor is “My super power is that I make mistakes faster than anyone else”, and that’s certainly true of me in the health and wellness space. Making mistakes faster than other people allows me to learn from those mistakes more quickly than others, and then I can pass that knowledge on to those I coach.

Here are just some of the many ways I’m imperfect, and this is only the health and nutrition side of things 🙂

-I grew up eating more processed foods and fast foods than probably almost anyone watching this video and that continued for about 28 years.
-For most of my adult life, about 10 to 12 years I was about 50 to 60lbs overweight and I had significant struggles losing weight
-About 5 years ago I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease (autoimmune hyperthyroidism), which took a long time to heal from. That experience was what motivated me to become a health coach for a living.
-To this very day, as I’m writing this (April 2018), I am working with my own functional health practitioner to resolve some lingering health issues that haven’t gone away. Why? Because I’m not perfect, and 28 years of eating junk food along in addition to being a Type A stress case will really mess up your health. Additionally, the past three years have probably been the most stressful of my life, which leads me to my next point.
-Stress, and how I deal with it, is my own personal Mount Everest that I’ve been working on very hard the past couple of years but it’s still a MAJOR area of work for me.
-I still eat completely off plan foods (pizza, chocolate chip cookies, etc.) and not always for special occasions (although this has improved dramatically in the past few years)

I think it’s important as a health coach to show people that I’m not perfect, and that I’ve dealt a number of health and weight issues over the years.

We’re all at various levels of imperfection, but we can improve. What separates those who stay stuck in their lifelong imperfections from those who change is the willingness to ask for help to learn and grow as a person.

Even though I’m still very much imperfect, the changes I’ve made have been dramatic from where I used to be, and I’m going to keep trying to improve. You should too.