For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been in the fitness industry since 1997, and loving every minute of it. I’ve played many roles including group fitness instructor, personal trainer, pilates instructor, yoga instructor and now I put it all together under the category of fitness coach.

For those of you who do know me, you know that I just had a baby. In my pregnancy, I was one of those women who was nauseous when I was NOT eating. So I ate quite a bit to keep from being sick. And the only things I could handle were big fluffy bread, egg salad and chicken salad. This from a person who never eats white bread. Haha. There were some days where I would eat 2 croissants for breakfast. So it’s no surprise that I gained an extra 30lbs. Yeah, that would be on top of the normal 30 pounds of pregnancy weight. So 60 pounds total. I was BIG!!

Here’s a pic of me, and get this- the other women in this photo are all pregnant! Some were further along than me. I am bigger than all of them put together. Yep, I’m  the one in the purple dress on the left. I had my baby on November 24, 2012, and as I expected- the first 30 lbs came right off. The 2nd 30 lbs I was going to have to work for.

I began my weight loss journey on January 1st, 2013, after I was cleared by the doctor to begin working out again. I was curious to see if I could do it. I have been giving people advice and guidance on how to lose weight for almost 2 decades! Now it was time to put my own expertise to the test.

I started at 161 pounds on January 1st. This morning, June 8th, the scale read 135 pounds. I have only 4 pounds left to go to meet the initial goal!

I won’t tell you it has been easy. Saying it and doing it are clearly VERY different things! I have been frustrated with all the time it has seemed to take. I was sure I would be back to myself by April 1st. Then May 1st. My clothes didn’t fit and I was uncomfortable showing skin. I had setbacks- you know when you go out to dinner with your family and they take you to some smelly Chinese place and you’re starving and before you know it you’ve eaten a pound of rice in weird brown sauce?! It was just a world of yuck.

But I never really lost my belief that I would lose the weight. It just was on a different schedule than I expected. And that, I believe, is the key.

Yes- I exercised more and altered my diet. Those are the physical ways to lose weight. We all understand this.

What we don’t understand is that we are human beings, and for us, nothing goes in a straight line. Just the fact that we are human means we are going to have setbacks. It could be emotions, it could be because your husband brought you a cake and you feel compelled to eat it, it could be because you had a busy day, week, month and you couldn’t find the time to exercise and you ate a bunch of crap. Whatever it is- we have setbacks. What we have to do is learn to get around these setbacks and there is no straight line to follow here. It will be different for every single one of us. We have to find our own ways.

Despite the fact that we are all on different paths, we can begin from the same place of strength!

The key to changing your body and thus changing your life is to have the end goal in the front of your mind at all times. Like me, you must know that you can do this. Whatever comes your way, keep the picture of yourself- the way you want to FEEL and LOOK in your minds eye.

You will get frustrated, you will have setbacks. And that’s all ok. Just know that you will get there. It might not be in the time frame that you want, but if you keep on keeping on- it has no choice but to happen for you.

I have to say, that for me, having to actually implement my own advice has been eye opening to say the least! I feel that I am much more capable of helping people to reach their weight loss goals after having this experience. I am still 4 pounds away from my goal, but I’ve got no doubt I will get there! If you want to see where I am now, vs when the purple picture was taken above, check out this video [youtube]awcHPDzIi6s[/youtube]

If you are interested in losing some weight, then I have an audio for you called “9 Steps to Permanent Weight Loss” that you can pick up on my site  www.mirzukfitness.com for f-ree! Go grab it now so you don’t forget. These are the principles I used to get me into my best version of myself.

Here’s to your success!

Miranda Zukowski

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