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8/16/2014

Amy Wrights Story!

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I was diagnosed with scoliosis – curvature of the spine – when I was 6 years old. I grew up wearing a back brace which was supposed to keep the curve from getting worse as I grew, and doctor visits and x-rays were a regular part of my childhood. I was still able to be pretty active and loved playing sports as a kid, so my condition and the brace didn’t bother me much until I became a teenager. I had to wear baggy clothes all the time to cover my brace, my body was changing due to adolescence and the braces became more uncomfortable. When I was 14, my family attended a healing conference at our church where I received prayer for healing and was told that God healed my back! You can imagine how excited I was, only to find out the next week after an x-ray that my spinal curve was actually several degrees worse. In my confusion and extreme disappointment, I came to the conclusion that God must not care about me, that there was something wrong with me and I wasn’t worth fixing, which became integrated into my identity. I resented the fact that I had to deal with this condition all the time and I felt like there was something wrong with me, that I’d been singled out. I saw the brace as the source of my problems rather than something that was keeping my condition from getting worse. I became very unhappy, bitter, and had very little self confidence, and I was stuck in that place throughout the rest of high school.

When my 18th birthday came around, I was allowed to stop wearing the brace, and I thought all my problems would be gone now that this thing that plagued my life was eliminated. I was wrong. Without the support of the brace, I became aware of how weak my back and shoulders were, and I began to experience intense pains in my back and shoulders that would shoot down my arms and get so bad that I could barely feel my arms or grip much of anything with my hands. This would happen whenever I was just walking around or doing anything on my feet for more than an hour or two, which made it really tough at work. This was my new reality, and it lasted for several years. I learned to be strong and push through the pain by sheer willpower and determination, I didn’t want this to hold me back but it was exhausting and I was very discouraged thinking I’d have to deal with it my whole life.

One day my parents heard about a local chiropractor on Christian radio, and I decided to give it a try – one of the best decisions I ever made! Over several months the chiropractic adjustments decreased my pain and it was eventually gone, which gave me hope. When I had to stop appointments due to finances, the pains came back so I was frustrated and discouraged again. I remembered the chiropractor telling me that the problem wasn’t just spinal curvature, but weak muscles associated with it, so 4 years ago I bought my first workout DVD by Jillian Michaels to help build my strength. I couldn’t go back to that state of hopelessness so I stuck with the program, my body began to change, and I got stronger while my pain decreased. I began to actually enjoy working out due to the benefits, I began to feel better about myself, and I was hooked!

Today I am pain-free and stronger than ever physically, mentally, and spiritually! I continued with the workout DVDs for several years, then in the past year I’ve stepped it up to lifting heavy weights, kickboxing, and bodyweight training that I never imagined I’d be capable of doing! I made peace with my scoliosis and the affects it had on my past, and it no longer defines me or my self image. I am now happy, positive, and quite the optimist! I no longer doubt God’s love and that He cares for me. He changes lives in many ways, and for me He used the health and fitness industry to do it. I strongly believe that no struggle is without purpose, and I can see how God used my struggle to reveal and develop my inner strength and determination, to grow my confidence, and to lead and equip me to find my passion for fitness, something I may never have found had I been healed a long time ago because I hated exercise back in the day! In a way, I’ve finally found my healing, and I’ve gained so much more than just a lack of pain.

Through God’s guidance I have recently become a personal trainer with my own online and in-home training business, and it is now my mission to use my passion to help and encourage others to reach their goals, overcome their own obstacles, and to become healthy and empowered through their own fitness journey. We all have different struggles, each person has something that is the hardest thing they’ve ever had to face or overcome, and God knows exactly what you need to conquer it. He can use your struggles for good and to prepare you for your calling, just as He did for me, and because of this there is ALWAYS hope.

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7/1/2014

Daniel Allen's Story

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Back in my high school days I was fit since I played sports, but now I was in college working on my Bachelors in graphic design. As we all know college classes can take up your time.  When I started college I worked a part time job so it was school, study and work.  I just don't have the time was my excuse when it came to exercise.
After 3 to 4 years I gained 50 lbs and now weighed 200 lbs. I never really noticed myself getting much bigger, I just ate bad between classes and at work. After graduating I found a graphic design job.  I also kept my job at Target, because they were flexible with me.
One night at Target I volunteered to work over night cleaning up the receiving area. In the middle of the night I was washing my hands, and when i looked in the mirror I noticed how big I was getting.  It was a shocking and sinking feeling when I saw it. I just kept staring and raising my shirt up wondering "how in the world did I ever get this big?"  It ruined my night and I decided to do something about it.  I joined a nice gym here in Texarkana, the problem was I knew nothing about how to workout.  I would go and spend 30 min. doing the same routine every 2 or 3 days.  I cancelled my membership and decided I would just workout at home.
I tried the Taebo workouts by Billy Banks and enjoyed them but it was the same thing over and over.  It wasn't until I heard of P90X.  At first I was intimidated and afraid, but made my mind up that I was going to do it and stick it out!  Nervous, I started the chest and back routine.  I only made it halfway through the exercise but it was awesome!  I was so sore after the workout that I couldn't even get my shirt off, because my arms were so heavy.
The more I got into P90X the more I loved it.  I couldn't wait to get home to do it because the changes were coming and they were coming relatively fast. I would take monthly pictures to see my progress. After 2 years of doing the P90X system the results are amazing.  I was still having trouble with my abs though. I could work them just fine but I didn't see them. The problem was in my diet. I had to stop drinking sodas' entirely and lay off the pizza and fudge rounds. Once I did that the change in my core started happening.
Now I mix it up with P90X, P90X2, Insanity, Asylum, Tapout, and many other workouts.  I'm a personal trainer now.  The one thing that drove me to become one is my dad. He was always in bad health because he never exercised or ate good and you didn't start to see the results until later in his life. He was bed ridden, had strokes and seizures.  It came to a point where he needed assistance for everything.  Even in a wheelchair it was hard for him to keep his head up. Of course that tore me up inside and stressed me out a lot.
Seeing dad go through that only motivated me to stay fit and healthy. Becoming a personal trainer would allow me to help others so they wouldn't suffer the same things my dad went through. When I was in Dallas taking a workshop to receive my fitness training certificate dad had a very long seizure.  My last words to him were, "I love you dad" and his last words to me were "I love you too son" while he was having a seizure. Even as I type this my heart gets heavy.  The next week he died.  Since then I have been a personal trainer and I have helped a lot of people with their health and fitness goals.

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7/23/2013

Misty Gatlin's Story

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Misty is in white
Where I’ve Been
I grew up a tiny little thing.  I was skinny — bones showing skinny.  One year, I remember being sick with what they ended up diagnosing as a stomach ulcer.  Several times at the doctor’s office I heard similar questions:  Do you skip meals during the day?  How many meals do you eat?  Do you ever throw up after you eat?  What does a typical meal look like?  I couldn’t figure out why they were always asking me things like that.  I had a very healthy appetite, and I was incredibly active but just couldn’t seem to gain weight or even get the muscle tone I was looking for as a cheerleader.  To them, I looked unhealthy.  To me I looked like myself, and there was nothing I could do about it.  No one ever taught me about eating healthy.  We didn’t have much money, and we just ate whatever we could afford.  If it wasn’t fried, it came from a box.  I just assumed people gained weight from eating too much rather than from eating unhealthy.
Once college hit, I was no longer cheering and no longer as active.  So I went back to my old eating habits.  All while going from class to class and coming back to my dorm to sleep.  I had no energy.  I gained almost half of the total weight I left high school with, and that’s where I stopped weighing myself.  I hated looking at myself in the mirror.  In fact, I avoided it altogether, and I hated having to choose what to wear because nothing fit.  I found myself wearing sweats and a T-shirt every day of the week.  Usually I wore whatever I slept in the night before.  I didn’t care anymore.  Then, I went into a serious depression.  I tried whatever I could in college.  I tried not eating anything, and I tried throwing up after eating, but nothing worked.  I was being controlled by food.  It had become an addiction.  I hated myself.  I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and see anything but an ugly, unhealthy person who was spiraling downward fast.
Once I graduated college, I began cooking my own meals paying attention to the types of food I was eating.  Our new home had a swimming pool that I lived in all summer long.  After 1 full year, I noticed that my pants were not fitting.  Had they stretched because I wore them so much?  So I decided to pull out the dusty scale.  I hadn’t weighed myself in years.  Once I stepped on, I thought it must have been broken.  The numbers were showing that I had lost more than half of the weight I had gained.  How did that make sense?  I saw the numbers on the scale, and I felt the pants falling off of me, but that’s not what I saw when I looked in the mirror.  Instead, I still saw a depressed and very overweight person.  It took years for me to realize it was the addiction that was clouding my view.  I couldn’t see myself the same as what others saw.  I saw what the food addiction and depression were allowing me to see.  It was as if I were looking through a fun house mirror.

Where I Am Now
Because of the struggle with weight, I lived in fear of gaining it all back, so it was several years after being married that I allowed myself to have the desire to have a baby.  I had always wanted kids, but the thought of going back to that place was too much for me.  I did well with the first pregnancy, but the second left me with a lot of extra weight that I just couldn’t get rid of.  I had again become uncomfortable in my own skin.  
In December 2011, I decided to join a gym.  I made new friends who helped keep me accountable in my fitness, and I actually became a fitness instructor and coach myself.  I coach differently than most because I don’t focus on weight and calories.  For someone who has struggled in the past with feelings of inadequacy, extremely low self-esteem, the need to be perfect in order to be good enough, and struggled with food addictions, it’s sometimes hard to stop these feelings from returning.  I learned that counting calories and stepping on a scale quickly bring those issues back to me, and I don’t always know what struggles those I coach have gone through.  There are other ways to get healthy.
I sometimes find myself feeling some of those same emotions because of the different reactions I’ve gotten from loved ones.  
For the first time in my life I am exercising and focusing on my health.  Yes, I was very active in high school as a cheerleader, but I never was one to go out and “exercise.”  I didn’t even step foot in a gym until college when I took a kinesiology class, and that was only because I had to.  Once I started really exercising, my metabolism went crazy again just like when I was younger.  I know I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been.  If you see me in person you can see even my bones are tiny.  My fingers are tiny.  My little fingernails look like someone in elementary school.  It’s the way God created me.  If I’m living to please others, this is proof that I can’t win. I’m thankful I don’t struggle the way I used to, but boy is it hard when I hear such negative comments from my loved ones.  When I was younger up until a few years ago I looked for the approval of others to tell me how I looked, what I should wear, and what activities I should enjoy doing.  Today I find my identity in Christ.  I don’t struggle with my self-esteem because I came to the understanding that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made by the only one who knows what beauty and perfection are.  I’m living for an audience of one, so if someone doesn’t like me for who I am, there’s nothing I can do about it, and there’s no reason I should feel I have to do anything about it.  I don’t struggle with food anymore.  I don’t count calories or weigh myself.  I don’t even own a scale.  

Where I’m Going
I know I was placed here to encourage others and help them to find their identity in Christ rather than in others.  I’ve worked in many areas of ministry, and right now God has placed me in the middle of the health and fitness world.  It’s a place I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be.  I have watched women walk into my class feeling inadequate, standing at the back with one foot out the door.  They didn’t want to be noticed.  I have watched those same women now come to the gym 30-45 minutes before class even starts just so they can get a spot in the front.  My favorite thing about that – they start smiling and adding their own style to the moves, and they’re truly having fun!  When they walked in for the first time, they didn’t want to be noticed.  They didn’t want any attention on themselves.  Now, they have confidence and are no longer worried about what others in class think about them.  And I understand it because I was that same woman.  I’m telling my story to anyone who will listen because I want everyone to have confidence.  I don’t want to see anyone struggle with their image.  I’m telling you.  You are beautiful and perfectly made.  Keep your body healthy, but don’t do it for others.  Do it because you were created with a plan in mind, and if you lack confidence in yourself, you will struggle to live out that plan.  The only weapon the enemy has against you is the ability to lie to you in a way you might just believe it.  One of his favorite lies is that you are “less than.”  He will tell you all the reasons you can’t do what you were created to do, and your confidence will diminish.  Don’t allow it.  Hold your head up high knowing you have flaws but at the same time, you were created to perfection.  You were equipped to serve a purpose, and God would never call you to that purpose if you weren’t capable of doing it.  Whether it’s in your journey to become healthier and physically fit or anything else under the sun, remember your audience only consists of one, and be confident that he created you to do amazing things.

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