Hey guys, I did an interview with one of our great clients and wanted to share her successes with you. You’ll find this inspiring…
In this article
Alternatively, you can read the interview below…
Yuri: Hey, guys, Yuri Elkaim here, and I’m really excited because we’re starting something new and exciting that I think is gonna really make a difference for a lot of you and really give you some inspiration and words of encouragement from real people that are experiencing some of the struggles and challenges and successes that, hopefully, you are looking to experience as well.
So, on the phone with me today, I have Patricia Stephens who is one of our, I guess, recent Total Wellness Cleanse students or successes or whatever you wanna call it, and we’ll talk a little bit about that, but I wanna welcome you to the call. Thanks for joining me, Patricia.
Patricia: Hi, Yuri.
Yuri: Awesome. Well, thank you for being here, and I’m really looking forward to getting some insight into some interesting things, I think. So, why don’t we start off with…I wanna keep this brief and kinda to the point, so why don’t we dig in—before even talking about the cleanse or anything, why don’t we talk about what are some of the challenges from a health and dietary perspective that you faced before using some of our programs?
Patricia: Well, what I thought was my biggest challenge was that six years ago, I quit smoking, and when I did I gained 30 pounds and I was having no success losing that, so that’s really what I thought was my challenge.
And then when I learned more about the Total Wellness Cleanse, I learned that I had a lot of other challenges that were probably the reason I wasn’t losing the weight. Sugar addiction and caffeine addiction; salt addiction was a big one after I quit smoking. So, going through the program, I discovered that those were probably more what the problem was as opposed to the fact that I just wasn’t smoking anymore.
Yuri: And did you find a suitable replacement for smoking? A lot of people, when they stop smoking, they replace it with, in some cases, food.
Patricia: Potato chips, yes. Potato chips were my replacement. I’d never really eaten potato chips until I did quit smoking, so that was definitely my replacement, and I could eat a bag of them to replace it. I did know about that, but I didn’t realize it was the salt, and I didn’t really realize so much the sugar and the caffeine and the dairy thing. I didn’t realize how much they impacted me.
Yuri: Yeah, and so, today have you made those changes to, have you seen a difference in a reduction in sugar cravings and some healthier measures based on some of those changes?
Patricia: Oh my goodness, yes. I was actually pretty surprised because when I started the Wellness Cleanse, I thought that I was going to be a little overwhelmed giving everything up and dealing with the deprivation but I wasn’t, and I found that when I was eating the healthy food, I really wasn’t that tempted by the other things as long as I kept busy.
So, do I feel better? I can’t even tell you. I’m usually awake before my alarm in the morning, I hop out of bed, I do one of your workouts at least six days a week…
Yuri: Wow, nice.
Patricia: I have energy all day long. I work with young children with autism, so it’s a pretty active job, so, I’m active all day long. I get home from work, I take care of my three-year-old grandson, and at eight o’clock at night, I still have plenty of energy.
And the biggest thing is, I’m not dragging around, tired all the time, needing the coffee to keep me going. It’s the energy. It’s the energy, the kind of feeling lighter, and I’ve lost twelve pounds in the six weeks that I’ve been following the eating plan. So, those are the huge things.
Yuri: That’s terrific; good for you. And, I think, you know, a lot of, I mean, for myself, energy is obviously pretty important ’cause you have a lot of things to do during the day, and you wanna be able to get through it without having to take a nap or depend on things like that.
You obviously mentioned working with children with autism, which is great. So, what was your initial motivation for getting healthier? From the time that you stopped smoking, had you tried different things, and what was different this time around?
Patricia: All right, I did kind of randomly try things all along but never apparently cutting down my eating enough to lose any weight whatsoever. And three years ago a friend challenged me to run in a 5K with her, so I did train to run a 5K and I did it and I completed it, but once I was done with the program and did the 5K, I kind of petered out on the running even though I really enjoyed it.
So, last year I decided that what I needed was a really structured kind of program, so I bought your Fitter U program for myself for my birthday present, and your style of coaching is apparently exactly what I need, because you seem to know exactly when I’m ready to quit and tell me not to.
The built-in sitting down and actually making goals and rewarding yourself for doing things is phenomenal. It’s the whole package that kind of works for me. I knew I could go out and run three and a half miles, but now I can do it three or four days a week, because I get out of bed and I get up and do it.
So, I mean, I wasn’t…sometimes life gets in the way, and I’d drop the workouts for a little while, but I’d always go back to them. And even if I wasn’t getting up in the morning, I knew I should and I knew I would again. So, I decided for this year to commit to really sticking to the workouts, and when I saw the Wellness Cleanse, I figured, Well, I’ll try that too.
Even though I was running intermittently through the past year and doing Fitter U, at some point I added the Treadmill Trainer to do my cardio, but I still wasn’t losing weight, so I said, Well, I guess I’ll try this cleanse and see how the eating piece goes and try them all together. So, it’s six weeks into it, and it has been very successful.
I think the coaching piece, it’s the coaching piece. You know, when I can’t do the exercises in A Fitter U or I think I can’t run any farther, Yuri just kinda pops right in those earphones and tells me that yeah, I can, and, usually, you’re right. Actually, always you’re right.
Yuri: Yeah. I have this magic power that I know exactly at what point of the workout you’re at, and I just jump in there.
Patricia: It really is exactly the right time.
Yuri: That’s great; that’s fantastic.
Patricia: I think it’s the structure of the program. I know I have a plan every day of what I’m going to do. So, I have my, I follow the eating plan. I’m not perfect about it. I’m not at all perfect about it, though I probably eat 50 percent of my food is raw food, and 80 percent of it is fruits, vegetables, or beans, I’ll still go out for a burger with my husband, but I’ll only eat half of it.
So, I think the whole package deal that comes with the structure, this is what you can do, the coaching that gets you through it. One of the things that you recommended was getting an accountability coach, so a friend and I decided last week, we’re each other’s accountability coaches.
We text each other every morning when we do our workout, and then we text each other at night; we rate how well we ate for the day. It’s the whole package that seems to work really well for me.
Yuri: Definitely, that’s great. I think there are some really good nuggets in there, ’cause you mentioned how it’s not just the workouts or it’s not just the way you’re eating, but it’s really everything combined, and I think that’s really important for people to understand, is that it isn’t just doing some radical diet.
It’s the whole thing. It’s about setting those goals, it’s about exercising, eating well, and I think you’re a great example of that, so that’s awesome. What’s your big goal? Moving forward, what’s the big goal for Patricia healthwise?
Patricia: My big goal, well, there’re kind of two of them. My really big goal is that my mom is turning 90 this spring, and she goes to the gym four days a week, so when I’m 90 I wanna be able to go to the gym four days a week. So, my big goal is that I’m healthy enough to enjoy my life a lot. There’s a lot of longevity in my family, so I’m thinking I may be around to be 90, and it would be way better to be healthy and enjoying life doing it.
And then my other goal, I think what’s probably got me really motivated to start working out was working with the kids that I work with. You need to have a lot of energy and a lot of stamina, and you need to be able to jump and run and play, so I think I really got started with the workouts because I wanted to build my strength and be able to do that.
Yuri: Great, good for you. So, other people listening to this might be in a similar situation to you. What advice or encouragement do you have for others who might be in a similar position, who are looking maybe for a little bit of inspiration or motivation?
Patricia: I think what I would say is just start somewhere and stick with it. Once I decided that I was gonna do your programs, I totally stopped reading everybody else’s stuff and decided for once I was gonna stop reading and just do it.
And taking it a little bit at a time. I can’t always work out for an hour, but I can do half of the workout or ten minutes of the workout or something like that. The food, I don’t always eat perfectly, but I can do, you know, when I looked at it as I can do it for two weeks, and then I’d say it’s okay to not always eat perfectly or exercise perfectly and just keep going from where you’re at today but not expect yourself to be totally on all the time.
Yuri: That’s really helpful because I think a lot of people, in my experience, they have this intention of being perfect. They have to eat perfect all the time, they have to follow all the workouts to a tee, and if something happens and they’re not able to do that, then they’re just like, “Oh, what the heck? What’s the point of me doing this?”
So, I think that’s a really good point that you mentioned of not needing to be perfect, ’cause no one is. It really is about having that flexibility to be able to kinda roll with the punches and follow the plan but understand that things will come up and if you can just modify to some degree and if you wanna enjoy the occasional burger, that’s totally fine, right?
Patricia: Right.
Yuri: That’s great.
Patricia: And sometimes the exercises are too hard, and I end up just kinda laughing my way through them because there’s no chance but I keep trying.
Yuri: That’s great.
Patricia: Well, the stability ball is rolling across the room ’cause I fell off it or something.
Yuri: That’s awesome. Well, Patricia, thank you very much for taking the time.
Patricia: Oh, you’re welcome.
Yuri: I know that there’s been a lot of wisdom in here that I’m sure people will pick up on. Is there anything that you wanna finish off with before we end?
Patricia: No. I talk about your program all the time to anyone who wants to listen, so you have a lot of coverage in eastern Connecticut.
Yuri: Well, I appreciate that very much. Thank you very much once again, Patricia. Have a great day and I look forward to talking to you soon.
Patricia: Okay, thank you. You too.
Yuri: Bye.
Patricia: Bye-bye.
